In 1963, at the age of 24, poet Fang Xin 方莘, published Mo Bai 膜拜 (In Prostration), a slim volume that garnered great critical acclaim from various notable literary critics in Taiwan and abroad.
Born in 1939 in Chengdu, China.
Fang Xin belongs to the generation of Chinese intellectuals who were born into a China embroiled in turmoil and change. He was born in 1939 in Chengdu, the second year of China's bloody Eight-year War of Resistance against imperial Japan's invasion (1937-1945) when his family was forced to seek refuge from the impending disaster of the war in northern China.
Soon after the end of that war, people's hopes for a peaceful and prosperous time for national reconstruction were again cruelly crushed when an all-out civil war broke out between the Nationalist forces and the Communist rebel forces (1946-1949). This conflict, right on the heels of a hard-won victory, forced the Fang family into another exodus, this time from the then-capital Nanjing to Taiwan, the island the nation had recently regained after 50 years of Japanese occupation.
Barely ten when he arrived in Taiwan in 1949 with his family and settled in Taipei, Fang had already lived through two catastrophic wars in his motherland. The relatively peaceful atmosphere in post-war Taiwan during his teenage years gave him the freedom to develop a deep love for poetry, art, and music.
He started writing poetry at age fourteen while in middle school. By high school, he was introduced to western modern art, music, and poetry. As a teenager, he joined an established poetry group known as Blue Star Poetry Society 藍星詩社. Inspired by Blue Star members, Fang contributed poems to various journals, magazines, and newspapers.
Photo: Fang Xin on vacation from military training with visual artist, Han Hsiang-Ning 韓湘寧 and playwright, Chiu Gang-Jian 邱剛健 . 1963.
In the late 1950s in high school, with the dawning of modernization and innovation in literature and art in Taiwan, Fang became a true poet when he started finding his own voice and vision after a period of intensive apprenticeship with some famed poets of the time. Among them are founding members of the prominent Fifth Moon Society 五月畫會, especially Liu Guo-Song 劉國松, Chuang Che 莊喆, Fong Chong-Ray 馮鍾睿, Han Hsiang-Ning 韓湘寧, and Peng Wan-ts 彭萬墀. This early immersion in modern art greatly influenced Fang’s artistic sensibility.
Modern poetry to him is its own art form, very different from the romantic, pastoral versification of the olden days. While voraciously learning about the post-war developments of new sciences and technologies in the West, he also plunged into experimenting with the sole medium he had better control of, language. A subscription to the American monthly Poetry journal, founded by Harriet Monroe in 1912 in Chicago, gave him access to contemporary poetic modes and techniques. From this direct exposure to a foreign source, he learned to appreciate explorations in seemingly disparate subjects and also learned various poetic concepts and devices such as thematic and structural organization and the use of motifs in the narrative of a poem.
In 1963, while still a student
at Tam Kang University 淡江大學 as an English major, he published his fastidiously self-curated and designed selection of some twenty-four Chinese poems, Mo Bai 膜拜 (In prostration). This slim but unique volume of poetry garnered great critical acclaim from various notable poets and literary critics in Taiwan and abroad, among them, are Chiu Gang-Jian 邱剛健, Ya Hsien 瘂弦, Chang Mo 張默, Hsiang Ming 向明, and Yu Kwang-Chung 余光中.
In 1965, Poet Fang arrived in Montreal, Canada.
After finishing his mandatory military service in the Taiwan Republic of China air force, Fang made plans to travel to Paris to study art, but France cut diplomatic relations with the Republic of China in Taiwan. Owing to this, he decided to pursue his studies elsewhere. In the fall of 1965, he arrived at Université de Montréal to study English literature, and along the way, Fang learned French. He immersed himself in the works of Shakespeare, Milton, Blake, Donne, Yeats, Hopkins, Eliot, Pound, and other giants in English literature.
The vibrant bilingual cultural scene in Montreal in the Sixties and several visits to San Francisco and New York stimulated Fang’s creative thinking. European drama, French New Wave cinema, avant-garde theater, modern dance, abstract art, classical and experimental music, science fiction, mythology, and existentialism, all greatly influenced his poetic thinking.
Nearing the end of the 1960s, the courage and vision of America’s Apollo moon landing mission galvanized his belief in the power of science, technology, human vision, and courage as the driving forces of human civilization. Since then, scientific and astronomical subjects have become a central theme in his creative mind.
Upon his return to Taiwan in 1971
Fang began teaching at Fu Jen University in Taipei. His work was published in many major literary journals and anthologies. He also served on the editorial board of the Blue Star Poetry Journal and Modern Literature Magazine 現代文學 and did extensive translation work for various magazines, including U.S. News and World Report.
From left: Zhou Meng-die 周夢蝶, Rong Zi 蓉子, Xiang Ming 向明, Yu Guang-zhong 余光中, Luo Men 羅門, Fang Xin 方莘, Zhang Jian 張健.
Fang immigrated to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1982
with his wife and young daughter. There, he continued his pursuit in art, music, theatre, film, literature, and also delved into modern science and the history of scientific evolution in the East and the West.
In the spring of 2004, he applied his deep knowledge of Chinese language and history to translate Sun Dynasty (11th century) archival technical documents for Dragon Skies: Ancient Astronomy of Imperial China (龍躍在天) at Chabot Space and Science Center, an astronomy museum and observatory.
Fang Xin joined the Eastbay Astronomical Society (EAS) and taught himself the principles of practical and theoretical astronomy, studied its history both as science and as culture. He then became an EAS board member, and served first as its librarian and then as archivist.
Now in his eighties, Fang Xin continues to write in Chinese and English and translate his early works into English. He is currently working on a manuscript, Night falls so impatiently, featuring over forty original poems and new translations that span his extensive career. He resides in the Oakland hills in California with his wife, surrounded by his daughter, son-in-law, and grandsons—in the same house where his parents spent the happiest years of their long lives.
Total solar eclipse, Junín, Argentina (2019)
