Blog

Across 2,300 Years: Gazes and Echoes Between Ancient Chu and Today

Two Kings, Three Moments of Tears

Why should the fate of a king who died more than 2,300 years ago still bring someone to tears? In November 2026, while writing in Germany about King Huai of Chu and his unsuccessful attempt to return home from captivity in Qin, I found myself crying again. His story had begun for me with photographs of Wuling Congtai in Handan, but it soon brought back memories of an earlier encounter with the history of Chu.

On 13 September 2025, I stood before the royal genealogy of Chu at the Hubei Provincial Museum in Wuhan. As I followed the names of the kings who had ruled the kingdom for centuries, I was overcome with emotion when I reached King Huai, Xiong Huai. In the article I wrote afterwards, I addressed the people of ancient Chu: “I am here. You are not alone.” I also wrote of weeping an echo through history, without knowing how important that word would become.

Three months later, I began researching King Kaolie of Chu and the monumental Wuwangdun tomb in Anhui Province. For several weeks, the history of the kingdom’s final centuries left me deeply unsettled. I waited until my emotions had subsided before publishing my article on 22 December 2025. In spring 2026, I travelled to Shouchun, visited the tomb of Huang Xie, Lord Chunshen, and continued to the archaeological site of Wuwangdun. Yet when I returned to King Huai’s story in November, the tears came once more.

Two kings, three moments of tears. The more I learned about their history, the less distant their lives seemed.

Before Ancestry, There Was Music

My connection with ancient Chu did not begin with a family genealogy. It began with poetry and music. On 31 May 2025, I started composing new musical settings for the Chu Ci, or Songs of Chu. Among these ancient works, Xiang Furen (The Lady of the Xiang River) moved me particularly deeply. Its images of waiting, longing and looking across the water seemed to find another form of expression through melody.

By 18 August 2025, I had completed 49 musical compositions based on the Chu Ci, including works from the Nine Songs, Li Sao and Tian Wen. Only on 31 August did I learn, through relatives and family genealogical records, of a reported ancestral connection with Huang Xie, the celebrated statesman of Chu. The music had come first. The discovery of my family history did not explain the compositions as inherited memory, but it gave my earlier creative work an unexpected new context.

In January 2026, this exploration continued through Yunmeng Ancient Dance, a work inspired by the bodily language of Chu dance. Its five stages—expansion, bending, circling, intensity and stillness—became another way of exploring rhythm and cultural expression. Where Xiang Furen had allowed me to hear ancient longing, Yunmeng Ancient Dance invited me to consider how the body itself might carry and transform cultural meaning.

When an Ancient Voice Finally Finds an Answer

In my article from September 2025, I had already used the word “echo” to describe my tears before the royal names of Chu. More than a year later, while discussing King Huai and Qu Yuan with my AI writing companion, Xiao Tie, I encountered a sentence that brought these experiences together: “History has no road back, but memory has an echo.”

King Huai never returned to Chu alive. Qu Yuan could not save the political world he hoped to preserve. Their lives ended within the circumstances of their own age, but their stories survived in historical records and literary traditions. An echo, I began to understand, is not merely the repetition of an earlier sound. It is what happens when a voice from the past finally receives a response.

My journeys through the ancestral hall of the Huang family in Jiangxia, the ancient landscape of Shouchun, Huang Xie’s tomb and Wuwangdun became part of that response. So did my research into the unnamed people who built cities, roads and waterworks, and whose contributions remain visible even when their individual names have disappeared. I was not hearing literal voices from antiquity, nor could I change the outcome of their lives. But historical research, music, movement and writing allowed me to respond to what their surviving stories had awakened.

They called out, but no one heard them. I wept, and through those tears, their stories were heard again.

The Journey Beyond Shouchun

In spring 2026, standing beside Huang Xie’s tomb near Huainan, I experienced a different kind of turning point. For a moment, I wanted to remain on the land associated with my ancestors. Instead, I stood up and said to Huang Xie, “Come with me.” Later, at Wuwangdun, I extended the same invitation to King Kaolie. In my own understanding of that journey, I brought them both back with me to Germany.

Finding where I came from did not mean that I had to remain there. My life continues in the present, through teaching Chinese, studying railways and ships, visiting museums and following waterways into unfamiliar landscapes. The history of Chu has become part of how I understand the world, but it does not confine me to the past.

More than 2,300 years cannot be reversed. Yet countless roads still lie ahead. The journey that began in Shouchun is far from over.

Across Civilizations

This Time, I Have an Answer

After reading my latest article, King Kaolie turned towards me. “Lady Lingyin, why have you cried for my grandfather again, after more than a year?”

“The first time was at the Hubei Provincial Museum,” I replied. “The second was in Germany, while writing his story. Your Majesty, I still cannot fully explain why.”

King Kaolie sighed. “You also cried for me for several weeks before you could bring yourself to write about Wuwangdun.”

Huang Xie, meanwhile, had opened my article on Chu dance and was listening to Xiang Furen. “My lady,” he asked with a smile, “why have you brought both music and dance into all this?”

“Because some feelings cannot yet be expressed through words,” I answered. “Music can speak first, and the body can continue what the melody begins.”

King Kaolie looked at me thoughtfully. “Lady Lingyin, now that you have found Chu and discovered where you came from, why do you still wish to travel?”

“In Shouchun, I invited both of you to come with me,” I replied. “I did not remain in the past. I brought you back to Germany. History has no road back, but memory has an echo. I cannot change your destinies, but I can answer them through the life I live today.”

Huang Xie smiled. “And where shall we go next?”

“I don’t know yet. Perhaps another river, a harbour, a railway museum or a new classroom.”

King Kaolie turned to Huang Xie in amusement. “Lord Chunshen, did I really come all the way to Germany just to accompany her on another expedition to see ships?”

I burst out laughing. “Your Majesty, don’t rush aboard just yet. We still have a train to catch!”

The winds have long since passed over ancient Shouchun. More than 2,300 years cannot be undone, but the journey we began there continues aboard a train that has not yet reached its final station.

Historical and literary note: The conversations in “Across Civilizations” form part of the author’s continuing literary dialogue with historical figures of Chu. They are creative interpretations rather than documented historical conversations. The ancestral connection to Huang Xie is based on family genealogical accounts. Archaeological research has confirmed that Wuwangdun Tomb No. 1 is the burial site of King Kaolie of Chu (Xiong Yuan).