China's White Cottage Poet Wu Fangji and His Poems

By Tang Win

Wu Fangji was a well-known poet in the early half of the 20th century in China. He had left behind him hundreds of poems, which are so beautiful and touching that after nearly a century of his death, many people still keep his poems in mind, and some research institutions of his works are still very active in some universities and cities in China. The aim of this book is to introduce the poet and his works to the people of the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Apr 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9781528983136

Tang Win

Tang Win graduated from the Sichuan Foreign Language Institute in Chongqing, China in 1982 with a bachelor’s degree in English literature. He used to work as an interpreter and teacher of English and manager of international trade for years in different countries around the world. Bygones is his first work in English.

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About the Author

Tang Win graduated from the Sichuan Foreign Language Institute in Chongqing, China, in 1982, with a bachelor’s degree in English literature. He used to work as an interpreter, teacher of English and manager of international trade for many years in different countries of the world. He began to write in English after he retired from work and has published a few books in London including an autobiographic memoir, biographies of celebrities, novels and poems.

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Tang Win (2021)

The right of Tang Win to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781528983129 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781528983136 (ePub e-book)

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First Published (2021)

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Chapter 1

Childhood of a Talented Boy

On the early morning of May 21, 1896, when the glimmering of dawn was glistening in the east, dying the wispy clouds in multi-coloured morning glows and a red morning sun was going to break out, some hasty cries of a new-born baby came out from a small courtyard surrounded by green willows in the city proper of Chongqing. Mr Wu Chuanjiang, the 40-year-old master of the courtyard, could hardly hide the joy in his mind, for his 36-year-old wife Liu Suxian finally gave birth to a child.

Mr Wu was at that time a merchant of Chinese silk in Chongqing business centre and his wife was a teacher of Chinese in a nearby primary school.

The couple looked carefully at their newly born son, tender and lovely and their faces rippled with unquenchable joy and happiness.

It was the time to give a name to the baby. The father thought a while and said:

I hope that my son will become an outstanding scholar in future and enjoy a good reputation for long ages in history. So I give him a name of Fang to bear the similar meaning. The mother smiled and added: I hope my son will be lucky and auspicious all his life, so I name him Ji.

Wu Fangji had shown great intelligence and talent from an early age. When he was only three years old, he astonished his parents for he could easily learn by heart a great number of Chinese classic poems, like those in Shijing, or A Book of Songs and the Three Hundred Poems of the Tang Dynasty. And his mother was his first teacher.

Every day when the night fell on the mountain city, it was usually the time for the mother to teach her little child. The mother had to do some housework, like sewing or cooking, at the same time she would teach her son to read some classic Chinese works. The sound of the son’s reading was the greatest consolation to the mother, while the mother’s smile was the greatest encouragement to the little son. The reading of books unfolded a brand-new world in the childish heart of the son, providing him a chance to know Li Bai, Du Fu and many other well-known ancient poets. And the rhyme and rhythm of the Chinese poetry had deeply rooted in the depth of his naive and curious mind.

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A misfortune suddenly befell the Wu family in 1903. Mr Wu Chuanjiang, the father of Wu Fangji became bankrupt in his business and was accused by his creditors. As a result, he was put into prison in Chongqing.

The disaster shocked the Wu family like a bolt from the blue. Wu Fangji was at that time only seven years old. His mother felt it too difficult to go on living in Chongqing, so they moved to Degan, a small town of the Jiangjin County, where they lived together with Wu Fangji’s uncle, the brother of the mother. But the uncle was also very poor and difficult to support them both. So, the mother and Wu Fangji had to move further to the town of Baisha, which was a town under the jurisdiction of the Jiangjin County, on the upper reaches of the Yangtze River and some 100 km in the west of Chongqing.

Liu Suxian, the mother tried hard to scrape a living all by herself and became a tutor of an old-style private home school for some children from rich families.

In 1906, when Wu Fangji was 10 years old, he began to study in the Jukui Primary School at Heishishan (Mt. Black Stone).

The Jukui Primary School was founded in 1870 and was one of the first new schools established in the late Qing Dynasty.

The school was situated on an isolated hilltop, surrounded in different directions by gently rolling country land. Tall green trees abounded there. Monstrous huge stones were scattered here and there on the campus. The school was some three kilometres away from the town of Baisha, far away from the noisy city, which made it a good place for learning.

Most of the teachers of the school were intellectuals who once studied abroad and returned to China, with modern scientific knowledge and new ideas of democracy and freedom. Most of the other traditional schools in China generally offered only Chinese classes, but in the Jukui School, there were different courses of mathematics, geometry, physics, chemistry and foreign languages.

Wu Fangji was a student of class one and Mr Xiao Xiang; his teacher of the Chinese language was a well-known pioneer in the democratic revolution. Xiao Xiang once studied in Japan where he joined the Chinese Revolutionary Alliance organised and headed by Dr Sun Yat-sen.

After graduation, Xiao Xiang returned to his homeland, Rongxian County in Sichuan province. He called on the local people to rise up and fight against the Qing Empire. So he became a wanted criminal by the Qing government. It became very dangerous for him to go on living in Rongxian and he had to