Beyond the brush, a life shaped by music

By sponsoring the concert at Shanghai Oriental Art Center, Feng Yu hopes to build long-term connections with the Shanghai theater, and get its help encouraging international artists and groups to perform in the new art center in the future.

"My grandfather had the same dedicated love for music as for painting, and used to write essays introducing his beloved classical musicians to China," Feng Yu told the media on Jan 6.

In his essays, Feng Zikai called Beethoven "a hero of the heart", and sympathized with Schubert's hard life: "He lived a short life of 31 years in poverty and oblivion, without a lover, protector or patron … today his songs are loved by musicians all over the world, but then nobody knew about them except for a few friends by his side."

Under the guidance of his mentor Li Shutong (1880-1942), Feng Zikai developed an interest in music and art while studying from 1914-18 at the No 1 Teachers' School of Zhejiang, the predecessor of today's Zhejiang Normal University.

Li was a renowned writer, artist and songwriter, and later became a Buddhist monk known as Hongyi.

Li rearranged American musician John Pond Ordway's composition Dreaming of Home and Mother, and wrote Chinese lyrics for it in 1915. Feng Zikai copied the lyrics, drew illustrations for it, and published it in a collection of 50 Chinese songs. The lyrical song, Farewell (Song Bie in Chinese) later became one of China's most celebrated songs.

In 1921, Feng Zikai traveled to Japan to study oil painting, but soon gave up because he could not afford the painting materials. He then turned to playing the violin, and practiced so hard that his fingers bled.

Back in China in the 1920s, Feng Zikai founded a private art school named Lida College together with renowned scholars such as Zhu Guangqian and Xia Mianzun.

He played an active role in public cultural life, and composed school songs for a number of institutions. Later this year, Fudan University in Shanghai will commemorate the 100th birthday of its old school song, which was composed by Feng Zikai in 1926 with lyrics by Liu Dabai.

Feng Yu is the only child of Feng Zikai's youngest son Feng Xinmei. He recalled visiting his grandfather's home on downtown Shanghai's South Shaanxi Road as a child.

"I was his favorite grandson, because I didn't cry or make lots of noise like others," Feng Yu recalls, who would play with his grandfather's long white beard, and be rewarded with chocolate and milk.

In 2009, Feng Yu bought the apartment where Feng Zikai lived for the last two decades of his life and turned it into a memorial hall for his grandfather. It was opened to the public for free from 2010-14, when more than 40,000 people visited. Feng Yu now hopes to restore the home and once again open it to the public in the coming years.