The great pianist Fou Ts’ong 傅聰 passed away last week in the UK, from covid. Many first encountered him not as a lyrical, brilliant interpreter of Chopin (he was), but as the young recipient of extraordinary letters from his father Fu Lei that were later collected: 傅雷家書.
In the sort of happy accident that young autodidacts (avant-Google) often have, I was separately a fan of both father and son without learning of their connection.

Fu Lei 傅雷 was the emblematic Shanghai Francophile: writing on and translating Romain Rolland, Balzac, Rodin.
As a young Francophile myself - stemming from my desire to better know my grandmother, Hsiao Tsong Rang, who had lived and studied in Paris as Fu Lei did - they in fact moved in the same circles there - Fu Lei was of course a legend to me.
Separately, as a fairly serious young piano student, I had of course heard of Fou Ts’ong. So when he visited Taipei, I was thrilled my parents purchased a ticket and allowed me to attend his recital along with our music professor neighbor and his college (!) students - I was 11?
The greatest experience of my young life.

Not just Fou Ts’ong’s performance; but also the ecstatic audience, for whom he played 9(!) encores; awe at this *Chinese* pianist (now a commonplace); my thrill at being included in an excited post-concert cafe chat w College! Students!
Only later, while living in Beijing in my 20s, did I read Fu Lei’s letters to his son; or learned that Fou Ts’ong had defected to the UK; or that his parents, Fu Lei and Zhu Meifu, were tortured and died by suicide during the Cultural Revolution.
Read @amyyqin’s lovely article.
Safe travels, Fou Ts’ong (1934-2020)

Here he plays Chopin Preludes, Op.28
A postscript: @yinnika shared w/me this amazing master class taught by Fou Ts'ong, circa 2010. He has such insight into Chopin - his instruction is more philosophical than strictly technical, and he is all encouragement, even while cajoling.
What a loss.
Sought out some old friends this evening. #傅聰 #傅雷 #蕭邦

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More from @chowleen

1 Jan
Returning to Mary Shelley and her *other* tale of loss, written right after her husband’s death, its title from her diary entry: “Yes I may well describe that solitary being's feelings,feeling myself as the last relic of a beloved race,my companions extinct before me.” Image
And it was more than Percy that Mary Shelley had lost: her father-in-law forbade her from using the family name.

Hence, “The Last Man” is merely the work of “The Author of Frankenstein.” It is a story of radical solitude, by an author bereaved and effaced. As apt now, as then.
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-Mary Shelley, The Last Man
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27 Dec 20
Winner of 2020’s new kanji contest in Japan: the character 座 (seat), ingeniously redesigned as a neologism for “social distance.”

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Runners up: sousaku-kanji.com/?fbclid=IwAR2q…
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My favorite:
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[PMB, Portrait of Rainer Maria Rilke, 1906]
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But "Requiem for a Friend" is yet again, something else.
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24 Jun 20
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19 May 20
@ourobororoboruo @intewig quick response to a fascinating question! 文人 wenren is of course the older term, but had a whiff of disrepectability to you - 賣文為生 was not a positive descriptor. Li Yu of the Ming Dynasty is most famous of a self-consciously professional class of writers - Patrick Hanan's +
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作家 as profession is also gained +
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4 Feb 20
“Wuhan’s direct entanglement with the world beyond Hubei province’s borders is nothing new. Caravans took tea overland to Russia.”

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As a result of growing up in Hankou in Wuhan, LY Chow became deeply enmeshed with and fascinated by the larger world — before he went to study international relations and political science at Yenching U (now Beida), and long before he made it his lifelong scholarly discipline.
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