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China: 'Yue Fei travelling by night at Cuiwei Pavilion, Chizhou'. Su Manshu (1884-1918), 1907

China: 'Yue Fei travelling by night at Cuiwei Pavilion, Chizhou'. Su Manshu (1884-1918), 1907

Yue Fei (24 March 1103 – 27 January 1142), courtesy name Pengju, was a military general who lived in the Southern Song dynasty. His ancestral home was in Xiaoti, Yonghe Village, Tangyin, Xiangzhou, Henan (in present-day Tangyin County, Anyang, Henan). He is best known for leading Southern Song forces in the wars in the 12th century between Southern Song and the Jurchen-ruled Jin dynasty in northern China before being put to death by the Southern Song government in 1142.

He was granted the posthumous name Wumu by Emperor Xiaozong in 1169, and later granted the posthumous title King of È (鄂王) by Emperor Ningzong in 1211. Widely seen as a patriot and national folk hero in China, since after his death, Yue Fei has evolved into a standard epitome of loyalty in Chinese culture.

Su Manshu (simplified Chinese: 苏曼殊; traditional Chinese: 蘇曼殊; pinyin: Sū Mànshū, 1884–1918) was a Chinese writer, poet, painter, revolutionist, and a translator. He was born as Xuanying in 1884 in Yokohama, Japan. He later adopted Su Manshu as a Buddhist name. His father was a Cantonese merchant, and his mother was his father's Japanese maid. He went back to Guangdong, China when he was five while his mother stayed in Japan. He became a Buddhist monk three times during his life; once at the age of 12, later in 1899, and again in 1903. He studied in Japan and traveled to many Buddhist sites including those in India, and Java. He was involved in revolutionary activity against the Qing Dynasty writing articles and papers. He mastered many languages — English, French, Japanese and Sanskrit. He died at the age of 34 in Shanghai.

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