A woman who made her mark as a revolutionary
Fan Zhichao (1906-1988), born in the picturesque Fanjiatan Village in Songjiang's Sheshan area, used to have sweet girlie names like "Fengsheng" (chirping sound of a phoenix) and "Yaxian" (a graceful fairy) from her father and elder brother.
A girl of bravery and a strong will, Fan ran away from home after she graduated from primary school and renamed herself "Zhichao," meaning, one with an extraordinary will.
Moving away from her femininity, the name she chose foreshadowed her destiny.
Her father, a doctor, taught her Chinese language at the age of 5.
Her mother, a tender and down-to-earth lady from a rich family, was good at embroidering and influenced Fan with her refined love of aesthetics.
Her father insisted on her learning traditional Chinese medicine after graduating from primary school.
Fan refused.
Fan Zhichao
She secretly packed her luggage and left home on an early autumn morning. She studied at the Songyun Girls' Vocational School in Songjiang, financially supported by her mother, who sold her jewelry to pay her tuition.
Yet Fan was deprived of her diploma because she went out to defend a female teacher surnamed Wu against an injustice.
After a brief return to home for two months, Fan left home a second time.
This time she went to study nursing at Shanghai Doulong Hospital in the hope that she could gain financial independence. But once again, her honest and frank personality cost her dearly. Her boldness was deemed offensive.
Fan enrolled in the Songjiang Jingxian Girls' School, a cradle of China's revolution.
Zhu Jixun (1888-1927), a revolutionary, and Hou Shaoqiu (1896-1927), a Songjiang martyr, were both Fan's teachers, in addition to a group of literary celebrities in contemporary China who once lectured there.
Fan later worked for the Communist Party of China. Her rich life experience included founding a newspaper in the Philippines, a governess in the US and a secretary of the Chinese Embassy in the United States.
She was once received by wife of former US president Henry Truman to her tea party.
In her later years, people would meet Fan in streets of Songjiang – a hunchbacked elderly lady with a neatly-cut bob, wearing breasted jacket, black trousers and cloth shoes, like a girl student she used to be in the 1920s and 1930s.
Fan donated two originals – a painting and a calligraphy work from Xu Beihong and Qi Baishi (1864-1957) she received as gifts from the two masters to Shanghai Museum in 1983.
The revolutionary died of cancer in Songjiang in 1988.
