From ancient times to the present, homosexuality has always been a very controversial group of people, extreme people will think that those who do not conform to the traditional gender image have homosexual tendencies, such as those boys who are not "masculine" enough and girls who are not "submissive", and will even be excluded and bullied.
Although there are anecdotes about the goodness of longyang and the habit of breaking sleeves in ancient China, homosexuality has always been inconsistent with mainstream values in people's minds, and what is more, it was not until 1973 that homosexuality was removed from the list of mental illnesses.
Therefore, many homosexuals in order to hide their true sexual orientation, and even deceive others to marry, the powerful people are even more so, in order to maintain their reputation, almost no one will take the initiative to admit that they are gay, the person we want to talk about today is an exception, he is a second generation of the army, but openly admits his true sexual orientation, even if he is not valued by his father for a lifetime, but he still chooses to live with his lover for a lifetime, he is the famous Taiwanese writer Mr. Bai Xianyong.
<h1>Half a life of ups and downs</h1>
As a writer who mainly focuses on realistic themes, Bai Xianyong can find projections of social problems and even traces of his own experience in many of his works, and his life experience is indeed a twist.
Bai Xianyong was the eighth child of Bai Chongxi, a senior Kuomintang general, whose father had always been known as the "Chinese God of War" in the Japanese army, and although his family was prominent, the first half of Bai Xianyong's life was not spared in the turbulent era of the time. Bai Xianyong was born in Guilin, Guangxi, and the beauty of "Guilin Landscape and Water Jia Tianxia" accompanied him for 7 years, which was his aesthetic enlightenment and the beautiful dream of representing childhood.
In 1944, at the age of 7, Bai Xianyong also waved goodbye to this dreamy land with the withdrawal of his father's troops, and then he traveled to Chongqing, Shanghai and Nanjing, where he spent his youth.
At that time, he could not go to school to study because of tuberculosis, and he could only study at home by himself, so he often walked to the streets of Chongqing to relax when he was sleepy, but what caught his eye was many air raid shelters built to avoid air raids, and the pain caused by the war drew a strong stroke on his young soul, making Bai Xianyong, who loved the great rivers and mountains of the motherland, even more determined in his heart.
Today we can still find these emotional projections in his works, and his love for the motherland and the nation is engraved in his bones.
In 1948, Bai Xianyong followed his father to Hong Kong, where he received an open Western-style education and soon after moved to Taiwan. As soon as Bai Xianyong was born, he experienced the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the Civil War of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party of China, and the first 12 years of his life were all the taste of artillery fire in retrospect, so he would say, "I really settled down after I arrived in Taiwan." ”
This floating and heavy life experience also created his sensitivity and compassion, which is indispensable for literary workers. However, even though he was already facing his homeland across the strait, he was still very concerned about the development of the mainland of the motherland.
In 1956, because he wanted to participate in the construction of the Three Gorges Dam, he resolutely chose the Department of Hydraulic Engineering when he enrolled in the university, but in a year of study and life, he found that his interest was not in this, and he could not continue to study, so he transferred to the Department of Literature of National Taiwan University to study English literature, and National Taiwan University also became the starting point for his fame.
<h1>A strict father is still a loving father</h1>
Among Bai Chongxi's ten children, nine are extroverted, only Bai Xianyong is born introverted, so he has received the least attention, which can be said to be the most unappreciated child of the father, but he has become the most famous child of the Bai family.
For the father, Bai Xianyong's feelings are very complicated, the absence of the father role when he was a child doomed the two people to have a shallow emotional basis, and in the personality reason, whenever Bai Chongxi is not easy to go home, the other brothers and sisters have already rushed up to spoil, only Bai Xianyong is an exception, he prefers to read quietly in the corner.
Tuberculosis at the age of 7 destroyed all of Bai Xianyong's normal social interactions, but made him love literature more, he once said that "my life is related to "Dream of the Red Chamber". In the small attic of his home, he began to create non-stop, revealing open-mindedness and warmth between the lines, and bai Xianyong explored more social issues as an adult, such as the survival status of homosexuality.
Bai Chongxi is very strict with the child's tutoring, in the childhood Bai Xianyong seems not even to have the family's long-term workers to come kindly, but Bai Chongxi has never interfered with Bai Xianyong's decision, even because people like to quit school and retake the exam, even if it is a "shameful" thing to write about homosexuality, so Bai Xianyong is also very grateful for his father's respect, which makes him have the confidence to face everything, all of which is also out of Bai Chongxi's respect for culture.
In Bai Xianyong's heart, Bai Chongxi is both a strict father and a loving father, teaching himself the truth of how to behave in the world, and also telling himself that his home is an eternal harbor.
<h1>Unforgettable love</h1>
The most controversial label on Bai Xianyong's body is not the second generation of the army, but homosexuality, and he believes that "this is innate." Indeed, perhaps it is his innately sensitive personality that allows him to keenly discover his own distinctive sexual orientation, because of the well-read and open-mindedness, he also believes that "between people and people, all natural feelings are lovely, and it is insulting to human nature to consciously stifle these feelings." ”
So he can quickly accept the fact that he is a homosexual, fortunately, at the age of 17, he met the person he was destined to be, Wang Guoxiang. That year, they were all young and ignorant high school sophomores, because of a late arrival, two people bumped into each other on the stairs, and the general beginning of this idol drama collided with the spark of love, which was 38 years.
Bai Xianyong once wrote in his article, "The first love is like a smallpox, once, it will never be sent again in a lifetime." His unforgettable first love with Wang Guoxiang really confirmed his words.
Giving up his dream for the sake of the other party is a very irrational act in the eyes of many people, but it is Wang Guoxiang who is willing to pay for Bai Xianyong. Originally, both of them were able to guarantee the guarantee of National Taiwan University, but Bai Xianyong wanted to study at Taiwan Cheng Kung University, which ranked high in the Department of Hydraulic Engineering, and Wang Guoxiang also enrolled in the Electrical Engineering Department of Taiwan Cheng Kung University.
Even if Bai Xianyong repented a year later and planned to re-enter National Taiwan University, Wang Guoxiang did not have a complaint, but worked hard to successfully transfer colleges and departments, becoming the only transfer student recruited by the Department of Physics of National Taiwan University that year, which shows Wang Guoxiang's excellence. The feelings of the two people are heating up day by day, and this kind of love that transcends the constraints of society and crosses gender makes them especially cherished, and they rent a room outside the school and live together sweetly all day.
It may be that the heavenly jealous talent, Wang Guoxiang was detected in the third year of college to get "aplastic anemia", which is a disease with a recovery rate as low as 5%, once suffering from the scythe of the god of death is always hanging overhead, but Bai Xianyong did not give up his lover, he sought medical treatment everywhere, running around for Wang Guoxiang's condition, and finally the emperor did not pay off.
They happened to find a very effective medicine for this disease, Wang Guoxiang's condition improved day by day, and he could learn to be a bully with Bai Xianyong, the two of them went abroad for further study, and built their own love base in Santa Barbara in the United States, named "Hidden Valley", where they accompanied each other, soaked each other, raised flowers and grass, and lived the life of a fairy couple.
<h1>Heaven and man are eternally separated</h1>
Since the age of 17, Wang Guoxiang and Bai Xianyong have spent 38 years together, if it were not for the recurrence of Wang Guoxiang's "aplastic anemia", their lives would have been calm and warm.
In that era when there was no bone marrow transplantation technology, everything could only depend on luck, and Wang Guoxiang, who was 55 years old at the time, obviously did not have the resistance and good luck of his youth, even if Bai Xianyong sought famous doctors and medicines around the world, Wang Guoxiang's situation was still deteriorating day by day.
Western medicine in the United States said that it was helpless, Taiwanese Chinese medicine regretted that it could not help, and the mainland's secret recipe was also true and false, but as long as someone told Bai Xianyong that this could have an effect on Wang Guoxiang's condition, they were willing to try again, even if it sounded very strange FangZi was no exception, Bai Xianyong even said: "At that time, if someone told me that there was a divine doctor on the top of the Himalayas, I would climb up and pray for the elixir." At that time, saving Wang Guoxiang's life was more important to me than anything else. ”
However, in the face of the ruthlessness of fate, he can only watch his lover weaken day by day, until he closes his eyes forever because of cardiac arrest in the hospital.
This time, Bai Xianyong, who has always been inseparable from Wang Guoxiang, chose to give up, no longer let the doctor electrocute for cardiopulmonary resuscitation, calmly accepted the departure of his lover, and calmly arranged all the aftermath. On August 7, 1992, in the same sound of cicadas as the day of the encounter, Bai Xianyong shook Wang Guoxiang's hand and sent him on the last journey of his life, and since then he has been separated forever.
After Wang Guoxiang's death, Bai Xianyong once wrote an article "Tree As It Is" to express his nostalgia for his lover, he looked at the flowers and plants planted with Wang Guoxiang, but he saw the desolation and vacancy in the lush greenery, and saw the "heavenly rift that the Nüwa refining stone could not make up", when he lost his lover and survived alone in the world.
For this pain, Bai Xianyong commented: "I spent all my energy and all my efforts to fight this battle, but in the end we still lost, a defeat. ”
Knowing each other for decades, suffering and sharing with the world's vision, but in the end failed to grow old, this is the ruthlessness of fate, but this feeling that transcends the world and gender is still talked about by people, just like the feelings between his brother Zhang Guorong and his same-sex partner Mr. Tang Hede, true love will not be separated by time and distance.
Bai Xianyong
Representative Kunqu opera producer, "Taipei People"
Bai Xianyong (born July 11, 1937) is a Hui writer of contemporary Taiwan, born in Guilin, Guangxi. The son of Bai Chongxi, a senior General of the Chinese Kuomintang, he graduated from National Taiwan University and the University of Iowa. He is currently a Bowen Chair Professor at the University of Chinese, Hong Kong, and the Honorary Director of the Kunqu Research Promotion Programme of the University of Chinese, Hong Kong. —— Quoted from toutia encyclopedia
Text/Yu Xin