Guo Moruo
Encyclopedia
Guo Moruo courtesy name
Dingtang (鼎堂), was a Chinese
author, poet, historian, archaeologist
, and government official from Sichuan
, China.
. Shawan is located on the Dadu River some 40 km southwest from what was then called the city of Jiading (Chia-ting, 嘉定路), and now is the central urban area of the prefecture level city of Leshan
in Sichuan Province.
At the time of Guo's birth, Shawan was a town of some 180 families.
Guo's father's ancestors were Hakkas
from Ninghua County
(xian) in Tingzhou fu
, near the western border of Fujian
. They moved to Sichuan in the second half of the 17th century, after Sichuan had lost much of its population to the rebels/bandits of Zhang Xianzhong
(ca. 1605-1647). According to family legend, the only possessions that Guo's ancestors brought to Sichuan were things they could carry on their backs. Guo's great-grandfather, Guo Xianlin, was the first in the family to achieve a degree of prosperity. Guo Xianlin's sons established the Guo clan as the leaders of the local river shipping business, and thus important people in that entire region of Sichuan. It was only then that the Guo clan members became able to send their children to school.
Guo's father, one of whose names may possibly have been Guo Mingxing (1854–1939), had to drop out of school at the age of 13 and then spent six monthe as an apprentice at a salt well. Thereafter he entered his father's business, a shrewd and smart man who achieved some local renown as a Chinese medical doctor, traded successfully in oils, opium, liquor, and grain and operated a money changing business. His business success allowed him to increase the family's real estate and salt well holdings.
Guo's mother, in contrast, came from a scholar-official background. She was a daughter of Du Zhouzhang, a holder of the coveted jinshi (chin-shih) degree. Whilst serving as an acting magistrate in Huangping
prefecture (zhou), (in eastern Guizhou
), Du died in 1858 while fighting Miao
rebels, when his daughter (the future mother of Guo Moruo) was less than a year old. She married into the Guo family in 1872, when she was fourteen.
Guo also had the childhood name Guo Wenbao ('Cultivated Leopard'), given due to a dream his mother had on the night he was conceived.
A few years before Guo was born, his parents retained a private tutor, Shen Huanzhang, to provide education for their children, in the hope of them later passing civil service examinations. A precocious child, Guo started studying at this "family school" in the spring of 1897, at the early age of four and half. Initially, his studies were based on Chinese classics, but with the government education reforms of 1901, mathematics and other modern subjects started to be introduced.
When in the fall of 1903 a number of public schools were established in Sichuan's capital, Chengdu
, the Guo children started going there to study. Guo's oldest brother, Guo Kaiwen (1877–1936), entered one of them, Dongwen Xuetang, a secondary school preparing students for study in Japan; the next oldest brother, Guo Kaizou, joined Wubei Xuetang, a military school. Guo Kaiwen soon became instrumental in exposing his brother and sisters still in Shawan to modern books and magazines that allowed them to learn about the wide world outside.
Guo Kaiwen continued to be a role model for his younger brothers when in February 1905 he left for Japan, to study law and administration at Tokyo Imperial University on a provincial government' scholarship.
After passing competitive examinations, in early 1906 Guo Moruo started attending the new upper-level primary school (高等小学 gaodeng xiao xue) in Jiading
. It was a boarding school located in a former Buddhist temple and the boy lived on premises. He went on to a middle school in 1907, acquiring by this time the reputation of an academically gifted student but a troublemaker. His peers respected him and often elected him a delegate to represent their interests in front of the school administration. Often spearheading student-faculty conflicts, he was expelled and reinstated a few times, and finally expelled permanently in October 1909.
Guo was glad to be expelled, as he now had a reason to go to the provincial capital Chengdu
to continue his education there.
In October 1911, Guo was surprised by his mother announcing that a marriage was arranged for him. He went along with his family's wishes, marrying his appointed bride, Zhang Jinghua, sight-unseen in Shawan in March 1912. Immediately, he regretted this marriage, and five days after the marriage, he left his ancestral home and returned to Chengdu, leaving his wife behind. He never formally divorced her, but apparently never lived with her either.
Following his elder brothers, Guo left China in December 1913, reaching Japan in early January 1914. After a year of preparatory study in Tokyo, he entered Sixth Higher School in Okayama. When visiting a friend of his hospitalized in Sain Luke's Hospital in Tokyo, in the summer of 1916, Guo fell in love with Sato Tomiko, a Japanese woman from a Christian family, who worked at the hospital as a student nurse. Sato would become his common-law wife. They were to stay together for 20 years, until the outbreak of the war
, and to have five children together.
After graduation from the Okayama school, Guo entered in 1918 the Medical School of Kyushyu Imperial University in Fukuoka
. He was more interested in literature than medicine, however. His studies at this time focused on foreign language and literature, namely the works of: Spinoza, Goethe, Walt Whitman
, and the Bengali
poet Tagore
. Along with numerous translations, he published his first anthology of poems, entitled The Goddesses (女神 - nǚ shén) (1921). He co-founded the Ch'uang-tsao she ("Creation Society") in Shanghai, which promoted modern and vernacular literature
.
in 1927. He was involved in the Communist Nanchang Uprising
and fled to Japan after its failure. He stayed there for 10 years studying Chinese ancient history. During that time he published his work on inscriptions on oracle bones
and bronze vessels
, Corpus of Inscriptions on Bronzes from the Two Zhou Dynasties (两周金文辞大系考释). In this work, he attempted to demonstrate, according to the Communist doctrine, the "slave society" nature of ancient China. His theory on the "slave society of China" remains highly controversial, although it was praised by Mao Zedong
and the party.
In the summer of 1937, soon after the Marco Polo Bridge incident, Guo returned to China to join the anti-Japanese resistance. His attempt to arrange for Sato Tomiko and their children to join him in China were frustrated by the Japanese authorities, and in 1939 he remarried to Yu Liqun (于立群; 1916–1979), a Shanghai actress. After the war, Sato went to reunite with him but was disappointed to know that he had already formed a new family.
, Guo was a prolific writer, not just of poetry but also fiction, plays, autobiographies, translations, and historical and philosophical treatises. He was the first President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences
and remained so from its founding in 1949 until his death in 1978. He was also the first president of University of Science & Technology of China (USTC), a new type of university established by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) after the founding of the People's Republic of China and aimed at fostering high-level personnel in the fields of science and technology.
In 1966 he was one of the first to be attacked during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. He confessed that he had not properly understood the thought of Mao Zedong and agreed that his works should be burned. However, this was not enough to protect his family. Two of his sons, Guo Minying and Guo Shiying, "committed suicide" in 1967 and 1968 following "criticism" or persecution by Red Guards
.
Unlike others similarly attacked, Guo's life was spared as he was chosen by Mao as "the representative of the rightwing" in the 9th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 1969. He had regained much of his influence by the seventies.
Guo was awarded the Stalin Peace Prize in 1951.
With Sato Tomiko (listed chronologically in the order of birth):
With Yu Liqun (listed chronologically in the order of birth):
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Chinese style name
A Chinese style name, sometimes also known as a courtesy name , is a given name to be used later in life. After 20 years of age, the zì is assigned in place of one's given name as a symbol of adulthood and respect...
Dingtang (鼎堂), was a Chinese
Chinese people
The term Chinese people may refer to any of the following:*People with Han Chinese ethnicity ....
author, poet, historian, archaeologist
Archaeology
Archaeology, or archeology , is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes...
, and government official from Sichuan
Sichuan
' , known formerly in the West by its postal map spellings of Szechwan or Szechuan is a province in Southwest China with its capital in Chengdu...
, China.
Family history
Guo, originally named Guo Kaizhen, was born on November 10 or 16, in the small town of ShawanShawan District
Shawan District is a district of Sichuan Province, China. It is under the administration of Leshan city....
. Shawan is located on the Dadu River some 40 km southwest from what was then called the city of Jiading (Chia-ting, 嘉定路), and now is the central urban area of the prefecture level city of Leshan
Leshan
-Administrative divisions:-Transport:There is a passenger rail line that serves the Mianyang–Chengdu–Leshan inter-city area.The Chengdu-Leshan Highway with a total length of 160 kilometers, was finished on January 14th, 2000...
in Sichuan Province.
At the time of Guo's birth, Shawan was a town of some 180 families.
Guo's father's ancestors were Hakkas
Hakka people
The Hakka , sometimes Hakka Han, are Han Chinese who speak the Hakka language and have links to the provincial areas of Guangdong, Jiangxi, Guangxi, Sichuan, Hunan and Fujian in China....
from Ninghua County
Ninghua County
Ninghua is a county in Sanming municipality in Fujian province, China.Ninghua is located at the west of Sanming, next to Jiangxi Province. Shibi of Ninghua is well known as the Cradle of the Hakka...
(xian) in Tingzhou fu
Tingzhou fu
Tingzhou fu was a prefecture in Fujian province from the Tang Dynasty down to the early 20th century.-History:As early as 3,000 to 4,000 years ago, there were ancient Minyue people thrived along the Tingjiang river, which originates in the north and runs through the county toward the south and...
, near the western border of Fujian
Fujian
' , formerly romanised as Fukien or Huguing or Foukien, is a province on the southeast coast of mainland China. Fujian is bordered by Zhejiang to the north, Jiangxi to the west, and Guangdong to the south. Taiwan lies to the east, across the Taiwan Strait...
. They moved to Sichuan in the second half of the 17th century, after Sichuan had lost much of its population to the rebels/bandits of Zhang Xianzhong
Zhang Xianzhong
Zhang Xianzhong or Chang Hsien-chung , nicknamed Yellow Tiger, was a Chinese rebel leader who conquered Sichuan Province in the middle of the 17th century. Upon capturing it, he declared himself emperor of the Daxi Dynasty .According to Chinese chronicles, many scholars rejected that claim, so he...
(ca. 1605-1647). According to family legend, the only possessions that Guo's ancestors brought to Sichuan were things they could carry on their backs. Guo's great-grandfather, Guo Xianlin, was the first in the family to achieve a degree of prosperity. Guo Xianlin's sons established the Guo clan as the leaders of the local river shipping business, and thus important people in that entire region of Sichuan. It was only then that the Guo clan members became able to send their children to school.
Guo's father, one of whose names may possibly have been Guo Mingxing (1854–1939), had to drop out of school at the age of 13 and then spent six monthe as an apprentice at a salt well. Thereafter he entered his father's business, a shrewd and smart man who achieved some local renown as a Chinese medical doctor, traded successfully in oils, opium, liquor, and grain and operated a money changing business. His business success allowed him to increase the family's real estate and salt well holdings.
Guo's mother, in contrast, came from a scholar-official background. She was a daughter of Du Zhouzhang, a holder of the coveted jinshi (chin-shih) degree. Whilst serving as an acting magistrate in Huangping
Huangping County
Huangping County is a county of Guizhou, China. It is under the administration of the Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture....
prefecture (zhou), (in eastern Guizhou
Guizhou
' is a province of the People's Republic of China located in the southwestern part of the country. Its provincial capital city is Guiyang.- History :...
), Du died in 1858 while fighting Miao
Miao people
The Miao or ม้ง ; ) is an ethnic group recognized by the government of the People's Republic of China as one of the 55 official minority groups. Miao is a Chinese term and does not reflect the self-designations of the component nations of people, which include Hmong, Hmu, A Hmao, and Kho Xiong...
rebels, when his daughter (the future mother of Guo Moruo) was less than a year old. She married into the Guo family in 1872, when she was fourteen.
Childhood
Guo was the eighth child of his mother. Three of his siblings had died before he was born, but more children were born later, so by the time he went to school, he had seven siblings.Guo also had the childhood name Guo Wenbao ('Cultivated Leopard'), given due to a dream his mother had on the night he was conceived.
A few years before Guo was born, his parents retained a private tutor, Shen Huanzhang, to provide education for their children, in the hope of them later passing civil service examinations. A precocious child, Guo started studying at this "family school" in the spring of 1897, at the early age of four and half. Initially, his studies were based on Chinese classics, but with the government education reforms of 1901, mathematics and other modern subjects started to be introduced.
When in the fall of 1903 a number of public schools were established in Sichuan's capital, Chengdu
Chengdu
Chengdu , formerly transliterated Chengtu, is the capital of Sichuan province in Southwest China. It holds sub-provincial administrative status...
, the Guo children started going there to study. Guo's oldest brother, Guo Kaiwen (1877–1936), entered one of them, Dongwen Xuetang, a secondary school preparing students for study in Japan; the next oldest brother, Guo Kaizou, joined Wubei Xuetang, a military school. Guo Kaiwen soon became instrumental in exposing his brother and sisters still in Shawan to modern books and magazines that allowed them to learn about the wide world outside.
Guo Kaiwen continued to be a role model for his younger brothers when in February 1905 he left for Japan, to study law and administration at Tokyo Imperial University on a provincial government' scholarship.
After passing competitive examinations, in early 1906 Guo Moruo started attending the new upper-level primary school (高等小学 gaodeng xiao xue) in Jiading
Leshan
-Administrative divisions:-Transport:There is a passenger rail line that serves the Mianyang–Chengdu–Leshan inter-city area.The Chengdu-Leshan Highway with a total length of 160 kilometers, was finished on January 14th, 2000...
. It was a boarding school located in a former Buddhist temple and the boy lived on premises. He went on to a middle school in 1907, acquiring by this time the reputation of an academically gifted student but a troublemaker. His peers respected him and often elected him a delegate to represent their interests in front of the school administration. Often spearheading student-faculty conflicts, he was expelled and reinstated a few times, and finally expelled permanently in October 1909.
Guo was glad to be expelled, as he now had a reason to go to the provincial capital Chengdu
Chengdu
Chengdu , formerly transliterated Chengtu, is the capital of Sichuan province in Southwest China. It holds sub-provincial administrative status...
to continue his education there.
In October 1911, Guo was surprised by his mother announcing that a marriage was arranged for him. He went along with his family's wishes, marrying his appointed bride, Zhang Jinghua, sight-unseen in Shawan in March 1912. Immediately, he regretted this marriage, and five days after the marriage, he left his ancestral home and returned to Chengdu, leaving his wife behind. He never formally divorced her, but apparently never lived with her either.
Study abroad
Second Sino-Japanese War
The Second Sino-Japanese War was a military conflict fought primarily between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. From 1937 to 1941, China fought Japan with some economic help from Germany , the Soviet Union and the United States...
, and to have five children together.
After graduation from the Okayama school, Guo entered in 1918 the Medical School of Kyushyu Imperial University in Fukuoka
Fukuoka, Fukuoka
is the capital city of Fukuoka Prefecture and is situated on the northern shore of the island of Kyushu in Japan.Voted number 14 in a 2010 poll of the World's Most Livable Cities, Fukuoka is praised for its green spaces in a metropolitan setting. It is the most populous city in Kyushu, followed by...
. He was more interested in literature than medicine, however. His studies at this time focused on foreign language and literature, namely the works of: Spinoza, Goethe, Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman
Walter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse...
, and the Bengali
Bengali literature
Bengali literature is literary works written in Bengali language particularly from Bangladesh and the Indian provinces of West Bengal and Tripura. The history of Bengali literature traces back hundreds of years while it is impossible to separate the literary trends of the two Bengals during the...
poet Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore , sobriquet Gurudev, was a Bengali polymath who reshaped his region's literature and music. Author of Gitanjali and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse", he became the first non-European Nobel laureate by earning the 1913 Prize in Literature...
. Along with numerous translations, he published his first anthology of poems, entitled The Goddesses (女神 - nǚ shén) (1921). He co-founded the Ch'uang-tsao she ("Creation Society") in Shanghai, which promoted modern and vernacular literature
Vernacular Chinese
Written Vernacular Chinese refers to forms of written Chinese based on the vernacular language, in contrast to Classical Chinese, the written standard used from the Spring and Autumn Period to the early twentieth century...
.
The war years
Guo joined the Communist Party of ChinaCommunist Party of China
The Communist Party of China , also known as the Chinese Communist Party , is the founding and ruling political party of the People's Republic of China...
in 1927. He was involved in the Communist Nanchang Uprising
Nanchang Uprising
The Nanchang Uprising was the first major Kuomintang-Communist engagement of the Chinese Civil War, in order to counter the anti-communist purges by the Nationalist Party of China....
and fled to Japan after its failure. He stayed there for 10 years studying Chinese ancient history. During that time he published his work on inscriptions on oracle bones
Oracle bone script
Oracle bone script refers to incised ancient Chinese characters found on oracle bones, which are animal bones or turtle shells used in divination in Bronze Age China...
and bronze vessels
Bronzeware script
Chinese Bronze inscriptions are writing in a variety of Chinese scripts on Chinese bronze artifacts such as zhōng bells and dǐng tripodal cauldrons from the Shāng dynasty to the Zhōu dynasty and even later...
, Corpus of Inscriptions on Bronzes from the Two Zhou Dynasties (两周金文辞大系考释). In this work, he attempted to demonstrate, according to the Communist doctrine, the "slave society" nature of ancient China. His theory on the "slave society of China" remains highly controversial, although it was praised by Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...
and the party.
In the summer of 1937, soon after the Marco Polo Bridge incident, Guo returned to China to join the anti-Japanese resistance. His attempt to arrange for Sato Tomiko and their children to join him in China were frustrated by the Japanese authorities, and in 1939 he remarried to Yu Liqun (于立群; 1916–1979), a Shanghai actress. After the war, Sato went to reunite with him but was disappointed to know that he had already formed a new family.
As a communist leader
Along with holding important government offices in the People's Republic of ChinaPeople's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
, Guo was a prolific writer, not just of poetry but also fiction, plays, autobiographies, translations, and historical and philosophical treatises. He was the first President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences
Chinese Academy of Sciences
The Chinese Academy of Sciences , formerly known as Academia Sinica, is the national academy for the natural sciences of the People's Republic of China. It is an institution of the State Council of China. It is headquartered in Beijing, with institutes all over the People's Republic of China...
and remained so from its founding in 1949 until his death in 1978. He was also the first president of University of Science & Technology of China (USTC), a new type of university established by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) after the founding of the People's Republic of China and aimed at fostering high-level personnel in the fields of science and technology.
In 1966 he was one of the first to be attacked during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. He confessed that he had not properly understood the thought of Mao Zedong and agreed that his works should be burned. However, this was not enough to protect his family. Two of his sons, Guo Minying and Guo Shiying, "committed suicide" in 1967 and 1968 following "criticism" or persecution by Red Guards
Red Guards (China)
Red Guards were a mass movement of civilians, mostly students and other young people in the People's Republic of China , who were mobilized by Mao Zedong in 1966 and 1967, during the Cultural Revolution.-Origins:...
.
Unlike others similarly attacked, Guo's life was spared as he was chosen by Mao as "the representative of the rightwing" in the 9th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 1969. He had regained much of his influence by the seventies.
Guo was awarded the Stalin Peace Prize in 1951.
Family
Guo had five children (four sons and a daughter) with Sato Tomiko and six with Yu Liqun (four sons and two daughters). An article published in the 2000s said that eight out of the eleven were alive, and that three have died.With Sato Tomiko (listed chronologically in the order of birth):
- son Guo Hefu (郭和夫) (December 12 (or 31, according to other sources) 1917, Okayama - September 13, 1994). A chemist, he moved from Japan to Taiwan in 1946 and to mainland China in 1949. He was the founder of the Institute of Chemical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
- son Guo Bo (郭博) (born 1920), a renowned architect and photographer. He came to China in 1955, invited by his father, and worked in ShanghaiShanghaiShanghai is the largest city by population in China and the largest city proper in the world. It is one of the four province-level municipalities in the People's Republic of China, with a total population of over 23 million as of 2010...
, where he participated in the design of many of its famous modern buildings. Guo Bu is also known as a photographer of Shanghai's heritage architecture; an album of his photographic work has been published as a book. - son Guo Fusheng (郭福生).
- daughter Guo Shuyu (郭淑禹), a Japanese-language teacher, now deceased.
- son Guo Zhihong (郭志宏).
With Yu Liqun (listed chronologically in the order of birth):
- son Guo Hanying (郭汉英) (born 1941, Chongqing). An internationally published theoretical physicist.
- daughter Guo Shuying (郭庶英). She published a book about her father.
- son Guo Shiying (郭世英) (1942 - April 22, 1968). In 1962, while a philosophy student at Beijing University, he created an "underground" "X Poetry Society". In the summer of 1963 the society was exposed and deemed subversive. Guo Shiying was sentenced to re-education through labor. While working at a farm in HenanHenanHenan , is a province of the People's Republic of China, located in the central part of the country. Its one-character abbreviation is "豫" , named after Yuzhou , a Han Dynasty state that included parts of Henan...
province, he developed interest in agriculture. Returning to Beijing in 1965, he enrolled at Beijing Agricultural University. In 1968, kidnapped by Red GuardsRed Guards (China)Red Guards were a mass movement of civilians, mostly students and other young people in the People's Republic of China , who were mobilized by Mao Zedong in 1966 and 1967, during the Cultural Revolution.-Origins:...
and "tried" by their "court" for his poetry-society activity years before he jumped out of the window of the third-floor room where he was held and died at the age of 26. His father in his later writing expressed regret for encouraging his son to return to Beijing from the farm, thinking that it indirectly lead to his death. - son Guo Minying (郭民英), (November 1943, Chongqing - April 12, 1967). His death is described as an unexpected suicide.
- daughter Guo Pingying (郭平英)
- son Guo Jianying (郭建英) (born 1953).
Commemoration
- Guo's residence in Beijing, near Shicha Lake (ShichahaiShichahaiShichahai is an historic scenic area consisting of three lakes in the north of central Beijing in China. They are located to the north-west of the Forbidden City and north-west of the Beihai Lake. Shichahai consists of the following three lakes: Qianhai , Xihai and Houhai...
), where he lived after the war with his second (or third, if the arranged marriage is to be counted) wife, Yu Liqun, is preserved as a museum. - Guo and Sato Tomiko's house in IchikawaIchikawa, Chibais a city located in northwest Chiba, Japan, approximately 20 kilometers from the center of Tokyo. The city was founded on November 3, 1934. As of January 1, 2011, the city has an estimated population of 474,586 and a density of 8,259.42 persons per km². The total area is 57.46 km²...
, Japan, where they lived in 1927-37, is a museum as well. Due to the Guo Moruo connection, Ichikawa chose to establish sister city relations with LeshanLeshan-Administrative divisions:-Transport:There is a passenger rail line that serves the Mianyang–Chengdu–Leshan inter-city area.The Chengdu-Leshan Highway with a total length of 160 kilometers, was finished on January 14th, 2000...
in 1981.
Further reading
- Encyclopædia Britannica 2005 Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, article- "Guo Moruo"
- Guo Moruo newssc.org
- Xiaoming Chen, From The May Fourth Movement to Communist Revolution: Guo Moruo and the Chinese Path to Communism (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2007).
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