Chinese Literature

[zhang wei]

Jia Pingwa
A master writer in China, you might call him "China's Ian McEwan" or "China's Philip Roth", he is far better known in China than Yan Lianke.His most famous novel, Ruined City, won Prix Femina étranger in France and was banned in China for 16 years because of its sexually explicit depiction,causing it to become one of the most pirated books in modern Chinese literature.

In 2015,a young admirer knelt before Jia Pingwa and called him the God of literature,this photo was widely shared on the Chinese Internet,of course, it makes a lot of controversy too.

 

[zhang wei]

Su Tong
A writer at the same level as Yu Hua, and also a good friend of Yu Hua.His most famous novel, Raise the Red Lantern, was adapted into a film by Zhang Yimou and nominated for Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1991.He is regarded as the best Chinese male writer who specializes in women's stories.He was also nominated for the Man Booker International Prize for The Boat to Redemption in 2011.

Since last year, Su Tong and Yu Hua have taken part in a TV show together.

 

[Leseratte]

Su Tong
A writer at the same level as Yu Hua, and also a good friend of Yu Hua.His most famous novel, Raise the Red Lantern, was adapted into a film by Zhang Yimou and nominated for Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1991.He is regarded as the best Chinese male writer who specializes in women's stories.He was also nominated for the Man Booker International Prize for The Boat to Redemption in 2011.

Since last year, Su Tong and Yu Hua have taken part in a TV show together.
View attachment 2211

I saw the film. Here in Brazil it was called "Lanternas Vermelhas" and I warmly recommend it. Thank you for this panorama of Chinese writers.

 

[Liam]

I saw the film. Here in Brazil it was called "Lanternas Vermelhas" and I warmly recommend it.

I still think that it's Zhang Yimou's best film. Perhaps not in terms of "visuals," but it is his most personal and harrowing work.

 

[nagisa]

Chiming in to echo the praise for Su Tong's Wives and Concubines and Zhang Yimou's adaptation (Raise the Red Lantern). Gorgeous cinematography, and gorgeous Gong Li.

 

[zhang wei]

Bi Feiyu
Just like Su Tong, a male writer who specializes in women's stories,his description of the female psyche more exquisite than Su Tong.But only three of his novels seem to have been translated into English.The Moon Opera ,was longlisted for the 2008 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.Three Sisters,won the 2010 Man Asian Literary Prize.And his most famous novel in China,Massage,which was adapted into a film by Lou Ye.

He was once considered the most handsome writer in China, and some critics believe that his understanding of women's psychology may have been due to his good looks, which gave him more opportunities to interact with women.

 

[redhead]

Su Tong
A writer at the same level as Yu Hua, and also a good friend of Yu Hua.His most famous novel, Raise the Red Lantern, was adapted into a film by Zhang Yimou and nominated for Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1991.He is regarded as the best Chinese male writer who specializes in women's stories.He was also nominated for the Man Booker International Prize for The Boat to Redemption in 2011.

Since last year, Su Tong and Yu Hua have taken part in a TV show together.
View attachment 2211

Thanks for posting these! I've read a few Su Tong books in translation, and he comes across as pretty uneven. The novellas collected in Raise the Red Lantern, including Wives and Concubines, are incredible, but other books, like the novels The Boat to Redemption and Binu and the Great Wall, come off as mediocre at best. Is this just a translation issue, or is his writing uneven in the original too?

 

[zhang wei]

Ge Fei
One of the most important writers in contemporary Chinese literature.His famous novel,Peach Blossom Paradise,was finalisted for the 2021 American National Book Awards for Translated Literature.He used to be an experimental writer,just like Can Xue.But he gave it up and turned to study classical Chinese literature and was particularly fond of The Plum in the Golden Vase.

He has a famous saying：Milan Kundera is an overrated writer，massively overrated！

 

[nagisa]

Jia Pingwa
A master writer in China, you might call him "China's Ian McEwan" or "China's Philip Roth", he is far better known in China than Yan Lianke.His most famous novel, Ruined City, won Prix Femina étranger in France and was banned in China for 16 years because of its sexually explicit depiction,causing it to become one of the most pirated books in modern Chinese literature.

In 2015,a young admirer knelt before Jia Pingwa and called him the God of literature,this photo was widely shared on the Chinese Internet,of course, it makes a lot of controversy too.
View attachment 2210

Among the authors you've cited so far, I was not aware of this one. Interesting to note that the more sexually explicit scenes of Ruined City were futilely "pre-censored" by the author — about 7000 characters total out of 400.000 as a French scholarly article notes — and that the charges of its obscenity may hide its more subversive, critical content

I'm interested. But pre-emptively fatigued: another 700+-page doorstopper...

 

[nagisa]

@zhang wei Thank you very much for your posts on Chinese authors! Very informative, and good to know the opinion of someone on the ground. I notice that all of them seem to have won the Mao Dun Prize. I'd be interested in knowing more about Chinese literary prizes; this seems to be one of the most prestigious, but also disparaged in recent years, criticised for awarding high-ranking members of regional writers' associations for their positions, not their works. (An interesting parallel presents itself with the prestigious French literary prize the Goncourt, which has been accused to rewarding authors from the same 3 large publishing houses.) So I guess my question would be: how do people perceive literary prizes in China? Are there smaller/alternative prizes to the big ones?

 

[Daniel del Real]

Let me introduce some of the most famous novelists in contemporary China. Since you all know Yu Hua, Yan Lianke and Can Xue, I will introduce some writers that you may not know.

Wang Anyi
In fact,she is currently the most famous female writer in the Chinese literary world,just like Margaret Atwood in the English literary world. Her most famous novel,The Song of Everlasting Sorrow,for which she was nominated for the Man Booker International Prize in 2011,is a classic of contemporary Chinese literature.It is a novel about Shanghai, a special city in the modern history of China.Shanghai is so special that there is a special kind of Chinese literature called “Shanghai literature”,and its most famous representative writer is Eileen chang,who had a huge influence on modern Chinese literature, just as Virginia Woolf had on English literature.Many Chinese critics have compared Wang Anyi to Eileen Chang,of course, it makes a lot of controversy.

Wang Anyi in her 20s
View attachment 2209

I've read a couple of slim novels by her in Spanish translation: Love in a Small Town & Baotown. I found her literature more in the vein of Yu Hua, giving light to the "small lives" survivors of the catastrophe.
The Song of Everlasting Sorrow was translated to Spanish from the English, this is the reason keeeping me away from reading it.

Jia Pingwa
A master writer in China, you might call him "China's Ian McEwan" or "China's Philip Roth", he is far better known in China than Yan Lianke.His most famous novel, Ruined City, won Prix Femina étranger in France and was banned in China for 16 years because of its sexually explicit depiction,causing it to become one of the most pirated books in modern Chinese literature.

In 2015,a young admirer knelt before Jia Pingwa and called him the God of literature,this photo was widely shared on the Chinese Internet,of course, it makes a lot of controversy too.
View attachment 2210

First time I've heard of this writer, but after a quick search I found two of his novels translated to Spanish: Dead City and The Supreme Flower. First one is a little more hard to find (and probably it's a retranslation too) but the second one is available and translated directed from the Chinese.
Have you read any of them?

 

[Daniel del Real]

Su Tong
A writer at the same level as Yu Hua, and also a good friend of Yu Hua.His most famous novel, Raise the Red Lantern, was adapted into a film by Zhang Yimou and nominated for Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1991.He is regarded as the best Chinese male writer who specializes in women's stories.He was also nominated for the Man Booker International Prize for The Boat to Redemption in 2011.

Since last year, Su Tong and Yu Hua have taken part in a TV show together.
View attachment 2211

A while ago I purchased a novel by him translated as The Emperor's life, but haven't gotten to read it.

Ge Fei
One of the most important writers in contemporary Chinese literature.His famous novel,Peach Blossom Paradise,was finalisted for the 2021 American National Book Awards for Translated Literature.He used to be an experimental writer,just like Can Xue.But he gave it up and turned to study classical Chinese literature and was particularly fond of The Plum in the Golden Vase.

He has a famous saying：Milan Kundera is an overrated writer，massively overrated！
View attachment 2213

I liked what I read in The Invisible, a more urban approach to China's contemporary life. Apparently there's another novel by him recently translated called Memory of the Paradise.

 

[zhang wei]

Chen Ran
She is a representative writer of Chinese feminist literature and also an experimental writer, she became huge famous in China at the age of 24 with a classic short story ,Century Disease, which I don't know if it has been translated into English.She is good at writing dark fairy tales and stories of the growth of women , mysterious, weird, bizarre, absurd, surrealistic, and strong philosophical undertones. For me, her novels are more interesting than Can Xue's. Her most famous novel, A Private Life，is a masterpiece and is considered a classic of Chinese feminist literature.

 

[Daniel del Real]

Chen Ran
She is a representative writer of Chinese feminist literature and also an experimental writer, she became huge famous in China at the age of 24 with a classic short story ,Century Disease, which I don't know if it has been translated into English.She is good at writing dark fairy tales and stories of the growth of women , mysterious, weird, bizarre, absurd, surrealistic, and strong philosophical undertones. For me, her novels are more interesting than Can Xue's. Her most famous novel, A Private Life，is a masterpiece and is considered a classic of Chinese feminist literature.
View attachment 2214

Also a new name to me. A Private Life has a Spanish translation

Edit: In fact, it has two different translations, both direct from the Chinese.

 

[zhang wei]

Zhang Wei
Not me. He's my favorite writer,a true master writer.His work is a perfect blend of modernism and romanticism.It's a pity that his works has not received much attention in the English world, possibly due to translation problems, as his novels use a large number of Chinese dialects.He became famous for his novel The Ancient Ship.His masterpiece, September's Fable, is a dreamy poetic novel，which for me is the greatest novel in contemporary Chinese literature.In 2010, he published a 4.5-million-word novel, You on the Plateau, which took 20 years to complete and is considered the world's longest pure literary novel,consists of ten books, each in a different style, and contains almost every literary experiment in the world since the 19th century.

 

[zhang wei]

@zhang wei Thank you very much for your posts on Chinese authors! Very informative, and good to know the opinion of someone on the ground. I notice that all of them seem to have won the Mao Dun Prize. I'd be interested in knowing more about Chinese literary prizes; this seems to be one of the most prestigious, but also disparaged in recent years, criticised for awarding high-ranking members of regional writers' associations for their positions, not their works. (An interesting parallel presents itself with the prestigious French literary prize the Goncourt, which has been accused to rewarding authors from the same 3 large publishing houses.) So I guess my question would be: how do people perceive literary prizes in China? Are there smaller/alternative prizes to the big ones?

It is true that there are many criticism of Mao Dun Prize in China, for example, every time there must be an award for a military novel, which is almost a political mission for the jury. But unlike the Goncourt Prize, Mao Dun Prize is held every four years，every time there are five novels awarded, so there are still four or three opportunities for other writers.Literary prizes often have a similar problem, the winning novel is not necessarily the author's best work, sometimes the jury give Mao Dun Prize to a writer as a lifetime achievement award，so there are many old writers winning awards.
There are other important literary prizes in China, such as the Lu Xun Literature Prize, which rewards novellas and short stories and was once influential, with many of the winning novels being classics of contemporary Chinese literature，but in recent years, it has also been controversial.
There's also a Prize for writers under 45 called Blancpain Imaginist Literary Prize ,which has attracted much attention from young Chinese readers in recent years.

 

[zhang wei]

Cao Naiqian
Goran Malmqvist(1924-2019), a jury member for the Nobel Prize in Literature, once said that Cao Naiqian was one of the most qualified Chinese writers to win the prize.His most famous work，There’s Nothing I Can Do When I Think of You Late at Night，was magically translated into English by John Balcom, and I don't know how he did it, because the novel uses a lot of dialects, which is difficult for even Chinese readers to understand.His novels are mainly concerned with two themes: appetite and sexual desire.

 

[zhang wei]

Cao Naiqian
Goran Malmqvist(1924-2019), a jury member for the Nobel Prize in Literature, once said that Cao Naiqian was one of the most qualified Chinese writers to win the prize.His most famous work，There’s Nothing I Can Do When I Think of You Late at Night，was magically translated into English by John Balcom, and I don't know how he did it, because the novel uses a lot of dialects, which is difficult for even Chinese readers to understand.His novels are mainly concerned with two themes: appetite and sexual desire.

 

[zhang wei]

A Lai
The most famous Tibetan writer in China today. His masterpiece,Red Poppies,is a huge famous epic novel, considered to be one of the greatest novels in China in the last 50 years. It tells the story of tribes in Tibet before 1949, kind of like Mel Gibson's film Apocalypto,but with a larger setting and a more complex story. He was also editor of Science Fiction World, in 2006, he saw a manuscript for a novel from a man who worked in a power plant, read it , and without hesitation, serialized it in the magazine, this novel is called The Three-Body Problem.

 

[tiganeasca]

A Lai
The most famous Tibetan writer in China today. His masterpiece,Red Poppies,is a huge famous epic novel, considered to be one of the greatest novels in China in the last 50 years. It tells the story of tribes in Tibet before 1949, kind of like Mel Gibson's film Apocalypto,but with a larger setting and a more complex story. He was also editor of Science Fiction World, in 2006, he saw a manuscript for a novel from a man who worked in a power plant, read it , and without hesitation, serialized it in the magazine, this novel is called The Three-Body Problem....

Speaking of Tibet, I wonder if you could share your thoughts on the reputation of Chinese-born, now-British citizen Ma Jian?