Leung Long Chau
|
|
Leung Long Chau (梁朗秋) is a Chinese poet and calligrapher. Born in early 1910s in Guangdong Province, China, he spent his childhood there and received his graduate education at the Guangdong Medical Research Institute, until in late 1920s when he married Ho Wing Yuet and moved to settle down in Hong Kong. Under the colonial rule, his qualifications as a Chinese medical practitioner was not recognised and he thus had to turn to business to make a living. He worked for a local company and could just make up the necessary living expenses for his large family. Still, in spare time he offered free medical advice to his compatriots and he also continued to write Chinese poems and practice Chinese calligraphy, both hobbies of which began since he was very small.
Throughout the years he has written a lot of good poems about Hong Kong, but they never got published at the time. The turning point came in 1984, when his children then decided to compile his works and published "Lang Yin Xiao Cao" (朗吟小草) for non-commercial purposes. The book was never sold in bookstores, but it managed to get the attention of the close circle of Chinese poets in Hong Kong and was widely acclaimed as an important piece for anyone who is seriously interested in Chinese literature and Hong Kong culture.
In 1998, the Leung family decided to publish a sequel to Lang Yin Xiao Cao, compiling the major works of Leung Long Chau written after 1984. In the same year, the low-profile Chinese poet received his first and only prize for Chinese literature by the Government of Hong Kong. He passed away in December 1998.