XU ZHIMO

Xu Zhimo was a famous Chinese poet and writer, whose poem ‘Second Farewell to Cambridge’ is known by heart by many Chinese school children. His life and work was central to the first great opening up of Chinese to Western artistic and literary influences during the 1920s and 1930's.

His gifts as a writer were inspired by the one year he spent at King’s College, Cambridge, between 1921-22. Cambridge was just recovering from the horrors of the First World War. It was filled with great scientists, philosophers and writers.

In particular there was the ‘Bloomsbury Group’, with its connections to London and King’s College, including over the years, individuals such as the political scientist and philosopher G. Lowes Dickenson, the writers Virginia Woolf and E. M. Forster and the artists Duncan Grant and Roger Fry. Many of which became Xu Zhimo’s friends and mentors, and corresponded with him over the years, meeting him on his two return visits to Cambridge.