Burying Autumn: Poetry, Friendship, and Loss

by Ying Hu

Overview

“Autumn wind, autumn rain, fill my heart with sorrow”—these were the last words of Qiu Jin (1875–1907), written before she was beheaded for plotting to overthrow the Qing empire. Eventually, she would be celebrated as a Republican martyr and China’s first feminist, her last words committed to memory by schoolchildren. Yet during her lifetime she was often seen as eccentric, even deviant; in her death, and still more in the forced abandonment of her remains, the authorities had wanted her to disappear into historical oblivion.

Burying Autumn tells the story of the enduring friendship between Qiu Jin and her sworn-sisters Wu Zhiying and Xu Zihua, who braved political persecution to give her a proper burial. Formed amidst social upheaval, their bond found its most poignant expression in Wu and Xu’s mourning for Qiu. The archives of this friendship—letters, poems, biographical sketches, steles, and hand-copied sutra—vividly display how these women understood the concrete experiences of modernity, how they articulated those experiences through traditional art forms, and how their artworks transformed the cultural traditions they invoked even while maintaining deep cultural roots. In enabling Qiu Jin to acquire historical significance, their friendship fulfilled its ultimate socially transformative potential.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674737204
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	04/25/2016
Series:	Harvard East Asian Monographs , #391
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Hu Ying is Professor of East Asian Languages and Literature at the University of California, Irvine.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix

Acknowledgments xi

Abbreviations xiv

Prologue 1

1 Wu Zhiying 15

"Heir of Tongcheng" 16

Friendship in the Capital 36

Wielding the Brush in Public 47

2 Xu Zibua 59

"Like a Scholar" 60

Harmonizing with Friends 73

Poet of Virtue 78

3 Qiu Jin 96

"Besieged" 97

Sworn Sisters 118

Embodying the Swordsman 136

Death Pledge 155

Interlude: "Autumn Wind, Autumn Rain" 174

4 The Arts of Mourning 184

Biography 187

Poetry 207

Burial 227

5 After the Revolution 255

Responding to Change 256

Speaking Collectively 284

The Martyrs Afterlives 307

Epilogue: Difference in Friendship 334

Glossary of Selected Names 347

Works Cited 349

Index 373