Liu Shahe | |||||||||
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| Born | (1931-11-11)11 November 1931 | ||||||||
| Died | 23 November 2019(2019-11-23) (aged 88) Chengdu, Sichuan, China | ||||||||
| Occupation | Poet, writer, publisher | ||||||||
| Language | Chinese | ||||||||
| Alma mater | Sichuan University | ||||||||
| Period | 1948–2019 | ||||||||
| Notable works | The Country Nocturnes (1956), Poems of Liu Shahe (1982) | ||||||||
| Notable awards | National Prize for Poetry | ||||||||
| Children | 1 son, 1 daughter | ||||||||
| Chinese name | |||||||||
| Chinese | 流沙河 | ||||||||
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| Birth name | |||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 余勋坦 | ||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 余勛坦 | ||||||||
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Yu Xuntan (Chinese:余勋坦; 11 November 1931 – 23 November 2019), known by hispen nameLiu Shahe (Chinese:流沙河), was a Chinese writer and poet.[1][2] The son of aSichuan landowner who was executed in theLand Reform Movement, he began publishing in 1948 and became a professional writer in 1952. He co-founded the poetry magazineStars in 1956, but was denounced as a "filial descendant of the landlord class" when theAnti-Rightist Campaign began in 1957. For the next two decades he performed hard labour and was exiled to the countryside until the end of theCultural Revolution. He resumed publishing in 1978, and his collection,Poems of Liu Shahe (1982), won theNational Prize for Poetry.
Yu Xuntan was born on 11 November 1931 inChengdu, the capital ofSichuan province,Republic of China.[3] His parents were small landowners fromJintang County near Chengdu, and the family moved back to Jintang in 1935. His father worked for theKuomintang government, and for that reason was killed by theCommunist Party during theLand Reform Movement.[1]
He enteredSichuan University in 1949, majoring in agricultural chemistry. He began writing in 1948, and served as an editor of a supplement to the newspaperWestern Sichuan Peasant Daily. He became a professional writer in 1952, and joined the predecessor of theCommunist Youth League of China that same year.[1]
In 1955, Liu published his first poem, which was well received by critics, and became a poet almost exclusively. The following year, he publishedThe Country Nocturnes, his first poetry collection, and was admitted to the Academy of Literature. Together with three other poets, he foundedStars, a monthly poetry magazine, in 1956. He wrote the poem series entitled "Grass and Stars" for the inaugural issue of the magazine, but was criticized soon after its publication.[1]
When theAnti-Rightist Campaign began in 1957, Liu was denounced as a "filial descendant of the landlord class" and forced to undergoreform through labour[4] for the next eight years, working all sorts of jobs including labourer and librarian.[1] During the subsequentCultural Revolution, he was exiled in Jintang without a job. He continued to compose poems in this period, but most of them were lost.[1]
After the end of the Cultural Revolution, Liu resumed publishing in 1978. His collection,Poems of Liu Shahe (1982), was awarded the National Prize for Poetry.[1] Many of his poems expressed a sense of loss over his youth and sentimentality for the years he spent as a downtrodden labourer. Other poems, written in a serene tone, recorded the emotional solace he found in the difficult times.[4] He wrote less poetry after the mid-1980s, and spent much time publishing and commenting on modern Taiwanese poetry.[4]
Liu was an outspoken critic of thesimplification of Chinese characters. He wrote a dedicated column entitled "Simplified Characters are Unreasonable" (简化字不讲理/簡化字不講理)in the Chinese-language edition of theFinancial Times.[5]
Liu married in 1966. He had a daughter and a son, Yu Kun (余鲲).[3][6]
Liu died in Chengdu on 23 November 2019 from complications ofthroat cancer, aged 88.[6]
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