An Envoy of Friendship and Culture

On September 27 this year, Comrade Lin Lin has reached the advanced age of ninety-four years. Besides being a senior on the diplomatic and cultural front of our country, Com. Lin Lin has long assumed leading position in our Association as well. In order to introduce his life and celebrate his birthday, the editor-in-chief of Voice of Friendship asked me to write an article, to which I promptly agreed, because it’s just also my intention to express my congratulations and respect for him through an article on this auspicious occasion .

Com. Lin Lin has been to me a leader in work and a teacher in study and life. I had quite many contacts with him before; yet in a fairly long time, I knew little about his life’s story, except his being a renowned poet and a veteran diplomat. He himself also rarely spoke to me about his past life. So it was not until 1987 when I read his book The Sea and the Vessel which he had given me, that I began to know some of his early revolutionary experiences. Recently, I’ve read his newly-published autobiography A Gold Flow of Eighty-eight Years, from which I see in more details the rich and colourful course of his life. Now let me give a brief account of Com. Lin Lin’s life as follows.

Lin Lin was born in 1910 in Qiaoyuan Village, Shao’an County, Fujian Province. His original name is Lin Yangshan; Lin Lin is his pen name which he began to use when writing poetry in Japan. He studied at China University in Beiping and graduated in 1933. In the same year, he went to Japan and studied at Waseda University in Tokyo, first majoring in economics and then changing to literature. During his days in Japan, he joined the League of Leftist Writers, Tokyo Branch, and ran several literary magazines including Essays, East Current and Poetry. In 1936 he returned to Shanghai and worked for the newspaper Salvation Daily, editing its supplement Cultural Post. When Shanghai fell into the hands of the Japanese aggressors, the newspaper office shifted to Guangzhou and then to Guilin; and Lin Lin and his colleagues, moving from place to place, made the utmost efforts to carry on the publication of this newspaper which had a great influence at the time in arousing the masses of China to get united in the fight against Japanese aggression.

In 1941, Lin Lin was dispatched as the representative of Mme. Soong Ching Ling, president of China Defence League, to the Philippines to run a newspaper and help to carry out a campaign to resist Japanese aggression. Later he led the work to establish the newspaper Overseas Chinese Herald and became the director of the Propaganda Department of the Overseas Special Detachment. From 1941 to 1945 when Japan surrendered, he fought the Japanese fascists shoulder to shoulder with the local people, braving untold dangers and risking death many times. Generally people only have the impression that Lin Lin is a poet and scholar with refined manners. Who can imagine that he had also fought as a guerrilla in the high mountains and deep forests on a foreign land?

In 1947, Lin Lin returned to Hong Kong and continued to do cultural work and was elected permanent member of All China Art and Literature Association, Hong Kong Branch.

In 1949, Lin Lin returned as ordered to Guangzhou and took part in the take-over of the local cultural units on the eve of the liberation of the country.

After the founding of New China, Lin Lin was appointed deputy director of the Cultural Bureau of Guangdong Province, and was later transferred to be cultural councillor of the Chinese Embassy in India. In 1958 he was made director of the Department of Asian and African Affairs of the Chinese People’s Association for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries; since 1973 he has been vice president of the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC) for over a dozen years. He has been member of the fifth, sixth and seventh Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, and concurrently vice president of China-Japan Friendship Association, president of the Japanese Literature Study Society, vice president of the Chinese Calligraphers’ Association, and of the Chinese Classical Poetry Society, council member of the Chinese Writers’ Association and others. He has assumed these posts not as honorary titles, but has done tremendous work in each field on the basis of his extensive scope of knowledge.

First of all, as we all know, Com. Lin Lin has worked for people-to-people diplomacy over long years, and deserves to be called an envoy of friendship and culture. During the time when he was CPAFFC vice president, he received innumerable groups of international friends and visited over a dozen countries in Asia, Africa and Europe, making remarkable contributions in promoting friendly contacts and cultural exchanges between China and other countries. Especially to cultural exchange between China and Japan, he has devoted persistent efforts and had contacts with many celebrities of the Japanese cultural circles, such as the writers Kenzo Nakajima, Yasushi Inoue, Kensaburo Oe; the painters Kaii Higashiyama, Ikuo Hirayama; the musician Ikuma Dan; the conductor Seiji Ozawa and others. In the Japanese cultural circles, the name Lin Lin enjoys an extremely high prestige and is almost a symbol of cultural exchange between China and Japan.

Of course, we are also aware that Com. Lin Lin has always been known as a poet. Writing poems ceaselessly in his whole life, he has published a number of collections of poetry including The Comrades Fighting into the City, Poems About India, Yanlaihong and Cutting Clouds. Expressing the sentiments of a revolutionary, and imbued with the spirit of the times, his poetry echoes the pulse of the history, and deservingly holds a place in the annals of the modern Chinese poetry. Besides, he is also a celebrated essayist. His Essays About Japan and Essays About Japan Continued have numerous readers both in China and Japan. Scholarly as well as poetical, his essay writing has created a unique style and won favourable comment in the literary circles.

Needless to say, Com. Lin Lin is also a translator. Early in his youth he became fascinated with the poems of the German poet Heine, and as a result, translated and published two collections of his poems, The Song of Weavers and The Slaves Boat. Later he also translated poems of Jose Rizal, the national hero of the Philippines. In 1983 he translated and published Anthology of Japanese Classical Haiku; and in 1990 Anthology of Five Modern Japanese Haiku Poets. What merits special mention is that in 1974 he translated and published Letters of Lu Xun to Wataru Masuda. From 1931 to 1936, the great Chinese writer Lu Xun wrote altogether fifty-eight letters to the Japanese scholar Wataru, answering the latter’s various questions. Written in Japanese by Lu Xun himself, these letters are very valuable for studying the thought, life and work in his late years. Com. Lin Lin has translated all these letters into Chinese; as the translation has successfully kept Lu Xun’s language style, it is well commended in the academic circles and is now collected in the Complete Works of Lu Xun; it will remain immortal together with Lu Xun’s works.

What’s more, Com. Lin Lin is a calligrapher as well. The style of his calligraphy combines the free spirit of a poet and the originality of a wise man. Though being a traditional art with a long history in China, calligraphy was quite neglected in the 1960s and 1970s. Deeply worried about this situation, Com. Lin Lin suggested that a calligraphers’ association be established, and personally carried out a lot of preparatory work to this end. Finally the Chinese Calligraphers’ Association came into being in December 1982, and Lin Lin was elected its vice president. He has indeed made a great contribution to the development of Chinese calligraphy.

Another significant contribution made by Com. Lin Lin is the creation of a new form of poetry, Kanpai. Japan has a very short form of poetry named Haiku which consists of only three lines with seventeen syllables. Existing and developing for hundreds of years, it is loved by the broad masses in Japan and even tends to be internationalized with the appearance of American, French, German Haiku, etc. Kanpai, in short, is Haiku written in Chinese characters, which also consists of three lines, but with seventeen characters instead of seventeen syllables. In the early 1980s when Lin Lin, together with two other elder poets, first initiated Kanpai, it was unfamiliar to most of the Chinese poets. But thanks to his demonstration and promotion for many years, it has eventually blossomed in the Chinese garden of poetry and become quite popular now. The birth of Kanpai has added not only a variety to modern Chinese poetry, but also a beautiful chapter to the history of the cultural interchange between China and Japan.

From the above brief account, we can see that owing to his talent and hard work, Com. Lin Lin has created and given us a rich spiritual treasure and contributed in many ways to the cause of friendship and to people-to-people diplomacy.

For his great learning and gentle temperament, Com. Lin Lin is well respected by all his colleagues, whether old or young. And he is particularly kind to the young people, always caring for their study and progress. I personally have deep experience in this respect and wish to give some of my own examples here.

When Com. Lin Lin was vice president of our Association in charge of Asian and African affairs, I worked under him for some time in the Asian Department of the Association. Apart from his guide to my regular work, he also gave me help and encouragement in my literary writing. It’s him who wrote the preface for my first published collection of poems, and who recommended me for membership to the Chinese Writers’ Association. In 1995, upon the publication of my translation 300 English Poems, a launching ceremony was held for it; and I invited Com. Lin Lin, among others, to the function. As it was just in mid-Summer and extremely humid and hot, I was worried whether the elderly guests invited would be able to come or not. But when entering the hall of the ceremony, I was surprised to see that Com. Lin Lin was already there. He was the first to arrive, even earlier than myself. He warmly congratulated me; and later made a lengthy comment at the meeting, giving praise to my work and wishing me more achievements in future, with such sincerity and expectation that I could never forget.

In recent years I’ve worked abroad at Chinese embassy. Soon after my return to Beijing, I went to see Com. Lin Lin at his home, and was very glad to find him still in good health. We had a good chat about many things. When I told him that I was planning to write a book of essays and poems about Europe, he nodded approvingly, and advised me to be more informative in my writing and not to forget to supplement the book with nice pictures. When I took leave, in spite of his advanced age, he accompanied me downstairs by lift and saw me off to the very gate of the apartment building.

On July 6 this year, I went to see Com. Lin Lin again. He told me that due to a successful cataract operation, his eyesight has improved much and he can read easily now. When I asked him what he usually reads, he said he reads several kinds of newspapers every day, and watches TV programme as well. Besides, he’s been studying materials about the history of the Huns, and just finished a biography of Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty. From his lively talk I can see that he’s very well informed and that he’s still much concerned about the development of our country. Listening to him, I cannot help being deeply moved and filled with reverence for him.

As an ancient saying goes, “the kind people live long.” which, I think, applies to Com. Lin Lin perfectly. Now in celebration of his ninety-fourth birthday, I sincerely wish him good health and even longer life; and I believe that I share this wish with all the comrades in our Association and with all his friends both at home and abroad.