Long distance love: A 50-Year Vigil
Li Danni’s father, Li Shuhua, was a Chinese expatriate from Meixian, Guangdong Province, who lived in Thailand. As a child, he returned to China to receive an education. During his time at Meizhou Middle School, he befriended Lin Fengmian, a future prominent artist. After the 1911 Revolution, Lin Fengmian led a group of 130 young men from Meizhou to explore the world. Li Shuhua, without informing his family, secretly joined them and traveled to France to study and work.
Li Shuhua married a French woman and returned to Beijing in the same year, where he became the head of the Music Department at the National Art School of Beijing, working alongside Lin Fengmian. On May 24, Li Shuhua’s only daughter was born in Beijing. She was named Li Chensheng, with her French name being Danni. Later, the entire family moved to Hangzhou with Lin Fengmian, where Li Shuhua continued teaching at the West Lake Art Academy’s Music Department.
In September 1953, Yuan Dibao from Shanghang, Fujian, enrolled in Zhejiang Medical College, becoming one of the first students in the public health discipline after the founding of the People’s Republic of China. His Russian language teacher was Li Danni, who had graduated from Zhejiang University’s Foreign Languages Department in 1950 and was fluent in English, French, Russian, German, and Chinese. The beautiful mixed-race woman was a year older than Yuan. They both had bright, intelligent eyes, and upon meeting, they instantly felt a mutual connection. Li Danni vividly recalled, “That was the largest class I ever taught, with 120 students!” Yuan Dibao, who was the class monitor and the representative for the Russian language course, scored perfect marks on every exam. His diligence and excellence left a deep impression on Danni, while Danni’s professional dedication greatly impressed him.
Li Danni mentioned, “We had a lot of contact. I often sought him out, probably because I was more proactive back then.” Yuan Dibao remembered, “We shared the same religious beliefs. She often lent me dictionaries, reference books, and even daily necessities… She even knitted a white wool sweater for me. I was very touched; we were just poor kids back then.”
However, she admitted, “At that time, we already had a certain feeling. We were very much alike; it was as if we were the same person.”
Destiny
Though petite, Li Danni had a stubborn personality, once she made up her mind, she wouldn’t easily give in. A notable example occurred on March 5, 1953, when Stalin passed away. The whole of China held memorials, and at Zhejiang Medical College, everyone voluntarily wore black armbands. However, Danni refused, saying, “Why should I wear one? No one in my family has died.” During the event, where students had to raise their hands multiple times to shout slogans, she found it tiresome. A fellow student, fearing she might cause trouble, grabbed her hand to raise it for her.
In early August 1955, due to a nationwide reorganization of higher education institutions, the public health department at Zhejiang Medical College, where Yuan Dibao studied, was to be merged with West China Medical College in Chengdu. Before leaving, Danni sensed that Yuan had something on his mind.
Danni recalled, “At that time, I had a premonition that he had something he didn’t dare tell me, fearing it would upset me.” While sitting by the pond at the Flower Harbor Viewing Fish Park, with colorful fish swimming by, Yuan, looking troubled, finally revealed his secret: just two weeks before leaving for college, pressured by his sister, Yuan had hastily married his sister’s colleague, Huang Xiuxue. At the same time, Danni learned that Yuan was about to leave for Chengdu.
Danni’s immediate reaction was that she had no right to build her happiness on another woman’s misfortune, stating, “I cannot accept the idea of taking someone else’s happiness.”
On August 5, 1955, just before Yuan left Hangzhou for Chengdu, they took a photograph together on the Su Causeway with the Three Pools Mirroring the Moon in the background. It was the last time their youthful faces were captured together.
Waiting
Despite their verbal “breakup” and actual separation, their feelings for each other never cooled. They wrote letters to each other every day, with each letter being at least 2,000 words long. To save money, they would accumulate a week’s worth of letters before sending them.
“I’m passionately in love with you, I’m passionately in love with you, missing you day and night just as you love me. If I am despondent over you, seeking your affection, I would rather be shattered into pieces… I pray that heaven grants us, grants us, grants us…” This was a letter Yuan wrote on the evening of September 17, 1955, under a park lamp.
It’s often said that love is selfish. Even though they deeply loved each other, and although Yuan’s marriage was more out of obedience to his sister, he never considered divorcing to remarry, and Danni never thought of asking him to do so.
In late March 1956, Danni decided to speak with the leadership at Zhejiang Medical College. By then, she had been an assistant teacher for six years, earning the same 60-yuan salary the entire time. Danni was a young person growing up in the new China, in an atmosphere of patriotism, and she too yearned for progress. She wanted to know about her future, but the leadership’s response, “We always feel that someone like you has no political awareness,” made her realize her situation. Her background in Catholicism and her strong-willed personality made her out of place in that environment. What was initially a request for hope turned into a sudden decision. She went home and told her mother that she wanted to return to France. Little did she know, it would be 55 years before she would see Yuan Dibao again.
After returning to France, Danni never fell in love or got married. She said, “I knew he never forgot about me, just as I never forgot about him. When I was writing the book Mixed Race, people often asked me, ‘You’re such a beautiful girl, we can’t believe no one ever loved you.’ I said, ‘Only one person lives in my heart, and only one boy ever truly loved me, and that was Yuan Dibao.'”
Holding On
On July 12, 1956, Danni and her mother arrived at the port of Marseille, France. She was eager to see her cousin, whom she had loved since she was seven, but her relatives looked down on them for returning from China. Since they were only allowed to carry $10 each when they left Shanghai, the mother and daughter lived in great poverty, and Danni’s Zhejiang University degree was of no use in finding a job in Lyon. Danni even considered suicide at one point. She once went to a pharmacy to have her ears pierced, crying out in pain to release her sorrow. Later, her grandmother in Thailand sent money to support them. Danni spent a year earning a certificate in shorthand and typing. On July 1, 1957, she was hired by a company where she worked continuously for decades. In 1960, Danni was granted French citizenship.
Helping from Afar
Meanwhile, in July 1957, Yuan Dibao graduated from West China Medical College in Chengdu and was assigned to work at the Xiamen Health and Epidemic Prevention Station.
After Danni moved to France, she kept in close contact with Yuan, initially sending her letters to the prevention station. “Oh, everyone would come to see my things; in the 1950s, it was still relatively open. But by the 1960s, it started to involve ideology, and I was accused of having connections with foreign countries. It was serious!” So Yuan asked Danni to send her letters to his sister’s house instead.
From 1959 to 1961, China experienced three years of economic hardship. During these years, Yuan’s three sons were born, one after another. Through their correspondence, Danni learned about the Yuan family’s living conditions. Despite Yuan’s reluctance, Danni continued to buy and send baby formula, biscuits, clothes, and toys to Xiamen under the guise of a French company shipping goods.
“I couldn’t tell them who it was. Sometimes, my wife would be curious about why I was always reading a letter, an English letter, so I would reveal a little: ‘This is my Russian teacher who was very kind to me, and the wool vest she gave me is still there.’ That’s all I said; I didn’t mention a passionate love affair. I also told her that Danni had written to ask what the children needed. She said, ‘No, no, no, don’t bother her!'”
Danni accepted this situation calmly, “He later had a very happy life. His children all turned out well; it’s a happy family. So sometimes I wonder if things would have been better if I had married him.”
Trials
In the summer of 1966, Danni and some girlfriends decided to climb the Alps. She daringly picked a white woolly flower called Edelweiss from a crevice on a cliff, intending to send it to Yuan. However, just as she was about to send the letter, she received an anonymous letter from Hong Kong. “The letter said, ‘Don’t write anymore, you’re causing harm.'” Danni immediately understood that it referred to Yuan in Xiamen
. Fearing she might indeed cause harm, she stopped writing.
It wasn’t until 1976 that Danni, overwhelmed with anxiety and concern, sent another letter to the old address of the prevention station. However, by that time, the station had already moved, and the letter was quickly returned, marked “no such person.” This was the only letter Danni kept that she had written to Yuan: “…In front of me is your letter from May 12, 1965, which seems to be our last correspondence. Nearly ten years of silence, are you still living on Xianhe Road? After much hesitation, I finally decided to write you this short letter. I hope you can read it…”
Danni returned to China three times, in 1980, 1986, and 2000, but each time, she failed to find Yuan. Eventually, she gave up, thinking, “Maybe it’s just as well. His life must be good, and his children are grown. If I suddenly appear again, what would he think?”
Reunited
In the 1970s, Yuan also sent seven or eight letters to Danni, but they were all returned. “I thought she might have moved to work in Marseille or Paris. I didn’t believe she was short-lived; she must still be alive and would write to me someday.”
In March 1994, Yuan’s wife, Huang Xiuxue, was diagnosed with gum cancer and passed away eight months later. Yuan then lived alone for nearly two decades in a small room in the Xinhua Road Health Bureau Dormitory in Xiamen, joking that he had become a “third-class citizen” — waiting to eat, waiting to sleep, and waiting to die. “At that time, I was still in good health. I could swim and walk well. My colleagues, sister, and sister-in-law all urged me to find another companion, but I refused. I still had a loved one in France.”
During the 2000 Spring Festival, Yuan’s nephew casually mentioned Yuan’s past love affair with his Russian language teacher. Yuan’s daughter-in-law, Ouyang Luying, heard about it for the first time. “I asked him, ‘Why didn’t you keep writing to her?’ He said, ‘I’m over 80 years old now; who knows if she’s still alive? Besides, the letters I sent before were all returned.’ I told him to try again. He didn’t say yes or no, just went upstairs to sleep.” But Yuan’s son noticed that his father’s room light was on all night.
On March 31 and April 1, 2000, Yuan sent out two tentative letters with the same content, addressed to the Danni who may or may not have been alive. The letters contained only four sentences: “Dear Danni, May God bless you with good health and long life. May God bless you with good health and long life. I pray that you live a long life. Please send me a letter. Forever missing you, Yuan Dibao.” This time, Danni received the letter!
Danni’s smile came from the heart: “At the airport, I saw him from a distance, holding 55 roses. I started to get nervous, but then told myself, ‘Keep walking.’ He walked towards me, and we didn’t say a word; we just hugged…”
This was a reunion after 55 years: In September 1953, Li Danni and Yuan Dibao fell in love when they were in their prime. In August 1955, they parted ways, separated by the ocean and longing for each other. In the spring of 2000, Yuan sent out two letters from Xiamen with just four sentences, which brought the lifelong single Danni from Lyon, France, back to his side to rekindle their love. This deep affection, spanning more than half a century and bridging the continents of Europe and Asia, finally came to rest in the harbor of home under the setting sun.
Thank you for reading! ” Sitestorys “
