My Visual Diary -- Fifteen years in Germany, by Wang Xiaohui, published by Xuelin Publishing House, 38 yuan (US$4.6)
Wang Xiaohui's life is best told in pictures, her true calling in life.
The 45-year-old architect-turned photographer started writing My Visual Diary -- Fifteen Years in Germany a decade ago by taking photos of her daily routine preparing for a photo exhibition titled ?24 hours in my life? in Germany.
"Without these photos, I could never pick up the very details of what I have experienced that has fade in my memory," Wang writes in the prelude to her book.
Her photos reconstruct her life in a way that she feels as important or even more vivid than her written diary. That's why she called her book a "visual" diary.
Sixteen years ago, when Wang and her husband, Yu Lin, boarded the plane for Germany, she compared the plane to the couple's life.
The jumbo jet needed to build up speed and use all its might to overcome the friction on the runway before it could fly into the sky. But once it took off, it flew smoothly.
The same was true of the couple, who had to overcome many difficulties before they could study in Germany.
Only she couldn't have known then that her troubles had just begun.
A photo in the second chapter shows the spider-web-like railway lines at the railway station of Edinburgh. Wang took it from the alleviated bridge when they were traveling through Scotland's capital and then Europe.
Her husband told her the various railway lines intermingled together represented the different paths her life could take, and it would be hard to decide which route was the best.
The tree lines that blocked her camera lens, her husband said, indicated a complicated and unknown future for her.
Her first decision about where to go came when she finished her one-year study as a member of a visiting scholar group in Germany in 1987.
At the same time, her husband was awarded a scholarship for his PhD in architecture at a German university.
Tongji University, which had sent the couple abroad, agreed that Yu should stay to continue studying, and Wang's friends and relatives all said she should stay with her husband.
Despite the fact she passed the exam for a PhD program, she planned to return home to Shanghai, fulfilling a promise to return to Tongji University before she started the visiting scholar's program in Germany. Her husband would also return with her.
But tragedy struck five days before their departure, forever changing the course of their lives.
It began when Ansger Schmid, a German friend, came to Wang's dormitory for a visit. They had talked about art, literature and philosophy in the past. He had also professed his love on several occasions, but she insisted they could only be friends.
On this visit, however, Wang was not home and her husband was packing their bags.
Schmid asked Yu whether he loved Wang. Yu said he would give up everything to be with his wife. Before Yu could continue, Schmid jumped out the window.
Since Yu witnessed the suicide, the couple could not leave on schedule.
They then decided not to return to Shanghai after all.
Wang found a job in Germany as a lecturer, and Yu continued his PhD studies.
Schmid's death prompted Wang to muse about the meaning of life.
Schmid was an idealist, according to Wang. Before his death, he told Wang that when life comes to an end, the suffering is finished as well. He said this theory is true as long as one dies for love.
A Chinese poet once said that love was not scarce, but pure love was rare. He also said that "there must be a tragic tendency to go along with true love."
Another crossroads in Wang's life occurred on Christmas Day in 1987.
When Wang was staying temporarily with Professor Hubertus Menke and his wife in Germany, her husband printed and enlarged the photos Wang had taken on their trip to other European countries and gave them to her as a Christmas gift.
Menke, his wife and three daughters were so in awe of the photos that they suggested a family photo exhibition be held.
Wang said she never expected that so many people, many of them artists, would come.
"It was not a formal exhibition, but it was an important one -- the one that had ushered me into the realm of professional photography," Wang said.
With the help of some photographic guests, Wang got in contact with four publishing houses about publishing her photo album. Wang was even more surprised that all four publishers were willing to cooperate with her. Finally she chose Harenberg Verlag, a well-known publishing house.
After her first album was published, Wang decided to take up professional photography. Several albums about nature and city landscapes were published in the following years. But she did not give up her job at the university until four years later, in 1991.
That year marked a tragic turning point in her life.
While driving to Prague with Yu to finish her photo album Observation and Experience -- Prague for a German publisher, Yu chose the B14 to avoid the crowded traffic on the motorway. A car smashed into their vehicle head-on, killing Yu. Wang survived but was paralyzed.
While recovering, she learned that the B14 was called "Death Road" because so many accidents happened there.
And she started to think about the number "14" and the Chinese pronunciation of this figure, yaosi, which is the same as the Chinese characters for "going to die."
"I started to believe in destiny then," Wang said.
Her German friends said she was always protected by angels. But her father insisted it was the good deeds her grandparents had done that protected her.
Consider her good fortune: She was rescued by strangers when she nearly drowned as a child; she had survived an earthquake that destroyed her family's home; and she survived the 1991 car accident and, after surgery, was no longer paralyzed.
Once she healed from the car accident, Wang turned down an offer from a university and concentrated solely on photography.
In summer 1993, Wang went to Prague again.
She got a lift and asked the driver to take the "B14" road because she wanted to "write her visual diary of the spot where the tragedy had taken place."
She finished three travelogues and was informed she was being awarded for a film script she had presented to the Film Academy of Munich two years earlier.
The academy gave her a stipend to make the film. She took acting and directing classes to learn how to make a film and found it so worthwhile that she decided to expand her career to include more of the arts.
Zerbro Chener Mond (Broken Moon) proved to be a success and won the "Besonders Wertvoll (most valuable)" prize in Germany in 1994.
This was just one of the successes has she enjoyed in her 15 years in Germany.
Her artistry has taken her on many travels. She has fallen in love with traveling, she said, because "the happiness of just going out and about and seeing new places compensates for a lot of the pain in my life."
(China Daily April 1, 2002)
