Rural woman's poems go viral online

By Wu Jin
0 Comment(s)Print E-mail China.org.cn, January 23, 2015
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Yu Xiuhua, a woman from the countryside in Hengdian, Hubei Province, never expected that her poems which she composed randomly for fun would become a big hit online.

A rough translation of Yu Xiuhua's popular poem "Crossing half the country to sleep with you" by China.org.cn. [Photo/China.org.cn] 

 

Nor could she ever imagine that her melancholy rhymes would touch the heart of comparative literary scholar Shen Rui, who considered Xu's talent equal to the famous 19th century American poet Emily Dickinson.

"I don't know Emily Dickinson," Yu chuckled in an interview with Southern Metropolis Daily, "I always pay great reverence to readers so long as they inquire nothing of my personal life, focusing simply on the lines of my poems."

But despite her surprising success in the past few days, her personal health is hardly a topic that can be ignored. Born in 1976, Yu was struck with cerebral palsy at birth due to the deficient oxygen supply during delivery. In the ensuing years, she has tumbled, trembled and stuttered uncontrollably because of her damaged cerebral nerves, which deprive her of many of her basic rights, such as the chance to receive higher education.

Her disability prevented her from continuing her study in high school, which she dropped out of two years after her admittance. Not knowing what to do, she was introduced to her present husband at 19 years old.

Yu later recalled her marriage as "a sin of my youthfulness."

"Completely upset at the marriage when I was 19 years old, I am no longer left with an intact body. The feeling rippled through in my ensuing life and has resulted in my loneliness today, which I wasn't aware of at a younger age," Yu once wrote in her poem about her marriage.

However, the unhappy marriage hasn't resulted in divorce even though the couple has separated. In an interview with Southern Metropolis Daily, Yu's husband Yin Shiping said they simply have contradictory characters. But despite the differences, life must go on. Yu and Yin's son is now a freshman in a university in Wuhan, capital of Hubei Province.

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