After trying and abandoning the fields of battle and of commerce, Yu has found his place in his art.
Nearing ninety but still vigorous, Yu Cheng-yao looks back somewhat ruefully on his days as a war hero: "Serving as an officer one could neither eat nor sleep; where is the joy in that?" Pressed for details, he pleads the failing memory of old age and drops the subject.
Some say Yu Cheng-yao's life is like a legend.
In 1927, at nineteen, he joined the campaigns against the warlords and returned home a hero. After marriage, he went to Japan to study economics at Waseta University, but transferred after one year to the Service School of the Japanese Army. He returned to China to serve as an instructor at the Whampoa Military Academy and rose to Major-General during the pacification of Fukien. Nevertheless, the sorrows of war left strong memories still resonant in the poetry he wrote at the time.
After leaving the military in 1946 as a Lieutenant-General, he took up trade in medicine between Fukien, Taiwan, and Singapore. Though successful, he soon abandoned this life: "Business is just to make money to live; I do not love money and fear the headaches of money management. This lifestyle went against my basic nature and made me unhappy."
His family unable to get out of the mainland in 1949, he took up solitary residence in a small house in Chungho, near Taipei, to pursue a scholarly life of books, music, and poetry. Yu has made particularly important contributions toward the study of the southeastern Chinese Nankuan style of music, for which he was given an award by the Ministry of Education.
Chain smoking "Long Life" brand cigarettes, Yu recounts the origins of this scholarly pursuit. Oddly, his interest in the music, long familiar to him since he was born in Yang-shang village in Fukien Province, was sparked by hearing the music while in military school in Japan, bringing back memories of home. He has actively researched Nan-kwan music ever since. He believes Nan-kwan music has a special graceful and quiet beauty capable of affecting one's moods. He emphasizes that few of those who studied it turned to bad lives, suggesting that it could be very useful in the education of young people.
Yu has special affection not only for the music and tea of his childhood home, but for its dialect of Fukienese. He believes Fukienese terms often carry special and profound meanings not present in their Mandarin counterparts.
Living this leisured life, little did Yu expect that a coincidental visit to a Chinese landscape exhibit would bring a new aspect to his quiet days. He took up the brush for the first time at 56 years old.
The starting points for his work are his vast experience, wide travels, and attention to the landscape that were learned through twenty years of military service. Yu argues that to really do justice to a landscape, one must understand the local styles and moods. His landscapes emerge with an unusual imposing quality.
Art critic Li Chu-tsing compares the self-taught Yu to Grandma Moses. Both lacked formal training and began painting quite late; their ideas were thus entirely original. Yu's life may also be compared to the traditional scholar-artist: he paints in isolation, for the art itself, without regard for fame or fortune.
Reactions to the discovery of Yu's talent varied: on the one hand, world famous artists would go to his humble home for visits, teaching, or buying. At the same time, many refused to consider doing large-scale exhibitions of his work. Yu simply ignored the fuss, and went on happily painting. Like Nan-kwan music, he stubbornly adheres to his own rhythm and his own style. Professor Yung Ssu-pai of the Academia Sinica adds, "Although he has led tens of thousands in battle, in the field of the arts he stands alone."
His life reflects his place in the art world. From the time he left his home and bride to go to Japan, through his years as a soldier, Yu had few chances to be with his family. After the fall of the mainland,
Yu feels that a simple life is adequate: food enough to stay healthy, clothes enough to stay warm, and shelter enough to keep out the wind and rain are all one needs. "After seeing the fields littered with corpses, when the daybreak finally he lost touch with them completely. Since coming to Taiwan his lifestyle has been very simple. Lan Su-ching, a member of the Chinese orchestra of Broadcasting Corporation of China who has gone to visit "Old Yu" weekly, says that his meals would rarely cost over ten NT dollars. He advised students who visited him to devote themselves to study, she recalls, and read aloud his poetry in Fukienese when he felt up to it.
comes, one does not take the little things so seriously." Despite having moved to a newer residence, Yu retains his simple lifestyle.
We visited Yu, and in a soothing background of Nan-kwan music, his adopted daughter and a founder of the "Ensemble of Han-Tang Music," Chen Mei-er, related the story of Yu's reunion with his wife and two daughters. Whether from emotion or the habit of self-denial, he merely nodded politely and did not respond to his wife's question: "How did you get so old?"
As early as 1966, Yu was contributor to a "New Tradition of the Chinese Landscape Painting" exhibit which toured the U.S. for four years. But he has since been silent, and only now is being rediscovered. At the end of this year the National Museum of History will hold a 90th birthday retrospective of his works.
A poet-general, a successful but unhappy merchant, a scholar of music, a painter in a ramshackle house in an obscure alley--"Old Yu" is not easy to pigeonhole. His friend of many years, practitioner of Chinese music Liang Tai-ping perhaps describes him best as an embodiment of magical qualities, wandering among us, provocative and simple as a playfully naughty child.
[Picture Caption]
The landscapes expressed through the paintings of Yu Cheng-yao are of layered, bouldered mountains. It is considered that these reflect the impressions left on him from his childhood home in Yung-chun Prefecture in Fukien, but at the same time they reveal his firm, upright, and frank character.
Yu looks back on some of his old poetry in the sunlight of the afternoon; those affairs of war and of business seem so far away now.
Yu has invested much effort in the appreciation of Nankwan music, the music of his childhood home. Though the years have piled up and his hearing is failing, he still looks back longingly on that quieter, simpler time.
Resting by Keelung Road in Taipei, Yu wastes no worries over food or clothes, having no desires beyond the time to paint.
The landscapes expressed through the paintings of Yu Cheng-yao are of layered, bouldered mountains. It is considered that these reflect the impressions left on him from his childhood home in Yung-chun Prefecture in Fukien, but at the same time they reveal his firm, upright, and frank character.
The landscapes expressed through the paintings of Yu Cheng-yao are of layered, bouldered mountains. It is considered that these reflect the impressions left on him from his childhood home in Yung-chun Prefecture in Fukien, but at the same time they reveal his firm, upright, and frank character.
Yu looks back on some of his old poetry in the sunlight of the afternoon; those affairs of war and of business seem so far away now.
Yu has invested much effort in the appreciation of Nankwan music, the music of his childhood home. Though the years have piled up and his hearing is failing, he still looks back longingly on that quieter, simpler time.
Resting by Keelung Road in Taipei, Yu wastes no worries over food or clothes, having no desires beyond the time to paint.
Resting by Keelung Road in Taipei, Yu wastes no worries over food or clothes, having no desires beyond the time to paint.
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