Wu Mei and His World

Author: Wang Weimin
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2002-10-01
Features: Wu Mei (1884–1939) was a modern Chinese litterateur. His courtesy name was Qu'an, also known as Ling□, and styled as Shuang□. He was from Changzhou (now Suzhou, Jiangsu). Orphaned at a young age, he was adopted by his uncle. He was deeply fond of ci poetry and qu opera, often engaging in close exchanges with the renowned qu master Yu Suli. He dedicated his life to teaching, serving as a professor at institutions such as Wu University, Peking University, Sun Yat-sen University, and Central University, where he taught ci and qu opera for 20 years. After the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japan, he traveled between Wuhan, Xiangtan, Guilin, and Kunming despite his illness and passed away in 1939. Wu Mei was a member of the Nan She (Southern Society). In his early years, he wrote Fengdong Mountain Legend and West Terrace Lament, expressing patriotic sentiments through historical stories. In 1898, moved by the injustice of the Six Martyrs of 1898, he composed Flying Blood Blossoms. After the execution of Qiu Jin in 1907, he wrote the zaju Xuanting Autumn to express his grief. After the "July 7th Incident" in 1937, he enthusiastically praised the anti-Japanese fighters while condemning traitors. Upon hearing that "someone in his occupied hometown played the flute to entertain the enemy commanders," he deemed it "shameless and regrettable," demonstrating his noble national spirit. Wu Mei had profound expertise in poetry, prose, ci poetry, and qu opera. His achievements in opera were particularly outstanding, as he excelled in composing, arranging, performing, and annotating qu opera scripts, as well as determining their musical notation. He was hailed as the "Great Master of Qu Opera in Modern China" (Xia Jingguan, Ninggu Lou Cihua). He authored works such as Discussions on Qu Opera, Simple Spectrum of the Nine Palaces, and Introduction to Chinese Opera, as well as 11 zaju and chuanqi plays. His published Three Plays of Shuang□ included accompanying musical scores. He also published Chemo Room Qu Opera Collection (Volumes 1 and 2) and contributed to the annotation of most of the works in Warm Red Room Collected Chuanqi, edited by Liu Shiheng. In addition to his dedicated work on qu opera, Wu Mei devoted his remaining energy to poetry and ci composition. His ci poems, such as "[Lingjiang Fairy]" "Short Clothes, Lean Horses, Tight Dust" and "[Qingping Yue]" "On Zheng Suonan’s Orchid Painting, in the Style of Yu Tian," were bold and elegant. His poems, such as "Reading Wang Nong’s Bleeding Flowers in Green Play, Collected from the Play’s Verses" and "Written at Xinyang on He Dashu’s Collection," were profound, desolate, and powerful. He self-edited Shuang□ Poetry Collection and Shuang□ Ci Collection, both in stone-printed editions. Shuang□ Prose Collection remained unprinted. He also wrote a monograph on ci poetry, General Treatise on Ci Studies, published by the Commercial Press. The book is divided into three parts: a biographical sketch, commemorative essays, and research reviews. Each part is arranged in chronological order of publication. The selected articles span from 1903 to 1998. The selection criteria were lenient for articles by lifelong friends and strict for contemporary works; lenient for direct remembrances and strict for indirect studies; lenient for hard-to-find works and strict for easily accessible ones. Some original texts were either unmarked, written in traditional characters, or used non-standard characters. This collection uniformly uses simplified characters, standard punctuation, and corrects minor irregularities or typos. The articles selected do not reflect the editor’s views (except for the author’s own). Due to the limitations of the era and available materials, some articles may contain discrepancies or inaccuracies in their views or facts. To respect the original works, the editor has refrained from making unauthorized changes.