Miaio Girl by Huang Yun Yu
Huang Yun Yu -Exhibition 1952
Huang Yun Yu - Portrait of a Boy
Backstory: 1949
In 1949, at the age of 23, I was appointed Lecturer in English, specialising in Linguistics, at the University of Hong Kong. It was an exhilarating time: Mao’s Peoples Liberation Army had swept down through China, and a Communist government had been established on the mainland - hardy more than a stone’s throw away..
In Hong Kong the old colonial regime was only just being re-established after the Japanese occupation, and refugees were pouring in. These included a new type of student at the University - .sophisticated young men and women, with excellent English most of whom had matriculated from mission schools in Shanghai.
Some time after term had begun, we received a late application supported by acadenic transcripts from Peking University which were entirely in Chinese. To test the applicant’s English, we asked him to write an essay on a subject of his choice. I thought the essay brilliant: it was on art history and I marked it at 90% ,However, my colleague, who had counted up the mistakes in grammar and syntax, said it was so badly written as to be unintelligble. After heated argument at the Faculty Board, it was agreed to accept the student, on condition that I took responsibility for improving his English. His name was TSENG YU.
A first meeting with Huang Yun Yu
Tseng Yu arrives at my flat as I am having breakfast.
He wants to take me to see a painter. As we walk down through the university compound we meet Amy, another of my students, whom we invite to come with us.
We go by ferry over to Kowloon then take a bus into the New Territories. As we walk first along the shore then inland, TY wonders whether we should press on. He says, apologetically, that he doesn¹t know why he has dragged us such a long way as this man is a bad painter and not worth seeing.
Well the day is warm even though winter, and the company is good so, having got so far, we agree to continue. After an hour or so TY says we are there. Walking though a bamboo grove and past a stream, we enter into a courtyard flanked by low buildings. An animated young man comes out to greet us, all shake hands and we sit down among the chickens and running cockroaches. We drink cups of hot water, are shown woodcuts, meet his wife and eat a Sharps toffee,. TY and the friend chat in Chinese then after some 2 hours, leave.
But it is only 2 o¹clock so Tseng Yu suggests we visit another friend. an up-and-coming art photographer Chen Yi. He is not in but I leave my visiting card and a note............
Two days later I receive the invitation to Huang Yun Yu's exhibition and take Mr and Mrs Scott (British Council) to meet him.
This is the first of so many fruitful, and often hilarious times that a group of friends met to enjoy the company of Tseng Yu and his friends Huang Yun Yu and Chen Yi.....and it was the occasion when, (this time on a table napkin), Huang Yun Yu did the first of his many caricature sketches of myself & friends.
Visiting Huang Yun Yu's Studio
Tonight after dinner in town, Tseng Yu, two friends and I pay a visit to Huang Yun Yu. His studio is tiny – about 9’ x 7’ – and is cram full of paintings, on the walls, on the bed, on the floor, on the desk and on shelves. We drink hot, bitter tea out of painting jars while Yun Yu does a dry-point portrait of me on copper for his exhibition next month. It was nearly spoilt because we got into an argument about communism and Yun Yu became so excited he put my top lip in the wrong place. However, this was merrily restored and the plate steeped in a glass dish full of sulphuric acid. For the rest of the evening, Yun Yu stroked the mixture with a long feather while we were talking. It will be ready tomorrow and we shall see the result. YY says it is more naturalistic than the others he has done of me – nicer but not so ‘good’ artistically. It was 2 in the morning before I got home!
Whoreson typist
So I opened the door and he came in for a chat. He told me that a friend had said the etching made me look like a whoreson typist. Ty said, on the contrary, it beautified me.
Nov 28th, 1951
DO NOT ASK MY NAME
I WOULD RATHER YOU DID NOT KNOW IT.
AND AS FOR MY ORIGIN
NO NEED TO ASK DARWIN,
THE PICTURE SPEAKS FOR ITSELF
The Tram Strike
Tuesday 16 July
Don has invited RB and his friend Denis, together with me and my friends, Huang Yun Yu, and Tseng Yu, out to dinner. The discussion soon turns to the tramway workers’ strike, which has resulted in major disruption in central Hong Kong. Denis would like the strikers to be whipped back to work while Don argues they are being paid a miserable wage and he has actually contributed to the strike fund. Denis counter-attacks, “ Good luck to the man who has money & keeps it – why give any to the lazy bs who won’t work?” Don’s nose gets sharper and his face tightens. He says in his thin Australian voice that one must give, for one’s own sake - to have a right relationship with one’s fellow-man.” Denis: No-one’s ever given me anything. Why should I give? Don:” But it is artistic to give.” I catch a sudden glimpse of Don as he sees himself, of what makes him hand out money to strangers and let beggars sleep in his car. Huang Yun Yu meanwhile has whipped paper pen and ink out of his bag and is capturing Don’s intense, ravaged face with a few strokes as Denis replies, “ But who wants to be artistic?”
Time to go home and Don says he would take me if he could remember where he’d left his car. RB accuses him of affectation – never knowing where his car is. Don murmurs something about hysterical reaction – that he’s so afraid of driving there’s the overwhelming need to keep putting off the evil moment. It is RB who drives me back to the University on his motorbike and says, as we part, that I must beware of Don with his impossibly charitable view of mankind. He’s not the saint you might think - he swears all the time at pedestrians when he’s driving, and he can be very cruel about people.
Mr. RB
Among the group of friends who came to know Tseng Yu and Huang YunYu was an expat electrical engineer named Mr. RB. My first meeting with Ron was on the bathroom floor at a party thrown by Dr. Elizabeth Tang (better known later as Han Suyin, author of the novel A Many Splendoured Thing). It ws thought he was drunk and might cause trouble, so Elizabeth asked me to go and Œdo something).
In fact, far from being drunk he was in a mixture of distress and bad temper - a mood I became very familiar with later on. It seems his girl-friend had dumped him that evening at the party, and he was taking it out on the bathroom floor.and an unfortunate clergyman who had offered to help him. He was by now calmer, we chatted, and he finally drove me home to the University on the back of his motorbike.
At that time, in colonial Hong Kong, it was considered infra dig for an Englishman to get about Hong Kong on a motorbike, so you can imagine that for an English woman to ride pillion was downright scandalous. RB - from a a feet-on-the-ground Lancashire background - had not taken HK social norms into account when deciding to buy a boat rather than a car. After that, he
could only afford the motorbike. Well, I was a Lancastrian too, and not even aware till very much later how having Chinese friends and riding on a motorbike.made me increasingly "not one of us".
RB and I became firm friends and many of my students, incuding Tseng Yu, had enjoyable days out on his boa.t. This was how RB - and later his friend Don - became part of the circle around Huang YunYu.
A SNATCH OF CONVERSATION
Tseng Yu talking about RB: "Mr. RB is very nice but, I can't explain it - there is something missing.. ...., mmm......he has no fantasy. Mr Huang has, you have, and I have....but not at all Mr. RB." I think for a moment then say to TY that he has more than anyone. This pleases him immensely. He laughs and says "It is a big lack in Mr. RB," then adds joyfully, "especially if you are thinking of marrying him."
Huang Yun Yu's Miao Woodcuts
This woodcut of a Miao girl riding along merrily on horseback is one of a series which I bought at Huang Yun Yu¹s first Hong Kong exhibition in January 1951.
Miao Girl Dancing
Dear Brother Yu, 20 May 1952
Here is the letter from Huang Yun Yu to Tseng Yu, which I have kept safely in my archives for over 50 years. The translation is by Xu Liying, a very good friend of mine, now living in Shanghai.
Dear Brother Yu (translated)
Dear Brother Yu,
I was told that you are busy with your exams and we missed you very much and talked about you everyday as you have not been here for some time now.
I did a many paintings and carving and hope that you can come and see.
There are few more days before the exhibition, I am preparing to send the invitation out and please go to Mather and asked her to print out the name list of her friends and bring it to me within two days. I am working on this big oil painting right now (it was smaller than the last one, but is much better than the last one), so I don't have time to visit you.
Looking forward seeing you.
Wang Yuan Yu
2nd Floor 120 Kenndy Road, Hong Kong
The Greek Nose
I ask Huang Yun Yu and Tseng Yu to dinner to meet some friends who I hope will be interested in buying pictures at Mr Huang¹s next exhibition. When Tseng Yu comes to confirm the date, he says with great self-satisfaction, "I have told him to have his supper first because you always give such bad food".
However, as it turns out, everyone including TY and HYY seem happy enough with the meal (colonial English style as interpreted by my lovely amah, Ah Yau) and afterwards Yun Yu entertains us by doing cartoon drawings of us all (see later postings). My picture causes great hilarity. Yun Yu says I have a Greek nose, so he¹s made me look like a Greek Needless to say, I was NOT wearing either ear-rings or a pearl necklace he says he has added these for effect! Cherry (a university colleague) says it is quite clear from the picture that I have just been marking exam papers and giving the students a bad time! We end up with much laughter and mutual compliments. Yun Yu says it has been a great evening in which the most intelligent man in Hong Kong (himself) has enjoyed the company of the most interesting woman (myself).
Visiting Kwan Ho Ki
Before moving on from Paris to Rome, Tseng Yu came to London and we visited our good friend - a former Hong Kong University student - Kwan HoKi and his wife. I was now working for The Marconi Company and had just acquired this 1932 Sunbeam Talbot sports car. We are seen here in Hyde Park - but who on earth took this photo?
Peasant Spinning - by Tseng Yu
The Blogger Blushes
This unfinished study of a corner of Tseng Yu's room in Paris comes with deep blushes from the blogger: not about this blog but about the gaffe in the blog below! My Paris Room was NOT sold at the one-man exhibition – only the oil painting ! Worse follows in previous blogs: none of them are about MY Paris bedsit or MY landlady; I was quoting from the letters of Tseng Yu, as of course you, dear sensible reader, would possibly have realised.
My Paris room 1956
"This a the preliminary watercolour sketch for the oil painting of my Paris room which was sold at the Paris one-man exhibition."
Letter from Paris 1956
"I am writing from 4th floor up in centre of Paris. The buses and camions and scooters are buzzing below me. The room has two windows just situated on the corner of a building. I have magnificent view of the crossing streets and the roofs of Paris. Looking down from my window I feel like a god watching human activities from heaven. What an odd world."
My landlady
A strange article
Bursary at The Slade
During his student years in Hong Kong Tseng Yu continued almost obsessively to produce drawings and sketches but it was not until 1951 that one piece of work drew public attention. This was the decorative playbill he designed for the University Arts Association production of Moliere¹s The Miser. The press, public officials and local business people were in the audience and came to chat with him. Tseng Yu subsequently sold pen and ink drawings to local newspapers and was offered a bursary by the British Council to study at The Slade School of Fine Art in London.
Thus in spring 1952 I was writing to ask my parents (who ran a laundry in Kent) to sponsor his studies in Britain and provide guarantees for his visa. By that summer his passage was booked and he was enrolled for the autumn term at The Slade, armed with estimates by my parents of the cost of living in London plus warm invitations to their home in Sandgate.
Wishing Tseng Yu a Happy Arrival in England
Dear Tseng Yu,
The weather is fine and the autumn beautiful. Hong Kong this evening has a splendid moon and a million lanterns. Also FIVE illuminated stars. They haven't yet exercised their fascination over Yung Yu. He came up alone to see me last night. Neither of us learnt much but it was very entertaining. My Mandarin is at least more comical than his English!
I am writing to thank you for your grave-gay letter from Singapore and to wish you a happy beginning in that land of shop-keepers and poets. Did it rain the day you arrived? You must get an English mac, a Burberry.
Mary
Paris exhibition: Bois de Boulogne 2
Tseng Yu's One-Man Exhibition, Paris 1956
He was captivated by tales from Greek mythology and he wrote "What am I doing now? I am painting trees all the days. Do you know the story of Daphne and Apollo? Daphne tried to avoid Apollo¹s chase and got her father to turn her into a tree. So Apollo finds himself embracing a laurel tree which still quivers in fear as, underneath the bark, a heart beats fitfully. So you see
my trees are not environmental, they are conveying an experience of feeling, they communicate the instinctive existence of objects."
This painting of the Bois de Boulogne was shown in Tseng Yu's first one-man exhibition in Paris, 1956.
Arthur Jeffress Gallery
The Tower through Chinese eyes
Tseng Yu's London etchings
The Observer, September 18, 1955
This drawing of St Paul's from across the river is by Tseng Yu, a young Chinese artist whose paintings and etchings are now on view at the Arthur Jeffress Gallery.'The beauty of London' he writes, 'lies not on her bright flower and tender trees but on her dirt, filth, rust, smog and the magnificent slum and swamp along the bank of the Thames'.
Folk Memories
As well absorbing European influences while at The Slade, Tseng Yu was also harking back nostalgically to the folk art of his friend Huang Yun Yu and his own memories of peasant life in the northern China of his childhood. Fishing is one of a series of paintings exhibited at the Arthur Jeffress Gallery, Mayfair, from 6th September to 1st October 1955. Other paintings in this exhibition included Peking Childhood and Nostalgia, which were sold.
Tseng Yu at The Slade
Among the most successful paintings of this period was this study of a blue vase with persimmons. He told me that Chinese traditional painting was not concerned with literal copying of nature, rather that each item was seen as radiating its own individual essence, each like a sun, and relating to other items as in a constellation.
An aside: Han Suyin, Cherry and The Tailor
While Dr Elizabeth Tang (Han Suyin) was writing her best-known novel A Many Splendoured Thing she came to my flat in the university from time to time with a chapter for me to read and comment on. In July 1951 she asked for a favour: as I had a spare bedroom, could her friend Dr. Cherry H stay with me while her flat in the hospital was being renovated. I knew that Elizabeth, Cherry and another friend, Dr. AB, had trained together in the Royal Free Hospital in London and come out together to Hong Kong. I readily agreed. It was while Cherry was staying with me that Elizabeth designed and commissioned a tailor to create a dress for Cherry and the following incident took place.
Wed July 11th, 1951
By the time I come home to the flat, the tailor is already there. and Cherry is being fitted. Elisabeth, imperious as always and ravishing in her elegant Chinese cheung saam dress, is in command..
Eliz: ‘Now look tailor you must bring that pleat down half an inch here. You’ll see, Cherry, how much better that will be. It’s the small things that make the difference. The skirt will be very pretty.” Elizabeth’s deft hands are turning Cherry round then back again. Cherry, who is tall, angular, and square-shouldered, submits awkwardly.
Thinking the fitting is finished, I go into the bathroom to wash my hands and comb my hair. However, I then hear Elizabeth’s voice rising in anger. “But tailor, tailor - what have you done? The top is ruined. I told you to cut it round, tailor, not straight. As it is, all the wrong points are emphasised. That line ends at the very one point it shouldn’t.”
She runs her fingers round the dress, pushing here, pulling there, standing back to see the effect and gesticulating. Inside the dress, like a stranded whale, Cherry stands mutely captive.
I am embarrassed for Cherry at this quite indecent humiliation and go out onto the balcony But even there I am not out of earshot. “If only I had seen it at the first fitting” Elizabeth cries petulantly; ”Why didn’t you see that, Cherry?”
”But it was only loosely tacked, and followed your design" mutters Cherry unhappily.
Elizabeth fires back sarcastically “But how can I be responsible if I am not at the fittings. My conception has been spoilt. The whole thing is hopelessly ruined." I hear a defensive murmur from Cherry which is swept aside by more angry words from Elizabeth. Then the the tones are lower and Elizabeth is saying “I’m sorry Cherry, but what am I to do when people don’t consult me all the way through?. The tailor ought to have known better.”
As I go back into the room, Elisabeth has subsided into a chair. Cherry now perches on the chair arm beside her and puts her hand as gently as a leaf on Elisabeth’s shoulder saying tenderly, “Not to worry, Bun. It doesn’t matter” Cherry’s voice is so soft, so caressing, as if she were comforting a small child. It is the muted gentleness of very strong person, loving, forgiving, consoling....
I have retired to the bedroom to get ready for my own fitting. Cherry calls out, with a sharp little laugh "Where’s the next victim?.....Mary!”
I am wearing a blue dress, also being made by the tailor. Elizabeth looks at me in despair and says “It’s very nice except for the collar." I look at her in astonishment as there is no collar. She goes on “I don't know why you must choose blue. It doesn’t suit you, in fact it makes you look awful., doesn’t it Cherry?"
Cherry replies with relish ”It would suit someone I know in the hospital who has black hair and blue eyes, but it makes YOU look insipid.” I am laughing and say “Fire away. I don't mind. Slaughter me...”
Elizabeth’s fingers are again pulling and pushing the material and she suddenly cries “Stand up straight Mary. If you try to look at what I’m doing you throw everything out of line.” “But I wont always have your expertise to rely on” I say. “So. I need to watch so I can do it myself in future.” Elizabeth bursts into laughter and says "That really will be the day when Mary Mather knows anything about clothes!”
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