【中文版】
[Author’s note:] In the coming months (hopefully not years), I will gradually roll out the Biography of Li Xuying. For the time being, the scheme is to post the Chinese version in the “Biography” section of this site, and the English version here in the blog section.
Preface
The book Famous Design Artist Li Xuying: Our Mother was published in 2020, co-authored by Li Xuying’s two daughters, Wang Hongmin and Wang Hongzhi. It chronicles Li Xuying’s tumultuous life and includes a collection of some of her artistic works. The narrative is largely based on the recollections of later generations and extremely limited textual materials.
Initially I considered placing the entire book under the “Li Xuying Biography” section of this site, but after careful consideration, I decided to adopt a rewritten approach. On one hand, this allows for the incorporation of new materials collected in recent years and the correction of certain oversights in the original book; on the other hand, the original book contains some content unrelated to Li Xuying’s life and creative work, which is unsuitable for direct online publication. Therefore, the Biography of Li Xuying presented here is based primarily on the original book, with necessary additions, corrections, and omissions. Additionally, the original book is narrated in the personal tone of the daughters recalling their mother, but for convenience, it has been adapted here into a conventional biographical narrative style. The recently uncovered materials mainly come from newspapers and magazines of the Republican era, some of which are not yet fully digitized or publicly available. If new materials emerge in the future, I will further update and refine the biography.