Still in poor health, Ah Yuan continued to work hard and excel in her career as a highly-respected university professor of English.
Yang only regrets that Ah Yuan had no chance to finish many of the things she had set out to do in her life.
"Tried and tempered innumerable times, she was all along nothing but a seed, putting forth only tiny sprouts. As her parents, our hearts cannot be soothed," laments Yang.
Two sides of a coin
Despite his academic achievements, Qian Zhongshu didn't move into the public spotlight until 1990, when his only novel was adapted into a hit television drama serial broadcast nationwide.
His wit, his enjoyment of the ironies of life, and his prodigious erudition impress almost every reader and viewer of his "Fortress Besieged."
But through the loving eyes of his wife, readers get a glimpse of some other interesting aspects of his personality.
He is revealed to be extraordinarily awkward, for one thing, in dealing with practical daily problems. When Yang married him in 1935, she found that he could not distinguish his right from his left shoe, and grasped his chopsticks with his fist, like a baby.
Yang also adds in some little known facts about their professional careers.
According to Yang, most part of Qian's masterpiece, the "Pipe-Awl Collection (Guanzhui Pian )," was written in the middle 1970s, in the midst of the chaotic "cultural revolution" (1966-76). The English version of the book, translated by Qian himself, is "Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters." The book was published by Harvard University Press in 1998.
In the mid-70s when the book was written they were "exiled" from their former residence, and, for more than three years, lived first in Ah Yuan's dorm in the university where she worked, then in an office which belonged to the institute to which they were attached.
