Guo Moruo (1892 -1978)

Guo Moruo 10532401 01:39, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Guo Moruo Click here for original source

Guo Moruo Root 21:14, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Childhood

The son of a wealthy merchant, Guo had five older siblings three of which died before he was born, his mother had another three after him giving her a total of six living brothers and sisters (two older four younger). Guo was born with the name Guo Kaizhen but was called Guo Wenbao ('Cultivated Leopard')during his childhood and Guo Moruo from his teens to his old age. Due to his parents rural location the young children could not travel the long distance to school. Guo's parent hired a private tutor and they were taught many classical Chinese works. With a focus on Confucian morals. 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. At the age of ten his parents had already arranged his first marriage. Regretfully the young girl died when Guo was fourteen. 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. Guo Moruo early manifested a stormy, unbridled temperament. 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 could now live ninety miles away attending a new school in Chengdu. One major reason behind his rebellion, of course was that he had been influenced by modern western concepts of love, romance, and individuality and could hardly sacrifice himself completely for lijiao norms.

In October 1911 Guo was surprised to learn of his own engagement through a letter his parents had written to his cousin. Guo's parents had made their decision based on what was best for the two families. Zhang Jinghua Guo's future wife was described by his aunt as, "having good looks", "was going to school" and had the modern unbound feet. Guo went along with his family's wishes keeping Chinese tradition, marrying his appointed bride sight-unseen in Shawan in March 1912 at the age of nineteen. 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. Years later in a autobiography written in 1929, he mentioned that his agreement to the marriage was the thing that he had "repented the most" in his life.

Guo Moruo Click here for original source

Motivations

Guo left Chengdu for Tianjin in September 1913 to attend the medical collage. Medicine was for financial purposes his best bet for schooling. Guo Moruo's brother had already arranged for him to work as a doctor in a hospital that belonged to a local red cross in Sichuan. The hospital had already promised him the position and a handsome pay to work for them after his schooling. Guo arrived at the medical collage in Tianjin only to find that it did not meet his expectations. Guo couldn't return home to his extremely disappointed family, and wife who he didn't love. Guo decided to stay with his brother for a time until his brother funded six months of schooling in japan with the idea that Guo would qualify for scholarships to remain there. Guo jumped at the chance to study in Japan, he had dreamed about going and the idea made him very excited. He attends the Medical School of Kyushu Imperial Univeristy at Fukuoka, Japan. During Guo's time in japan he meets his wife Sato Tomiko. Tomiko is studding to be a nurse when they meet through a friend of Guo who happens to be staying at Tomiko's hospital for treatment of tuberculosis. Guo's relationship with Tomiko brings him the love and romance that he had long desired. However, is also causes him tremendous guilt and suffering and an strong sense of guilt. His relationship with Tamiko brought him great dishonor in the eyes of his family. Guo's parents disown him for several years. They finally reach out calling his new wife Tomiko a "concubine" making Guo very upset.

In april 1923 Guo eventually leaves Medical School in Japan to pursue his love of writing. He returns to China to work for company named Tai Dong where he publishes a large part of his work. During his time here he is treated like an like a animal begging for money to support his family. Guo only stayed because Tai Dong was one of the only publishers willing to print Guo's kind of political writing. Guo and Tomiko become tired of not having the necessities for their family and decide to return to Japan so Guo can finished his degree, living comfortably on scholarships.

True love, emancipation for the individual, freeing china, were the largest motivations discussed in the novel "From the may fourth movement to Communist Revolution" by Xiaoming Chen. Guo was a hopeless romantic stuck in the quagmire of Confucian orientaional order of xiushen. Wm. Theodore DeBary describes the main difference between Confucian Personalism and the Western individualism as follows. Western individualism is unique in that is sees the induvidual "as fulfilling [our self] through the social process and in a moral and spiritual communion with others" and "does not set the individual over against state of society" Confucian Personalism has a strong focus on the fulfilling one's spiritual/moral needs through family, state, and the world. Confucian ideals consist of the following, morally cultivation the self, regulating the family, managing the state, and harmonizing the world. The Confucian ideologies sound good but when a families ancient Confucian traditions of arranged marriage hinder your more modern belief in love, such was the case of Moruo.

Guo Moruo translated works from Russian, German, and Japanese into Chinese. The numerous translations of the works of Goethe, Friedrich von Schiller, Ivan Turgenev, Tolstoy, Upton Sinclair, and other Western authors gave him a unique perspective of the modern western ideals.

Controversy

During the 1920's Guo turned to Communism although he didn't officially join the Communist Party until 1927. Guo rides the Communist Party focusing on the Marxist belief that the emancipation of the individual is possible through the complete destruction of capitalist society. He also uses the Communist party as a catalyst for combining Western Modernity and age old Chinese traditions. Guo's desire to free the Chinese from improper ideals began with several movements. Some of the movements Guo started and participated in are as follows, May Fourth (period), Nanchang Uprising, anti-Japanese resistance, and his own Creation Society. Guo is fixated on the fundamental question of whether the Chinese people should rely upon traditional or modern Western thinking for their value system and ideological guidance in a collision between the modern West and their traditional society.

Guo studies the Marxist Cosmopolitanist Ideal and see's resemblance to his view of a free china. He writes a letter to Cheng Fangwu in August 1924, Guo describes with great longing and admiration his newly founded Marxist communist ideal, He tells his friend that in the cosmopolitanist society of Marxist communism "there will no longer be an classes" and material wealth will be "evenly distributed." People "will have no more worries and suffering in their life other than those caused by natural and physical factors." "Each" in that society "will work according to his ability, and each will take what he needs." "All people will be able to develop themselves according to their talents, all people will be able to devote themselves to truth so that they will make contributions[to society] and all people will be extricated."

Sadly the Communist ideals in modern China are not the same kind that Guo believed in. The modern Chinese have perverted the teachings of Guo for their gain. Guo could not predict that the same warlords in his day would embrace and take over communist rule. The idea of communism is pure and good but the implementation of it is virtually impossible.

Wikipedia states the following about Guo's family,"Guo had five children (four sons and a daughter) with Sato Tomiko and six with Yu Liqun (four sons and two daughters)." Who is Yu Liqun? In my research I couldn't find where she came from.

In both of my sources there is literally one line designated to the "Creation Society" which he founded, what did it do? What was it for? Why is there so little about this seemingly important society.

Shanghai - Guo Moruo statue

Legacy

As a writer, Guo was enormously prolific in every genre. Besides his poetry and fiction, his works include plays, nine autobiographical volumes.

Guo was probably the most influential Chinese intellectual in battle against the Confucian Family and lijiao society on the issue of arranged marriage.

Guo held many important positions in the People’s Republic of China, including the presidency of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

He co-founded the Creation Society in Shanghai, which promoted modern and vernacular literature.

Guo Moruo served as a prominent government official from 1949 until his death on 12 June 1978 (aged 85).

Sources

Xiaoming Chen. From the May Fourth Movement to Communist Revolution Albany:State University of New York Press,2007.

Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 10/5/12 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guo_Moruo>