Wen Ting, the great-granddaughter of Republican Era-poet Wen Yiduo, talks about her great-grandfather’s cultural and emotional legacy
As far as poets go, Wen Yiduo (闻一多) is a household name in China, a “martyr of the revolution” who was assassinated, allegedly by Kuomintang agents, on July 15, 1946. His works about a new country on the rise—set in opposition to a ruling system he saw as stagnant and rotten—captured the fervor of the era, and won supporters far and wide.
Wen was a leader of the China Democratic League, a minor political party. He wrote fiercely about societal ills, but his poetry is mostly free of overt politicization, and can be appreciated on its own terms, divorced from the bloody infighting of the period.
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