Born in Tiaong, Quezon, Philippines on May 7, 1914.
     Second child of the eight children from the union of Yap Uy and Francisca Mercado. Yap Uy was a Chinese national from Lamua, Nan-an, Fukein (now called Fujian) province. He migrated to the Philippines and married Sixto's mother who is a native of San Juan, Batangas.
     He was baptized in the Roman Catholic Church of Tiaong in 1914 and was given the name Sixto Tiongco. The surname Tiongco was the Christian family name adopted by his father when he was baptized in the same church before his marriage to his mother.
     At the age of 5, he was sent to China by his father to study. He spent his formative years in his father's hometown of Nan-an. Later, he went to the city of Amoy, now Xiamen, some 50 miles south for his secondary education. He enrolled in the 13th middle school of Amoy. While at this school, in May 1928, he joined the Communist Youth League (CYL). By the end of that year, he dropped out of school
and joined its underground revolutionary activities. The following year, he became the chairman of the provincial committee of the CYL.

     In mid 1930, the CYL in Fukien was destroyed by the Nationalist and he was arrested. He was imprisoned for one and a half years. After his release, he resumed his work with the provincial CYL. In 1932, he was formally admitted as member of the Chinese Communist Party (CPC).
     In 1933, he organized and led peasants' campaigns against the abuses of landlords and warlords. In May of that same year, he led the Workers and Peasants Self-Defense Armed Group and won the "Houtong Rebellion". Later in December, he, together with the other leaders, launched widespread armed rebellions in the whole province of Fukien.
     In February 1934, the local communist government in East Fukien was established. Two months later, this local unit was smashed by the Nationalists. The local CPC lost contact with the CPC Central Committee. Under this situation, he set-up a special committee of the CPC in East Fukien and organized in the mountains the East Fukien Independent division of the Chinese Workers and Peasants Red Army. From his mountain base, he waged extensive guerilla actions in east Fukien. Within three years of fighting, his unit engaged several skirmishes with the Nationalists and won notably the engagement in Shacheng, Taokeng and Qingjiao. He had now four established guerilla bases in the whole province.

     In 1938, Japan invaded China.
     His East Fujian Independent Division was integrated with, and became the 6th Regiment of the New Fourth (4th) Red Army. He was appointed as its Commander. He became a regimental commander of a formal army unit. As part of the New 4th Army, his unit participated in the advance to Shanghai. His 6th Regiment engaged the Japanese in the city of Wuxi, attacked the Nanjing-Shanghai railway route and Honggiao airfield where he destroyed several Japanese air crafts. By the end of 1938, his unit was merged with the Danyang guerilla army and re-organized as the Advancing division of the New 4th Army and served as the Division deputy commander.
     The Advancing Division of the 4th crossed the Yangtze River, established anti-Japanese bases in north Kiangsu (now Jiangsu) province and engaged the enemy in Yangzhou and Tai Counties. In March 1940, he led his army to support the attack on Bantaji, in June 1940, he won the battles of Guo and Huanggiao. After these victories, he was prompted as deputy commander of the 1st Division of the 4th Army.
     In March 1944, he achieved a great victory in the battle of Cheqiao. The following year, he was made the Commander of the 1st Division of the New 4th Army and concurrently Commander of the Central Jiangsu Military Area. These were the military rank and positions he held when China was fully liberated from the Japanese.

     Ye Fei died on April 18, 1999 in a military hospital in Beijing. He was 85 years old. He was given full military honors during his funeral.

     In 1998, President Corazon Aquino invited Gen. Ye Fei to make a visit to the Philippines. In January 1989, the Chinese government sent Vice chairman Ye Fei as head of a Chinese parliamentary delegation to the Philippines. In that week official visit to the Philippines, Senator Jovito Salonga, then President of the Philippine Senate, acted as the official host. Ye Fei made a one-day visit to Tiaong, Quezon, the place of his birth, after an absence of 70 years. He met his relatives and town folks who treated him as part of their clan. He paid filial homage before the tomb of his parents who were buried in the town's cemetery.
The Manila Standard, a national newspaper in Manila, in its Editorial entitled "Beyond Prejudices" of January 30, 1989, made a comment on the visit of Vice chairman Ye Fei:
    "It is a remarkable human story, folkloric in its proportions. President Aquino perhaps may have been truly stirred, upon hearing the life history of Chinese parliamentary delegation head Ye Fei (whose first remark to the President was that his mother was a pure Filipina).  She suggested, in the fashion that seems characteristic here, that a movie be made out of it. Taken in by its inner loveliness, the President's impulse was to share the story with everybody."
    "Ye Fei, after all of 70 years, journeyed back to the land of his birth the other, in the yet sleepy town of Tiaong, to pay homage at the grave of his mother and be reunited with brothers and sisters and friends he may no longer recognize. The clan- the whole town-teachers, policemen, traffic aides, housewives and schoolchildren, it was reported-came out to greet him. He left at the age of five, brought to China with his older brother Felix by his father in 1919. And he has come back, vice-chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China, no less, speaking through an interpreter, as residents affectionately addressed him as Ka Sixto, brother of Ka Sayas and son of Aling Kikay."
    " 'I want to apologize for not being able to help you' he said to his family, which included a brother-lawyer at the Philippine Consulate in California who arrived for the occasion. 'It was very busy in China.' Indeed he was. He joined the Chinese communist party at age 14, was cadre and eventually became a general in the decades-long-Chinese revolution, was a governor of Fujian province at one time."
     "He paid his respects to his mother at her grave. Francisca managed a rice mill and a restaurant until her death in 1962 and Ye Fei or is it Ka Sixto, the name he was baptized with remembered his mother as an "intelligent and competent" woman. he had long wanted to visit her, but the government then would not allow him because he was a communist."
    "Isn't it this a magical narrative, more so as it happens in the midst of scandals that rock high offices? It's point is much too obvious to be missed: the reunion of brothers and sisters whose father is Chinese and mother is a Filipina, siblings who managed to carve honorable lives among their peoples, symbolizes to us the boundlessness of humanity. Beneath the skin, beneath the ideology, creed, or national frontiers, we are all, firstly and lastly, members of mankind. how many among us Filipinos can trace their roots to foreign shores, or have brothers and sisters making a place for themselves in far societies and yet are not less nobler for it?"
     "Isn't it something to ponder how anti-Chinese sentiments that seem so prevalent today can be so pointless? The Chinese capitalist or Chinese communist or for that matter every Filipino, is not to be judged by his label, but by the manner he lives and conducts himself. The Philippines is a melting pot where virtually all cultures and blood mix, and find a home."
     "Rather than stressing how different we are from each other, because indeed, there are many differences to find, we should rather be thinking of our oneness."