The Children of Osmanthus - A Biography of Yu Guangzhong

Author: Fu Mengli
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-08-01
Features: A single poem, "Nostalgia," moved hundreds of millions of Chinese people. Getting closer to the master, experiencing the extraordinary life and times of the master. Mr. Yu Guangzhong exclusively authorized this publisher to publish the Simplified Chinese edition. I write because I have no choice, like a sneeze, yet suddenly spray out a rainbow; or like a cough, unable to help but cough, and end up coughing into music. I write to refine stones to mend the sky. — Yu Guangzhong Writing poetry is for self-entertainment. Writing essays is for entertaining others. Writing criticism, especially prefaces, is for entertaining friends. Translation is for entertaining my wife, because translation work is steady and income is reliable. The copyrights of these four things will be divided among my four daughters in the future. — Yu Guangzhong If one is too unfeeling, always rationally severing emotional ties, it would be too dull, like a poor conductor; but if one is too self-pitying, causing chaos every time love strikes and turning it into tragedy, it would be too naive. Love and beauty are different; love arises from real life, while beauty depends on the right distance. — Yu Guangzhong From a thin narcissus to the confident elegance of today, Fan Wocong has always been Yu Guangzhong’s best “.” She did not lose herself because of Yu Guangzhong’s fame. She possesses great wisdom and skillfully grasps the bigger picture, confidently participating in both his literary world and private life. — Fu Mengli
A tiny lotus has shown its sharp tip—the earliest beautiful memories are in Jiangnan.The gentle water towns of Jiangnan, with green willows and red flowers, the chirping of orioles and swallows, always leave people lost in admiration. In the eyes of the young Yu Guangzhong, he had long believed himself to belong to Jiangnan.Yu Guangzhong, originally from Yongchun, Fujian, was born in Nanjing due to his father Yu Chaoying’s official duties, so most of his childhood was spent in Jiangnan.Sun Xiujun, a native of Wujin, Jiangsu, after graduating from the local normal school, was assigned to teach in the distant Yongchun, Fujian, a place the family called “the Southern Barbarians.” In Yongchun, she met Yu Chaoying, the education director, as if pulled by an invisible red thread. They eventually married, and she became the stepmother of a nine-year-old boy.Yu Guangzhong’s half-brother with the same father, Guangya, lived only to the age of eighteen and died of illness. Later, Sun Xiujun did not have any more children, leaving the Yu family with only a few members—a situation quite unique in the traditional Chinese extended family. Beautiful JiangnanSun Xiujun often took Yu Guangzhong back to Changzhou’s Chaqiao to visit relatives. The Changzhou branch of the family was large, with dozens of distant and close cousins, who treated the visiting outsider with special attention, especially the female cousins, who adored him and often gathered around him, asking him to draw horses or door gods for them. From a young age, Yu Guangzhong had a remarkable talent for painting and could quickly sketch whatever he liked.As a child, Yu Guangzhong had thick eyebrows and large eyes, a fair and long face, and short hair. He still preserves an old photograph taken with his mother in Shanghai when he was ten. His large eyes revealed a sense of maturity and intelligence, giving him a quiet demeanor.However, Yu Guangzhong also had a mischievous side. A female cousin later often recounted this embarrassing incident from his childhood: Once, while playing martial arts stories with his cousins, he needed props and ended up cutting the fur collar off his mother’s coat and tying it around his head, looking like a mountain king—extremely heroic. But his joy turned sour when his mother discovered him and was furious, ready to beat him. The cousins quickly intervened, hiding him in the room until his mother calmed down before letting him out.With so many female cousins, each elegant and refined, he was often overwhelmed. Besides his mother, the maternal gentleness of his female cousins was one of the most beautiful memories of his childhood.“He’ll marry one of the cousins in the future!” the elders of both the Yu and Sun families would say.Later, Yu Guangzhong did indeed marry a cousin, though not one from that original group.During his childhood, apart from the time spent in Changzhou, most of his days were lonely, without siblings or playmates. Yu Chaoying later worked at the Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission, his duties keeping him extremely busy. His attitude toward his son was traditional—strict. The loss of one son was a great sorrow, but it did not change his treatment of the other. In Yu Guangzhong’s memory: “Father was very stern and never played with me. Whenever we met, he would give me motivational speeches, making it hard to get close to him.”The Jiangnan relatives’ home was not only lively with many people but also culturally rich, filled with charm. Jiangnan was colorful, while Yongchun was stark and solemn. The clan elders of Yongchun were more masculine, compared to the gentle aunts and grandmothers of Jiangnan, who were easier to approach. As a child from Yongchun, Yu Guangzhong never quite mastered the local dialect, his accent always carrying the Jiangnan flavor. His later nostalgia was also for Jiangnan.Born on the Double Ninth Festival in 1928, Yu Guangzhong was clearly pleased with his birthdate, calling it “a day of poetry and wine, a day of chrysanthemums, a day of zhusy.” He secretly took pride in being born on the Double Ninth and called himself a “child of zhusy”; however, on the other hand, “the meaning of the Double Ninth Festival is to avoid disaster, to escape a great calamity, so amidst the pride, there was also deep sorrow.” Yu Guangzhong believed that children of his generation were metaphorically born on the Double Ninth. That generation of children were caught between two wars. Fleeing from danger occupied most of his teenage memories; it also ended his childhood prematurely. P3-5