柏楊
Boyang was born as Guō Dìngshēng () in Kaifeng, Henan Province, China, with family origins in Huixian. Boyang's father changed his son's name to Guō Lìbāng () to facilitate a transfer to another school. Bo Yang later changed his name to Guo Yìdòng, also spelled Kuo I-tung (). In high school, Boyang participated in youth organisations of the Kuomintang, the then-ruling party of the Republic of China, and joined the Kuomintang itself in 1938. He graduated from the National Northeastern University, and moved to Taiwan after the Kuomintang lost the civil war in 1949.