Guo Moruo (; November 16, 1892 – June 12, 1978),

courtesy name A courtesy name (), also known as a style name, is a name bestowed upon one at adulthood in addition to one's given name. This practice is a tradition in the East Asian cultural sphere, including China China, officially the People's R ...

Dingtang (), was a Chinese author, poet, historian, archaeologist, and government official.

Biography

Family history

Guo Moruo, originally named Guo Kaizhen, was born on November 10 or 16, in the small town of Shawan, located on the Dadu River some southwest from what was then called the city of Jiading (Lu) (Chia-ting (Lu), ), and now is the central urban area of the prefecture level city of

Leshan Leshan, formerly known as Jiading or Jiazhou, is a prefecture-level city located at the confluence of the Dadu and Min rivers in Sichuan Province, China. Leshan is located on the southwestern fringe of the Sichuan Basin in southern Sichuan, ab ...

in Sichuan Province. At the time of Guo's birth, Shawan was a town of some 180 families. David Tod Roy, "Kuo Mo-jo: The Early Years". Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 1971. No ISBN. Guo's father's ancestors were Hakkas from Ninghua County in Tingzhou fu, near the western border of

Fujian Fujian (; alternately romanized as Fukien or Hokkien) is a province on the southeastern coast of China. Fujian is bordered by Zhejiang to the north, Jiangxi to the west, Guangdong to the south, and the Taiwan Strait to the east. Its c ...

. 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 ( 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 months 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'' degree. Whilst serving as an acting magistrate in Huangping prefecture (), now part of Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture, in eastern

Guizhou Guizhou (; formerly Kweichow) is a landlocked province in the southwest region of the People's Republic of China. Its capital and largest city is Guiyang, in the center of the province. Guizhou borders the autonomous region of Guangxi to t ...

, 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.

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 a 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 () 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.

Study abroad

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 is the capital city of Okayama Prefecture in the Chūgoku region of Japan. The city was founded on June 1, 1889. , the city has an estimated population of 720,841 and a population density of 910 persons per km2. The total area is . The city is ...

. When visiting a friend of his hospitalized in Saint 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.Yan Lu. "Re-understanding Japan: Chinese Perspectives, 1895-1945". University of Hawaii Press, 2004.
Partial text on Google Books
/ref> After graduation from the Okayama school, Guo entered in 1918 the Medical School of

Kyushu Imperial University , abbreviated to , is a Japanese national university located in Fukuoka, on the island of Kyushu. It was the 4th Imperial University in Japan, ranked as 4th in 2020 Times Higher Education Japan University Rankings, one of the top 10 Design ...

Fukuoka is the List of Japanese cities by population, sixth-largest city in Japan, the second-largest port city after Yokohama, and the capital city of Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan. The city is built along the shores of Hakata Bay, and has been a center ...

. 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 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic. His works include plays, poetry, literature, and aesthetic criticism, as well as t ...

, Walt Whitman, and the Nobel Laureate Rabindra Nath Tagore. Along with numerous translations, he published his first anthology of poems, entitled ''The Goddesses'' () (1921). He co-founded the Creation Society () in Shanghai, which promoted modern and

vernacular literature Vernacular literature is literature written in the vernacular—the speech of the "common people". In the European tradition, this effectively means literature not written in Latin nor Koine Greek. In this context, vernacular literature appeare ...

The war years

Guo joined the

Chinese Communist Party The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), officially the Communist Party of China (CPC), is the founding and sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Under the leadership of Mao Zedong, the CCP emerged victorious in the Chinese Ci ...

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'' (). 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 pronounced ; also Romanization of Chinese, romanised traditionally as Mao Tse-tung. (26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976), also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the List of national founde ...

and the party. In the summer of 1937, shortly 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 , 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 China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, sli ...

, 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 The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS); ), known by Academia Sinica in English until the 1980s, is the national academy of the People's Republic of China for natural sciences. It has historical origins in the Academia Sinica during the Repub ...

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 A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase ''universitas magistrorum et scholarium'', whic ...

(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. For the first 15 years of the PRC, Guo, with his extensive knowledge of Chinese history and culture, was the ultimate arbiter of philosophical matters relating to art, education, and literature, although all of his most vital and important work had been written before 1949. With the onset of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, Guo became an early target of persecution. To save face, he wrote a public self-criticism and declared that all his previous works were in error and should be burned. He then turned to writing poetry praising Mao's wife Jiang Qing and the Cultural Revolution and also denounced former friends and colleagues as counterrevolutionaries. 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.- Portraits of China's historical figures
(This article contains portraits of a number of people who participated in the Cultural Revolution - as actors or as victims - painted by Xu Weixin, and biographical comments).. This article is based on the book Because of his sycophantic loyalty to Mao, he survived the Cultural Revolution and received commendation by the chairman at the 9th Party Congress in April 1969. By the early 1970s, he had regained most of his influence. He enjoyed all the privileges of the highest-ranking party elites, including residence in a luxurious manor house once owned by a Qing official, a staff of assigned servants, a state limousine, and other perks. Guo also maintained a large collection of antique furniture and curios in his home. In 1978, following Mao's death and the fall of the Gang of Four, the 85 year old Guo, as he lay dying in a Beijing hospital, penned a poem denouncing the Gang. :: (What wonderful news!) :: (Rooting out the Gang of Four.) :: (The literary rogue.) :: (The political rogue.) :: (The sinister adviser.) :: (The White-Boned Demon.) :: (All swept away by the iron broom.) The White-Boned Demon was a character in the Ming-era novel ''

Journey to the West ''Journey to the West'' () is a Chinese novel published in the 16th century during the Ming dynasty and attributed to Wu Cheng'en. It is regarded as one of the greatest Classic Chinese Novels, and has been described as arguably the most po ...

'', an evil shapeshifting being, and was a popular derogatory nickname for Jiang Qing. Guo was awarded the Stalin Peace Prize in 1951.

Legacy

Guo was held in high regard in Chinese contemporary literature, history and archaeology. He once called himself the Chinese answer to

and this appraisal was widely accepted. Zhou Yang said: "You are Goethe, but you are the Goethe of the New Socialist Era of China."("") Despite his achievements, he was also criticised as the first of "Four Contemporary Shameless Writers". For example, he spoke highly of

's calligraphy, to the extent that he justified what the Party Leader had written mistakenly. And during the

Cultural Revolution The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a sociopolitical movement in the People's Republic of China (PRC) launched by Mao Zedong in 1966, and lasting until his death in 1976. Its stated go ...

, he published a book called ''

Li Bai Li Bai (, 701–762), also pronounced as Li Bo, courtesy name Taibai (), was a Chinese poet, acclaimed from his own time to the present as a brilliant and romantic figure who took traditional poetic forms to new heights. He and his friend Du F ...

and Du Fu'' in which he praised Li Bai while belittling Du Fu, which was thought to flatter Mao Zedong. His attitude to the Gang of Four changed sharply before and after its downfall. In his private life, he was also known to have affairs with many women, whom he abandoned shortly afterwards. One of them, Li Chen (), allegedly committed suicide after his betrayal, although this is disputed.

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 () (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., and following chapters, from the book *son Guo Bo () (born 1920), a renowned architect and photographer. He came to China in 1955, invited by his father, and worked in

Shanghai Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flowin ...

, 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 (). *daughter Guo Shuyu (), a Japanese-language teacher, now deceased. *son Guo Zhihong (). With Yu Liqun (listed chronologically in the order of birth): *son Guo Hanying () (born 1941, Chongqing). An internationally published theoretical physicist. *daughter Guo Shuying ().USTC Newsletter 2001 No.2
(2005-08-14) She published a book about her father. *son Guo Shiying () (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

Henan Henan (; or ; ; alternatively Honan) is a landlocked province of China, in the central part of the country. Henan is often referred to as Zhongyuan or Zhongzhou (), which literally means "central plain" or "midland", although the name is al ...

province, he developed interest in agriculture. Returning to Beijing in 1965, he enrolled at Beijing Agricultural University. In 1968, kidnapped by Red Guards 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 led to his death. This article is based on the book *son Guo Minying (), (November 1943, Chongqing - April 12, 1967). His death is described as an unexpected suicide. *daughter Guo Pingying () *son Guo Jianying () (born 1953).

Commemoration

* Guo's residence in Beijing, near Shicha Lake ( Shichahai), 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 Ichikawa, Chiba, Japan, where they lived in 1927-37, is a museum as well. Due to the Guo Moruo connection, Ichikawa chose to establish

sister city A sister city or a twin town relationship is a form of legal or social agreement between two geographically and politically distinct localities for the purpose of promoting cultural and commercial ties. While there are early examples of inter ...

relations with

in 1981.

Honours

* Empire of Iran : Commemorative Medal of the 2500th Anniversary of the founding of the Persian Empire (14/10/1971).

Bibliography

This is a select bibliography. A fuller bibliography may be found in: ''A Selective Guide to Chinese Literature, 1900-1949'' (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1988-90. 4 vols.).

Poetry, stories, novels, plays

* 1921: ''Goddess: Songs and Poems'' (). English translation:
Selected Poems from the Goddesses
', A. C. Barnes and John Lester, tr., Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1958. * 1926, 1932: ''Olives'' (), Shanghai: Chuangzao she chubanshe bu, 1929 (book series: Chuangzao she congshu).. * 1928, 1932: ''Fallen Leaves'' (), Shanghai : Xin zhong guo shu ju, 1932. * 1936: ''Chu Yuan: Five Acts'' ();. English translation:
Chu Yuan: A Play in Five Acts
', Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang, tr., Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1953; 2nd edition, 1978; Honolulu: University Press of the Pacific, 2001. * 1946: "Under the Moonlight", in: ''The China Magazine'' (formerly ''China at War''), June 1946; reprinted in: Chi-Chen Wang, ed., ''Stories of China at War'', Columbia University Press, 1947; reprinted: Westport, Conn. : Greenwood Press, 1975. * 1947: ''Laughter Underground'' ()), Shanghai and Beijing: Hai yan shu dian - selected stories. * 1959: ''Red Flag Ballad'' (), Beijing Shi: Hongqi zhazhi she (= Red Flag Magazine), 1959; English translation: ''Songs of the Red Flag'', Yang Zhou, tr., Peking, Foreign Languages Press, 1961.

Autobiography

Guo wrote nine autobiographical works: * 1947: ''My Youth'' (), Shanghai. ** French translation: ', tr. Pierre Ryckmans, Paris, Gallimard, 1970. ** German translation: ', tr. Ingo Schäfer, Frankfurt am Main: Insel, 1981. * ''Before and After the Revolution'' (Fanzheng qianhou). * 1930, 1931: ''The Black Cat and the Tower'' (), Shanghai, 1930. - often referred to just as ''Black Cat'' (). * ''The First Outing of Kuimen'' (Chuchu Kuimen). * ''My Student Years'' (Wode xuesheng shidai). * 1932: ''Ten Years of Creation'' (), Shanghai : Xian dai shu ju, 1932. * 1938: ''Sequel to Ten Years of Creation'' (), Shanghai : Bei xin shuju. (book series: Chuangzuo xin kan). * ''On the Road of the Northern Expedition'' (Beifa Tuci). * 洪波曲 / ''Hongbo qu''.

Historical, educational, and philosophical treatises

* 1935, rev. ed., 1957: 兩周金文辭大系圖彔攷釋 / ''Liang Zhou jin wen ci da xi tu lu kao shi'' (Corpus of Inscriptions on Bronzes from the Two Zhou houDynasties), Beijing: Ke xue chu ban she, 1957 (考古学专刊. 甲种 = Archaeological monograph series). * 1950: "Report on Culture and Education", in: ''The First Year of Victory'', Peking, Foreign Languages Press. * 1951: ''Culture and Education in New China'', Peking : Foreign Languages Press, 1951 (joint authors: Chien Chun-jui, Liu Tsun-chi, Mei Tso, Hu Yu-chih, Coching Chu and Tsai Chu-sheng). * 1982: 甲骨文合集 ''Jiaguwen Heji'' (Oracle Collection), Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 1978-1983, 13 volumes (edited with

Hu Houxuan Hu Houxuan ( zh, 胡厚宣, 19111995) was a Chinese historian, chief editor and a contributor of the ''Jia gu wen he ji shi wen'' (甲骨文合集释文), the modern Chinese transcriptions of the most comprehensive collection of the oracle bone ins ...

) - collection of 41,956 oracle bone inscriptions from Yinxu.

Other nonfiction

* ''Appeal and Resolutions of the First Session of the World Peace Council : Berlin ; February 21-26, 1951 ; Kuo Mo-jo's Speech at the World Peace Council'', Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1951. * Kuo Mo-jo, "The Struggle for the Creation of New China's Literature" in:

Enlai Zhou Zhou Enlai (; 5 March 1898 – 8 January 1976) was a Chinese statesman and military officer who served as the first Premier of the People's Republic of China, premier of the People's Republic of China from 1 October 1949 until his death on 8 J ...

, ''The People's New Literature : Four Reports at the First All-China Conference of Writers and Artists'', Peking: Cultural Press, 1951.

Translations

* 1922: J. W. von Goethe, '' Die Leiden des Jungen Werther'' (The Sorrows of Young Werther) * 1924: Kawakami Hajime, ''Social Organization and Social Revolution'' * 1925: Ivan Turgenev, '' Xin shi dai'' (Virgin Soil) * 1926: Schiller, '' Wallenstein'' * 1928:

Friedrich Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; or ; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, prose poet, cultural critic, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philosophy. He began his c ...

, '' Also sprach Zarathustra'' (Thus Spake Zarathustra) * 1928: J. W. von Goethe, '' Faust, I. Teil'' * 1929:

Upton Sinclair Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. (September 20, 1878 – November 25, 1968) was an American writer, muckraker, political activist and the 1934 Democratic Party nominee for governor of California who wrote nearly 100 books and other works in sever ...

, '' Tu chang'' (The Jungle) * 1931:

Karl Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...

, '' Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie'' (Capital: A Critique of Political Economy) * 1935:

Leo Tolstoy Count Lev Nikolayevich TolstoyTolstoy pronounced his first name as , which corresponds to the romanization ''Lyov''. () (; russian: link=no, Лев Николаевич Толстой,In Tolstoy's day, his name was written as in pre-refor ...

, '' Voina i mir'' (War and Peace)

Contributions

* 1974: ''Cho Wen-chün: A Play in Three Acts'' (abridged), in:
Straw Sandals: Chinese Short Stories, 1918-1933
', Harold R. Isaacs, ed., Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Cho Wen-chün: A Play in Three Acts (Book, 1974)
worldcat.org. Retrieved 15 June 2022.