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c h a p t e r 1 3  Home China faced a wide range of global confrontations in the early 1960s while struggling with domestic issues. The Great Leap Forward plunged the whole country into a terrible economic and political ordeal. There was famine on a massive scale between 1959 and 1962. In the international arena, the country faced an American government that was committed to containing communism by enforcing an economic blockade, arming Taiwan with its latest weapons, and supporting the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan cause. The Chinese government condemned the Americans who would never “lay down their butcher knife and become Buddhas.” At the same time, the relationship between China and the Soviet Union deteriorated. The ideological conflict between these two giant socialist states deepened, resulting in the Sino-Soviet rift when all Russian experts and advisers were summoned home and hundreds of projects and contracts were abruptly cancelled. For overseas Chinese in the United States, however, returning home remained a dream.1 Yang Lien-sheng became a naturalized U.S. citizen in September 1961. On December 10, he composed a short poem after waking up from a dream: The plum trees in my hometown have blossomed many times, And their lingering fragrance touched me in my dream at the world’s end. Pursuing official titles might be other people’s ambition, I am content with my home, caring for my wife and children.2 Many Chinese believe that one’s hometown is more than simply an essential element in human life; it is a sacred entity that they all respect and cherish. It is the place where their homes and families are located—its water, air, and earth providing them with life, identity, and social connections. For those who have no choice but to stay away from their hometown, bittersweet homesickness becomes a part of life, more pungent as time goes by. Though far from his hometown, Yang still had a home in which he was father and husband. Chiang Yee, now nearly sixty 208 home 209 years of age, was separated from both his hometown and his family. A self-abasing attitude became his only effective means to fight the pain of loneliness. I am no Sun Traveller though also on a journey to the West; Hometown in my dream is nothing but an illusion. I have realized lately that my life is full of failures: I fail to be a husband, a father, and a grandpa.3 Yee’s tone was not merely self-deprecating or, to use Yang’s term,“pedantic.”4 The poem was about his identity in relation to his home, hometown, and accomplishments . He admired birds and used to envy them “for the matchless freedom which their wings give them.” “No bird has ever caged itself,” he once commented; by comparison, “men cage themselves—in homes and offices and labour camps.”5 However, this poem expresses a pungent bitterness contradictory to his earlier manifested inclinations. Like a tired traveler, Yee found himself looking for a “home,” a haven for serenity and closeness. The University of Virginia was planning to create a new arts center, and it appointed Frederick D. Nichols as chairman of the development committee. Whitehill, who was Nichols’s friend, was invited to serve on the committee, and he recommended Yee to join as well. Yee accepted the invitation and made an unequivocal statement about his theories in art: he favored “art with discipline” because “art and craftsmanship are inseparable.” To him, “mere ‘form’ or ‘idea’ will not be enough for a great piece of work of art.”6 At the time, abstract expressionism was in fashion. Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Hans Hofmann, and Franz Kline, for example, were exploring spontaneous expression of their subjective selves. They believed that only in the seemingly irrational form can a modern painter correctly reproduce the modern world. Yee’s statement clearly manifested his taste and criterion. The committee, a small but congenial group, met in Virginia and visited the proposed site. They strongly recommended that the new center be placed at a site near the original Jefferson buildings and Alderman Library. The university accepted their recommendation, and the center was completed in 1970. This external service proved beneficial to Yee. Professors at Columbia were encouraged to engage in more activities both on and off campus, and Yee had been “pestered” by this all the time. He always replied, “I have no honors!” This service at...

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