A Real Sanmao: Beauty and Sorrow

Author: Liu Lanfang
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-03-01
Features: Sanmao is considered a "strange person" in the eyes of the ordinary, but a "prized one" in the hands of creation. "The petty man of heaven is the noble man of the world; the noble man of heaven is the petty man of the world." This passage from the Zhuangzi might have been written specifically for Sanmao. Sanmao's understanding of life is simply the word "play," "I want to play this life out to the fullest." She showed urban women who read a little, lived in concrete jungles, and traveled from morning to evening the other possibility of "women's lives": truancy in youth, in adolescence, romantic love with exotic charm, a handsome, loyal, and bearded husband, starting from scratch in the desert, free and unrestrained. In short, the word is "play." She demonstrated the life that the shy and depressed "urban women" longed for but could never experience, showing a "pure land" deep within a woman's heart. Therefore, Sanmao always occupies a corner in their memories.