Xu Zhimo (Wade-Giles: Hsü Chih-mo 徐志摩, pinyin: Xú Zhìmó) (January 15, 1897-November 19, 1931) was a twentieth-century Chinese poet.
He was born in Xiashi, in Zhejiang province, and died in Jinan in the Shandong provence. In 1918, after studying at Peking University (now a.k.a. Beijing University) he traveled to the United States to study Economics and Political Science at Columbia University in New York City. Finding the States "intolerable", he left in 1920 to study at Cambridge University in England where he fell in love with English romantic poetry like that of Keats and Shelley. In 1922 he went back to China and became a leader of the modern poetry movement. When the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore visited China, he played the part of oral interpreter. His literary ideology was mostly pro-western, and pro-vernacular. He was one of the first Chinese writers to successfully naturalize Western romantic forms into modern Chinese poetry. He worked as an editor and professor at several schools before dying in a plane crash on November 19, 1931 in Ji'nan, Shandong while flying from Nanjing to Beijing. He left behind four collections of verse and several volumes of translations from various languages.
Sample
偶然(Chance)
我是天空里的一片云， I am a cloud in the sky,
偶尔投影在你的波心 —— A chance shadow on the wave of your heart.
你不必讶异， Don't be surprised.
更无须欢喜 —— or too elated.
在转瞬间消灭了踪影。 In an instant I shall vanish without trace.
你我相逢在黑夜的海上， We meet on the sea of dark night,
你有你的，我有我的，方向； You on your way, I on mine
你记得也好， Remember if you will,
最好你忘掉， Or,better still, forget
在这交会时互放的光亮！ The light exchanged in this encounter.
References
Encyclopedia Britannica 2005 Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, article- "Hsü Chih-mo"
There is a book titled "Bound Feet & Western Dress" written by Pang-Mei Natasha Chang which record the memoir of the aurthor's grand-aunt, Chang Yu-i, who at the age of 15 was arranged to married to Hsu Chih-mo as his first wife and later divorced with him after the birth of their second child. "Bound Feet & Western Dress" is a dual memoir of the aurthor's life as an American-Chinese, who suffered a sense of lost with her own culture in the West and Chang Yu-i, who born at the turn of the century of China and later moved to the West. This is definitely a page-turner and every details of Hsu Chih-Mo's early life in the West is being recorded accurately.
