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Sheng Cheng, a native of Yizheng, Jiangsu Province, who lived to the age of 98, led a legendary life. In his early days he joined Tung-meng Hui (the Chinese Revolutionary League), went through the Revolution of 1911 and took part in the May 4th Movement of 1919. When studying in France he was involved in establishing the French Communist Party. After returning home, he threw himself into the movement of resistance against Japanese aggression and for national salvation. He was a fighter of the democratic revolution and a staunch patriot. He was from a family of Chinese traditional intellectuals much influenced by Buddhism. He was proficient in French and English and also had a good grounding in German, Italian, Greek, Latin and Malay. He held professorships in the University of Paris, Peking University, Sun Yat-sen University and the National Taiwan University. He wrote and translated a great number of literary and academic works in French and Chinese and was a renowned scholar, writer, translator, educator and linguist all in one. At the age of 28, he wrote in French Ma Mere (My Mother) that caused a big stir in the French literary circles. The book was translated into 16 languages including English, German, Japanese and Spanish and popularized around the world. Due to his long-term important contributions to the Sino-French cultural exchanges and the development of French language, he was awarded the Knight of the Legion of Honor Medal (Medaille de Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur) by the French Government in 1984.
Democratic Revolution and Anti-Imperialist Patriotic Movement
Sheng Cheng was born in the Sheng family mansion in the ancient city Yizheng on February 6, 1899, enrolled in the Nanjing Huiwen Academy in 1910 and, in 1912, into the Nanjing Railway School where he joined Tung-meng Hui (the Chinese Revolutionary League). At the beginning of 1914, he transferred to the Shanghai Nanyang Railway and Mining School, and in the summer of that year he was admitted into the preparatory department of the Shanghai Zhendan University where he met Xu Beihong and the two became intimate friends. He accompanied his elder brother to pay a formal visit on Sun Yat-sen and Han Hui. Encouraged by Sun’s teaching “Do not forget revolution while studying, and do not forget study while making revolution”, he organized the student union in the university and was arrested by the police of the Shanghai French Concession. However, Ma
Xiangbo, founder of the university, bailed him out and he was able to continue his study. In 1917, having graduated from the preparatory courses of Zhendan University, he started to work at the Changxindian Peking-Hankou Railroad Noviciate Office. On the eve of May 4, 1919, students of Peking University were preparing to march against the government in protest at the “unequal treaty of national betrayal and humiliation” at the Paris Peace Conference called to settle issues from WWI. On hearing the news, he was full of patriotic zeal. After that, he initiated the Federation of Ten-member Groups of Railway Workers of Changxindian for National Salvation, and was elected as its head. He led railway workers to boycott Japanese goods, carry out strikes and support the activities launched by patriotic students in Beijing and Tianjin. In the struggle he got acquainted with some student leaders such as Zhou Enlai, Liu Qingyang, Guo Longzhen and Xu Deheng, as well as Wu Zhihui who sponsored the work-study program. Wu encouraged Sheng Cheng to go abroad and wrote letters of recommendation to the Sino-French Education Association for Sheng Cheng and some others.
Work-Study Program in France
On November 22, 1919, Sheng left Shanghai for France by a British ship, starting his ten-year work-study program and Sino-French cultural exchanges. On January 9, 1920 he arrived in Paris. While studying French and mathematics at the High School of Vendome, he worked in a woodwork factory. At the time when he arrived in France, the center of the Dadaist Surrealism Movement popular in Europe (an anti-rationalism literary and art movement and trend of thought) had been shifted to Paris. Sheng, dissatisfied with the status quo since childhood, was attracted to the movement. He got acquainted with Pablo Picasso and Ernest Hemingway and even wrote a book of poems in French. In March 1920, he joined the French Socialist Party. At the end of that year, he and some other leftists split away to found the French Communist Party (FCP). He was elected secretary of the Languedoc Provincial Committee. On December 28, 1920, upon receiving a letter from Zhou Enlai, he went to Lyon to meet him, and Liu Qingyang, Guo Longzhen and Zhang Ruoming who had also come to France for study. In order to protect the legitimate rights of the Chinese students studying under a work-study program, in 1920 he was elected president of the Chinese Students’ Association and together with Zhao Shiyan and Li Lisan organized the Labor Society in Paris. In 1921, he, together with Zhou Enlai, Zhao Shiyan, Li Lisan and Cai Hesen, mobilized the worker-students to carry out the “February 28th” struggle. In the summer of 1921, he entered the National Superior Agronomical School of Montpellier to study sericulture, and worked part time on a nearby farm. In the spring of 1922, he went to Italy to continue his study of sericulture. One year later, after obtaining the diploma in advanced sericulture with honor, he returned to the National Superior Agronomical School of Montpellier for further study and became a Master of Science in 1927.
Publication of French Novel
Ma Mere Causes a Sensation
In International Literary Circles
In 1928 he accepted the offer to give lectures on the ancient classic text I Ching (The Book of Changes) and China’s sciences at the University of Paris. The theme of the Introduction, the first lesson of The Book of Changes he gave, was “Different roads lead to the same destination”. As he realized, Eastern and Western thought could communicate with each other, and he came to understand the famous dictum that “Human beings are one and moral principles do not have two standards”. In June 1928, a biographical novel Ma Mere he wrote in French was published by the Paris Attinger Publishing House. This novel full of national features and local customs was written with heartfelt feelings and in a simple style. He told most interestingly a story about an old family and through an ordinary Chinese woman’s diligent, courageous, modest and simple life revealed to the world the Chinese history of the half century since the Opium War. French Poet Paul Valery known in France as “the 20th century Victor Hugo”, wrote a long preface for the novel in praise of it. Romain Rolland, George Bernard Shaw, Maurice Maeterlinck, Andre Gide, Mme. Marie Curie and Bertrand Russell, among others, all highly appraised it. Later, it was translated into 16 languages including English, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Hebrew, etc., and circulated in many countries in Europe, America, Asia and Africa. Ma Mere became a best seller in the world and Sheng Cheng a noted writer attracting extensive appreciation. He soon joined the French Writers Association. Some parts of Ma Mere were selected for inclusion in French secondary and primary school textbooks. Up to now the book is still listed as one of the world-famous books that French university students of liberal arts must read. In 1929，Ma Mere et Moi, the sequel of Ma Mere, (also known as Mother and Son in the Chinese Revolution) and his first French poetry anthology La Muse Endolorie were published. Ma Mere is a gem of cultural integration and a monument of Sino-French cultural exchanges. In 1930, Sheng Cheng was listed in Who’s Who.
Return Home to Teach
in Prestigious Universities
In October 1930, Sheng Cheng arrived in Shanghai via Hong Kong. Once home, he paid a visit to Ma Xiangbo, Zhang Taiyan and Cai Yuanpei respectively. Cai Yuanpei in the name of the Chinese Pen Society held a reception in Cangzhou Villa to welcome and introduce him to well-known personages in the cultural circles including Yang Xingfo, Hu Shi, Xu Zhimo, Lin Yutang, Yu Dafu and Shen Congwen. In 1931, recommended by Cai Yuanpei, Sheng was appointed professor of French language in Peking University, teaching French poetry and novels and the history of French literature. In August 1931, his book A Record of Ten Years’ Work-Study Abroad came off the press. In 1935, he worked as an editor in the Zhonghua Book Company and was engaged in writing and translation. After the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggressi on broke out in July 1937,
he went to Guangxi, Guangdong, Changchun and Lanzhou and taught in several prestigious schools such as Guangxi University, Sun Yat-sen University and Lanzhou University. In the winter of 1947, he went to Taiwan with his wife and five children upon invitation to teach in the National Taiwan University. But, who could have known then that the family would be stranded there for 18 years? As the Chiang Kai-shek Regime ruled Taiwan with an iron fist as its last stronghold, Sheng Cheng was deemed a dangerous leftist. In 1953, because he refused to rejoin the Kuomintang, he was dismissed from the National Taiwan University. He then had nowhere to continue his teaching, so he began to devote himself to the cultural exchanges between China and Western countries and academic research. He translated Le Cimetiere marin (The Graveyard by the Sea), representative poem of Academician Paul Valery of the Institute of France, into Chinese, wrote a research monograph Dante and a great number of treatises on Western literature, particularly that of France, published two volumes of prose works and essays Reminiscences of Paris and completed his writing of the books Fine Arts of the Tang Dynasty, A Study of Wen Tingyun and A Research on Morality in State Administration in the Analects of Confucius. In 1964, upon the request of UNESCO, he translated the novel Travels of Lao Can into French, which was published in Paris.
Return to France to Continue Sino-French Cultural Exchanges
In March 1966, after more than 30 years, he returned to France, his second home. He found his French could not keep up with the changes in the language, so, although he was already 67, just as he had done during the years of work-study, he left Paris and went to Avignon in the south of France to attend training courses and mix with local people to brush up his French. Sometimes he could pick up more than 100 new expressions a day. After two years of hard work, he retuned to Paris and showed one of his newly-written poems to Mrs. Valery and won her praise: “Your French is good again.” In the following ten years, he was engaged in cultural communications in Paris. He gave lectures on The Book of Changes at the old-style Chinese private school he had set up. Each term there were around 10 students from different countries attending his class. The school lasted nine years. His admirers even organized the Club of Sheng Cheng. They met every week and asked him to be the main speaker. In addition to all this, his modern writings and poetry won wide popularity in France. In 1975 and 1977, Radio France Culture invited him to lecture on China’s May 4th Movement and the 1911 Revolution. The tape recordings were issued by Alliance Francaise and some of the lectures were selected as grammar teaching materials for French secondary and primary schools.
Awarded the Legion of Honor
On October 10, 1978, accompanied by his wife, sons and daughters, he returned via Hong Kong to his motherland. The Party and Government showed great care for him. In 1979, he was offered the first-rank professorship of French language at the Beijing Language Institute (now the Beijing Language and Culture University). After returning home, he published a collection of poems written in French, Ma Mere (Chinese version), A Record of Ten Years’ Work-Study Abroad, memoirs, a collection of essays and books on lingual studies. In 1984, the French Government awarded him Medaille de Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur for his long-term important contributions to France-China cultural exchanges and the development of French language. On March 14, 1985, on behalf of President Francois Mitterrand, French Ambassador to China Charles Malo issued him the most honored medal of France at his residence. The envoy, on behalf of the French Government and people, highly praised Sheng Cheng as the only Chinese writer who wrote in French and as a poet who had been closely attached to French language for half a century from 1929 to 1979.
Buried in his Ancestral Home
On December 16, 1996, Sheng Cheng passed away of illness in Beijing at the age of 98. At the funeral, people paid their last respect to his remains. The French Embassy in China presented a big flower basket in the design of French national flag with the elegiac couplet: “Mr. Sheng Cheng, Pioneer of Sino-French Friendship”. On January 15, 1997, according to his last wish, the Yizheng Municipal Government buried him in the Sheng family cemetery in Qingshan Village. This old man who had moved about from place to place finally came to the end of his lifelong journey and rested in peace in his beloved mother’s arms. In 2003 in memory of Sheng Cheng, the Yizheng Municipal Government appropriated a special fund for building a Sheng Cheng Square. At the center of the square there is a bronze statue of him. On the west side of the statue is an open history book made in marble on which are engraved passages of Ma Mere embodying his love of his motherland and attachment to his home place.
Democratic Revolution and Anti-Imperialist Patriotic Movement
Sheng Cheng was born in the Sheng family mansion in the ancient city Yizheng on February 6, 1899, enrolled in the Nanjing Huiwen Academy in 1910 and, in 1912, into the Nanjing Railway School where he joined Tung-meng Hui (the Chinese Revolutionary League). At the beginning of 1914, he transferred to the Shanghai Nanyang Railway and Mining School, and in the summer of that year he was admitted into the preparatory department of the Shanghai Zhendan University where he met Xu Beihong and the two became intimate friends. He accompanied his elder brother to pay a formal visit on Sun Yat-sen and Han Hui. Encouraged by Sun’s teaching “Do not forget revolution while studying, and do not forget study while making revolution”, he organized the student union in the university and was arrested by the police of the Shanghai French Concession. However, Ma
Xiangbo, founder of the university, bailed him out and he was able to continue his study. In 1917, having graduated from the preparatory courses of Zhendan University, he started to work at the Changxindian Peking-Hankou Railroad Noviciate Office. On the eve of May 4, 1919, students of Peking University were preparing to march against the government in protest at the “unequal treaty of national betrayal and humiliation” at the Paris Peace Conference called to settle issues from WWI. On hearing the news, he was full of patriotic zeal. After that, he initiated the Federation of Ten-member Groups of Railway Workers of Changxindian for National Salvation, and was elected as its head. He led railway workers to boycott Japanese goods, carry out strikes and support the activities launched by patriotic students in Beijing and Tianjin. In the struggle he got acquainted with some student leaders such as Zhou Enlai, Liu Qingyang, Guo Longzhen and Xu Deheng, as well as Wu Zhihui who sponsored the work-study program. Wu encouraged Sheng Cheng to go abroad and wrote letters of recommendation to the Sino-French Education Association for Sheng Cheng and some others.
Work-Study Program in France
On November 22, 1919, Sheng left Shanghai for France by a British ship, starting his ten-year work-study program and Sino-French cultural exchanges. On January 9, 1920 he arrived in Paris. While studying French and mathematics at the High School of Vendome, he worked in a woodwork factory. At the time when he arrived in France, the center of the Dadaist Surrealism Movement popular in Europe (an anti-rationalism literary and art movement and trend of thought) had been shifted to Paris. Sheng, dissatisfied with the status quo since childhood, was attracted to the movement. He got acquainted with Pablo Picasso and Ernest Hemingway and even wrote a book of poems in French. In March 1920, he joined the French Socialist Party. At the end of that year, he and some other leftists split away to found the French Communist Party (FCP). He was elected secretary of the Languedoc Provincial Committee. On December 28, 1920, upon receiving a letter from Zhou Enlai, he went to Lyon to meet him, and Liu Qingyang, Guo Longzhen and Zhang Ruoming who had also come to France for study. In order to protect the legitimate rights of the Chinese students studying under a work-study program, in 1920 he was elected president of the Chinese Students’ Association and together with Zhao Shiyan and Li Lisan organized the Labor Society in Paris. In 1921, he, together with Zhou Enlai, Zhao Shiyan, Li Lisan and Cai Hesen, mobilized the worker-students to carry out the “February 28th” struggle. In the summer of 1921, he entered the National Superior Agronomical School of Montpellier to study sericulture, and worked part time on a nearby farm. In the spring of 1922, he went to Italy to continue his study of sericulture. One year later, after obtaining the diploma in advanced sericulture with honor, he returned to the National Superior Agronomical School of Montpellier for further study and became a Master of Science in 1927.
Publication of French Novel
Ma Mere Causes a Sensation
In International Literary Circles
In 1928 he accepted the offer to give lectures on the ancient classic text I Ching (The Book of Changes) and China’s sciences at the University of Paris. The theme of the Introduction, the first lesson of The Book of Changes he gave, was “Different roads lead to the same destination”. As he realized, Eastern and Western thought could communicate with each other, and he came to understand the famous dictum that “Human beings are one and moral principles do not have two standards”. In June 1928, a biographical novel Ma Mere he wrote in French was published by the Paris Attinger Publishing House. This novel full of national features and local customs was written with heartfelt feelings and in a simple style. He told most interestingly a story about an old family and through an ordinary Chinese woman’s diligent, courageous, modest and simple life revealed to the world the Chinese history of the half century since the Opium War. French Poet Paul Valery known in France as “the 20th century Victor Hugo”, wrote a long preface for the novel in praise of it. Romain Rolland, George Bernard Shaw, Maurice Maeterlinck, Andre Gide, Mme. Marie Curie and Bertrand Russell, among others, all highly appraised it. Later, it was translated into 16 languages including English, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Hebrew, etc., and circulated in many countries in Europe, America, Asia and Africa. Ma Mere became a best seller in the world and Sheng Cheng a noted writer attracting extensive appreciation. He soon joined the French Writers Association. Some parts of Ma Mere were selected for inclusion in French secondary and primary school textbooks. Up to now the book is still listed as one of the world-famous books that French university students of liberal arts must read. In 1929，Ma Mere et Moi, the sequel of Ma Mere, (also known as Mother and Son in the Chinese Revolution) and his first French poetry anthology La Muse Endolorie were published. Ma Mere is a gem of cultural integration and a monument of Sino-French cultural exchanges. In 1930, Sheng Cheng was listed in Who’s Who.
Return Home to Teach
in Prestigious Universities
In October 1930, Sheng Cheng arrived in Shanghai via Hong Kong. Once home, he paid a visit to Ma Xiangbo, Zhang Taiyan and Cai Yuanpei respectively. Cai Yuanpei in the name of the Chinese Pen Society held a reception in Cangzhou Villa to welcome and introduce him to well-known personages in the cultural circles including Yang Xingfo, Hu Shi, Xu Zhimo, Lin Yutang, Yu Dafu and Shen Congwen. In 1931, recommended by Cai Yuanpei, Sheng was appointed professor of French language in Peking University, teaching French poetry and novels and the history of French literature. In August 1931, his book A Record of Ten Years’ Work-Study Abroad came off the press. In 1935, he worked as an editor in the Zhonghua Book Company and was engaged in writing and translation. After the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggressi on broke out in July 1937,
he went to Guangxi, Guangdong, Changchun and Lanzhou and taught in several prestigious schools such as Guangxi University, Sun Yat-sen University and Lanzhou University. In the winter of 1947, he went to Taiwan with his wife and five children upon invitation to teach in the National Taiwan University. But, who could have known then that the family would be stranded there for 18 years? As the Chiang Kai-shek Regime ruled Taiwan with an iron fist as its last stronghold, Sheng Cheng was deemed a dangerous leftist. In 1953, because he refused to rejoin the Kuomintang, he was dismissed from the National Taiwan University. He then had nowhere to continue his teaching, so he began to devote himself to the cultural exchanges between China and Western countries and academic research. He translated Le Cimetiere marin (The Graveyard by the Sea), representative poem of Academician Paul Valery of the Institute of France, into Chinese, wrote a research monograph Dante and a great number of treatises on Western literature, particularly that of France, published two volumes of prose works and essays Reminiscences of Paris and completed his writing of the books Fine Arts of the Tang Dynasty, A Study of Wen Tingyun and A Research on Morality in State Administration in the Analects of Confucius. In 1964, upon the request of UNESCO, he translated the novel Travels of Lao Can into French, which was published in Paris.
Return to France to Continue Sino-French Cultural Exchanges
In March 1966, after more than 30 years, he returned to France, his second home. He found his French could not keep up with the changes in the language, so, although he was already 67, just as he had done during the years of work-study, he left Paris and went to Avignon in the south of France to attend training courses and mix with local people to brush up his French. Sometimes he could pick up more than 100 new expressions a day. After two years of hard work, he retuned to Paris and showed one of his newly-written poems to Mrs. Valery and won her praise: “Your French is good again.” In the following ten years, he was engaged in cultural communications in Paris. He gave lectures on The Book of Changes at the old-style Chinese private school he had set up. Each term there were around 10 students from different countries attending his class. The school lasted nine years. His admirers even organized the Club of Sheng Cheng. They met every week and asked him to be the main speaker. In addition to all this, his modern writings and poetry won wide popularity in France. In 1975 and 1977, Radio France Culture invited him to lecture on China’s May 4th Movement and the 1911 Revolution. The tape recordings were issued by Alliance Francaise and some of the lectures were selected as grammar teaching materials for French secondary and primary schools.
Awarded the Legion of Honor
On October 10, 1978, accompanied by his wife, sons and daughters, he returned via Hong Kong to his motherland. The Party and Government showed great care for him. In 1979, he was offered the first-rank professorship of French language at the Beijing Language Institute (now the Beijing Language and Culture University). After returning home, he published a collection of poems written in French, Ma Mere (Chinese version), A Record of Ten Years’ Work-Study Abroad, memoirs, a collection of essays and books on lingual studies. In 1984, the French Government awarded him Medaille de Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur for his long-term important contributions to France-China cultural exchanges and the development of French language. On March 14, 1985, on behalf of President Francois Mitterrand, French Ambassador to China Charles Malo issued him the most honored medal of France at his residence. The envoy, on behalf of the French Government and people, highly praised Sheng Cheng as the only Chinese writer who wrote in French and as a poet who had been closely attached to French language for half a century from 1929 to 1979.
Buried in his Ancestral Home
On December 16, 1996, Sheng Cheng passed away of illness in Beijing at the age of 98. At the funeral, people paid their last respect to his remains. The French Embassy in China presented a big flower basket in the design of French national flag with the elegiac couplet: “Mr. Sheng Cheng, Pioneer of Sino-French Friendship”. On January 15, 1997, according to his last wish, the Yizheng Municipal Government buried him in the Sheng family cemetery in Qingshan Village. This old man who had moved about from place to place finally came to the end of his lifelong journey and rested in peace in his beloved mother’s arms. In 2003 in memory of Sheng Cheng, the Yizheng Municipal Government appropriated a special fund for building a Sheng Cheng Square. At the center of the square there is a bronze statue of him. On the west side of the statue is an open history book made in marble on which are engraved passages of Ma Mere embodying his love of his motherland and attachment to his home place.