In the 95th year of the Republic (2006), I curated the exhibition “The Cultural World of a Ci Poet” at University Museum and Art Gallery, the University of Hong Kong, showcasing nearly one hundred and eighty pieces of calligraphy, paintings and letters by my father and his friends. This exhibition travelled to the National Museum of History in Taipei the following year. My father Mr. Soong Hsün-leng considered himself a tz’u poet, his works The Fragrant Hermitage was published in the 94th year of the Republic (2005). Apart from the peerless English translation by my friend Professor John Minford, a novel idea was also conceived, to record my father’s own recitals of his tz’u poems on compact discs, and so initiated an act that no earlier tz’u poets had ever attempted. My father, hao Hsing-an, was born on the eighth of July in the second year of the Hsüan-t’ung reign, and passed away on the twelfth of August in the 99th year of the Republic (2010). To reach the venerable age of a hundred, how much joy and sorrow, attainment and loss, were entailed? The allure of youthful love, the grief for home and country, behold invariably in his tz’u poems, in the literary exchanges with friends, and in their calligraphy and paintings. Although time has moved on and the world has changed, for the onlooker it is not easy to relinquish sadness and introspection. I respectfully gathered and searched for my father’s writings, even those on a single sheet, poems and essays, were all photographed and copied, to be carefully stored in this room. I only wish the distinguished visitor will empathize with such meticulousness and trivialness, knowing that I still linger amongst the residual sounds and words, too nostalgic to part.
Soong Hsün-leng, tzu Hsin-leng, also Yü-li; hao Hsing-an (literally Fragrance Hermitage). He came from a Wu-hsing family, in Chekiang Province. He was born in the second year of the Hsüan-t’ung reign (1910) in Foochow, and grew up in Shanghai. He graduated in 1932 from National Central University.
