Su Manshu

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A Bright Literary Star see scholar

• 　　At the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, China saw its social system going through a great change from autocracy to democracy. A great number of outstanding figures emerged at the historic moment, just like stars glistening in the country's nighttime. Among them was Su manshu, a famous poet and writer.

== The Puzzle of his Pedigree == secret

• 　　The family background of Su Manshu was a puzzle for a time. For a very long time after his death, it was said that his parents were Japanese. And in Japan, people even held an exhibition in memory of Su as a writer with a complete Japanese pedigree. Later, with a thorough investigation by Liu Yazi. another very famous Chinese writer, the family back ground of Su Manshu then became known to all. He turned out to be a half-breed. His native place was in Sujia Pane, Lixi Village. Qianshan Town, Zhuhai City, Guangdong Province. His grandfather Su Ruiwen (1817-1897) and his father Su Jiesheng (1846-1904) both engaged in business in Japan. Two years before Su Manshu was born. Su Jiesheng was employed as a comprador of an English tea store in Yokohama. At that time in Japan some men had the corrupt custom of keeping concubines. Su Jiesheng had already married a woman whose surname was Huang at home in Guangdong. In Japan he mar ried another woman Kaai Sen as his concubine. However Manshu's natural mother was not her but the woman's sister Kaai Yoko, who was 17 years younger. Yoko came miles away to Yokohama to help her older sister do some housework from her home village Mameosakula. Coveting her beauty, Su　Jiesheng seduced her and made her pregnant. Thereby Su Manshu was born in Yokohama on Oct. 9th 1884. Yoko was only 19 years old when she gave birth. Three months later, her father called her back, leaving Little Manshu to his aunt, the concubine Kaai Sen. The works of Su were very moving and full of the eagerness for his mother's love and, that may have something to do with the life at his childhood. Su Manshu had a very strange character because he was not sure whether he was a "bastard" or not, a condition which stayed with him the rest of his life and heavily influenced his literary works.

　　

• 　　蘇曼殊的繪畫《秋思圖》(李蔚供稿)
• 　　The Autumn Thoughts painted by Su Manshu (Supplied by Li Wei)

[edit] A Half-Monk Existence

• 　　When he was 6 years old, Su Manshu was brought by his legal mother, Huang, back from Yokohama to live in his native place Guangdong. The second year he was sent to a private school, where Su Ruoquan, his teacher, took the ut most care of him for his being weak but very intelligent. At the age of twelve, he fell seriously ill. His aunt (the wife of his father's brother) thought that he was too ill to be cured, and left him in a firewood room waiting for death. Thanks to his sister-in-law, who insisted on his medical treatment and put him on a diet, he was on the mend. After his recovery, he renounced the family to become a Buddhist in Liurong Temple in Guangzhou. Later he was expelled for stealing a roasted pigeon. Then he begged his aunt (his father's sister) to take him to Shanghai, where he learned from a Spanish teacher for two years. At fifteen, he went back to his birthplace Yokohama, Japan, with his cousin and continued studying there. To attend upon his actual mother Kaai Sen, Su went back to the village Mameosakula and stayed there for a time. During that period, he fell in love with a Japanese girl in the neighborhood. It was said that the girl later died for love because of the family's rude interference. Su was so depressed that he went alone back to Guangzhou and became a monkagain in Pujian Temple. On Dec 24th,1903, the "Extra Court" under the control of the imperialists passed the evil judgement on the Subao Case in Shanghai, in which Zhang Taiyan and Zou Rong were involved. Su Manshu was filled with great fury and went for the third time into a monastery called Leifeng Temple in Panyu County. He was initiated into being a Monk and then a Boddhisattva. Till then he had all the three Buddhist Titles. But still he didn't grow accustomed to the monks' hard living, unconstrainedly secularizing. From then on he began to lead a half monk existence till his death. He had been to many temples in China, Bangkok, Sri Lanka, Vietnam. India and Japan, either putting up for a short stay, abiding, paying homage, or visiting.

　　

• 　　蘇曼殊和他的友人，右排左1為蘇曼殊，左4為柳亞子(李蔚供稿)
• 　　Su Manshu and his friends. Su Manshu is in the back row. first from the left. the fourth is Lui Yazi (Supplied by Li Wei)

• 　　Being the most radical revolutionary at times and the most inactive pessimist at other times, Su Manshu wandered characteristically between these two extremes in his lifetime. In spite of his monkhood, he was very fond of women. Ac cording to Buddhist Scripture, a Buddhist should abstain from women. Yet Manshu made a lot of female friends. Among them, there were not only Chinese women, but also Japanese, Spanish and British women. He always had some love affairs. Since he could come in and go out of the courtesans' quarters or brothels as he pleased, he won the nickname "play-monk". He had been to all the well-known teahouses in Shanghai and Nanjing and associated with all the famous storytellers includ ing Sai Jinhua (the most famous geisha girl at the time). He also wrote many love poems, which were very beautiful andsentimental, for those women, including Jinfeng from the Qinhuai River in Nanjing, Hua Xuenan and Suzhen from Shanghai, and Senyouko, a stringed instrumentalist from Japan.

• 　　Su Manshu went to Japan 11 times, spending two fifths of his life there. He worked as a teacher successively in Wuzhong Public School and Tangjiaxiang Primary School in Suzhou, Shiye School, Mingde School, Jingzheng School in Changsha, Army Primary School in Nanjing, Wanjiang High School in Wuhu, Anhui Public School, etc. He also taught in the Youth Association of Longhua Temple in Bangkok and Nouban Chinese School in Java. He worked as an interpreter in the Sanskrit Class in Tokyo. He mainly taught English, Painting, sometimes Chinese and Mathematics. In his spare time he wrote books, and did some edition and translation as well. Sometimes he had to borrow money. He even made his living by begging alms and pawning. He roved all over the world and never got married. At the age of 35, he died of an illness in Shanghai on May 2nd, 1918. In 1924, his friends removed his grave to the Gushan (Lonely Mountain) by the West Lake in Hangzhou, the whole expenses being covered by Mr. Sun Yat-sen.

[edit] A Radical Revolutionary Propagator

• 　　From 1902 to 1903, when studying in Japan, Su Manshu was greatly influenced by the revolutionary movement of the Chinese students studying in Japan and devoted himself to it. He took part in a few revolutionary groups, such as the YouthUnion, the Resisting-Russian Army of Volunteers, and the Education Association of the Amymen and Citizen. Every morning he held a secret meeting for the returned students with Mr. Liao Zhongkai (a reputed statesman), and went to Oumoli to practice shooting. But his work was mainly on propaganda. Especially in the years 1903, 1907 and 1912, he worked for news agencies such as Guoming Riyue Bao (The National Sun and Moon), Min Bao (Citizens), Tianyi Bao (The Justice), and Taipingyang Bao (The Pacific Ocean), where he published many works full of great enthusiasm. Although he didn't become a full-time revolutionary, in all his life he had been keeping a close contact with the revolutionary force led by Mr. Sun Yat-sen, and was involved in the schemes of several armed uprisings. He had the revolution in the south in mind constantly until he died. Even when dying he still could not forget his duty and said: "how I wish God would let me recover early so that I could go back to Guangdong to fulfill my duty."

• 　　He had made a lot of good friends with many great revolutionaries and cultural workers, including Zhang Taiyan,Liu Yazi, Zhang Shizhao, Liu Shipei, Liu San, Ju Juesheng, Feng Ziyou, Zhao Sheng, Chen Yingshi, Chiang Kai-shek, Li Shutong, and Cai Zhefu. But his closest friend was Chen Duxiu.

• 　　In fact, Su Manshu had the thoughts of revolution when he was quite young. As early as 1903, he called on the abolishment of private ownership with great zeal. In his translation of Les Miserables (The Miserable World), which was embellished by Chen Duxiu, he held the view that "everything in the world should be shared by all the people in the world". He attacked those who profited only by cheating and by other people's toil as "bandits", and demanded "taking the proper ties of the evil rich and distributing them to the poor". How leading and radical his thoughts were.

Well-known Literary Works 　　

• 　　蘇曼殊(前左)與孫伯純(後左)等合影(李蔚供稿)

　　Su Manshu (in the front row, first from the left) and Sun Bochun(in the back row, first from the left) (Supplied by Li Wei)

• 　　In the second year after his death, his good friends Li Genyuan and Cai Zhefu collected his 22 posthumous paint ings, which got published as The Paintings of the Reverend Su Manshu, and distributed them to all his friends. Liu Yazi and Liu Wuji, who were father and son, collected and sorted outhis works and edited a book The Complete Works of Su Manshu. It was published by Xinbei Press. Manshu's Posthumous Paint ings and Calligraphy edited by Liu Yazi was published by the same press.

　　

• 　　孫中山先生為蘇曼殊遺墨題字(珠海市檔案館供稿)

　　Mr. San Yai-sen's inscription on the book of Manshu's Posthumous Paintings (Supplied by Zhuhai Archives)

• 　　Su Manshu's books, including the complete works, the selected works, poems, stories, letters, essays, miscellanies. jottings and translations, edited by Wang Dezhong, Feng Xueqiu. Shen Yinmo. Zhou Shoujuan. Duan Anxuang, Lu Yiye, Shi Xisheng. Lou Fangzhou, Jin Zhiyun, Zhang Pengzhou, Xie Bingying. Wen Gongshi, Liu Sifen, Ma Yijun, Zeng Degui, Pei Xiaowei, and Shi Zhecun, have been at least published in 92 different editions. Some have even been reprinted five to six times, with thousands of copies issued, which had a great im pact among readers.

• 　　The works handed down include one hundred poems, one hundred paintings, six novels and short stories, more than one hundred letters, two translated novels and ten translated poems. There are also some jottings, prefaces and postscripts and miscellanies. Among those which haven't been handed down. there are eight volumes of Sanskrit Records, four volumes of Initial Sanskrit Records, Sanskrit Madhyamika Karika, Sakundalou. The New Explanation of the Place-names in Dharma in the Buddhist Country and Huisheng's Journey to Western Regions and the Tour Maps. Taise's Collection of Stories of Virtuous People. Taise's Collection of Virtuous Peoples. The Study of The Ancient Egyptian Religion. Cantonese-English Dictionary, Chinese-English Dictionary, English-Chinese Dictionary. Chinese Ancient Poems in English Version. Three Hundred Poems Without Titles, Man and Ghost. Collections from Southeast Asia, Additional Incidents While Re-translating Camellia Lady, Paintings of Manshu and so on.

• 　　Arts are valued for originality. Obviously Su Manshu was a unique writer and artist. His style is so unique that any one who has some knowledge of arts can identify his work easily from other works. His poems are full of emotion and bright images. They even can be chanted. The more you chant the poems, the better you will find they are. His paintings, clean and elegant, are always highly valued. At that time no one could top him. His novels saturated with his own life experience and sufferings, loneliness and desolation, contain ing his reflections upon society and his pursuits. His letters, excellent essays themselves, reveal a natural feeling.

Living in the World Forever

• 　　Within the twenty years after his death, there was a "Manshu Craze" in the society (the words of Lu Xun). People all over the country still like reading his works. The biogra phy of Manshu has been published in at least eighteen edi tions. There are more than ten books of critical studies of Manshu, including The Chronological Life of Su Manshu and Others, Supplement to the Biography of Master Manshu, The Biographical Materials of Su Manshu, The Study of Su Manshu, The New Critical Study of Su Manshu, The Special Issue in Honor of the Centenary Birthday of Su Manshu. Manshu's other works, about five hundred thousand Chinese characters edited by Liu Yazi, will be published soon. There are six novels Jiang Zuo Shinian Muduji (The Ten Years' Witness of Jiang Zou), Haishang Shenlou (The Mirage), Renhaichao (The Current of People), Henhai Guzhouji (A Lonely Boat on the Regretful Sea), Renjian Diyu(The Earthly Hell), and Renkui Fenghuameng (The Romance in the Year of Renkui), in which Su Manshu and his life were described. Because he was such a legendary man, his life has been re arranged for film, poetic drama, plays, TV plays and Cantonese Opera etc. More than five hundred poems are known to have been written about him or to eulogize him. There are hun dreds of critical articles about him as well.

• 　　Su Manshu had a good command of English, Sanskrit, French and Japanese, which enabled him to do a lot in the cultural exchange between China and foreign countries. He introduced some great writers such as Byron, Shelley, Hugo and Goethe to unenlightened Chinese readers by way of trans lation. Thus, he has been praised as one of the "three great translators at the end of Qing Dynasty". He published his Chinese version of Selected Poems of Byron and Les Miserables. He also translated some poems of the Scottish poet Burns, the English writer Hoist and an Indian female poet Toludou. Sanskrit is the language of ancient India. The earliest Buddhist Scripture was written in it. Manshu won his reputation as the best Sanskrit expert in his lifetime in China with his two dictionaries Dictionary of Sanskrit and Sanskrit Madhyamika Karika. He interpreted the lectures delivered by Indian scholars many times. He also translated The Inscrip tions on the Tablet at Buddha's Birthplace, which was set upby King Asoka, and two letters from Sanskrit to Chinese. He copied a part of The Sutra of Parejnaparamita (great wisdom to reach the opposite shore of the sea of existence) in Sanskrit. The Indian revolutionary mythical novel Sahlo's Reclusion on the Coast was translated first from Sanskrit into English. Su Manshu translated it from English into Chinese. Being proficient in Sanskrit, Manshu's Chinese version was much better than the English one, for he revealed all the elegance of Sanskrit. At the same time, he also insisted on the two-way cultural exchange. In the magazines edited by him such as Wenxue Yinyuan (Literature World), Chaoyin (The Sound of Waves), Hanying Sanmei Ji (The Treasure of Chi nese Literature in English), he presented the great Chinese culture to the world, by introducing a great many of Chinese cultural treasures to the English world. Among them, there are extracts of Lisao(Poems of a Departing Poet), some poems in Shijin (Book of Poetry) and The Nineteen Ancient Poems, The Song of Mulan, The Song of Eternal Sorrow, The Song of Picking Tea Leaves, The Song of Interring Petals, The Western Chamber-Words of Awakening, and works of Li Bai. Du Fu. "Three Caos" (Cao Cao, Cao Zhi, Cao Pi), Tao Yuanming. Zhang Ji, Zhang Jiuling, Li Ling, Qin Jia, Bao Mingyuan etc..

• 　　As a famous poet and novelist in the Chinese modern history. Manshu had long before been known to the world. For years, his works have been translated into English, Japanese, Russian, French, German and so on, which have drawn great attention of some readers and scholars. At his birthplace in Japan, a temple called Manshu's House was built in memory of him. Satoo, a Japanese scholar, published an essay titled Su Manshu in The Times of Literature and Arts in 1934. He said that Manshu was "a bright literary star in the Chinese modern history". Iizsukalou obtained his degree with a research article on Su Manshu as long as two hundred papers in 1934. The famous French writer Aitiepu, who is near eighty years old and also a Sinologist enjoying great prestige, claimed that Manshu was "a prominent enlightening thinker and a writer with great talent". Prof. Golik at Czechoslovakian Academy of Sciences has some wonderful remarks on Manshu's transla tion of Hugo and Byron. The British scholar Maclevie has published a monograph on Manshu quite early. Thanks to Liu Wuji's untiring efforts, the research papers on Su Manshu could be read out at several annual meetings of Asia Institute. The English editions of The Biographies of Famous Chinese People in the Times of PC, The Twentieth Century's World Literature Encyclopaedia, Dictionary of Oriental Literature, and Dictionary of Chinese Names, include the biographical sketches of Su Manshu.

• 　　Su Manshu, as a prominent poet, a talented artist, a writer with distinctive characteristics, an important transla tor, will live forever in our hearts.

　　

　　

• 　　蘇曼殊的雜記與手札(珠海市桉案館供稿)

　　Su Manshu's jotting and autograph letter (Supplied by Zhuhai Archives)

　　

• 　　蘇曼殊書寫的梵文，其意為:萬物或美或醜，皆因其本性(李蔚供稿)

　　The Sanskrit written by Su Manshu, which means that the beauty and the ugliness of all things on earth come from their nature (Supplied by Li Wei)

　　

• 　　出家剃度的蘇曼殊(上圖)及其在杭州西湖的墓地(右圖)(珠海市檔案館供稿)

　　The monk Su Manshu (Above) and his grave near the West Lake in the city of Hangzhou (Right) (Supplied by Zhuhai Archives)

About the author

• 　　Li Wei, chief journalist, born in Yangling, Shaanxi Province, in Feb, 1932. He studied at Northwest Agriculture University. And now he is the general editor of Asia Zhonghui United Publisher Company (Hong Kong), and holds a concurrent post as assistant director of Gansu Province International Cultural Exchange Association.

• 　　He has been a journalist for TV. Radio and newspaper for a long time. His Works such as The Horse Able to Tread the Flying Swallow Is Resurrecting, Where is Yangguan the Past Thoroughfare? Explore to "Fairly Hole" have been translated into English, French, German. Portuguese, Spanish, Arabian or retransmitted by the foreign news services. Some of them have been included in a correspondence school textbook The Collection of Chinese Practical Writings. He has also been involved in a group in charge of publicizing the good deeds of Zhang Hua, a student in The Fourth Military Medical College and an outstanding representative of contemporary college students.The Group won the special prize granted by Guangming Daily. Other award-winning works include A Critical Biography of Su Manshu and some literary critical essays, research papers, news reports and reportage, etc.

• 　　The published books also include Premier Zhou Enlai and Intellectuals (1985) and Gems of Chinese Poetry (1996).

Bibliography

• 　　1 .CPPCC of Zhuhai City, Collected Works in Commemoration of the Centenary of Su Manshu's Birthday, restricted material, 1984.

• 　　2.Ma Yijun, edt, Collection of Su Manshu's Poetry, The Culture and History Research Ceneter of CPPCC, Zhuhai City, Sep. 1991.

• 　　3.Li Wei, A Critical Biography of Su Manshu, Social Science Document Press, 1990.

　　(Translated by Cheng Jia)

作者：Li Wei article adapted from[[1]]

return to [[2]]