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Ruan Fan and Cindy Gu
(Chinadaily.com.cn)
A great poem is a fountain forever overflowing with the waters of wisdom and delight
—P. B. Shelley, British poet.
伟大的诗篇即是永远喷出智慧和欢欣之水的喷泉。
——英国诗人P. B. 雪莱
“Compared with poems by other poetesses in China, hers stand out like a killer among groups of ladies,” Liu Nian, editor of the Chinese literary journal Poetry, said about Yu Xiuhua’s works.
Tagged as the “poetess with cerebral palsy (a condition characterized by a group of permanent movement problems)” and a seemingly paradoxical “China’s Emily Dickinson” in media reports, Yu’s work has recently ’gone viral on WeChat, Chinas largest standalone messaging app.
And her blog, previously with less than 200 followers, has now climbed to over 5,000 followers, with more than 400,000 hits.
Her fans are not shy of expressing their love of her works.
One lef her a message: “Your poem moved me. It’s been a long while since I tasted my tears.” Another wrote: “Your poem made me realize that the poetry is still alive.”
Putting her feelings into words has always worked for Yu, but she does not intend to teach or preach .
“When I’m not happy, I write it down, and the words are basically an expression of my mood at that particular moment. I do not write in order to show something,” says Yu in an interview with People’s Daily Online.
“I never think of what I should write about in poems or how to write them. When I’m worried about my life, I don’t have the luxury to care about where my country is going, nor where human beings are heading. If I happen to be writing about these matters, it is because they touched me, warmed me or really made me sad or worried,” said Yu.
Compared to her words that flow elegantly with no difficulty, Yu’s physical posture is nothing but smooth.
Yu shakes her head when she talks, and her speech stutters sometimes. The habit also shows in her walk, as she stumbles to move across the room. When she types, she presses the keyboard arduously solely with her lef index finger.
“You can talk to her about her physical condition, her husband and child, her attitude on love, and domestic violence she’s suffere in her past,” Liu says.
“There’ no barrier for you to reach down to her heart, you can easily walk in.”
Journalists have floode to interview her since she gained her fame, but some of her newly gained fans worry that too much media attention will distract her from her creation.
“If you keep silent, even the howling sea will calm down,” Yu said in response.
When she was told she was compared to the famous American poet Emily Dickinson, she said she didn’t know who that was.
In fact, the only thing the two have in common is probably their love of reading.
Ofte she will pull a chair in the yard to read in the daylight, or sit in her simply equipped bedroom by a plain wooden table, with an energy efficie bulb lighting from the ceiling.
She married a man 12 years her senior, and describes what has become an unhappy marriage as “Youth rendered to an engagement of sin.”①
Her son, a freshman at the University in Wuhan, says his mother has a peaceful heart, yet she always prefers to show her tough side.
Showing weakness to the world has never been on Yu’s list.
In her words, “To make heard my physical disability is redundant as the teeth say it aches.”
(559 words)
① She married a man 12 years her senior, and describes what has become an unhappy marriage as “Youth Rendered to An Engagement of Sin.” 她嫁给了一个大她12岁的男人，并将这段不幸的婚姻描述为“青春给了一段罪恶”。
render vt. 回报，归还
engagement n. 婚约
1. We can infer from the firs paragraph that.
A. Yu Xiuhua’s poems are about a killer who stands out from a group of ladies
B. Yu Xiuhua’s works are not recognized by other poetesses in China
C. Liu Nian thinks poorly of Yu Xiuhua’s poems because they “stand out like a killer”
D. Yu Xiuhua’s poems are differen in style from those of other poetesses in China
2. Which statement is TRUE about Yu’s writing?
A. Her poems are widely spread through media reports.
B. Yu ofte intends to include certain moral lessons in her poems.
C. Th fans are moved by her poems because she puts a lot of feelings into words.
D. Yu doesn’t care about where her country is going and where mankind is heading at all.
3. We can learn from the passage that.
A. Yu’s physical posture is as smooth as her words that flo elegantly
B. Yu thinks that too much media attention will distract her from her creation
C. Yu Xiuhua’s works actually have little in common with those of Emily Dickinson
D. Yu always shows her tough side because she wants her physical disability known by others
4. From the passage we know that Yu Xiuhua.
A. is a strong-willed lady B. reads occasionally in her spare time
C. has many hobbies D. has a very happy family
5. What is your understanding of the underlined sentence in the last paragraph?
Nowadays, more and more Internet celebrities appear in the common view, such as “Xidan Girl” and “Milk Tea Sister.” Do you want to be one of them? Why or why not?