Yè Shān 葉山, zì Bābái 八白, was a mid-Míng Yìjīng scholar of unrecorded native place. He is one of the more obscure mid-Míng Yì-writers; the Sìkù editors, drawing on Zhū Yízūn’s 朱彝尊 Jīngyì kǎo citation of Zhāng Yúnzhāng 張雲章, note that “his beginning and end have no source to be examined; in detail his self-preface suggests he was an aged provincial student” (a “lǎo zhūshēng 老諸生”).
His birth year can be calculated from his own four sequential prefaces to the Yè Bābái yì zhuàn 葉八白易傳 (KR1a0102): the first preface dates to Jiājìng rénzǐ 嘉靖壬子 = 1552, when he was forty-eight (he says at the start of the work that he had begun reading the Yì at age ten, that ten years passed before he could disentangle himself from rote recitations, and a further fourteen years to the jǐyǒu / mistakenly written dīngmǎo 丁卯 year — jǐyǒu 己酉 of Jiājìng = 1549; followed by six more to rénzǐ 1552). The fourth preface dates to Jiājìng 39 = 1560 (gēngshēn 庚申), at which point the work was complete and he was fifty-seven. He was therefore born in 1504. He failed civil examinations repeatedly and remained a provincial-grade scholar; the Sìkù notice characterizes the Yì zhuàn as the work of an old failed examination candidate.
His one surviving work is the sixteen-juàn Yè Bābái yì zhuàn, drafted from 1552 and rewritten over four prefaces through 1560.