Marriage
Qi's marriage was arranged by his mother within the clan according to Qing Dynasty tradition. He married Zhang Baochen (1910–1975), a woman he had never met before, at the age of 21. With a lifestyle far removed from Qi, Zhang knew little about calligraphy or painting. She also brought to the family her little brother. Zhang devoted herself to the family. When Qi's mother died in 1957, a grateful Qi kneeled down before her to express his gratitude. Qi was labeled as a "rightist" in Mao's Anti-Rightist Movement in 1957, and became depressed. Zhang encouraged her husband to keep on working and sold her jewelry to buy books for Qi. During the Cultural Revolution (1966–76), Qi was arrested because of his noble family background and was forced to surrender his family's belongings. Zhang had packaged all Qi's works and collections and managed to keep them away hidden. The Red Guards searched their house several times to no avail. Zhang revealed the locations of the manuscripts to Qi before she died, and Qi later retrieved the pieces, which had been well covered in sheets of kraft paper.
Read more about this topic: Qigong (artist)
Famous quotes containing the word marriage:
“The parent who loves his child dearly but asks for nothing in return might qualify as a saint, but he will not qualify as a parent. For a child who can claim love without meeting any of the obligations of love will be a self-centered child and many such children have grown up in our time to become petulant lovers and sullen marriage partners because the promise of unconditional love has not been fulfilled.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)
“What exacerbates the strain in the working class is the absence of money to pay for services they need, economic insecurity, poor daycare, and lack of dignity and boredom in each partner’s job. What exacerbates it in upper-middle class is the instability of paid help and the enormous demands of the career system in which both partners become willing believers. But the tug between traditional and egalitarian models of marriage runs from top to bottom of the class ladder.”
—Arlie Hochschild (20th century)
“With my desire to write he seemed in full sympathy, and in urging our early marriage he argued that my first necessity was leisure in which to develop and to master my craft. It appeared to me that with such a man as teacher and guide I could not fail, and it was in a queer mixture of young love and vaulting ambition that I became a wife.”
—Rheta Childe Dorr (1866–1948)