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I have known Ping Xintao and his novelist wife Qiong Yao for years. Ping and I have written to each other. I received a few issues of a literary magazine he edits and publishes. His wife Qiong Yao has sent me her novels. Over years, facts and people in the lives of the couple have come to my attention through various channels.
It was after 1991 when I made friends with celebrated artist Suzhou-based Ling Xu that I got to know of Ping Xintao. Then I learned that Ping Xintao is husband of Qiong Yao, a Taiwan writer best known on the mainland for her tear-jerking romances. The two were married in 1979 after a sixteen year of romance. It was through conversations with the artist that the family background of Mr. Ping surfaced. I was able to piece together a background story of the Ping family: Ping Xintao’s father Ping Guanqiu was an entrepreneur in Shanghai and his uncle Ping Jinya was editor-in-chief of a newspaper in Shanghai in the 1940s. In the late 1940s Ping Xintao studied in Shanghai-based Utopia University when through the arrangement of his uncle Ping Jinya, Ping Xintao came to study painting under the guidance of Ling Xu, then in his late 20s. The master and his disciple jointly created a painting, which was later published in August 1949 in the first album of Collected Paintings of Ling Xu. After I made friends with the master, I received a copy of the album.
In early 1949 Ping Xintao left for Taiwan. For the following four decades, the master and his pupil could not keep in touch until the early 1980s when the contacts across the Taiwan Straits gradually became normal. It was by this time that Ling Xu learned that his disciple had been editing and publishing Crown, a literary magazine where San Mao and Qiong Yao made their literary debut. Ping now runs Crown Publishing Company, which is a preeminent cultural venture in Taiwan.
After the relations between the mainland and the island province further improved, Ping Xintao asked his younger sister to visit Ling Xu then living in Suzhou. It was then that the master and his old-time disciple began to write each other on a regular basis. In 2001, Ling Xu visited Taiwan at the invitation of Ping Xintao.
The story I pieced together on the basis of the account from Ling Xu enabled me to write two articles on the friendship of the two and got them published in Zhejiang Daily and China Art Weekly respectively. In 1999, I mailed the two clippings to Ping Xintao. Soon I received a letter from Ping, who expressed his appreciation most courteously. A few months later he sent me four issues of Crown magazine, a Happy New Year card printed with the autographs of the couple, and autographed novels by Qiong Yao. In the following correspondence, Ping even called me his teacher, though he is ten years older than I am. But I understand the appropriate title since his master and I are friends. This reminds me of some anecdotes related by Ling Xu. The master said his disciple was very courteous in his youth in Shanghai.
Qiong Yao is a big name on the mainland for years. Over years, I have also come to know some anecdotes of her relatives on the mainland. She is from a family of scholars. Her aunt Yuan Jing was a well known novelist in the 1930s and 1940s in the liberated areas under the jurisdiction of the Communists. She and her husband jointly created “New Story of Heroic Sons and Daughters” in 1948, a novel about revolutionaries. It was heralded as a new voice after its publication in 1949. More than a few million copies were printed and it was translated into foreign languages. Another great aunt Yuan Xiaoyuan lived to 102 years of age; a great granduncle Yuan Lizhun once worked as a teacher to the last emperor of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).
I met with Yuan Xiaoyuan in 1997 at a birthday party in honor of Xu Bangda, a preeminent scholar of Chinese classics and connoisseur of antiques. Yuan was then 97 years old, 11 years older than Xu Bangda. At that time I didn’t know who the lady was, but Xu Bangda and a high-ranking provincial leader were there to meet at her at the door in a most reverent way. Her story came to me later. In her youth she studied art in France and then switched to political science due to her disappointment in art for its inability to follow the chaotic changes China was experiencing at that time. She was the first female taxation official in the republican years. And she became China’s first female diplomat. During her stay in US, she became a translator for the United Nations. In America, she wrote a proposal on Pinyin in the 1950s and sent it back to the Chinese government when China was considering proposals and soliciting advice and suggestions from scholars all over the world in a bid to adopt a modern pronunciation system for Chinese. Her suggestion was highly appreciated by Premier Zhou Enlai. She came back to China at the age of 85.
In 1998, Qiong Yao published a novel called “Princess Pearl”. The novel was later adapted to an extremely popular television comedy series. Readers and television audiences highly appreciated the new direction the romance novelist had undertaken.
Ping Xintao spoke highly of his wife’s new literary move, saying that “Princess Pearl” expounds morality in a widely accepted way and gives people a sense of beauty and that it entertains people a great deal partly because it does not aim to lecture on morality or politics and partly because it does not aim to be purely entertaining.
Ping says that they are still enriching themselves intellectually. They have kept watching a film per evening for a long while. They have watched more than 10,000 films so far.
With what I know about Ping and Qiong Yao, I tentatively conclude that the culture of Taiwan is part of Chinese culture. The majority of the celebrities in the island’s culture, business and social undertakings are either from the mainland or descendents of the people from the mainland. They have grown up with their roots in the Chinese culture. It is therefore easy to understand why they are most willing to contribute to the growth of Chinese culture in conjunction with their counterparts on the mainland. □
It was after 1991 when I made friends with celebrated artist Suzhou-based Ling Xu that I got to know of Ping Xintao. Then I learned that Ping Xintao is husband of Qiong Yao, a Taiwan writer best known on the mainland for her tear-jerking romances. The two were married in 1979 after a sixteen year of romance. It was through conversations with the artist that the family background of Mr. Ping surfaced. I was able to piece together a background story of the Ping family: Ping Xintao’s father Ping Guanqiu was an entrepreneur in Shanghai and his uncle Ping Jinya was editor-in-chief of a newspaper in Shanghai in the 1940s. In the late 1940s Ping Xintao studied in Shanghai-based Utopia University when through the arrangement of his uncle Ping Jinya, Ping Xintao came to study painting under the guidance of Ling Xu, then in his late 20s. The master and his disciple jointly created a painting, which was later published in August 1949 in the first album of Collected Paintings of Ling Xu. After I made friends with the master, I received a copy of the album.
In early 1949 Ping Xintao left for Taiwan. For the following four decades, the master and his pupil could not keep in touch until the early 1980s when the contacts across the Taiwan Straits gradually became normal. It was by this time that Ling Xu learned that his disciple had been editing and publishing Crown, a literary magazine where San Mao and Qiong Yao made their literary debut. Ping now runs Crown Publishing Company, which is a preeminent cultural venture in Taiwan.
After the relations between the mainland and the island province further improved, Ping Xintao asked his younger sister to visit Ling Xu then living in Suzhou. It was then that the master and his old-time disciple began to write each other on a regular basis. In 2001, Ling Xu visited Taiwan at the invitation of Ping Xintao.
The story I pieced together on the basis of the account from Ling Xu enabled me to write two articles on the friendship of the two and got them published in Zhejiang Daily and China Art Weekly respectively. In 1999, I mailed the two clippings to Ping Xintao. Soon I received a letter from Ping, who expressed his appreciation most courteously. A few months later he sent me four issues of Crown magazine, a Happy New Year card printed with the autographs of the couple, and autographed novels by Qiong Yao. In the following correspondence, Ping even called me his teacher, though he is ten years older than I am. But I understand the appropriate title since his master and I are friends. This reminds me of some anecdotes related by Ling Xu. The master said his disciple was very courteous in his youth in Shanghai.
Qiong Yao is a big name on the mainland for years. Over years, I have also come to know some anecdotes of her relatives on the mainland. She is from a family of scholars. Her aunt Yuan Jing was a well known novelist in the 1930s and 1940s in the liberated areas under the jurisdiction of the Communists. She and her husband jointly created “New Story of Heroic Sons and Daughters” in 1948, a novel about revolutionaries. It was heralded as a new voice after its publication in 1949. More than a few million copies were printed and it was translated into foreign languages. Another great aunt Yuan Xiaoyuan lived to 102 years of age; a great granduncle Yuan Lizhun once worked as a teacher to the last emperor of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).
I met with Yuan Xiaoyuan in 1997 at a birthday party in honor of Xu Bangda, a preeminent scholar of Chinese classics and connoisseur of antiques. Yuan was then 97 years old, 11 years older than Xu Bangda. At that time I didn’t know who the lady was, but Xu Bangda and a high-ranking provincial leader were there to meet at her at the door in a most reverent way. Her story came to me later. In her youth she studied art in France and then switched to political science due to her disappointment in art for its inability to follow the chaotic changes China was experiencing at that time. She was the first female taxation official in the republican years. And she became China’s first female diplomat. During her stay in US, she became a translator for the United Nations. In America, she wrote a proposal on Pinyin in the 1950s and sent it back to the Chinese government when China was considering proposals and soliciting advice and suggestions from scholars all over the world in a bid to adopt a modern pronunciation system for Chinese. Her suggestion was highly appreciated by Premier Zhou Enlai. She came back to China at the age of 85.
In 1998, Qiong Yao published a novel called “Princess Pearl”. The novel was later adapted to an extremely popular television comedy series. Readers and television audiences highly appreciated the new direction the romance novelist had undertaken.
Ping Xintao spoke highly of his wife’s new literary move, saying that “Princess Pearl” expounds morality in a widely accepted way and gives people a sense of beauty and that it entertains people a great deal partly because it does not aim to lecture on morality or politics and partly because it does not aim to be purely entertaining.
Ping says that they are still enriching themselves intellectually. They have kept watching a film per evening for a long while. They have watched more than 10,000 films so far.
With what I know about Ping and Qiong Yao, I tentatively conclude that the culture of Taiwan is part of Chinese culture. The majority of the celebrities in the island’s culture, business and social undertakings are either from the mainland or descendents of the people from the mainland. They have grown up with their roots in the Chinese culture. It is therefore easy to understand why they are most willing to contribute to the growth of Chinese culture in conjunction with their counterparts on the mainland. □