Beauty and Sorrow: A Real Sanmao

Author: Liu Lanfang
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-03-01
Features: Sanmao is considered a "strange person" in the eyes of ordinary people, but she is a "prized one" in the hands of fate. "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 rushed to and from work from morning to evening another possibility of "woman's life": truancy in youth, during adolescence, romantic love with a foreign accent, a handsome, loyal, and bearded husband, starting from scratch in the desert, free and unrestrained. In short, the word is "play." She showed the urban women suffering from depression an unbelievable yet unattainable life, and the "pure land" deep within a woman's heart. That's why Sanmao always occupies a corner in their memories.