Pei Xu

Xu Pei (born 1966) is a Chinese-born German poet, writer, and human rights activist. Born in Sichuan, she left China in 1988 and studied in Germany. Xu became a German citizen in 2004, and lives in Cologne, Germany.

Life Xu Pei was born on 22 March 1966 in Kangding City, the seat of the Garzê Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in the Sichuan of Southwest China. Xu has three older brothers and one younger brother. In her childhood, Xu was sent to foster care in Chengdu. When she was 8 years old, her parents were transferred to work in Ya'an and Xu was taken back to her parents.

In 1983, Xu was admitted to the German Department at Sichuan International Studies University and graduated in 1987. Xu later worked in Leshan as a tour guide for German visitor groups. Xu's other German-language publications include: the essay The outlooks of Women in Romanticism Poems (ISBN ) published in 1997, as well as the novel The Long Way of the Red Chamber published in 2013.

Awards and reception Xu Pei won Düsseldorf's Literary Creation Award in 1991, the Literary Creation Award of the Ministry of Culture of North Rhine-Westphalia in 1993, the Doctoral Scholarship of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in 1994–1996, and the Heine Literature Creation Award in Lümborg in 1999–2000.

In an interview in 2011, the German sinologist Wolfgang Kubin commented that Xu Pei's poems were well written and her works of art deserved attention. Kubin said, unlike other overseas Chinese writers who focused on Chinese topics, Xu did not limit herself to Chinese topics.