By TwoCircles.net staff reporter
Jamshedpur : He is a dentist by profession. But more importantly, for him and the world, he is an Urdu poet of Chinese origin in India. And perhaps the only surviving Urdu poet of Chinese origin living in the country.
Jamshedpur-based dentist-cum-poet, Liu Yung Ven fell in love with Urdu more on compulsion than choice.
During 1940s his family landed in the city from Calcutta in acute financial distress. They had no choice but to send him to a local Urdu school. In the beginning he found it difficult to learn Urdu alphabets. But he learnt it and learnt it so passionately that the language became a weakness for him who later became Shaida Chini. Yes, this is his pen name by which the Urdu literary world knows him.
He says Urdu is his first love and he feels proud to pen his thoughts in it, the world’s sweetest language. People who come to know him are surprised to know that a Chinese is well-versed with an alien language.
He won fame during the Indo-China war when he made public his anger against his home country. His nazams and ghazals became popular among the denizens of the city of Jamshedpur. During the war period, he was the cynosure of all eyes in mushairas, which were very common part of the society. People flocked to see him praising India and spewing venom against his home country China.
He has been honoured with several literary awards including Firaq Gorakhpuri National Award. He has been felicitated by Anjuman Taraqqi-e-Urdu Hind for his contribution to Urdu poetry.
These days he is a sad man because his first love is being neglected by the society at large. He is equally sad because Urdu is now being tagged with a particular community, neglecting the historical fact that the language played an important role during the freedom movement.
Shaida Chini, supported by his two dentist sons Eric Liu and Waren Liu, is preparing to get his Urdu writings published in the form of a book.