Poetic, artistic, diasporic Mu Xin passes away

(Ecns.cn)--Mu Xin, a renowned Chinese writer and painter, passed away at age 84 in his hometown of Wuzhen, a water town of Zhejiang Province, at 3 a.m. December 21.

"The morning fog filled the sorrowful air. Everyone knows you left in haste." Chen Xianghong, a Wuzhen resident tweeted on Sina Weibo, December 21.

Over 150,000 netizens mourned the old gentleman via microblog, reported the Hangzhou Daily on December 23.

A memorial was held December 24 at Mu's former residence in Wuzhen. Domestic and international celebrities, loyal readers, and members of literary circles and artistic communities attended.

Mu's poem Slow Pace in Old Times in 87 words was also repeatedly posted on microblogs. Messengers expressed their sadness at Mu's death and the vanishing traditional world he so beautifully rendered.

Illustrious Chinese writer Chen Cun, expressed his grief thus: "Few can be good at poetry, prose and painting alike. I admire his independent character."

Ning Caishen, a popular contemporary playwright microblogged: "The stalwart Mu Xin chose to treat with compassion his own and other's weaknesses. His works carefully stepped around the ugly things and conveyed only the beauty and kindness of the world."

Poet and artist of the diaspora

Mu Xin was born in Wuzhen, South China, into a wealthy aristocratic family with business interests in Shanghai. He was among the last generation to receive a classical education in the literati tradition. He studied under Liu Haisu at school and took Lin Fengmian as his teacher. Liu and Lin are both outstanding 20th century Chinese painters.

Mu Xin's paintings are preserved, among other places, at the British Museum, Yale University and the Harvard University Art Gallery.

In the context of China's Cultural Revolution, Mu Xin had been imprisoned for 18 months in the early 1970s and all his works were destroyed. Behind bars, Mu completed The Prison Notes on the paper the government had given him for confessing his "guilt."

Mu drifted abroad in 1982 and wrote dozens of books in succession in the forms of essays, prose poems and fiction. Mu Xin's literary texts reveal a mind uncontained by national boundaries."

To Mu Xin, being part of the diaspora was not so much a physical condition as an aesthetic and intellectual mode. Mu Xin argued "Wanderers carrying their roots, or travelers in the spiritual realm will encounter their kindred spirits either before them or after them. One globe is indeed enough."

"He is a literary cult figure in Taiwan and a towering intellectual in the Chinese diaspora", remarked Holland Cotter on New York Times.