【中文版】
Wang Yuanqi’s study in Japan was not long. That year, due to funding issues, the Tokyo Higher School of Crafts admitted only three graduate students to the craft and designs program, and Wang Yuanqi was one of them. It is said that his outstanding performance earned praise from Japanese experts. Since his study abroad expenses were primarily supported by Li Xuying, he lived a very frugal life in Tokyo, often making a single cucumber his entire meal. The money he saved on food was used to buy books. Jimbocho, the famous old book street in Tokyo’s Chiyoda district, particularly the Matsuyama Bookstore, known for its Western art books, was his favorite haunt. However, this irregular lifestyle took a toll on his health; he even contracted tuberculosis, but at the time it did not attract his attention.
In March 1937, Wang Yuanqi completed his graduate studies and returned to China. Of his creative work during his time in Tokyo, only a small cartoon drawn for Xin Beiping and a screen design posthumously published in Art and Life in 1939 have been found so far.
After returning to China, Wang Yuanqi found a position at the Ministry of Industry of the Nationalist Government in Nanjing. Li Xuying and Amin moved with him to Nanjing. Min Bao reported on April 24 that Wang Yuanqi served as deputy secretary of the preparatory committee for the upcoming National Craft Exhibition. Although they had relocated to a strange land, the family was finally reunited, and their livelihood was secure. In Li Xuying’s recollections, their short time in Nanjing was pleasant and full of charm. Sadly, these good times did not last. Soon the July 7th Incident broke out, marking the start of Japan’s full-scale invasion of China, and the War of Resistance began. The “Dawn Moon over Lugou,” once one of the Eight Scenic Sights of the capital, became the site where Japanese invaders provoked the war. This filled Li Xuying with boundless emotion. In her Frosty Sky, Morning Horn: Dawn Moon over Lugou, she lamented:
Dawn Moon over Lugou, stained with human blood.
Iron hooves stir dust everywhere; when will the beacon smoke clear?
Falling leaves, tangled sorrow.
Southbound wild geese cry in the empty sky;
Worse still, in the mournful autumn rain, endless choking sobs.
After the Lugou Bridge Incident, the atmosphere in Nanjing grew tense day by day. The Nationalist Government began planning the evacuation and relocation of government agencies, choosing Wuhan as the initial destination for moving the capital. From early August, staff family members were gradually evacuated, with women and children going first. Li Xuying’s small family was forced to separate again. By then she was already pregnant and traveled alone with her eldest daughter, who was a little over three years old, to Wuhan. There, they stayed with the mother of Wang Yuanqi’s good friend Zhang Yuanshan. Zhang Yuanshan (1892–1987) was the Director of the Cooperatives Department of the Ministry of Industry and likely Wang Yuanqi’s superior. Zhang’s mother was exceptionally kind to Li Xuying, hiring a servant to care for her with great attentiveness. Li Xuying was deeply grateful and had the child recognize the old lady as her god-grandmother. Nevertheless, her worries about current events and her longing for her loved ones were hard to dispel:
Autumn winds sweep the land, startling frontier geese;
Wind and rain fill the perilous tower.
Chrysanthemums do not lessen one’s haggardness;
As the curtain rolls up revealing traces of autumn, sorrow fills the guest courtyard.
— Three Poems from Hubei, No. 2
Soon after, Shanghai was attacked on August 13, and the Battle of Shanghai began. After Dachang fell in October, the Nationalist Government announced the relocation of the capital to Chongqing. At that time, Wuhan became the national hub for industrial relocation. Wang Yuanqi may have moved to Hankou with the Ministry of Industry, allowing a brief reunion with Li Xuying and their daughter. Their original plan was to go to Sichuan together. By then Li Xuying was nearing childbirth and found it difficult to travel. Old Lady Zhang advised Wang Yuanqi to go ahead alone with the government to Sichuan for work, while Li Xuying would remain temporarily in Hankou until the child was born.
A report in the Huabei Daily in July 1937 mentioned that Sichuan elites residing in the capital were planning to convert Sichuan Middle School into an advanced vocational school. The school would feature a department of fine arts and crafts, with many prominent figures hired to teach; the names of Wang Yuanqi and Li Xuying were listed as professors of design. This might have been part of their initial plan to enter Sichuan. In her long memorial essay mourning Wang Yuanqi, Li Xuying also noted, “My husband was already exhausted, yet he still plotted to secure a future home to harbor us.” This shows that Wang Yuanqi had always hoped to properly arrange the lives of his wife and daughters. Yet, in the face of the increasingly severe national crisis, he chose to serve his country. After the Ministry of Industry moved to Wuhan at the end of 1937, it was reorganized into the Ministry of Economic Affairs in early 1938. Most staff were retained, and from July they were relocated to Chongqing in batches. Some personnel were transferred to logistics roles in military supply departments, and a very small number of young people volunteered to join the army for propaganda and medical rescue work. From this it can be inferred that at the end of 1937 Wang Yuanqi did not stay in Hankou with the Ministry of Industry but left before the birth of his second daughter. Judging from Li Xuying’s subsequent poetry manuscripts, it appears that Wang Yuanqi chose to join the army to defend the nation:
I recall when you left to join the army, under the first light of dawn.
Words failed us, yet my heart was already broken; tears fell, soaking my clothes.
A true man values integrity and honor,
resolving to drive out the enemy and washed away the nation’s shame.
Leaving me to care for our little children,
you went shed your blood alongside the army.
— Ten Poems Mourning the Departed, Nos. 2 and 3
On the very last day of 1937, Hongzhi, the second daughter of Li Xuying and Wang Yuanqi, was born. At that time the Japanese invading forces had made Wuhan a primary target, and Hankou had been under repeated air raids since the beginning of 1938. Only seventeen days after giving birth, Li Xuying had to leave the Zhang household in Hankou again with an infant less than a month old and resume her life as a refugee. [Note: According to the book Our Mother, when Li Xuying and Wang Yuanqi first left Beiping for Nanjing, they left Amin with her paternal grandfather in Beiping. This draws from the description in the comic Little Chubby that Li Xuying later created. However, the 1946 Interview with Ms. Li Xuying mentions that when Li Xuying began her refugee journey from Nanjing, she had her eldest daughter with her. As for whether Amin was with her when evacuating from Wuhan, left in the care of Old Lady Zhang, or arranged otherwise, there is no record. All those involved have passed away, and the details are difficult to ascertain.]
Fleeting the war, Li Xuying carried the basket with her infant in one hand and a suitcase in the other, preparing to head toward Sichuan. But the journey was extremely difficult. She had no breast milk, and there was nowhere to buy milk powder. The newborn had nothing to eat and could only cry. When her clothes became soaked along the way, she could only wait for them to dry naturally in the wind. Excessive fatigue and anxiety caused Li Xuying to suffer postpartum disorders, leaving her with chronic lower back pain. With no other choice, she decided to return first to Beiping to seek shelter with her family. This forced decision would profoundly impact the rest of her life. Since the north-south railway transport had been cut off, Li Xuying first took the train to Guangzhou, then a ship to Dagu Port (Tianjin), and made her way back to the already occupied Beiping, where she continued to live in the home of her father-in-law, Wang Jingzuo.
Misfortunes never come singly. During this period, Wang Yuanqi also began coughing up blood due to overexertion. Before long he contracted malaria, which worsened his existing lung condition. Since Li Xuying and the children had not been able to reach Sichuan, Wang Yuanqi, longing for his family, made his way back to Beiping in the spring of 1938 despite his illness. At first he received traditional Chinese medical treatment, but his condition showed no improvement. In early June he went to Deutsches Lazarett in Dongjiao minxiang. [Note: At the fall of Beiping, British, American, and French hospitals were restricted by the Japanese; only the German Hospital continued normal operations. This hospital was the predecessor of today’s Beijing Hospital.]. The malaria was cured, but his lung disease had reached its terminal stage. Although Li Xuying cared for him with all her heart and soul, there was ultimately reversed his fate. On July 23, Wang Yuanqi passed away at home at the age of only twenty-six. Li Xuying was overcome with grief and thought of following him, but for the sake of the children she endured the pain. She composed a long couplet to express her mourning for her late husband:
Three years as teacher and disciple, six years as husband and wife—polishing each other like jade and stone, loving and cherishing one another, enduring all hardships together, yet before we could enjoy peace and happiness you left me, causing me heart-wrenching pain.
Grieving for a five-year-old young daughter and a months-old infant, innocent and unaware, crying from cold and hunger—the full responsibility of their upbringing now falls to me after our eternal parting; I shall remain for a while so that you may close your eyes in peace.
On the Ghost Festival in mid-August, Li Xuying composed the long essay A Eulogy for My Late Husband Wang Yuanqi. Looking back on the days they met, fell in love, and lived together, she praised Yuanqi’s talent and mourned his early death; every word was a tear, weeping and lamenting.
After Wang Yuanqi’s death, the coffin was temporarily placed at Fayuan Temple. In March 1940 he was buried at Wan’an Cemetery. More than a hundred mourners came to pay their respects and bid him farewell, including calligrapher Zhang Hairuo (1877–1943), traditional painter Liu Lingcang (1908–1989), Huang Jun (1914–2011), all the students of the Design Department of Yizhuan, and friends from various walks of life. Li Xuying single-handedly arranged her husband’s funeral and later composed ten elegiac poems in his memory. She and Wang Yuanqi shared six years together as husband and wife, and she never remarried.
In the second year after Wang Yuanqi’s death, Li Xuying’s beloved father, Li Yuzeng, also passed away. Her father was the closest link between her and her natal family. In his later years, Li Yuzeng cherished this daughter even more, and the two kept in touch with letters and visits. His passing was undoubtedly another heavy blow to Li Xuying. Seeing her two younger brothers fighting over the family property, Li Xuying took only a few books and bought a set of rosewood bookshelves from her eldest younger brother as a memento.
In the early 1940s, Wang Yuanqi’s father, Wang Jingzuo, also died of illness. This father-in-law was a stern man and not particularly warm toward Li Xuying and her daughters, but he had at least provided them with a place to stay. Once he was gone, the mother-in-law and sister-in-law cried and demanded that they leave. Li Xuying had no attachment to this family anymore and moved out with her daughters.
Pingback: Chapter 7: Returning to Yizhuan – Xuying Art Gallery