Wang Anyi

Wang Anyi
Native name 王安忆
Born (1954-03-06) March 6, 1954
Nanjing, Jiangsu, China
Language Written Chinese
Nationality China
Period 1975–present
Genre fiction, prose
Literary movement Xungen movement
Notable works The Song of Everlasting Sorrow (1995)
Spouse Li Zhang (李章)
Relatives
  • Wang Xiaoping (王啸平), father
  • Ru Zhijuan, mother
Wang Anyi
Traditional Chinese 王安憶
Simplified Chinese 王安忆
This is a Chinese name; the family name is Wang.

Wang Anyi (born 6 March 1954) is a Chinese writer. The daughter of renowned writer Ru Zhijuan, Wang is considered a leading figure in contemporary Chinese literature. She has been vice-chair of China Writers Association since 2006, and professor in Chinese Literature at Fudan University since 2004.

Wang's stories are frequently set in her hometown Shanghai, and David Der-wei Wang has called her the "new successor to the Shanghai School". Wang also regularly writes about the countryside in Anhui, where she was "sent-down" during the Cultural Revolution.

Early life

Wang Anyi's father Wang Xiaoping (王啸平) (1919–2003) was a noted dramatist originally from Singapore, and her mother Ru Zhijuan (1925–1998) an orphan-turned-writer originally from Shanghai. Both joined the communist-controlled New Fourth Army to fight the Japanese invaders during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945). Wang Anyi was born in Nanjing in 1954, but moved to Shanghai at age 1 with her parents. Wang writes that she was "raised in a thoroughfare, Huaihai Road."

In 1957, Wang Xiaoping was denounced as a "Rightist" during the Anti-Rightist Movement because of his "overseas" background. In 1966, Ru Zhijuan was criticized for her "reactionary bourgeois" writing during the Cultural Revolution, losing her leading position in the Shanghai Writer's Association.[1] Wang Anyi herself also suffered during the Cultural Revolution. After graduating from middle school (which she said she learned nothing from due to endless political parades and mass meetings) in 1970, Wang Anyi joined tens of millions of urban youths to work in the countryside. She went to work in a farm in Wuhe County, Anhui — then an impoverished province plagued by famine. The rustication experience traumatized her. In the late 1980s, Wang said: "When I left, I left with the feelings of escaping from hell."

Wang was transferred in 1972 to a performing arts troupe in Xuzhou to become a cellist, she began to publish short stories in 1976. One story that grew out of this experience, "Life In a Small Courtyard", recounts the housekeeping details, marriage customs, and relationships of a group of actors assigned to a very limited space where they live and rehearse between their professional engagements. She was permitted to return home to Shanghai in 1978 to work as an editor of the magazine Childhood. In 1980 she received additional professional training from the China Writers Association, and her fiction achieved national prominence, winning literary award in China. Her most famous novel, The Song of Everlasting Sorrow, traces the life story of a young Shanghainese girl from the 1940s all the way till her death after the Cultural Revolution. Although the book was published in 1995, it is already considered by many as a modern classic. Wang is often compared with another female writer from Shanghai, Eileen Chang, as both of their stories are often set in Shanghai, and give vivid and detailed descriptions of the city itself.

A novella and six of her stories have been translated and collected in an anthology, Lapse of Time. In his preface to that collection, Jeffrey Kinkley notes that Wang is a realist whose stories "are about everyday urban life" and that the author "does not stint in describing the brutalising density, the rude jostling, the interminable and often futile waiting in line that accompany life in the Chinese big city".

Works available in English translations

YearChinese titleTranslated English titleTranslator(s)
1979雨，沙沙沙"And the Rain Patters On"[2]Michael Day
1980小院琐记"Life in a Small Courtyard"[2]Hu Zhihui
1981墙基"The Base of the Wall"[2]Daniel Bryant
朋友"Friends"[3]Nancy Shao-lan Lee
本次列车终点"The Destination"[2]Yu Fanqin
1982流逝Lapse of Time[2]Howard Goldblatt
舞台小世界"The Stage, a Miniature World"[2]Song Shouquan
1984人人之间"Between Themselves"[2]Gladys Yang
话说老秉"Speaking of Old Bing"[4]Chad Phelan
1985小鲍庄Baotown[5]Martha Avery
老康回来"Lao Kang Came Back"[6]Jeanne Tai
"Lao Kang Is Back"[7]Denis C. Mair
阿跷传略"The Story of Ah Qiao"Yawtsong Lee[8]
1986阿芳的灯"Ah Fang's Light"
鸠雀一战"The Nest Fight"
"Birds Fighting for a Nest"[9]Nigel Bedford
名旦之口"The Mouth of the Famous Female Impersonator"[10]Zhu Zhiyu, Janice Wickeri
面对自己"Needed: A Spirit of Courageous Self-Examination"[11]Ellen Lai-shan Yeung
荒山之恋Love on a Barren Mountain[12]Eva Hung
小城之恋Love in a Small Town[13]
1987锦绣谷之恋Brocade Valley[14]Bonnie S. McDougall, Chen Maiping
1988女作家的自我"A Woman Writer's Sense of Self"[15]Wang Lingzhen, Mary Ann O'Donnell
1989弟兄们BrothersDiana B. Kingsbury[16]
Jingyuan Zhang[17]
1991妙妙Miaomiao[18]Don J. Cohn
乌托邦诗篇Utopian Verses[15]Wang Lingzhen, Mary Ann O'Donnell
1995长恨歌The Song of Everlasting Sorrow[19]Michael Berry, Susan Chan Egan
1996姊妹们Sisters[20]Ihor Pidhainy, Xiao-miao Lan
1998忧伤的年代Years of Sadness[15]Wang Lingzhen, Mary Ann O'Donnell
丧钟为谁而鸣"For Whom the Bell Tolls"[21]Gao Jin
我为什么写作"Why I Write"[22]Michael Berry
遗民"Inhabitants of a Vintage Era"Yawtsong Lee[8]
大学生"The Grand Student"
小饭店"The Little Restaurant"
1999喜宴"A Nuptial Banquet"
开会"The Meeting"
花园的小红"Xiao Hong of the Village of Huayuan"
街灯底下"Under the Street Lights"[23]Shin Yong Robson
艺人之死"The Death of an Artist"[24]Hu Ying
2000王汉芳"Wang Hanfang"[25]
2002投我以木桃，报之以琼瑶"A Peach Was Presented Me, I Returned a Fine Jade"[21]Gao Jin
云低处"In the Belly of the Fog"[26]Canaan Morse
2008黑弄堂"The Dark Alley"[27]
possibly forthcoming
2000富萍Fu PingHoward Goldblatt
2008魏庄"Weizhuang"[28]Jennifer L. Feeley
2011天香Scent of HeavenAndrea Lingenfelter

Major awards

Wang was also a finalist for the 1st Newman Prize for Chinese Literature in 2009 and the 4th Man Booker International Prize in 2011.

Other works

References

  1. ↑ Leung, p. 180.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Wang Anyi (1988). Lapse of Time. China Books. ISBN 0-8351-2032-5.
  3. ↑ The Rose Colored Dinner: New Works by Contemporary Chinese Women Writers. Joint Publishing. 1988. ISBN 962-04-0615-X.
  4. ↑ Chinese Literature, Autumn 1989.
  5. ↑ Wang Anyi (1989). Baotown. Translated by Martha Avery. Viking Press. ISBN 0-670-82622-7.
  6. ↑ Spring Bamboo: A Collection of Contemporary Chinese Short Stories. Random House. 1989. ISBN 0-394-56582-7.
  7. ↑ The Time Is Not Yet Ripe: Contemporary China's Best Writers and Their Stories. Foreign Languages Press. 1991. ISBN 7-119-00742-4.
  8. 1 2 Wang Anyi (2010). The Little Restaurant. Translated by Yawtsong Lee. Better Link Press. ISBN 978-1-60220-225-2.
  9. ↑ Renditions (39), Spring 1993.
  10. ↑ Renditions (27 & 28), 1987.
  11. ↑ Modern Chinese Writers: Self-Portrayals. M. E. Sharpe. 1992. ISBN 0-87332-817-5.
  12. ↑ Wang Anyi (1991). Love on a Barren Mountain. Translated by Eva Hung. The Chinese University of Hong Kong. ISBN 962-7255-09-2.
  13. ↑ Wang Anyi (1988). Love in a Small Town. Translated by Eva Hung. The Chinese University of Hong Kong. ISBN 962-7255-03-3.
  14. ↑ Wang Anyi (1992). Brocade Valley. Translated by Bonnie S. McDougall; Chen Maiping. New Directions Publishing. ISBN 0-8112-1224-6.
  15. 1 2 3 Wang Anyi (2009). Years of Sadness. Translated by Wang Lingzhen; Mary Ann O'Donnell. Cornell University. ISBN 978-1-933947-47-1.
  16. ↑ I Wish I Were a Wolf: The New Voice in Chinese Women's Literature. New World Press. 1994. ISBN 7-80005-124-2.
  17. ↑ Red Is Not the Only Color: Contemporary Chinese Fiction on Love and Sex Between Women, Collected Stories. Rowman & Littlefield. 2001. ISBN 0-7425-1137-5.
  18. ↑ Six Contemporary Chinese Women Writers (IV). Chinese Literature Press. 1995. ISBN 7-5071-0297-1.
  19. ↑ Wang Anyi (2008). The Song of Everlasting Sorrow: A Novel of Shanghai. Translated by Michael Berry; Susan Chan Egan. Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-14342-7.
  20. ↑ Dragonflies: Fiction by Chinese Women in the Twentieth Century. Cornell University. 2003. ISBN 1-885445-15-6.
  21. 1 2 One China, Many Paths. Verso Books. 2003. ISBN 1-85984-537-1.
  22. ↑ Chinese Writers on Writing. Trinity University Press. 2010. ISBN 978-1-59534-063-4.
  23. ↑ Renditions (69), Spring 2008.
  24. ↑ The Mystified Boat: Postmodern Stories from China. University of Hawaiʻi Press. 2003. ISBN 0-8248-2799-6.
  25. ↑ Words Without Borders, April 2008.
  26. ↑ Pathlight, Summer 2013.
  27. ↑ Pathlight, Summer 2012.
  28. ↑ The Seventies: Recollecting a Forgotten Time in China. The Chinese University Press. 2017. ISBN 9789629964948.

External links

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