Jin Xuan

Jin Xuan, courtesy name Hengyu, was born in 1875 in Daan Village, Xixiang, Jiangyin County, Jiangsu Province, and later moved with her family to Xianzhuang, Jiangyin. Her father, Jin Cheng, courtesy name Xinxiang, once held the Qing dynasty post of Guangdong salt envoy; the family regarded her as the apple of their eye. Jin Xuan married Qu Shiwei; their wedding was held according to local custom, and a month after the ceremony they moved to Tianxiang Building at Ba Gui Hall. Jin Xuan influenced the growth of her children, especially the early development of Qu Qiubai.

On the night of the fifth day of the first lunar month in 1916, Jin Xuan, by the light of a kerosene lamp, wrote a will asking someone to take care of her children. The text mentions debt collectors pressing for debts, the year-end approaching, cold wind and snow, a shortage of rice and firewood, hunger beyond endurance, and shame as a mother. She described a brood of intelligent and lovely children, who had been born into the world yet were not granted human rights; she asked her friends and relatives to raise them; she proclaimed that Heaven’s grace would not be forgotten and that the spirits would bless. She then swallowed the heads of two boxes of yellow phosphorus matches and drank liquor to take her own life. Although she was rescued, she died on the sixth day, during the You hour, at the age of 42.