15.10.1943–?
Xi Murong
Xi Murong was born in 1943 in Chongqing and grew up in Hong Kong and Taiwan. She studied painting in Taipei and at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels, where her first exhibition was held in 1966. She became known through the poetry collection “Seven Miles of Fragrance” (1981), followed soon after by a second, “Unregrettable Youth”.
Biography
Xi Murong held her first exhibition in February 1966 in Brussels, where she was studying oil painting at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. She was twenty-two.
She was born on 15 October 1943 in Chongqing. Her family was Mongol by origin, from Mingan Banner in Inner Mongolia; the poet’s Mongolian name is Muren Xi Lianbo. Her father was elected by the Chahar Mongols to the first Legislative Yuan, the national legislature of the Republic of China, and her mother sat in the first National Assembly. In 1949 the family moved to Hong Kong, where the girl went to the primary school attached to Tongji Secondary School, and in 1953 she moved on to Taiwan. By some accounts she began writing poetry at thirteen. In 1959 Xi Murong entered the fine art department of National Taiwan Normal University and graduated in 1963. Right after that she began teaching at Renai Middle School in Taipei. In 1964 she went to Belgium and took up oil painting at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts; besides oils, she worked in printmaking. A Belgian gold medal is also mentioned, but no details of it turned up, and it needs to be checked separately.
Her first solo exhibition in Taiwan took place in 1974. From April 1979 she turned to laser painting and held several solo shows. She taught in the fine art department of Tunghai University and at the National Hsinchu University of Education. In 1976 she received an award in the literary prize run by the newspaper “United Daily News”.
Her best-known book appeared in 1981: the poetry collection “Seven Miles of Fragrance” (Qīlǐ Xiāng). It sold so fast that it was reprinted several times within a short period; sources give differing numbers of reprints. A few years later came a second collection, “Unregrettable Youth” (Wúyuàn de Qīngchūn). Her poem “Song of Going Beyond the Great Wall” was performed in pop arrangements by the Taiwanese singers Tsai Chin and Chang Ching-fang. The song “Father’s Prairie, Mother’s River”, set to other poems by Xi Murong, was made by the Mongol singer Qi Feng from China.
Besides poetry, she published essay collections: “There Is a Song”, “The Golden Saddle”, “My Home Is on the Plateau”, “Twenty-One Letters to Hairihan”, “Give Me an Island”. Books on painting also appeared, among them “Exploration of the Soul” and “Laser Art”. Later came the poetry books “Nine Pieces of Time” (1987), “Prairie of Time” (1997), “In the Name of Poetry” (2011) and “The Age of Heroes” (2020). She also published poems with her own drawings.
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