New stone installed with China's best-known poem
A white marble stone has been installed at the back of King's bearing a verse from the China's best-known poem. 'Saying Goodbye to Cambridge Again' is by arguably the greatest poet of 20th century China, Xu Zhimo, and has an emotional place in many Chinese people's hearts.
Xu Zhimo wrote the poem on the King's College Backs, and it is thought that the golden willow of the poem is the tree that stands beside the bridge at King's, near to where the stone has been installed. This poem is one which most educated Chinese know and many feel deeply moved by. It provides a bridge between China and Cambridge, and King's in particular. Many Chinese students think of this poem when leaving Cambridge.
Xu Zhimo died in 1931 at the young age of 36 in an air crash. He studied Politics and Economics 1921-2 and was associated with King's through Goldsworthy Llowes Dickinson. It was in Cambridge that, under the influence of poets such as Keats and Shelley, he began to write poetry.
A friend of Cambridge in China, Simon Jiang, arranged for the stone to be inscribed with the first two and last two lines of the poem and brought to Cambridge. It is made of white Beijing marble (the same stone used to construct the Forbidden City in Beijing) as a symbol of the continuing links between King's and China.
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