Wang Anyi

Wang Anyi (born 6 March 1954) is a Chinese writer, vice-chair of the China Writers Association since 2006, and professor in Chinese Literature at Fudan University since 2004.

Wang widely writes novels, novellas, short stories and essays with diverse themes and topics. The majority of her works are set in Shanghai, where she lived and worked for the majority of her life. Wang also regularly writes about the countryside in Anhui, where she was "sent down" during the Cultural Revolution. Her works have been translated into English, German and French, and studied as zhiqing (educated youth), xungen (roots-searching), Haipai (Shanghai style), and dushi (urban, cosmopolitan) literature. Under the influence of her parents, she liked literature very much in childhood. After the Cultural Revolution, her parents were sent to labor camps. She read a large number of foreign works, Including Turgenev, Tolstoy, Gorky, Pushkin, Tazma and other writers classic works.

Career In 1969, after graduating from middle school, Wang was "sent down" to the countryside of 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."

During the lonely years in the countryside, "reading books and writing in my diary became even more precious to me". Her biographical stories portray emotionally-charged coming-of-age experiences of political frustrations, youthful yearnings, and the development of the private self in the context of socialist revolution.

Since Baotown, Wang began exploring social taboo subjects. Her three novellas on forbidden carnal love, namely Love on a Barren Mountain (1986), Love in a Small Town (1986), and Brocade Valley (1987), provoked much controversy despite virtually no depictions of sex. Her 1989 novella Brothers made forays into the fragile same-sex, non-sexual female bond. However, in a 1988 interview, Wang stated her "purpose and theme" have been consistently about man and love.

During 1990s, the literal technics of Wang have been more skilled, and her works "not only reveal social relationships, but some of the basic attributes (natural attributes) of people and their profound constraining power over the fate of individuals.

Narrative style Wang likes to combine history with current facts to create, and integrate historical culture into the narrative of the novel. "The Song of Everlasting Sorrow" is actually a poem written by Bai Juyi, a poet in the Tang dynasty, about the love between Tang Xuanzong and Concubine Yang. Based on a piece of real news and ancient history, Wang Anyi unfolded another kind of love story, cleverly combining current knowledge and history. On the other hand, Wang Anyi is good at narrative methods that see the 'big' from the 'small'. From "Song of Everlasting Regret" to "Kao Gong Ji", she reflects the changes in society and the times through the description of characters.

Hong Zicheng commented that "Among women writers, Wang Anyi is seen as a writer with an exceptionally wide field of vision and the ability to harness many forms of life experience and literary subject matter." The cultural critic, Dai Jinhua, remarked on her literary creation after Wang won the 2017 Newman Prize for Chinese Literature, "Wang Anyi is a good at capturing the miniature drama of mundane lives ... Her world is a gallery of humans, in which you encounter China, the world, and the river of life that is enduring and sublime, yielding yet constantly invigorated ... She does not write about ordinary people in a general sense; she writes about laborers, and the daily lives of those laborers, regarding their love, fear, life, and death."

Throughout her writing career, Wang transitioned from experience-based writing to more strategic narration. In a 1991 interview, she claimed that her early works only described scenes, without the narrator's presence. Late on, she transitioned from objective narration to more subjective narration. Wang is often recognized as a feminist writer, although she does not self-identify as a feminist. "Critics often says that I am under the influence of feminism. They say I am disappointed in man, which I am not."

Works translated into English

Major awards 1982: 4th National Short Story Prize, "The Destination" 1983: 2nd National Novella Prize, Lapse of Time 1987: 4th National Novella Prize, Baotown 2000: 5th Mao Dun Literature Prize, The Song of Everlasting Sorrow 2004: 3rd Lu Xun Literary Prize, "Confidences in a Hair Salon" 2012: 4th Dream of the Red Chamber Award, Scent of Heaven 2013: France's Ordre des Arts et des Lettres 2017: 5th Newman Prize for Chinese Literature 2018: 2nd JD Literature Prize, "红豆生南国"