poet and his wife
Zhong Bin
* * * C h i n a N e w s D i g e s t * * *
(News Global)
Wednesday, October 13, 1993
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5. Exciled Poet Gu Cheng Kills Wife and Himself in New Zealand .......... 51
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5. Exciled Poet Gu Cheng Kills Wife and Himself in New Zealand .......... 51
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Forwarded by: XU Ming Yang
Source: The Sydney Morning Herald, 10/11/93
WELLINGTON, Sunday -- The exiled Chinese poet Gu Cheng, whose name had been
put forward as a possible Nobel Prize contender, hanged himself after killing
his estranged wife with an axe in New Zealand, police said today.
Gu Cheng, 37, killed his wife, Xie Ye, 35, on Friday outside a house on the
picturesque Waiheke Island - near Auckland - where she had been staying,
Detective-Inspector George Wood said. The poet was found hanged from a tree.
Gu Cheng left China in 1986 and was banned from returning after his outspoken
criticism of the Chinese Government when it crushed the Tiananmen Square
pro-democracy protests in 1989.
He became a tutor at the University of Auckland after leaving China but at
the time of his death earned his living making spring rolls.
Friends who attempted to help Gu Cheng and Xie Ye, also a poet, to sort out
their marital problems described him as "very unstable".
"He was among a group of poets who heralded the rebirth of Chinese literature
in the late 1970s," said Duncan Campbell, a Chinese scholar at Wellington's
Victoria University.
He said Gu Cheng was an editor of Today, a publication which was "highly
significant in political and literary terms".
Gu Cheng and his wife were separated and had been discussing divorce for some
time.
Gu Cheng had learned his wife had a lover and that the man was due to arrive
in Auckland on Friday or Saturday from Germany, where the couple had lived
for a year. The arrival of the lover was apparently the last straw for Gu
Cheng.
Xie Ye had said she still loved her husband and wanted to help to support him
as he was not a practical man but Gu Cheng could not accept that. He was
troubled by his inability to support the household with his minimal income
from writing, she said. The couple had a son, Samuel (5), who has grown up
mostly in the care of a Samoan foster family on the island.
People who knew the couple said Gu Cheng loved the boy but was jealous of him
and had insisted on leaving him on Waiheke when he and his wife went to
Germany.
They returned about two weeks ago from a year of writing and teaching on a
scholarship from the German Government.
The couple were often at the island's Ostend market where Gu Cheng sold his
books and did portrait sketches and Xie Ye sold spring rolls and trinkets.
Xie Ye, who was also a poet, was more outgoing than her husband and was
well-liked. She provided for the family by making and selling pottery,
raising chickens and selling eggs and cooking at the Onetangi Hotel.
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alzj...@gmail.com
This is Jerry, I was recently told something about this tragedy and I tried to research for more information but little could be found.
I accidentally found this google group and I was hoping that I could be given more relating resources or information to have a clearer picture of this.
Thank you.
Best Regards,
Jerry
Resty Wyse
My question is:
What does this got to do with China???