Usually when we look at the trajectory of a highly
successful life, there's this expectation of
a blueprint. It's kind of like staring at the
architectural plans for a massive skyscraper.
Yeah, you see the foundation being laid out.
Right, exactly. You see the steel girders going
up and you know exactly what kind of building
is going to dominate the skyline. But then you
stumble across a story that just completely shatters
that expectation. Because they just don't stick
to the plan. Right. Imagine someone meticulously
drawing up those blueprints for this perfectly
sensible skyscraper. And then right as the steel
is going up, they just, well, they set the blueprints
on fire. And from those ashes, they decide to
build a wildly chaotic, breathtakingly beautiful
stained glass cathedral instead. Which completely
upends our desire for a predictable, rational
progression from plane A to point B. Welcome
to the Deep Dive. Today we are looking at Xu
Zimo. He was an absolute towering figure in modern
Chinese poetry, and he died at just 34 years
old. Such a short life. Yeah. And our mission
today is to figure out how a young man placed
on this highly prestigious traditional track
of law and economics somehow transformed into
a literary rock star. I mean, a man who revolutionized
an entire nation's poetry, lived a wildly dramatic
personal life, and left a legacy so profound
that his words are still inspiring modern pop
songs today. It's an incredible transformation.
It really is. Okay, let's unpack this. Because
to really appreciate the stained glass cathedral,
we have to look at those original sensible blueprints.
Right. So we have to start with the sheer weight
of his early academic pedigree. It was incredibly
rigorous. Born in 1897 in Haining, China, Xu
started out on a hyper practical path. Very practical.
Yeah. By 1916, he was studying law at Pe 'an
University, which is now Tianjin University.
And when the law department merged into Peking
University, he moved right along with it. Wow.
So he was navigating the very top tier of Chinese
higher education. It seems like he was, you know,
collecting prestigious degrees like trading cards.
He really was. Because in 1918, he crosses the
globe. He travels to the United States to get
his bachelor's degree at Clark University in
Massachusetts, majoring in political and social
sciences with a minor in history. I mean, he
just keeps going. Yeah. The very next year, he
enrolls at Columbia University in New York for
a graduate degree in economics and politics.
Right, so if you are looking at this resume on
paper, you are looking at a future titan of industry,
or a major political figure, or maybe a brilliant
economist. He had reached the absolute pinnacle
of Western pragmatic education. Which makes his
sudden pivot in 1920 so incredibly jarring. He
basically pulls the ripcord on the whole thing.
Just completely abandoned. Yeah, he abandons
New York and leaves for England. Initially, it
was to study at the London School of Economics.
But historical accounts note that he actually
found the United States, quote, intolerable.
That word intolerable is really key here. You
have to consider what America was in 1920. Right.
The roaring 20s. Exactly. It was the dawn of
the roaring 20s. It was hyper capitalist, pragmatic.
just totally driven by industry and financial
hustle. Yeah, a lot of focus on making money.
And for a young man who is beginning to crave
deep aesthetic and emotional meaning, that environment
felt completely soulless. It clashed violently
with his internal disposition. So he leaves for
London. But even London doesn't stick. No, even
London School of Economics doesn't hold him.
By 1921, he transfers to King's College, Cambridge,
as a special student. And that geographical shift
to Cambridge, that is the catalyst for everything.
He doesn't fall in love with a new economic theory
there. He falls head over heels for English romantic
poetry. He begins consuming the works of John
Keats and Percy Bishus Shelley, and he's also
heavily influenced by French romanticism and,
uh... the symbolist poets. Symbolism being the
movement that focuses on using words to evoke
moods and abstract ideas, right? Like, rather
than just telling a literal story. Precisely.
Yeah, symbolism isn't about, say, describing
a flower. It's about using the flower to evoke
a fleeting, melancholic state of mind. Ah, I
see. By immersing himself in all of this, Yu
was absorbing a completely different lens through
which to view the world. The romantics prioritized
intense emotion, the beauty of nature, and just
the supreme value of individual expression. To
put this in modern terms for you listening, compare
Yu's pivot to, like, A modern -day Ivy League
economics grad or a high -power corporate lawyer
suddenly dropping everything. Just moving to
Europe and becoming an avant -garde spoken word
artist. That is a perfect comparison. It's not
just a change in major, you know, it's moving
to an entirely different universe of human experience.
If we connect this to the bigger picture. This
was a profound ideological awakening. He wasn't
just learning how to rhyme. He was adopting a
philosophy of unbridled individualism. And that
philosophy is about to cause some friction. Oh,
definitely. That Western Romantic philosophy
was about to collide forcefully with the deeply
collective traditional culture of his homeland.
Right, because taking that radical new worldview
and dropping it into 1920s China, that was like
throwing a match into dry brush. It really was
an explosion. Yeah. In 1922, Zhu returns to China.
bringing this fiery western romanticism with
him. And he doesn't just write a few poems in
his diary, he sparks a massive sweeping cultural
shift. He essentially kicks off a literary revolution.
Exactly. He becomes the leading figure of the
modern poetry movement. And he executes this
revolution through two major mechanisms. First,
he aggressively breaks away from the strict highly
structured classical Chinese poetic forms. Forms
that had been around for centuries. Right, they
had been the absolute standard for centuries.
Those forms dictated rigid tonal patterns and
syllable counts and Zhu just shattered those
molds. And second, he starts writing in vernacular
Chinese. That's the everyday language that people
actually spoke on the street rather than the
formal, highly stylized classical language of
the educated elite. Which was a huge deal. Yeah,
writing poetry in classical Chinese back then
was a bit like writing modern laws in Latin.
So by switching to the vernacular, Zhu didn't
just change the style, he effectively unlocked
the gates and let the general public into the
library. It was a massive democratizing force.
Suddenly, literature was accessible to an audience
far beyond the ivory tower. But he didn't stop
at just using everyday words. What else did you
do? Well, Zhu actively translated Western Romantic
forms into modern Chinese poetry. But wait, how
does that actually work mechanically? I mean...
English and Chinese are fundamentally different
languages. You can't just copy and paste a Shakespearean
sonnet structure over Chinese characters, can
you? No, it's an incredibly difficult technical
challenge. English coterie relies on meter patterns
of stressed and unstressed syllables, like the
famous iambic pentameter. Right, da -dum, da
-dum, da -da -da. Exactly. Chinese, however,
is a tonal language where every character is
a single syllable. You cannot recreate English
stress patterns. So what did he do? Zhu had to
invent entirely new rhythmic structures in the
Chinese vernacular to mimic that flowing musical
quality of poets like Keats or Shelley. He was
pioneering a completely new sonic landscape for
the language itself. That is just wild. And he
builds an institution to push this forward. In
1923, he founds the Crescent Moon Society. Yes,
the Crescent Moon Society. This was a literary
group that became a major pillar of the broader
new culture movement that was happening in China
at the time. And the cultural landscape in 1920s
China was highly, highly polarized. The country
was undergoing massive political upheaval, trying
to modernize and redefine itself after the fall
of the last imperial dynasty. Right, the Qing
dynasty. Yeah. And in this environment, literature
was viewed by many as a weapon for social change.
And this is where we see a fascinating clash
of ideologies. And, you know, we can just lay
out the facts of the debate as they existed back
then. The Crescent Moon Society, led by Zhu,
firmly championed the concept of art for art's
sake. They believed poetry had intrinsic value.
Right. They argued it existed to express beauty,
human emotion, and the individual soul without
needing to serve a practical political purpose.
But... On the other side of the intellectual
battlefield, you had the League of Left Wing
Writers, which was driven by the Chinese Communist
Party. Their rallying cry was art for politics
sake. So a very different approach. Entirely
different. They argued fiercely that in a time
of national crisis, literature had to serve a
societal purpose. It had to be a tool for political
progress, class consciousness and collective
change. And so the Crescent Moon Society. and
the League of Left -Wing Writers just engaged
in constant running debates over this philosophical
divide. Yes, they frequently clashed. And when
you understand the context of the era, you get
this massive aha moment about Yu's work. His
belief in art for art's sake wasn't just a peaceful,
passive, artistic choice. Not at all. In a country
violently trying to unify and modernize through
political revolution, choosing to write a delicate
poem about a willow tree instead of an anthem
for the working class was viewed by his rivals
as a dangerous, radical act of defiance. Choosing
the individual over the collective was the ultimate
disruption. And Xu was so respected for his mastery
of this new form that when the globally renowned
Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore visited China,
Xu Zimo served as one of his oral interpreters.
Wow. Yeah, he was standing squarely at the intersection
of global literary giants. But holding this standard
of absolute uncompromising ideal beauty? That
is a dangerous game when you apply it to real
flawed human beings. It really is. Hugh's fierce
dedication to personal freedom wasn't confined
to his poetry. It totally flooded his personal
life, creating an immense amount of collateral
damage. We see the first cracks in his philosophy
back in 1915, before his Western exposure, when
he entered into an arranged marriage with a woman
named Zhang Yue. Right. Even though they had
two sons together, Zhu fundamentally could not
accept the marriage. It violated his deep -seated
belief in free and simple love. And while he's
having his grand awakening in London in 1921,
he meets and falls deeply in love with Lin Weiyun.
This surge of emotion actually inspires a massive
outpouring of his poetry. But there is a glaring
complication here. A major one. Yeah. Lin Huiyin
is already betrothed to another man, Liang Zicheng,
through an arrangement made by his father. And
driven entirely by his romantic ideals, Su makes
a highly controversial move. In March 1922, he
officially divorces his wife, Zeng Yui. He essentially
blows up his family structure to pursue a pure
romantic connection. Exactly. And yet Lin and
Zhu ultimately just remain friends. His pursuit
of her didn't result in marriage, but the chaotic
romantic journey was far from over. Not even
close. His final and most scandalous love affair
was with Lu Xiaoman. Lu was married to a man
named Wang Gang, and Wang Gang was actually a
friend of Yu's. It was a very messy situation.
Lu's marriage had also been arranged by her parents,
and she felt completely trapped in a loveless
situation. So they had that in common. Right.
When Zhu and Liu met, they bonded intensely over
their shared trauma regarding these restrictive
traditional marriages. They found in each other
a shared desire to break free from societal expectations.
But when their relationship became public, the
backlash was severe. Both of them were scorned
by their parents and their social circles. But
they pushed forward anyway, basically burning
the bridges behind them. Liu divorced her husband
in 1925 and she and Zhu married the very next
year in 1926. But the reality of their life together,
it quickly failed to live up to the lofty romantic
ideal Zhu had constructed in his mind. It did.
Historical accounts note that their honeymoon
period evaporated rapidly. Liu gradually became
increasingly depressed. And then the financial
ruin sets in. Liu had incredibly high spending
habits. She was accustomed to a lavish Shanghai
lifestyle. And remember, Liu's parents were utterly
furious about the scandalous marriage. So they
cut them off. Completely. They refused to fund
them. Which creates this stark, greedy contrast
to the image of the lofty head -in -the -clouds
poet. Zhu, the man who championed art for art's
sake, was suddenly forced into the ultimate pragmatic
hustle. He had to take on multiple exhausting
teaching jobs across different cities just to
keep up with the lifestyle Liu demanded. The
pressure on him was immense. And amidst all this,
he was also romantically linked to the American
author Pearl S. Buck and the American journalist
Agnes Smedley. Yeah, his romantic life was incredibly
complicated. Which is why I have to push back
a little on the tortured artist trope here, because
it's so easy to romanticize this kind of behavior.
That's a fair point. I want you to think about
this. Was Jusimo a brave pioneer of true love,
fighting against genuinely oppressive traditions
like forced marriages, or was he incredibly selfish?
Just leading a trail of destruction. Yeah, a
divorced wife, broken friendships, neglected
responsibilities, all just to chase his own fleeting
feelings. That tension is exactly how his contemporaries
viewed him. In an obituary for Shu, the writer
Wen Yuanning made a very sharp observation. He
commented that Yu's relations with women were
exactly like the English poet Shelley's. How
so? Well, Wen wrote that, quote, Let no woman
flatter herself that C .M .O. has ever loved
her. He has only loved his own inner version
of ideal beauty. He has only loved his own inner
version of ideal beauty. That is a devastating
critique. What's fascinating here is that we
see a perfect mirror between his art and his
life. His greatest strength as a poet, his ability
to conjure an intense almost supernatural romantic
idealism, was his greatest flaw as a human partner.
Because nobody could live up to it. Right. He
was constantly chasing an aesthetic perfection
that a real complicated human being could never
actually provide. And the crushing financial
realities of his messy choices, along with his
enduring ties to his romantic past ultimately
converge to set the stage for the final tragic
act of his life. We are at November 19th, 1931.
Xu is just 34 years old. He's preparing to fly
from Nanking to Peking. And the reason for this
specific flight is deeply tied to his history.
He is traveling specifically to attend a university
lecture being given by Lin Huyen. The woman he
had fallen for in London, the one who inspired
his divorce nearly a decade earlier. Right. And
to make the trip, he boards a China Airways Federal
Stinson Detroiter. Now, this wasn't some comfortable
passenger flight. It was an aircraft primarily
contracted by the Postal Service to deliver airmail
along that route. And as the flight approaches
the Jnan area in Shandong province, they encounter
severe blinding fog. The pilot completely loses
visibility of the ground. You have to remember
aviation technology in 1931 was rudimentary.
Pilots relied heavily on visual landmarks to
navigate. So the plane descends into a mountainous
area unnoticed. Both pilots are distracted, looking
down at their maps, desperately trying to figure
out their course in the whiteout conditions.
By the time they look up, realize their altitude
is fatally wrong, and attempt a sharp left turn
to correct it, it is simply too late. The aircraft
slams into the peak of a mountain. The right
wing tears off. The plane spins completely out
of control and crashes into the mountains near
Jinan and Taiyan. The crash kills Yuzumo instantly,
leaving him with fatal cerebral trauma. He was
34. One of the pilots also died on impact. The
first officer survived the initial crash but
tragically perished while waiting for a rescue
team that was delayed by the same terrible weather.
The suddenness of it sent shockwaves through
the country. Because of his immense fame and
the constant drama surrounding his life, rumors
immediately started swirling that the crash was
sabotage. That he was murdered. Yeah. But historical
records confirm those rumors were entirely untrue.
It was just a tragic accident caused by severe
weather and pilot misjudgment. He was gone in
an instant. But what he left behind was monumental.
He left four collections of verse, multiple volumes
of translations, and one specific masterpiece
that would cement his legacy forever. His most
famous poem, written a few years earlier in 1928,
is called Taking Leave of Cambridge Again, or
sometimes translated as Saying Goodbye to Cambridge
Again. It is a love letter not to a person, but
to the place where his mind was originally blown
wide open. The imagery is breathtaking. He writes,
softly I am leaving, just as softly as I can.
He describes the golden willows by the riverside
as young brides in the setting sun. He talks
about the green tape grass rooted in the soft
mud and says, I am willing to be such a water
weed in the gentle flow of the river cam. It
is so peaceful, so deeply observant of nature.
Yeah. And it ends with a profound sense of quiet
acceptance. Quietly I am leaving. Just as quietly
as I came, gently waving my sleeve, I am not
taking away a single cloud. I am not taking away
a single cloud. Here's where it gets really interesting.
This isn't just a poem gathering dust in an academic
archive. To this day, it is a living piece of
culture. It really is. In 2008, King's College
at Cambridge installed a white Beijing marble
memorial stone featuring the first and last lines
of that exact poem, placed right by the river
camp. And its reach extends far beyond academia
into mainstream pop culture. I mean, between
1980 and 2023, this 1920s poem has been set to
music multiple times. Imagine a modern pop artist
reaching back a century for their lyrics. In
1989, Taiwanese singer Stella Chang turned it
into a song. In 2008, it was featured on the
debut album of Taiwanese pop star Yoga Lin. And
in 2018, the renowned English composer John Rutter
composed a choral version of it. Think about
that kind of cultural fingerprint. He changed
the way an entire nation spoke and wrote. And
a hundred years later, people are still singing
his words. It is the ultimate testament to his
impact. He tore down centuries of rigid, elite
literary tradition and replaced it with something
deeply human, emotional and intensely personal.
He really did. Xu Zimo lived a lightning fast
life. He built a bridge between the East and
the West, absorbing the romantic ideals of Europe
and using them to shatter the classical molds
of Chinese poetry. And he brought it all back
home. But he also lived with a fiery, chaotic
passion that upended the lives of the people
around him. A flame that burned incredibly bright
and was extinguished far, far too soon. Which
leaves us with a final thought to mull over.
Consider those sensible blueprints we talked
about at the beginning. If Shusimo had stayed
in the United States, finished his economics
degree at Columbia, and lived a quiet, stable,
highly rational life, would his poetry have possessed
the same revolutionary power? Or does true artistic
disruption, the kind that shifts the entire culture
of a nation, require a life lived on the absolute
edge of chaos? Can you build that breathtaking
stained glass cathedral without first setting
fire to the blueprints? Thank you for joining
us on this deep dive into the extraordinary messy
and beautiful life of Shuzimo. We hope this sparked
your curiosity and we warmly invite you to keep
seeking out these incredible stories.