The Death of Yuli

The Death of Yuli originated from a sentimental love story between the author Xu Zhenya and the widow Chen Peifen. From 1909 to 1911, the author taught in Wuxi and sojourned in Cai Yinting, a famous calligrapher near the school. The Cai family had a widow, Chen Peifen, and his son had been learning from Xu Zhenya. Xu Zhenya and Chen Peifen went from mutual admiration to passionate love. They exchanged letters and sang poems. However, in the feudal society, widows were but miserable „undead“ and could only feel like a dry well. Remarriage was destructive to the morals. It was hard to get married with each oter. So Chen Peifen had to marry her niece Cai Ruizhu to Xu Zhenya. Therefore, the author wrote this novel and revealed the sorrow of love in his heart. He Mengxia, a primary school teacher, resided in the distant relative Cui's home and also served as the coach of his family. Cui's widowed wife, Bai Liying, came from big family, and her son Penglang was couched by He Mengxia. He Mengxia and Bai Liying fell in love from admiration. However, this is a love that is doomed to be hopeless. Due to her frustration, Bai Liying introduced her sister-in-law Junqian to He Mengxia and forced them to marry by using „the scheme of grafting trees and removing flowers, and the scheme of replacing Li with a stiff peach“. Bai Liying felt sorry for her dead husband. On one hand, she killed herself in order to cut off He Mengxia's feelings for herself. Junqian was a new woman trained by the school. She yearned for free marriage, and was not satisfied with her widowed sister-in-law's arranged marriage. Later, he found out the love between Bai Liying and He Mengxia and felt that she had killed Bai Liying, so she also killed herself. He Mengxia also wanted to die for love, but thought that a true man should die for state affairs, so she went abroad to study and participated in the Wuchang Uprising after returning home and at last he died for her country.