老陳的blog~

This work " Bound feet and Western dress" written by Pang-Mei Natasha Chang who was related to Yu-i Chang. Yu-i Chang, as the first wife of the famous chinese poet:Chi-mo Hsu, was a legend herself.

I have seen the TV series 人間四月天 with my family when I was a kid. This TV series was based on the life of Hsu Chi-mo(whether it's true or not ), the   program was mostly centering on the complex relationships between Hsu Chi-mo and the three women in his life, Chang yu-i, Lin Hui-yin and Lu Hsiao-man. It was this TV program that raised the curiosity in me to study Hsu Chi-mo's poems; those poems were hard for me to really understand the imagery behind them since I was only ten or eleven. Still, astonished by the beautiful lines of Hsu Chi-mo's poems I latter on studies some of his famous verse and poems on both junior high school and high school text books.

I wonder why Hsu chi-mo didn't refuse to marry a girl he didn't love (Yu-i) at the first place; maybe the pressure from his family pushed he to do things he didn't feel like to do; however, such important events like marriage should not be treated like a match game.

I have always felt sorry for Yu-i, she seems to be the most innocent soul around Hsu chi-mo's life. Unlike the free Hui-yin and the wild Hsiao-man, Yu-i had to be burderned with the old style of chinese tradition virtue of woman. She was always in between; bewteen her cold husband and in-laws who adored her, bewteen the modern woman and traditional wife, and between the identity of a powerful president and a meek daughter-in-law of the Hsu family. 

sometimes I even thinks that Hsu chi-mo wasn't good enough for Chang yu-i when comparing the contributions they made on each other's life.