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Chu weaves an eclectic tapestry of culture through the personal history and musings of her mentor, Hu Lancheng, and his estranged ex-wife, the acclaimed Eileen Chang. Modern and ancient philosophy from both East and West, alongside myths, religions, modern science, and literature, all form a synthetic unity of humanity and the world. Originally published as the sixth essay in Chu T'ien-wen's memoir A Flower Remembers Its Past.
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Upon the publication of the inaugural issue of The Threes (Sansan jikan ...) in April 1977, Hu Lancheng ... wrote us a letter: "I'd figured yesterday (the tenth) was the first issue of The Threes, and I was so excited that I couldn't sleep the night before. To celebrate, I got up before dawn the next day and drank a glass of brandy. Probably I can read the issue you mail to me on the fifteenth . . . "
I can't help but recall that in the last two years of the Sino-Japanese War, Hu Lancheng and Eileen Chang ... published four issues of Bitter Bamboo (Kuzhu ...), the cover image of which was drawn by Yan Ying .... The table of contents included "A Plea to Hold the National People's Congress" ("Qiu kai guomin huiyi" ...), "Unofficial History of Chinese Revolutions" ("Zhongguo geming waishi" ...), "The Tradition of Civilizations" ("Wenming de chuantong" ...), "To the Japanese and the Chinese" ("Gao ribenren ji zhongguoren" ...), and "Yen'an Government: So What?" ("Yan'an zhengfu you zenyang" ...). There were also Eileen Chang's essays "On Music" ("Tan yinyue" ...) and "One's Own Writing" ("Ziji de wenzhang" ...), her short story "Indian Summer: Ah Xiao's Autumn Lament" ("Guihua zheng ahxiao beiqiu" ...), the poems of Lu Yishi ... (whose pen name is Ji Xuan ...), and essays translated by Yan Ying. Compared with other magazines Chang contributed to, Bitter Bamboo had more sundries.
The Threes published twenty-eight issues. Hu Lancheng sent us letters to praise all the issues except the last one, which was published after he passed away. In 1979 we established The Threes Bookstore Publisher in order to publish Zen Is a Flower (Chan shi yizhi hua ...). Hu Lancheng used the alias Li Qing ??£? for the book, and began using...