Sanmao: Timeless Author of Honesty

Year 2011 marks the 20th anniversary of the demise of Taiwanese author Sanmao (1943-1991) On June 26, 2011, some cultural and publishing institutions from Beijing, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Tianjin jointly held a symposium in commemora-tion of the writer On January 4, 2011, liter-ary people in Taiwan unveiled an exhibition in honor of Sanmao

Sanmao is the penname of Chen Ping Born on March 26, 1943, Chen Ping had her ancestral roots in Dinghai, a county in Zhoushan Archipelago of Zhejiang Province She was born Chen Moping and the name changed to Chen Ping when she was three years old She used Sanmao as her penname which is widely known to her readers in Chinese communities across the world In 1964 she began to study philoso-phy at Cultural University of Taiwan She dropped out and went to study in Europe She settled down in Canary Islands after she got married The life there became a subject of many of her books In 1981, she came back to Taiwan and taught for a while at her alma mater She resigned from the university in 1984 and began a full-time career of writing and speaking She committed suicide on the early morning of January 4, 1991 at the age of 48

Her death shocked the both sides of the strait Her reputation has kept growing Twenty years after her farewell to this world, she is still widely read and sadly missed A 2011 survey finds that Sanmao is still one of the most popular writers on the mainland

Her elder sister Chen Tianxin recalls: “My sister’s death shocked me I realized life could vanish when nobody was aware of anything Had I known better twenty years ago, I would have cherished her more and tried harder to understand her emotions better”

The elder sister reminisced: her younger sister made a remark one day that has stayed fresh in her memory: “You mature too slowly It will take you ten lifetimes to go through what I experience in one lifetime” The past 20 years has enabled her to understand what Sanmao implied She left a message on the message board at the venue of the exhibition: “A real life will never vanish, for it exists forever”

Sanmao’s younger brother Chen Jie wrote a message: Siblings’ bond is as deep as the sea; few people’s lives are more colorful

Sanmao was a prolific writer and trans-lator She published 23 books in her short career, which amounts to about 5 million characters Her best-known books include “The Stories of Sahara,” “Gone with the Rainy Season,” “Red Dust”

Her reputation on the mainland climaxed in the 1980s The most attractive features of her works are romance, courage, truth, kindness and freedom Reading her works was a collective memory of a generation and a cultural phenomenon

Zhang Manjuan, a good friend of San-mao and Taiwanese writer, thinks Sanmao herself was a work of art

Ping Xintao, the founder of Crown Pub-lishing House of Taiwan, acted Sanmao’s publisher for years He edited her first stories and published them in the literary page of United Daily News As her stories accumulated, Ping and Sanmao hit upon the idea of getting all of these stories in a collection They agreed that the brown paper was the best material as the cover for her books Her first book published by Crown had the brown paper as book cover The original book cover was attrac-tive and many writers fell in love with this style The Crown later published 27 books all with the brown paper as the cover In commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the death of Sanmao, the Crown published “The Best of Sanmao”, a collection of nine books by Sanmao

The exhibition in Taiwan displayed many of her manuscripts and her belong-ings such as skirts, scarves and caps

Sanmao made her literary debut on the mainland in 1983, a year when the mainland was still in its initial phase of opening up to the outside world For millions of mainland readers, Sanmao represented a way of life, a worldview, a life philosophy, and a window on the world

Han Jingqun, editor-in-chief of October Literature and Art Publishing House, con-firms that Sanmao enjoys great popularity The publisher has turned out two editions of the selective works of Sanmao Over the past four years, October has been printing 200,000 to 300,000 sets per year The numbers reflect the sales, and behind the sales is the popularity

Sanmao learned about her ancestral roots in Dinghai County when she was still a young girl She visited the mainland twice and went to her grandfather’s house in Lit-tle Sand Town in Dinghai The house has been turned into a museum in her honor Five rooms in the house display her books and photos Hundreds of objects from her personal belongings are also in the collec-tion of the museum The house is a desig-nated cultural heritage under the protection of the Zhoushan Government

After her second visit to the mainland, she wrote to her uncle Ni Zhuqing in Little Sand Town saying that she was planning to settle down on the mainland and that she was going to make a decision within three years The letter was dated June 11, 1990 Half a year later, she passed away in Taipei