Xifan Yang was born in Hengyang, an industrial city in the southern Chinese province of Hunan. She came to Germany at the age of four and went to school in Freiburg im Breisgau. Xifan Yang studied psychology for a few semesters at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich and also wrote for the youth magazine of the Süddeutsche Zeitung, jetzt.de. jetzt.de.

After training as an editor at the German School of Journalism in Munich, internships at Stern's Shanghai foreign bureau and at NEON, she moved to Shanghai in 2011 to report as a freelance correspondent from China and Asia for German-language media, including Stern, SZ Magazin, GEO, NZZ am Sonntag, SPIEGEL Online, Financial Times Deutschland, Tagesspiegel, Mare, DUMMY, Wired and Harper's Bazaar.

In 2015, her first book "Als die Karpfen fliegen lernten" was published by Hanser Berlin, in which she tells the recent history of China using the example of her family. In April 2016, she accompanied former German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and in May 2017 his successor Sigmar Gabriel on government visits to China. From 2016 to 2017, she worked as an editor at SZ Magazin. SZ Magazin.

Seit Juli 2018 berichtet sie als China-Korrespondentin der ZEIT Since July 2018, she has been reporting from Beijing as China correspondent for ZEIT. She is a recipient of the German Reporter Award and the Egon Erwin Kisch Award. She speaks Mandarin as her native language.