Essayist:A Life of Writing

by Zhang Ke

Essayist He Manzi passed away on May 8, 2009 in Shanghai at the age of 90. His son-in-law said to me over the phone that He did not leave any last words. What the scholarly essayist left behind are 50 books he authored over the last 30 years.

As a scholar and essayist, he saw his writing career bloom only after he was 60 years old. He started at 13.

From a family of government officials and scholars, He Manzi was educated at home under the guidance of the best teachers the rich family could afford. He grew up in Hangzhou, living with his great grandfather, an extremely influential figure in the capital city of Zhejiang Province. His first essay was published in a newspaper in Hangzhou, when he was only 13. When Japan invaded China, the war situation pushed him across the country. He traveled and joined resistance. He visited Chengdu twice in these years. It was his second stay in Chengdu that He Manzi worked as a literary editor for a local newspaper and met a woman named Wu Zhonghua. Three years later, they got married.

He Manzi was a professor at the Chinese Department of Aurora University in Shanghai and his wife worked as a journalist and editor for the citys radio in 1949 when the New China came into being. The familys misfortune began in 1955 and did not end until 1978, two years after the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) ended. He was finally reinstated and was able to come back to Shanghai after spending more than a year in prison, eight years in exile in remote Ningxia and12 years in Longmen, his hometown in Fuyang, then a rural county of Hangzhou.

When the whole family finally settled down in Shanghai after the protracted chaos, He Manzi was already 60 years old. He commented years later that his life started at 60. He worked as an editor with the Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House and worked as guest professor for a number of universities in Shanghai and Ningbo. The prolific scholar wrote enthusiastically, trying to get back the lost time. About half of the 50 books he authored during the 30 years are academic books on art, literature and studies on ancient novels. His academic papers are published in a collection of three volumes. The other half are collections of essays. The Very Best Essays of He Manzi won the Essay Prize of the First Lu Xun Literature Awards.

I met the master through Wang Turan, his son-in-law and my classmate in college. I have always managed to find time to see Wang whenever I am in Shanghai on business. In early years, one of our conversation topics was He Manzi. I visited He Manzi and his wife at the home of Wang when they lived together so that the young could take care of the old. My close contact with He Manzi took place in the fall of 2000 when a pen meeting convened in Hangzhou. The host, the chief of Louwailou Restaurant on the West Lake and I went to Shanghai to invite He Manzi personally. A few days later, He Manzi made contacts with some scholars in Shanghai to come to Hangzhou for the meeting. They came together with their families. The meeting took place first in Shanghai and then moved to Hangzhou and then the masters visited Orchid Pavilion in Shaoxing.

Two journalists from Qianjiang Evening News interviewed all these masters at Golden Brook Hotel on the West Lake where the masters stayed during their time in Hangzhou. In his interview, He Manzi talked about the May Fourth Movement and criticized some kongfu novels and romances for their going against the spirit of the literary movement that started in 1919. He questioned the popularity of such novels, considering them a continuation of the outmoded literary tradition that the movement wanted to get rid of in the first place. The old tradition, in his opinion, went against humanism the movement upheld. He Manzi stressed the uplifting function of literature. He said literature should not be used to satisfy some readers base needs. He insisted that elitists are the pillar of literature.

During their stay in Hangzhou, masters visited many places of historical and cultural interests on the West Lake. They sipped tea at tea resorts around the lake area.

Though He Manzi spent his last 30 years in Shanghai, he was closely associated with Longmen Town. He came back to his hometown several times in the 1990s. The town is a typical habitat in this part of Zhejiang where huge clans live together. Ninety percent of the 7,000 residents in town share the surname Sun and one of their ancestors is Sun Quan (182-252), the king of the Wu Kingdom (222-280).