An artist’s life remembered through family, history, teachers, places, and art.
Drawn from Yim Mau-Kun’s handwritten notes and a continuing series of oral-history conversations with his daughter, Iris Yim, these memoirs preserve the experiences behind the artist: his childhood in Hunan, family separation after 1949, early encounters with art, professional training, political upheaval, migration, and the people whose lives intersected with his own.
These memoirs are based on Yim Mau-Kun’s handwritten recollections and oral-history interviews recorded late in life. Some events occurred many decades ago. Dates, names, places, titles, and historical details are preserved as remembered unless independently verified. Where uncertainty remains, the articles note it rather than silently reconstructing the record.
Childhood, family upheaval, early schooling, first encounters with art, and the road from Changde to professional art training.
Father Went to Taiwan. We Stayed in Hunan.In 1949 Yim Mau-Kun's father left for Taiwan while the family stayed in Hunan. What seemed a brief separation became a boundary that could not be crossed.
When a Scholarly Family Encountered Land ReformLand Reform reaches a family that valued learning. The Huangfus are reclassified, the next generation becomes farmers, and Yim Mau-Kun takes a different road.