Xu Zhimo

Xu Zhimo was born on January 15, 1897, in Xiashi, Haining, Zhejiang. He was the son of Xu Shenru by his second wife, Qian Muying, and was named Zhangxu; as an adult he took the name Zhimo. His father was 25 at the time of his birth. A profile on China Daily’s Zhejiang channel gives his year of birth as 1896.⁠[1][2][3]

The Xu family had been merchants for generations. His father, Xu Shenru (1872–1944), whose given name was Guangpu, ran the family’s inherited Xu Yufeng sauce works on his own and invested widely in native banks, commerce and industry, becoming known far and wide as the richest man in Xiashi; in 1897 he co-founded the Yutong native bank, and in February 1913, with Shen Shuying and others, he founded the Xiashi Electric Light Company, one of the earliest thermal power plants built in Zhejiang.⁠[1]

As soon as he turned three, his father engaged a private tutor to begin his education; The World of Chinese writes that in his early years he was educated in a traditional Confucian school.⁠[1][4]

The World of Chinese writes that he left home at 14 to study at Hangzhou’s first modern middle school; a 2022 article in the Xinmin Evening News states that he graduated from Hangzhou No. 1 Middle School in 1915.⁠[4][5]

The Xinmin Evening News article states that he went on to study at Shanghai Baptist College (Hujiang University), Peiyang University in Tianjin and Peking University. His biographer Han Shishan lists his studies in China in order as the preparatory course of Peking University, Shanghai Baptist College, the law preparatory course of Peiyang University and the law faculty of Peking University.⁠[5][6]

The Zhangs, a prominent family of Baoshan County in Jiangsu, heard that the Xu family had a gifted son of 16 and decided to betroth their 13-year-old daughter, Zhang Youyi, to him, sending a go-between to propose the match; Xu Shenru agreed without asking his son’s opinion. Xu Zhimo and Zhang Youyi were married on October 29, 1915.⁠[1]

A 2017 article in Jiemian on Bound Feet and Western Dress, the life story of Zhang Youyi written by Pang-Mei Natasha Chang from Zhang’s own account, writes that Zhang came from a distinguished family and, because her second brother dissuaded the family, was the only woman in it whose feet were not bound; the article shows a photograph of her second brother, Zhang Junmai, with Xu Zhimo. It also writes that after the marriage Zhang bore the Xu family an heir and looked after her parents-in-law while Xu went abroad to study in America and Europe.⁠[7]

In 1918, on someone’s recommendation, Xu Shenru agreed that his son should become a disciple of Liang QichaoLiang QichaoLiang Qichao (1873–1929) was a thinker, politician, journalist and scholar of the late Qing and early Republic, a disciple of Kang Youwei and a participant in the Hundred Days’ Reform of 1898. After the reform failed he spent 14 years in exile in Japan, where he ran the journals Qingyi Bao and Xinmin Congbao; returning in 1912, he helped to found the Progressive Party, served the Beijing government as minister of justice and minister of finance, and in 1915–1916 opposed Yuan Shikai’s attempt to make himself emperor. After leaving politics at the end of 1917 he devoted himself to writing and teaching, was a tutor at the Tsinghua Academy of Chinese Learning and director of the Beijing Library, and left the collected works known as the Yinbingshi heji.Open the full entry, a figure of great weight in both politics and scholarship, and paid 1,000 silver dollars as the gift for the teacher.⁠[1]

In the summer of 1918 he went to study in the United States, first at Clark University in MassachusettsMassachusettsMassachusetts (officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts) is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States; its capital and largest city is Boston. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on February 6, 1788, the sixth state to do so. Its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 7,029,917.Open the full entry, where he studied history and banking. Han Shishan writes that by June 1919 he had obtained a first-class honours degree, and that he used the summer vacation to take economics and English at a Cornell UniversityCornell UniversityCornell University is a private research university in Ithaca, New York, and a member of the Ivy League. It is New York State's federal land-grant university, a distinction unique within the Ivy League. Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White founded the university in 1865, and it opened in 1868. In addition to its Ithaca campus, Cornell operates Weill Cornell Medicine and Cornell Tech in New York City and a medical college in Qatar. It enrolled 26,793 students in fall 2024. Its president is Michael I. Kotlikoff.Open the full entry summer session in New York, quickly earning four credits and graduating.⁠[8][6][1][9]

He then entered Columbia UniversityColumbia UniversityColumbia University, formally Columbia University in the City of New York, is a private research university in New York City and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1754 by royal charter from King George II as King's College, it is the oldest institution of higher education in New York State and the fifth oldest in the United States. It was renamed Columbia College in 1784 and adopted the university name and moved to Manhattan's Morningside Heights in 1896. It has 17 schools and four affiliated colleges, with 35,978 students enrolled in fall 2025. Legal scholar Jennifer L. Mnookin became president on July 1, 2026.Open the full entry in New York to study political science and received a master’s degree in September 1920. Han Shishan writes that after his master’s he had intended to go on to a doctorate, but out of admiration for Bertrand Russell he gave up the prospect of a Columbia doctorate and crossed the Atlantic to England.⁠[8][2][6]

After receiving his master’s degree he went straight to England to study political economy at the London School of EconomicsLondon School of Economics and Political ScienceThe London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) is a specialist social science university in central London, founded in 1895 by members of the Fabian Society. It is known for research in economics, politics and social policy, and its alumni and staff include many Nobel laureates and national leaders.Open the full entry.⁠[8][6]

That year Lin ChangminLin ChangminLin Changmin (1876–1925), courtesy name Zongmeng, was a politician, diplomat, educator and calligrapher of the late Qing and early Republic of China and the father of Lin Huiyin. He studied at Waseda University in Japan, served in the early Republic as a member of parliament and as Minister of Justice among other posts, and in 1919 published “A Diplomatic Warning to Our Citizens” in the Chenbao, an article credited with setting off the May Fourth Movement; in 1925 he joined Guo Songling’s revolt against Zhang Zuolin and was killed by a stray bullet at Sujiatun.Open the full entry travelled in Europe with his daughter, Lin HuiyinLin HuiyinLin Huiyin (1904–1955) was a Chinese architect, poet and writer, the wife and longtime collaborator of Liang Sicheng. With Liang Sicheng and others she surveyed China’s historic buildings in the field, helped found the architecture departments of Northeastern University and Tsinghua University, took part in designing the national emblem of the People’s Republic of China and the Monument to the People’s Heroes, and was a poet of the Crescent Moon group.Open the full entry, and on that journey father and daughter came to know Xu Zhimo, Zhang Xiruo, Chen Xiying and other Chinese living in Europe. Xu came to count Lin Changmin a close friend, which Chen Xueyong attributes to a meeting of two similar artistic gifts and temperaments.⁠[10][11]

He then went to King’s College at the University of CambridgeUniversity of CambridgeThe University of Cambridge is a university in Cambridge, England, United Kingdom. It gives 1209 as its founding date, is made up of Schools, Faculties, Departments and autonomous Colleges, and is a member of the Russell Group.Open the full entry, where he spent eighteen months as an associate member. A 2018 China Daily report dates this to 1921–22; the author page of Renditions at the Chinese University of Hong Kong says he went to Cambridge in 1921; The World of Chinese gives 1920.⁠[12][13][4][6]

At Cambridge he was drawn to English Romantic poetry and chose a literary career. In 1921 he began to write poems and essays in the vernacular under the influence of English Romantic poets such as Shelley and Byron and of French Romantic and Symbolist poets; the China Writers Association’s author profile says that he began by imitating the English aesthetic poets and leaned towards art for art’s sake.⁠[2][13][8]

Lü Jiaxiang writes in a 2021 article in the Qilu Evening News that in 1920, at Cambridge near London, the 23-year-old and already married Xu Zhimo began to court the 16-year-old Lin Huiyin and divorced Zhang Youyi for this reason; in early March 1922, in Berlin, with Jin Yuelin and three others as witnesses, Zhang Youyi reluctantly signed the divorce agreement.⁠[14]

The Jiemian article on Bound Feet and Western Dress writes that two years after Xu went abroad to study in America and Europe, Zhang Youyi went to Europe to join him, hoping to acquire new knowledge, but could only look after his meals and daily life at home; when she was pregnant with their second child he wanted her to have an abortion and then left without a word; a month after she gave birth to a son, he came to her with a divorce agreement, and she signed it, having made up her mind to be one of the new women of the future. The child, named Peter, grew up in Berlin, saw his father only once before his death, and died in 1925. Lü Jiaxiang writes that Peter was born on February 24, 1922, and died of encephalitis at the age of three.⁠[7][14]

He returned to China in October 1922. Han Shishan counts seven universities in China and abroad at which he had studied before his return.⁠[6][2]

After his return he taught as a professor at Peking University, Tsinghua University and Pingmin University; from 1924 to 1927 he taught in the English department of Peking University.⁠[8][15]

In 1923 he helped organise the literary group known as the Crescent Moon Society and was its principal founder. Zeng Qiong, a professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University, writes in the People’s Daily that the society’s name was inspired by Rabindranath Tagore’s collection The Crescent Moon.⁠[8][16][17]

In 1924 the Indian poet Tagore made a lecture tour of China at the invitation of Liang Qichao and Lin Changmin, and Xu Zhimo was put in charge of all the arrangements for receiving him; when Tagore’s liner docked at the Huishan Wharf in Shanghai, the quay was crowded with Chinese writers and artists who had come to welcome him. Xu served as Tagore’s interpreter on the tour and became his friend despite the difference in age; in Hangzhou he took him round West Lake, where the two recited, discussed and wrote poetry. Encyclopaedia BritannicaEncyclopædia BritannicaEncyclopædia Britannica is a general English-language encyclopedia first published in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1768; the name also refers to its publisher, Chicago-based Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. (which presents itself as The Britannica Group). The print edition ended in 2012, and the company’s main businesses since then have been the online encyclopedia Britannica.com, digital education products for schools and libraries, and Merriam-Webster dictionaries.Open the full entry writes that Xu fell under Tagore’s influence while serving as his interpreter on the lecture tour.⁠[18][16][2]

On April 28 Tagore lectured at the Temple of Agriculture (Xiannongtan) in Beijing; Lin Huiyin helped him onto the platform and Xu Zhimo interpreted. In his letters Xu called Tagore “elder brother”, and Tagore gave him a Bengali name meaning a man of refinement. During this visit Liang SichengLiang SichengLiang Sicheng (1901–1972) was a Chinese architect, architectural historian and architectural educator, the eldest son of Liang Qichao and the husband of Lin Huiyin. With Lin Huiyin and others he carried out extensive field surveys and studies of China’s historic buildings, pioneered architectural education at Northeastern University and Tsinghua University, and after 1949 led the design of the national emblem of the People’s Republic of China and of the Monument to the People’s Heroes, while putting forward plans for preserving the old city of Beijing.Open the full entry came to know Hu Shih, Xu Zhimo and others.⁠[18][16][19]

Tagore’s birthday fell during his stay in Beijing; at the celebration Liang Qichao gave him the Chinese name Zhu Zhendan, and that evening members of the Crescent Moon Society performed his play Chitra, with Lin Huiyin in the title role of Princess Chitra, Xu Zhimo as the god of love, Lin Changmin as the god of spring and Liang Sicheng in charge of the sets; selling the programmes was Lu Xiaoman, then the wife of Wang Geng and later Xu Zhimo’s wife.⁠[16][18][11]

Back in China he fell in love with Lu Xiaoman, a married woman, which caused a public outcry. The World of Chinese writes that her husband at the time, Wang Geng, was a friend of his. Han Shishan writes that in the spring of 1925, because his romance with Lu Xiaoman had caused such a stir, he decided to go to Europe until the talk died down, travelling by way of Siberia to France.⁠[1][4][6]

In 1925 he published his first collection of poems, Poems of Zhimo. After returning from Europe he took over the editorship of the Chenbao supplement that autumn; Encyclopaedia Britannica describes the literary supplement of the Chenbao, which he edited in 1925–26, as Beijing’s most important literary supplement at the time.⁠[8][6][2]

Lin Changmin was killed in December 1925. Lin Huiyin later wrote, in her essay mourning Xu Zhimo, that in that year Xu had written an article in the same newspaper lamenting her father’s tragic death. Chen Xueyong writes that Xu, knowing that Lin Changmin had boundless feeling with nowhere to put it, had repeatedly urged him to leave politics and soar with him in the world of letters, and that Xu intended to edit Lin’s posthumous writings as the Collected Writings of the Double Juniper Studio, but was himself killed not long afterwards and the plan came to nothing. The Collected Works of Lin Changmin, published in 2024, made public in full for the first time his letters to Lin Huiyin, Liang Sicheng, Liang Qichao, Xu Zhimo, Hu Shih and others.⁠[18][11][10]

On April 10, 1926, the Chenbao poetry supplement (Shijuan) was launched with him as editor, devoted to a serious exploration of metrical form in the new poetry.⁠[8]

On October 3, 1926, Xu Zhimo and Lu Xiaoman were married in Beihai Park in Beijing, with his teacher Liang Qichao officiating. His father, Xu Shenru, built them a marriage house combining Chinese and Western styles on Ganhe Street in Xiashi; the couple lived there for a short time before moving to Shanghai.⁠[1][5][20][21]

At the ceremony Liang Qichao gave the couple a stern lecture, ending with the words “May this be the last time you marry!” The next day he wrote to Liang Sicheng, Lin Huiyin, Liang Sizhong and others (Liang Sicheng and Lin Huiyin were then studying in the United States): “Yesterday I did something I was most unwilling to do: I officiated at Xu Zhimo’s wedding … In the hall I delivered an admonitory address and gave them a thorough dressing-down; the couple and every guest present turned pale. I fear no wedding like it has ever been heard of, in China or abroad, past or present …” He went on: “Xu Zhimo is in fact clever, and I love him dearly; seeing him going under this time I still wanted to rescue him, and I had my reasons …” He wrote that, seeing the kind of partner Xu had found and fearing endless suffering for him, he had meant to give that person a blow on the head, so that she would not one day work Xu Zhimo to death.⁠[20]

After marrying Lu Xiaoman he moved south to live in Shanghai and left Peking University. From 1927 he taught at Guanghua University and Daxia University in Shanghai and at National Central University in Nanjing, and in the same year he founded the Crescent Moon Book Company with Hu Shih, Liang Shiqiu and others. The couple did not settle in Shanghai until 1927, in a small room on the second floor of a garden villa on Route Vallon (Huanlong Road); a plaque marked “Former Residence of Xu Zhimo” now hangs on their former home on Nanchang Road, stating that the two lived there from 1927 to 1928.⁠[15][8][2][5]

From 1928 he edited the literary monthly Crescent Moon; the China Writers Association’s author profile says that the Crescent Moon monthly was also founded by him with Hu Shih, Liang Shiqiu and others, that he served as its editor-in-chief, and criticised Lu Xun and the proletarian revolutionary movement. That year he made his third visit to Cambridge and, on leaving, wrote “Second Farewell to Cambridge”; the China Writers Association’s author profile praises the poem’s harmonious sound and beautiful imagery and notes that it has been widely recited. A 2018 China Daily report says the poem has been learned by millions of schoolchildren in China.⁠[2][8][12]

A 2025 article from Red Star News writes that at the end of 1928 he saw Lin Huiyin again in Beijing after four years apart; she had married Liang Sicheng in March that year and was expecting their first daughter, Liang Zaibing.⁠[18]

The Xinmin Evening News article states that in the autumn of 1930, at Hu Shih’s invitation, he became a professor at Peking University and also at Beijing Women’s Normal University; an article by Zhang Yanlin in the Literary Gazette gives February 1931 as the date on which, at Hu Shih’s invitation, he returned to Peking University’s college of arts as a professor in the English department. Zhang Yanlin writes that by then he was a famous poet throughout the country, and that at Peking University he was much loved by the students and was repeatedly invited to attend academic meetings and give lectures.⁠[5][15]

Lü Jiaxiang writes that over their years together Xu patiently admonished Lu Xiaoman about her lavish spending and the opium habit she had taken up to relieve her illness, while working as hard as he could to support her, teaching at several universities in different cities at once and wearing himself out travelling between them; he also sincerely admired her artistic talent and did all he could to encourage it; in 1931 she took up painting under a teacher and made rapid progress, and in June that year he brought one of her landscape paintings from Shanghai to Beijing to show his friends, among whom Hu Shih, Yang Xingfo and Jin Yuelin praised it and wrote poems on it.⁠[14]

He helped found and ran the journal Poetry (Shikan); Lin Huiyin’s poem “Who Loves This Ceaseless Change” appeared in it, and the Red Star News article calls it her literary debut. In March 1931 Lin, ill with lung disease, went to recuperate at Xiangshan in the western suburbs of Beijing, where Xu often visited her; that September, recovered, she came down from the hills and had lunch with Xu and others.⁠[13][18]

That year Xu introduced Jin Yuelin to Liang Sicheng and Lin Huiyin, the beginning of a deep friendship between Jin and the couple that lasted until their deaths. On October 1 Xu wrote to Lu Xiaoman: “… by the look of it, Huiyin is about to have another baby.” Lin’s second child, Liang Congjie, was indeed born in August of the following year.⁠[19][18]

In early April 1931 an urgent telegram about his mother’s grave illness called him back to Xiashi. He wanted Lu Xiaoman to come and wait on her mother-in-law as well, but his father objected fiercely, saying: “If she comes, I go!” His mother died on April 23. Lu Xiaoman had long resented her father-in-law’s refusal to accept her as his daughter-in-law, but on hearing of the death she hurried to Xiashi in mourning dress; Xu Shenru, on learning of it, at once sent people to stop her on the way and would not let her into the house, so she had to turn back to Shanghai. That evening Xu Zhimo confronted his father and argued her case, and from then on father and son were estranged.⁠[1]

Lü Jiaxiang writes that on the eve of this last journey the couple had a violent quarrel: Xu once again urged Lu Xiaoman to give up the drug, she flew into a rage, and he picked up his luggage and left home at once; she later wrote him a letter of apology, which he could never receive.⁠[14]

To get back to Peiping (Beijing) in time for Lin Huiyin’s lecture on architecture, he arranged through acquaintances a free seat on the China National Aviation Corporation mail plane “Jinan”, flying north from Nanjing. Lü Jiaxiang writes that Lin was to speak to foreign envoys on classical Chinese architecture at the Peking Union Medical College auditorium that afternoon; Dai Yongxia, in a 2011 article in the Qilu Evening News, describes it as a scholarly lecture on the evening of the 19th. The exhibition wall of the Xu Zhimo former residence in Haining, quoted by Zhang Enjie in the Beijing Youth Daily, states that the plane took off from Nanjing at eight in the morning on November 19, 1931.⁠[22][14][21]

Dai Yongxia writes that at 11:35 that day, over Jinan, the plane ran into thick fog; searching for its route, the pilots repeatedly lost height, and the plane flew straight into Beida Mountain southwest of Jinan, exploded and caught fire, killing Xu Zhimo and both pilots; he adds that after investigation by experts the crash site has been officially identified as Beida Mountain. The former-residence exhibition quoted by Zhang Enjie states instead that the plane met sudden fog near Dangjiazhuang, fifty li from Jinan, and crashed into Xida Mountain, and that Xu was 35 full years old; Lü Jiaxiang writes that the Jinan struck a hill on the outskirts of Jinan at about noon. Encyclopaedia Britannica gives the place of his death as Tai’an, Shandong. The Xinmin Evening News and Literary Gazette articles give his age at death as 34.⁠[22][21][14][2][15][5]

Han Shishan writes in a 2016 article in the Literary Gazette that he had earlier travelled south from Beijing to Nanjing on Zhang Xueliang’s private plane, which was taking Zhang’s diplomatic adviser Wellington Koo to Nanjing to seek instructions on handling the crisis in the Northeast; on the evening of his arrival in Nanjing he called on Yang Xingfo, who was not at home, and the note he left became his last writing. Han dates his arrival in Nanjing and his death to September 16 and September 17, 1931, and writes that the Mukden Incident took place the day after his death.⁠[6]

Dai Yongxia writes that his body was first carried to a nearby railway bridge arch; on November 20 it was moved to the Fuyuan Temple on the outskirts of Jinan and placed in a coffin with the help of a clerk of the Bank of China in Jinan; at 8:30 that evening the coffin was loaded onto an open car and escorted back to Shanghai by Xu Jikai, Zhang Jiazhu and others. Zhang Enjie writes that after the crash the 13-year-old Xu Jikai and his uncle Zhang Jia’ao (Zhang Youyi’s fourth elder brother, a banker and industrialist) went to Jinan to collect the body and held a public memorial rite there; the body reached Shanghai on November 24, was re-coffined at the International Funeral Home, and the Shanghai literary world held a memorial meeting.⁠[22][21]

Lü Jiaxiang writes that Liang Sicheng, acting also for Lin Huiyin, hurried at once to the crash site and brought back a fragment of the aircraft, which Lin kept hanging on her bedroom wall until her death. The Red Star News article writes that Lin Huiyin and Liang Sicheng arranged the hall for Xu’s memorial meeting with their own hands; on December 7 Lin’s essay “Mourning Xu Zhimo” appeared in the Chenbao.⁠[14][18]

The news shook the literary world in China, and teachers and friends including Hu Shih, Tao Menghe, Zheng Zhenduo, Ling Shuhua, Lin Huiyin, Yu Shangyuan, Wu Mi and Chen Mengjia wrote a great many reminiscences and assessments. The German sinologist and poet Vincenz Hundhausen (1878–1955) wrote a memorial article in German, “Remembering Zhimo”, which appeared in the Tianjin German-language newspaper Dehua Ribao on December 6, 1931, the day of Xu’s memorial meeting, and recorded the memorial gathering that Peking University held for him; Hundhausen also translated Xu’s poem “The Joy of a Snowflake” into German in full, one of its earliest German translations.⁠[15]

His father, Xu Shenru, was convinced that Lu Xiaoman had caused his son’s death: had she not spent money like water, Xu Zhimo would not have taken on jobs everywhere to make ends meet and spent years travelling between Beijing and Shanghai. The Xu family bore her deep resentment thereafter, and when a memorial meeting for Xu Zhimo was held in Xiashi, Haining, Lu Xiaoman could not attend because Xu Shenru prevented it. Dai Yongxia writes that after Xu’s death Lu Xiaoman changed her ways, wore plain clothes for the rest of her life and never again went to any place of entertainment; Dongfang Xiaosi writes in People’s Digest that she finally put aside all finery and worked on putting Xu Zhimo’s manuscripts in order.⁠[1][22][20]

In the spring of 1932 Xu Zhimo was buried at Wanshiwo on Dongshan (East Hill) in his home town of Xiashi, Haining; at the time a number of well-known writers and people from all walks of life in Xiashi held a public memorial rite for him at the Meitan on Xishan (West Hill).⁠[21]

The Xu ancestral house in Xiashi where he was born has long since been demolished; the surviving house on Ganhe Street in Xiashi is the marriage house his father built for him and Lu Xiaoman. In March 1997 Xu Jikai donated the house to the Haining Municipal People’s Government; Zhang Enjie writes that an exhibition wall in the former residence gives a detailed account of the plane crash.⁠[21]

In 2008 a stone carved with the first and last lines of “Second Farewell to Cambridge” was placed beside the bridge at King’s College, Cambridge, drawing Chinese visitors who grew up with his poetry.⁠[4]

On August 10, 2018, during the fourth Cambridge Xu Zhimo Poetry and Art Festival, the Xu Zhimo memorial garden at King’s College, Cambridge, opened; it was the first Chinese garden built on any college campus in Cambridge. The garden took three years to plan and build and was initiated by Steven Coghill, the college’s senior horticulturist; the festival’s chair, Alan Macfarlane, said it was designed on Taoist and Buddhist principles, with English trees around it and plants native to Xu’s home region of Haining, and that it contains calligraphy by famous Chinese, including Mo Yan, illustrating the poem. Its centre is shaped as yin and yang, the path through it is inscribed with the second and third stanzas of “Second Farewell to Cambridge”, and a bench is named the Crescent Moon Bench after the Crescent Moon Society. His eldest grandson, Xu Shanzeng, was invited to Cambridge and read his grandfather’s best-known poem in the garden; Queen Elizabeth II sent a congratulatory letter to mark the opening.⁠[23][17]

His father, Xu Shenru, died lonely in Shanghai in March 1944; two years later Zhang Youyi and her son, Xu Jikai, reburied him beside Xu Zhimo’s grave on Dongshan in Xiashi.⁠[1]

The Jiemian article on Bound Feet and Western Dress writes that after the divorce Zhang Youyi stayed in Germany for three more years and trained as a kindergarten teacher; back in China she became vice-president of the Shanghai Women’s Commercial and Savings Bank and general manager of the Yunshang fashion company; her second husband was a doctor named Su. Her life story, Bound Feet and Western Dress, was written by Pang-Mei Natasha Chang; CITIC Press published a Chinese edition in April 2017.⁠[7]

His elder son, Xu Jikai, was born to Zhang Youyi in the fourth year of the marriage; Zhang Enjie writes that he was only 13 when Xu Zhimo died. Xu Jikai went to the United States in 1947, worked for a global import–export trading company, and died in the United States in 2007; he had three daughters and a son.⁠[1][21]

His grandson Xu Shanzeng (Tony S. Hsu) was born in Shanghai and, with his three younger sisters, was raised by his grandmother Zhang Youyi; in 1949 he went with her to Hong Kong and then on to the United States to rejoin his parents. Chen Yuxian, writing in The Paper’s Shanghai Review of Books in 2018, says he grew up in New York StateNew York (state)New York is a state in the eastern United States; its capital is Albany and its largest city is New York City. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on July 26, 1788, becoming the 11th state to join the Union, and its population in the 2020 census was 20,201,249.Open the full entry, earned a doctorate at YaleYale UniversityYale University is a research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Its predecessor, the Collegiate School, received a charter in 1701. Trustees chose New Haven in 1716; the institution became Yale College in 1718 and Yale University in 1887. Yale provides undergraduate, graduate and professional education and has 14 undergraduate residential colleges. As of October 2026, its president was Maurie McInnis, who took office in July 2024. In 2026, Yale expanded aid for incoming undergraduates and celebrated its 325th anniversary.Open the full entry and worked in technology, and after retiring travelled the world to follow his grandfather’s footsteps and gather material for a biography, which he self-published in 2016 as Chasing the Modern (Chinese translation published by CITIC Press in 2018); he does not read Chinese. China Daily calls him Xu Zhimo’s oldest grandson.⁠[24][23]

The profile on China Daily’s Zhejiang channel states that he was an elder cousin of the martial-arts novelist Jin Yong.⁠[3]

Lü Jiaxiang dates their first meeting in England to 1920, the 2025 Red Star News article to 1921. Lü writes that Xu divorced Zhang Youyi in pursuit of Lin Huiyin but that the two never became a couple; Xu married Lu Xiaoman in 1926 and Lin married Liang Sicheng in 1928, and each found a home for their love.⁠[14][18]

Qi Ling, author of the Red Star News article, argues that as early as 1919 Lin Changmin and Liang Qichao had tacitly settled the future marriage of Lin Huiyin and Liang Sicheng, and the two had begun courting; Xu was married and was Liang Qichao’s student, and Lin, raised with a strict education as a young lady, admired his talent but would not give up Liang for Xu. Writing of their contacts at Xiangshan in 1931, the article says that the feeling between Xu and Lin could go no further than that.⁠[18]

Lü Jiaxiang writes that after Xu’s death Lin Huiyin wrote the free-verse poem “Don’t Throw It Away”, which Zhu Ziqing recommended in an essay; Zhu did not say who the “you” of the poem was, and Lü considers that readers who take it to be Xu Zhimo are probably right. The Red Star News article notes that Lin never said for whom “You Are the April of This World” was written, and that Liang Sicheng said she wrote it for Liang Congjie; some have speculated that it was written for Xu, while the article’s author thinks it far more likely a poem for her child.⁠[14][18]

He also wrote under the pen names Yunzhonghe and Nanhu. His poetry collections include Poems of Zhimo (1925), A Night in Florence (1927), The Fierce Tiger (1931) and Roaming in the Clouds (1932); many poems in Poems of Zhimo express concern and sympathy for the lives of the poor and celebrate ideals, love and freedom. Encyclopaedia Britannica notes that he published four collections of poetry and several volumes of translations from various languages.⁠[8][13][2]

His essay collections include Fallen Leaves (1926), Self-Dissection (1928) and Autumn (1931); he published a collection of short stories, Roulette (1930), and wrote the play Bian Kungang (1928) with Lu Xiaoman; his letters and diaries include Love Letters to Mei (1936), written with Lu Xiaoman, and Zhimo’s Diaries (1947); his translations include Stories of Katherine Mansfield (1927) and Voltaire’s Candide (1927). Later editors compiled the Selected Works of Xu Zhimo (1935) and his Complete Works.⁠[8]

“Second Farewell to Cambridge” has been set to music several times. The China Project writes that its first musical recording was commissioned by King’s College and arranged by John Rutter, performed by Bo Wang in an operatic, choral style, and that Stella Chang recorded a ballad version in 1989.⁠[25]

Dai Yongxia writes that a memorial stone has been erected in front of Beida Mountain in Jinan; his article shows a photograph of the Xu Zhimo Memorial Park in Jinan.⁠[22]

In 2010, the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations between China and India, a bronze statue of Tagore given by India was placed near Xu Zhimo’s former residence in Shanghai to commemorate the deep friendship between the two men. The World of Chinese writes that the Cambridge festival named after Xu began in 2015, with a theme each year celebrating some aspect of British–Chinese exchange.⁠[16][4]

Encyclopaedia Britannica writes that he sought to free Chinese poetry from its traditional forms and to reshape it under the influence of Western poetry and the vernacular language. Renditions at the Chinese University of Hong Kong calls him one of the most distinguished romantic poets of twentieth-century Chinese literature and a representative figure of the Crescent Moon school; The China Project calls him a leading figure of the modern Chinese poetry movement of the early twentieth century. The China Daily Zhejiang profile states that he advocated metrical verse and contributed much to the development of the New Poetry in China.⁠[2][13][25][3]

Hu Shih wrote in an epitaph for Xu that Xu’s philosophy of life was a simple faith consisting of just three words: love, freedom and beauty. The China Daily Zhejiang profile holds that this pursuit gave his work much of its inspiration but at the same time ruined his life. The World of Chinese writes that Chinese scholars like to compare his life and work with those of English Romantic poets such as Shelley and Keats, and that “Second Farewell to Cambridge” is taught in Chinese schools as an example of Western influence on modern Chinese poetry; it adds that his personal life is remembered mostly for its emotional entanglements.⁠[4][3]

Han Shishan writes that to the end of his life Xu was a sincere patriot, anxious about the state of affairs and about the future of his ancient nation.⁠[6]