Talk:Guo Moruo

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[edit] Struggled to death???

The article states

"However, this was not enough to protect his family and both of his sons were struggled to death by Red Guards."

What does this mean? Is this a misprint for "strangled to death," which would make sense in English? If so, it should be fixed.

If on the other hand, during the cultural revolution, people were actually "struggled to death," then this needs to be clarified. I know that during the cultural revolution there was a lot of "struggling." I could understand that someone was "struggled with" so vehemently that he or she died subsequently. But I never heard of people being "struggled to death."

If this was a common practice during the cultural revolution, then it would seem that it needs its own article. The article on the cultural revolution indicates that "these struggle sessions often led to physical violence". Maybe this is what the article refers to. If so, then that should be made clear. Bill Jefferys (talk) 03:56, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

I reckon that this indeed must be a Cultural Revolution era expression, meaning something like "died as a result of the Red Guards persecution". The page history shows that the original text was put in by an anonymous contribution, but one who appears to have made knowledgeable edits elsewhere. A cursory Google and Google News Archive search did not unearth any details other than a reference to a (non-free) New York Times article for the late 1960s, mentioning one of GMR's sons being driven to suicide by persecution:

 news.google.com)
 "Suicide of Chinese Reported
 $3.95 - New York Times - Jul 10, 1968
 The Moscow radio reported today that the son of Kuo Mo-jo, Communist China's leading in..... , 
 has committed suicide after systematic   attacks on him in the ... "

Now, I agree that the phrase probably should be indeed reworded or clarified - but to do it, one needs to find the details (names of the sons, when and how they actually died - or were reported to die). But online search is not very useful here - somebody with access to a good library may be able to find a good book on GMR that has these details. Vmenkov (talk) 23:19, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

This is very useful information, and more or less confirms my guess. I hope that someone with access to more definitive information can find a better phrasing. At least this cite from the NYT gives good information on the death of one of his sons (although it doesn't seem to recognize that he had two sons, and apparently doesn't name the son that committed suicide). Thanks for your research! Bill Jefferys (talk) 23:46, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Zhou

In the article, the place of Guo's maternal grandfather's place of service is identified as "Huangping prefecture (zhou) (in eastern Guizhou)." It appears that 'zhou' is being used as a synonym for 'prefecture'. But the article on Prefecture (China) gives 地区级 (dìqūjí) for this term. It appears that the article may be thinking of 州 (zhōu), which is a term for sub-prefecture (according to the MDBG Chinese-English online dictionary).

Would someone with more expertise in Chinese than I have check if this is correct, and if so, it would appear appropriate to edit the article to add 州 (zhōu) at the indicated point in the article, and to edit the article on Prefecture (China) to add this character as an alternative. Bill Jefferys (talk) 00:50, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

This zhou comes from the David Tod Roy's book on Guo Moruo's youth. Presumably, the author uses zhou because that's how the adminstrative unit in question was referred either in the days of GMR's ancestor, or when GMR wrote his autobiography, and I presume that "prefecture" was his translation of this term - which is an accepted usage for Qing-era zhou, according to our article on Zhou (country subdivision), even if in today's PRC this term is used for different units. Vmenkov (talk) 03:39, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Your explanation here and edit of the article solves the problem. Bill Jefferys (talk) 22:34, 23 April 2008 (UTC)