'Holy house': Why Gu Cheng's family is selling poet's Waiheke home

Family members of renowned late poet Gu Cheng say they are selling the Waiheke Island home he once lived in with his wife, Xie Ye, because they are no longer able to keep up the maintenance.

Tucked away in a quiet crescent in Ōmiha, the property has attracted a steady stream of visitors from China for more than three decades since the tragic death of the couple in 1993.

Acclaimed poet

Born in 1956, Gu was a leading figure of the so-called Misty Poetry movement that emerged in the late 1970s and early '80s at the end of China's Cultural Revolution.

Dubbed the "fairytale poet", Gu's terse two-line poem "A Generation" is one of the most widely read pieces of modern Chinese poetry:

The black night gave me black eyes /

But I use them to seek the light.

Gu and his wife moved to New Zealand in early 1988, and their only son, Muer, was born shortly after their arrival.

Gu taught Chinese literature at the University of Auckland.

Xie, who was also a writer, helped Gu to transcribe his poems and communicate with English-speakers.

Their place on Waiheke Island was more a holiday house, hence the simple structures on the property and the primitive conditions others have written about, academic John Minford wrote in a memoir.

Various accounts show Gu was involved in an affair with a younger woman named Li Ying, who ended up living with the couple on the island for a couple of years.

Gu and his wife travelled to Europe for 18 months to undertake literature work in 1992.

Li left New Zealand during their absence.

On 8 October 1993, about two weeks after Gu and his wife returned from Europe, the 37-year-old poet killed himself after fatally attacking his 35-year-old wife near the house of Gu's older sister.

It was believed that Xie was planning to leave Gu for another man.

A coroner's finding from February 1994, viewed by RNZ, said Xie died from "head injury inflicted by her husband during a domestic altercation".

A separate coroner's finding said Gu's death was self-inflicted.

A police statement from February 1994, released to RNZ under the Official Information Act, said Gu attacked his wife with an axe, inflicting serious head wounds before killing himself.

'Holy house for our family'

The couple's house has been listed on the market with a deadline sale date of 5 November.

A statement by Gu's family released through real estate agency Ray White said it had been a "holy house for our family since the beginning".

"For more than 30 years we could not imagine it in other people's hands, so we did not sell it. Day to day, year to year, we did what we could to keep it up," the statement said.

"Gu Cheng built many parts of the house himself, inside and outside, with his own special ideas, so it is quite like a big artwork of his."

However, the property had been damaged over time by nature and people, it said.

"Many things were stolen, even the firewood Gu Cheng had chopped for current days, and next winter," the statement said.

"Windows, doors and walls were broken again and again. When the old roof rusted through, we replaced it to save the house from the rain."

It said most visitors treated the house with respect, leaving flowers, fruit, notes and cards, which moved the family, it said.

"We are selling now because we are no longer able to keep up the maintenance," it said.

"We are selling a house. We are not selling Gu Cheng's or Xie Ye's names.

"If someone wants the house because of them, for a museum or a memorial, that is a different conversation, and it would be on different terms."

The statement said the family deliberately kept the couple's names off the sale listing and avoided posting it on Chinese real estate sites.

"We hoped the sale would not revive old gossip or cause the family further distress," it said.

"Recent reports, and the many articles that have since repeated and translated them, have undone that care."

The statement said neither death happened at the property and no weapon had ever been confirmed, the latter contradicting an official report at the time.

"After the events of October 1993, police forensically tested an axe found nearby and found no evidence on it," it said.

It also said Xie's death certificate did not include any references to an axe or Gu, although by then both had already been reported around the world.

"Gu Cheng died at the scene. Xie Ye died in hospital later that day," the statement said.

It said no court or inquest ever found that Gu intended to kill Xie, and the common description of Gu having "killed his wife and then himself" was not accurate.

"The loss of both Xie Ye and Gu Cheng remains a deep and lasting grief for our family."

Beyond the tragedy

Denise Whitfield, Ray White's branch manager in Waiheke Island, said she was not in a position to provide any information about price feedback or likely subsequent steps.

"There has been a good level of enquiry to date and those eligible to buy in New Zealand have been introduced to the property," Whitfield said.

Duncan Campbell, a senior fellow at the New Zealand Contemporary China Research Centre, was friends with Gu and Xie.

He said people should pay more attention to Gu and Xie's literature legacy, rather than fixated on the tragedy.

"It would be good to think of them as poets and as people rather than simply a murderer and, the other, a victim," Campbell said.

In terms of the future of the house, Campbell said it could be turned into a writers' residence that people could visit and create.

Family friend Mike Lee said it would be a great pity to see the house being sold and probably demolished.

"I would much prefer that the house be bought and preserved as a heritage site," he said.