Literary Volume - The Collected Works of Fu Lei

Author: Fu Lei
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-09-01
Features: A Brief Autobiography by Fu Lei
I was born in March 1908 in Yutan Township, Putuo County, Shanghai, into a landlord family. At the age of four, my father passed away. During the Xinhai Revolution, he was wronged by local tyrants and imprisoned for three months. Upon release, he died in sorrow without his innocence being cleared, at the age of only twenty-four. My second brother and younger sister died because their mother had to travel outside the home, leaving no one to care for them. My mother, widowed at a young age (also twenty-four), often taught me to avenge our family. Due to her constant grief and tears, and her severe discipline over me—even corporal punishment was common until I was sixteen—I grew up in sorrow without laughter. At the age of seven, I studied the Four Books and Five Classics with an elderly scholar at home, and later took lessons in English and mathematics. At eleven, I entered the second grade of Zhoupu Town Primary School, and at twelve, I moved to Shanghai and enrolled in the fourth grade of Nanyang Affiliated Primary School (then known as the Shanghai Industrial College Affiliated Primary School). However, I was expelled after one year for being unruly. I then transferred to Xuhui Public School for the first year of middle school (under the old system) but was expelled again for criticizing religion. At sixteen, I strongly opposed superstition and all religions, speaking fiercely at home. Once, I clashed violently with my mother over her insistence on holding a ritual to honor our ancestors.
After the Jiangsu-Zhejiang War, I entered the affiliated middle school of Datong University and participated in the May Fourth Movement, giving speeches and parading in the streets. During the Northern Expedition, I joined the movement to expel the academic tyrant Hu Dunfu, writing posters in opposition to the pro-school faction. Later, I heard that Wu Zhihui (one of the school trustees of Datong University) accused me of being a communist and had my mother bring me back from the countryside. In autumn, I enrolled in the first year of Zhizhi University but found the academic environment unsatisfactory and decided to study in France for free in winter 1927.
In France for four years: I attended classes in the humanities at the University of Paris and the School of Art History at the Louvre in Paris. However, I did not study diligently. In summer 1929, I traveled to Switzerland for three months, and in spring 1930, I took a short trip to Belgium. In spring 1931, I went to Italy for two months and gave a lecture on the significance of the Northern Expedition by the National Army against the Beiyang Warlord forces at the invitation of the "Royal Geographic Society of Italy" in Rome. During my time in France, I interacted more with foreigners, including university professors, critics, sinologists, musicians, the head of the Paris Fine Arts School, and other elderly painters, though I had less contact with Chinese students. In 1928, I met Liu Haisu and other art students in Paris and often served as an interpreter for Liu, helping him lobby the French Ministry of Education to purchase one of his works, which was bought by the French government. In 1929, Teng Gu fled overseas and studied in Germany, passing through Paris. We met there.
In autumn 1931, I returned to China, arriving in Shanghai just as the September 18th Incident occurred. In winter 1931, I joined the Shanghai Fine Arts College to teach art history and French. In January 1932, I married in Shanghai. On January 28, 1932, the incident broke out, and the Fine Arts College closed. The Havas News Agency (the predecessor of France Presse) was established, and through the introduction of my fellow student Wang Ziguan, I took a translation job, but left after six months. At the time, I worked alongside Li Liewen. After I left, Hu Yuzhi and Fei Yiming joined the agency, but I returned to the Fine Arts College to teach.
In September 1933, my mother passed away, and I resigned from the Fine Arts College. The reasons were: (1) I felt unqualified to teach due to my lack of formal education, and my mother, who was deeply hurt by my lack of a degree abroad, would have been even more heartbroken if I didn’t work; and (2) although Liu Haisu treated me kindly, he was harsh to others and ran the school like a business, which I found unacceptable. So, immediately after my mother’s death, I resigned.
In autumn 1934, my friend Ye Changqing invited me to co-found the Current Affairs Review—a weekly magazine that reorganized news from daily papers. I served as the editor-in-chief, staying up late at the printing shop to oversee layout, marking the beginning of my involvement in publishing. Three months later, the magazine shut down due to financial losses. As a shareholder, I lost one thousand yuan, and had to sell ten acres of farmland to pay it back.
In February 1935, Teng Gu invited me to work as the director of the editorial department at the Nanjing "Central Committee for the Preservation of Cultural Relics," where I collaborated with Xu Baoju. I worked there for four months, translating a compilation of Regulations on the Preservation of Cultural Relics from Various Countries. The committee later downsized and merged into the Ministry of Interior, and I left.
In winter 1936, Teng Gu invited me to Luoyang as a "Special Committee Member of the Central Committee for the Preservation of Cultural Relics" to examine the Longmen carvings, accompanied by a photographer to study preservation methods. Two months later, the Ministry of Interior demanded accounting procedures for my expenses, and in anger, I resigned and returned home, coinciding with the December 12th Incident.
On July 8, 1937, one day after the Lugou Bridge Incident, I accepted an invitation from the Fujian Provincial Education Department to give lectures on the essentials of art history at the "Summer Training Course for Secondary School Teachers." Due to the tense situation, I finished quickly and returned to Shanghai on August 4, learning that the Nanjing government had decided to resist Japan. I left with my family by ship for Hong Kong and then fled to Guangxi for refuge. A friend’s relative, Ma Shi, was from Mengshan in Guangxi, and I planned to join them. However, due to unforeseen circumstances, we got stuck in Wuzhou for three months, unable to advance or retreat, and eventually returned to Shanghai via Hong Kong in November, just as the Nationalist army was retreating from Daxiang.
In February 1939, Teng Gu became the president of the National Art College, which merged the schools in Beijing and Hangzhou and moved to Kunming. He invited me to serve as the head of the academic department. I traveled from Hong Kong to Vietnam and then to Yunnan, but declined the position. I drafted a curriculum outline (even consulting with Qian Yiduo in the process) but disagreed with Teng Gu’s proposal to conduct entrance exams to screen out some students. Our disagreements led me to leave Yunnan in mid-May and return to Shanghai via the same route.