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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

The second of three children of writers Wang Xiaoping (王嘯平) and Ru Zhijuan, Wang Anyi was born in Nanjing in 1954, but moved to Shanghai at age 1 with her parents. Wang was raised in a well-protected family off wealthy Huaihai Road and developed a habit of reading herself to sleep at a young age. She has an elder sister Wang Annuo (王安諾) and a younger brother Wang Anwei (王安桅).

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". Wang had hoped to enter a university as a Worker-Peasant-Soldier student but without a recommendation her dream was not realized. However, as she could play the accordion, in 1972 she found a position in the Xuzhou Song and Dance Cultural Troupe to play the cello. During her spare time she continued to write, and began to publish short stories in 1976. She was permitted to return to Shanghai in 1978 and worked as an editor of the literature magazine Childhood (儿童时代).

In 1980 Wang became a professional writer, and that year received training from the China Writers Association at the Lu Xun Literary Institute. Her earlier works focused on individual experiences rather than the collective, politics-oriented literature advocated by the state. In 1982 and 1983, her short story "The Destination" and novella Lapse of Time won national awards. In Lapse of Time, Wang shifted from emotional intensity in her previous work to the mundane day-to-day lives. But it was a 1983 trip to Iowa City, Iowa, United States for the International Writing Program, with her mother Ru Zhijuan, that redefined her career. There she met writer Chen Yingzhen, a social activist and Chinese nationalist from Taiwan, whose humanistic worldview and encouragement strongly influenced her. This experience "led to the profound discovery that she was indeed Chinese and to the decision to 'write on China' when she returned". In her first major work after the trip, the award-winning novella Baotown (1985), Wang focused on the culture of rural China, drawing from her own experience. The benevolent child protagonist is contrasted with selfish, prejudicial, cruel and close-minded adult villagers, and Ying Hong remarked that Wang used "words that carry not the least hint of subjectivity she casually tosses forth a whole string of 'slices of life'."

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.

Wang's 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".

Wang has tried other forms of writing. In 1996 Wang co-wrote the period film Temptress Moon with director Chen Kaige and Shu Kei. In 2007, she translated Elizabeth Swados' My Depression: A Picture Book from English.

Wang has been a professor in Fudan University since 2000s.

Personal life

Wang is married to Li Zhang. They have no children.

Works translated to 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 (天香)
• 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"

Wang was also a finalist for the 4th Man Booker International Prize in 2011.

References

1. ^ Lapse of Time. China Books. 1988. ISBN 978-0-8351-2032-6.
2. ^ Chinese Writers on Writing. Trinity University Press. 2010. ISBN 978-1-59534-063-4.
3. 王安忆的文学之路 Retrieved 2017-01-14
4. ^ Leung, Laifong (1994). "Wang Anyi: Restless Explorer". Morning Sun: Interviews with Chinese Writers of the Lost Generation. M.E. Sharpe. pp. 177–87. ISBN 978-1-56324-093-5.
5. Wang, Lingzhen (2003). "Wang Anyi". In Mostow, Joshua S. (ed.). The Columbia Companion to Modern East Asian Literature. Columbia University Press. pp. 592–7. ISBN 978-0-231-11314-4.
6. ^ Years of Sadness. Cornell University. 2009. ISBN 978-1-933947-47-1.
7. Ying Hong (1991). "Wang Anyi and Her Fiction". In Ying Bian (ed.). The Time Is Not Yet Ripe: Contemporary China's Best Writers and Their Stories. Translated by Katharina A. Byrne. Foreign Languages Press. pp. 217–24. ISBN 978-7-119-00742-7.
8. 王安忆教授的复旦十年 Retrieved 2017-01-14
9. 王安忆：文学能使人生变得有趣 Retrieved 2017-01-14
10. 王安忆作品开展 Retrieved 2017-01-14
11. The Rose Colored Dinner: New Works by Contemporary Chinese Women Writers. Joint Publishing. 1988. ISBN 978-962-04-0615-7.
12. Chinese Literature, Autumn 1989.
13. Baotown. Viking Press. 1989. ISBN 978-0-670-82622-3.
14. Wang, Anyi. "Mother". Frontiers of Literary Studies in China. 12 (1): 5–19. doi:10.3868/so10-007-018-0002-5 (inactive 2020-01-22).{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of January 2020 (link)
15. Spring Bamboo: A Collection of Contemporary Chinese Short Stories. Random House. 1989. ISBN 978-0-394-56582-8.
16. The Time Is Not Yet Ripe: Contemporary China's Best Writers and Their Stories. Foreign Languages Press. 1991. ISBN 978-7-119-00742-7.
17. ^ The Little Restaurant. Better Link Press. 2010. ISBN 978-1-60220-225-2.
18. Renditions (39), Spring 1993.
19. Renditions (27 & 28), 1987.
20. Love on a Barren Mountain. The Chinese University of Hong Kong. 1991. ISBN 978-962-7255-09-3.
21. Love in a Small Town. The Chinese University of Hong Kong. 1988. ISBN 978-962-7255-03-1.
22. Brocade Valley. New Directions Publishing. 1992. ISBN 978-0-8112-1224-3.
23. Modern Chinese Writers: Self-Portrayals. M. E. Sharpe. 1992. ISBN 978-0-87332-817-3.
24. I Wish I Were a Wolf: The New Voice in Chinese Women's Literature. New World Press. 1994. ISBN 978-7-80005-124-1.
25. Red Is Not the Only Color: Contemporary Chinese Fiction on Love and Sex Between Women, Collected Stories. Rowman & Littlefield. 2001. ISBN 978-0-7425-1137-8.
26. Six Contemporary Chinese Women Writers (IV). Chinese Literature Press. 1995. ISBN 978-7-5071-0297-0.
27. Dragonflies: Fiction by Chinese Women in the Twentieth Century. Cornell University. 2003. ISBN 978-1-885445-15-5.
28. Wang, Anyi. "I Love Bill". Frontiers of Literary Studies in China. 12 (1): 43–65. doi:10.3868/so10-007-018-0004-9 (inactive 2020-01-22).{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of January 2020 (link)
29. Wang, Anyi (2018). "The Troupe". Frontiers of Literary Studies in China. 12 (4): 645–673. doi:10.3868/s010-007-018-0030-2.
30. ^ One China, Many Paths. Verso Books. 2003. ISBN 978-1-85984-537-0.
31. Wang, Anyi. "Match Made in Heaven". Frontiers of Literary Studies in China. 12 (1): 20–42. doi:10.3868/so10-007-018-0003-2 (inactive 2020-01-22).{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of January 2020 (link)
32. Street Wizards and Other New Folklore. Foreign Languages Press. 2009. ISBN 978-7-119-05749-1.
33. Chinese Literature, September–October 2000.
34. Renditions (69), Spring 2008.
35. The Mystified Boat: Postmodern Stories from China. University of Hawaiʻi Press. 2003. ISBN 978-0-8248-2799-1.
36. Words Without Borders, April 2008.
37. Wang, Anyi (2019). Fu Ping. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0231193238.
38. Under the Eaves: Selected Short Stories by Contemporary Writers from Shanghai(I). Better Link Press. 2008. ISBN 978-1-60220-207-8.
39. Keep Running, Little Brother. Foreign Languages Press. 2014. ISBN 978-7-119-09311-6.
40. How Far Is Forever and More Stories by Women Writers. Foreign Languages Press. 2008. ISBN 978-7-119-05436-0.
41. Wang, Anyi. "A Girls' Trip". Frontiers of Literary Studies in China. 13 (2): 262–297. doi:10.3868/s010-008-019-0014-0.
42. The Great Masque and More Stories of Life in the City. Foreign Languages Press. 2008. ISBN 978-7-119-05437-7.
43. Renditions (86), Autumn 2016.
44. Wang, Anyi. "The Rescue Truck". Frontiers of Literary Studies in China. 13 (2): 298–311. doi:10.3868/s010-008-019-0015-7.
45. A Voice from the Beyond. Foreign Languages Press. 2014. ISBN 978-7-119-09309-3.
46. By the River: Seven Contemporary Chinese Novellas. University of Oklahoma Press. 2016. ISBN 978-0-8061-5404-6.
47. 王安忆获"法国文学艺术骑士勋章" 忆法国情结, 2013-09-29, Retrieved 2017-01-14

External links

• Wang Anyi. A Portrait by Kong Kai Ming at Hong Kong Baptist University Library

• CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of January 2020
• 1954 births
• Living people
• Chinese women novelists
• Writers from Nanjing
• 20th-century women writers
• 21st-century women writers
• 20th-century Chinese novelists
• 21st-century Chinese novelists
• Fudan University faculty
• Chinese women short story writers
• Chinese women essayists
• Members of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference
• Chevaliers of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
• International Writing Program alumni
• Sent-down youths
• People's Republic of China translators
• English–Chinese translators
• Mao Dun Literature Prize laureates
• 21st-century translators
• Chinese people of Singaporean descent
• People's Republic of China short story writers
• Politicians from Nanjing
• Educators from Nanjing
• Short story writers from Jiangsu