Taipei, June 21 (CNA) Taiwan-based literary writer Yang Pin-chun, better known by his pen name Mei Xun, passed away Monday at the age of 96.

Born in 1925 in China's Jiangsu province, Yang came to Taiwan in 1949 when the Communists won the Chinese Civil War and had lived here ever since.

He wrote more than 20 million words during his career, many of them coming after he became visually impaired due to retinopathy in the 1980s, according to a statement issued Monday by Wenhsun Magazine.

Despite his inability to see, Yang continued to work by dictating his thoughts to his son and had several of his books published, including a 610,000-word novel, according to Feng Te-ping, the magazine's editor-in-chief.

Yang was a highly versatile writer who was well known for his novels, essays, commentaries and even dictionaries, according to the statement.