Bai Renfu is considered one of the top four playwrights of the Yuan Dynasty.
He wrote 16 plays, three of which survive:
* ''Over the Wall''
* ''Rain on the Parasol Trees''
* ''Romance of the East Wall''
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Han Lao Da
Han Lao Da is a Singaporean playwright, as well as founder and principal of Han Language Centre for his contributions in the Singaporean drama scene, and is also recognised for his xiangsheng contributions in Singapore.
Although Han was born in Singapore, his forefathers were from Wen Chang province in Hainan, China.
Han started composing xiangsheng plays since the 1970s, and he started studying the works of renowned xiangsheng artist Ma Ji . Han’s debut play was entitled "The gift ticket". The play was performed in Singapore and major towns and cities all over peninsula Malaysia. In 1984, Han got to befriend Ma Ji, and in 1986, Han also befriended noted performers like and . After making these acquaintances, Han began to absorb all the artistic knowledge he can from these noted xiangsheng performers so that he could bring the art of xiangsheng to Singapore, and promote the local xiangsheng culture. He worked hard with other xiangsheng enthusiasts, and produced many scripts for local performances. His works garnered many local awards and won many xiangsheng competitions. He also published three xiangsheng collections and critiques containing a total of 45 xiangsheng scripts. In 2000, his article introducing Singaporean xiangsheng was published in the column on xiangsheng history, published in the Chinese Xiangsheng Network.
At the same time, Han is a noted playwright active in the Singaporean drama scene. He has written a total of nine full-length drama and many short plays.
* 1990: Cultural Medallion , by the National Arts Council Singapore.
* 1995: Broadcast award, by the .
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
* The sisters Jin and Yin
* The Door
* The five Libra
* The Soaring heights
* The Teochew Kangaroo
* Yelin School
* What time is it?
* Aliens
* The Call
* Face
Life
Although Han was born in Singapore, his forefathers were from Wen Chang province in Hainan, China.
Han started composing xiangsheng plays since the 1970s, and he started studying the works of renowned xiangsheng artist Ma Ji . Han’s debut play was entitled "The gift ticket". The play was performed in Singapore and major towns and cities all over peninsula Malaysia. In 1984, Han got to befriend Ma Ji, and in 1986, Han also befriended noted performers like and . After making these acquaintances, Han began to absorb all the artistic knowledge he can from these noted xiangsheng performers so that he could bring the art of xiangsheng to Singapore, and promote the local xiangsheng culture. He worked hard with other xiangsheng enthusiasts, and produced many scripts for local performances. His works garnered many local awards and won many xiangsheng competitions. He also published three xiangsheng collections and critiques containing a total of 45 xiangsheng scripts. In 2000, his article introducing Singaporean xiangsheng was published in the column on xiangsheng history, published in the Chinese Xiangsheng Network.
At the same time, Han is a noted playwright active in the Singaporean drama scene. He has written a total of nine full-length drama and many short plays.
Awards
* 1990: Cultural Medallion , by the National Arts Council Singapore.
* 1995: Broadcast award, by the .
Published Works
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Plays that have been performed but not published
Full-length drama
* The sisters Jin and Yin
* The Door
* The five Libra
* The Soaring heights
* The Teochew Kangaroo
* Yelin School
Short plays
* What time is it?
* Aliens
* The Call
* Face
Guan Hanqing
Guan Hanqing , sobriquet "the Oldman of the Studio" , was a Chinese playwright in Yuan Dynasty.
Guan was born in the capital city of the Yuan Dynasty, and produced about 65 plays, mostly in Vernacular Chinese of the time. He was considered as one of the Four Great Yuan Playwrights, fourteen of his plays survived, including:
* ''The Injustice to Dou E'' or ''The Injustice Suffered by Dou E''
* ''Saving the Dusty-windy'' or ''Saving the Prostitute''
* ''The Conference of a Single '' or ''Meeting the Enemies Alone''
* ''The Pavilion of Moon-Worship''
* ''Snow in Midsummer''
*''The Butterfly Dream''
Biography
Guan was born in the capital city of the Yuan Dynasty, and produced about 65 plays, mostly in Vernacular Chinese of the time. He was considered as one of the Four Great Yuan Playwrights, fourteen of his plays survived, including:
* ''The Injustice to Dou E'' or ''The Injustice Suffered by Dou E''
* ''Saving the Dusty-windy'' or ''Saving the Prostitute''
* ''The Conference of a Single '' or ''Meeting the Enemies Alone''
* ''The Pavilion of Moon-Worship''
* ''Snow in Midsummer''
*''The Butterfly Dream''
Gao Xingjian
Gao Xingjian , is a émigré novelist, dramatist and critic, who received the 2000 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is also a noted translator, particularly of Samuel Beckett and Eugène Ionesco, a stage director and a celebrated painter.
Gao's original home town is . Born in Ganzhou, Jiangxi, China, Gao has been a citizen since 1997. In 1992 he was awarded the by the French government.
Gao's father was a clerk in the Bank of China, and his mother was a member of the Young Men's Christian Association. His mother was once a playactress of Anti-Japanese Theatre during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Under his mother's influence, Gao enjoyed painting, writing and theatre very much when he was a little boy. During his middle school years, he read lots of literature translated from the West, and he studied sketching, ink and wash painting, oil painting and clay sculpture under the guidance of painter Yun Zongyin .
1950, his family moved to Nanjing, the capital city of Jiangsu Province. 1952, Gao entered the Nanjing Number 10 Middle School .
In 1957 Gao graduated, and listening to his mother's advice, chose Beijing Foreign Studies University instead of the Central Academy of Fine Arts , although he was thought to be talented in art.
In 1962 Gao graduated from the Department of French, BFSU, and then entered the Chinese International Bookstore , where he became a professional translator. During the 1970s, because of the Down to the Countryside Movement, he went to and stayed in the countryside and did farm labour in Anhui Provice. He taught as a Chinese teacher in Gangkou Middle School , Ningguo Xian , Anhui Province for a short time. In 1975, he was allowed to go back to Beijing and became the group leader of French translation for the magazine ''Construction in China'' .
In 1977 Gao worked for the Committee of Foreign Relationship, Chinese Association of Writers . In May 1979, he visited Paris with Chinese writers including Ba Jin , and served as a French-Chinese translator in the group. In 1980, Gao became a screenwriter and playwright for the Beijing People's Art Theatre .
Gao is known as a pioneer of absurdist drama in China, where ''Signal Alarm'' and ''Bus Stop'' were produced during his term as resident playwright at the Beijing People's Art Theatre from 1981 to 1987. Influenced by European theatrical models, it gained him a reputation as an avant-garde writer. His other plays, ''The Primitive'' and ''The Other Shore'' , all openly criticised the state government.
In 1986 Gao was misdiagnosed with lung cancer, and he began a 10-month trek along the Yangtze, which resulted in his novel ''Soul Mountain'' . The part-memoir, part-novel, first published in Taiwan in 1989, mixes literary genres and shifting narrative voices. It has been specially cited by the Swedish Nobel committee as "one of those singular literary creations that seem impossible to compare with anything but themselves". The book details his travels from Sichuan province to the coast, and life among Chinese minorities such as the Qiang, Miao, and Yi peoples on the fringes of Han Chinese civilisation.
By 1987, Gao had shifted to Paris, France. The political ''Fugitives'' , which makes reference to the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, resulted in all his works being banned from performance in China.
* 《绝对信号》
** 1982, in Beijing People's Art Theatre
** 1992, in Taiwan
* 《车站》
** 1983, in Beijing People's Art Theatre
** 1984, in Yugoslavia
** 1986, in Hongkong
** 1988, in Britain
** 1992, in Austria
** 1999, in Japan
* 《野人》
** 1985, in Beijing People's Art Theatre
** 1988, in Hamburg, Germany
** 1990, in Hongkong
* 《彼岸》
** 1986, published in magazine ''Oct.'' , Beijing
** 1990, in Taiwan
** 1994, translated into by G?ran Malmqvist
** 1995, in The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts
* 《躲雨》
** 1981, in Sweden
* 《冥城》
** 1988, in Hongkong
* 《声声慢变奏》
** 1989, in United States
* 《逃亡》
** 1990, published in magazine ''Today''
** 1990, in Sweden
** 1992, in Germany, Poland
** 1994, in France
** 1997, in Japan, Africa
* 《生死界》
** 1991, published in magazine ''Today''
** 1992, in France
** 1994, in Sydney, Italy
** 1996, in Poland
** 1996, in US
* 《山海经传》
** 1992, published by Hongkong Tian & Di Book Press
* 《对话与反诘》
** 1992, published in magazine ''Today''
** 1992, in Vienna
** 1995, 1999, in Paris
* 《周末四重奏》
** 1999, published by Hongkong New Century Press
* 《夜游神》
** 1999, in France
* 《八月雪》
** 2000, published by Taiwan Lianjing Press
** 19 Dec 2002, in Taipei
* 《高行健戏剧集》
* 《高行健戏剧六种》
* 《行路难》
* 《喀巴拉山》
* 《独白》
* 《寒夜的星辰》
* 《有只鸽子叫红唇儿》 - a collection of novellas
* 《给我老爷买鱼竿》 - a short story collection
* 《灵山》
* 《一个人的圣经》
* 《巴金在巴黎》
* 《现代小说技巧初探》
* 《谈小说观和小说技巧》
* 《没有主义》
* 《对一种现代戏剧的追求》
* 《高行健·2000年文库——当代中国文库精读》
* ''Buying a Fishing Rod for my Grandfather'', short stories, trans. Mabel Lee, Flamingo, London, 2004, ISBN 0-00-717038-6
* ''Soul Mountain'', novel, trans. Mabel Lee, Flamingo, London, 2001, ISBN 0-00-711923-2
* ''One Man's Bible'', novel, trans. Mabel Lee, Flamingo, ISBN 0-06-621132-8
* ''The Other Shore'', plays, trans. G. Fong, Chinese University Press, ISBN 962-201-862-9
* ''Silhouette/Shadow: The Cinematic Art of Gao Xingjian'', film/images/poetry, ed. Fiona Sze-Lorrain, Contours, Paris, ISBN 978-981-05-9207-3
* ''Trees on the Mountain: an Anthology of New Chinese Writing'' by Stephen C Soong and John Minford. - Hong Kong: The Chinese U.P., copilot 1984.
* ''Gao Xingjian, le moderniste'' // La Chine aujourd'hui NO 41, September 1986.
* ''World Literature with Chinese Characteristics: On A Novel by Gao Xingjian'' by Torbjoern Lodén, // Stockholm journal of East Asian Studies 4, 1993.
* ''Chinese Writing and Exile'' by Gregory B. Lee - Center of East Asian Studies at the University of Chicago, 1993.
* ''Gao Xingjian, the Voice of the Individual'' // Stockholm Journal of East Asian Studies, 6, 1995.
* ''Without Politics: Gao Xingjian on Literary Creation'' by Mabel Lee // Stockholm journal OF East Asian Studies 6, 1995.
* , Robert Nagle, Houston, Texas, 2002.
* ''Pronouns as Protagonists: Gao Xingjian's Lingshan as Autobiography'' by Mabel Lee// Colloquium of the Sydney Society of Literature and Aesthetics at the University of Sydney. Draft Paper, 3-4 Oct. 1996.
* ''Personal Freedom in Twentieth Century China: Reclaiming the Self in Yang Lian's Yi and Gao Xingjian's Lingshan'' by Mabel Lee // History, Literature and Society. - Sydney: Sydney Studies in Society and Culture 15, 1996.
* ''Outer one plus près you réel: dialogues sur l'écriture 1994-1997, entretiens avec Denis Bourgeois'' /trad. par Noeel et Liliane Dutrait. - La route of d'Aigues: l'Aube, 1997.
* ''Gao Xingjian's Lingshan/Soul Mountain: Modernism and the Chinese Writer'' by Mabel Lee, // Heat 4, 1997.
* ''Gao Xingjian, le peintre de l'?me'' by Robert Calvet, // Brèves No 56, more hiver 1999.
* ''Towards A Modern Zen Theatre: Gao Xingian and Chinese Theatre Experimentalism''. Henry Y.H. Zhao, - London: School of Oriental and African Studies, 2000.
While being forced to work as a peasant - a form of 're-education' under the Cultural Revolution - in the 1970s, Gao Xingjian produced many plays, short stories, poems and critical pieces that he had eventually to burn to avoid the consequences of his dissident literature being discovered. Of the work he produced subsequently, he published no collections of poetry, being known more widely for his drama, fiction and essays. However, one short poem exists that represents a distinctively modern style akin to his other writings.
天葬台
宰了
割了
烂捣碎了
燃一柱香
打一声呼哨
来了
就去了
来去都干干净净
Translation:
Cut
Scalped
Pounded into pieces
Light an incense
Blow the whistle
Come
Gone
Out and out
- 13 April, 1986, Beijing
Gao is a renowned painter, especially for his ink and wash painting.
* ''The End of the World'', Germany, 29 Mar - 27 May 2007
* “无我之境·有我之境”, Singapore, 17 Nov 2005 - 7 Feb 2006
* ''Return to Painting'', New York, Perennial 2002
* ''Le go?t de l'encre'', Paris, Hazan 2002
Although the general position by the Chinese media and current government towards Gao is that of silence, the Yangcheng Evening News , a state-run newspaper, in 2001, criticised one of his works. A Chinese columnist called him an "awful writer", and said that the idea of his winning the Nobel Prize was "ludicrous".
During Gao's early years in China, his works were published and his dramas were performed, and he had a large readership and audience. He was considered an "experimental playwright" or an avant-courier. Since the ban of his works and his migration to Europe, he has become less known - or even unknown - in China.
The Premier Zhu Rongji delivered a congratulatory message to Gao when interviewed by the Hong Kong newspaper ''East Daily'' :
* Q.: ''What's your comment on Gao's winning Nobel Prize ?''
* A.: ''I am very happy that works written in Chinese can win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Chinese characters have a history of several thousand years, and Chinese language has an infinite charm, believe that there will be Chinese works winning Nobel Prizes again in the future. Although it's a pity that the winner this time is a French citizen instead of Chinese, I still would like to send my congratulations both to the winner and the French Department of Culture.''
Gao's work has led to fierce discussion among Chinese writers, both positive and negative.
Many Chinese writers comment that Gao's "Chinoiserie," or translatable works, have opened a new approach for Chinese modern literature to the Swedish Academy, and that his winning the Nobel Prize in its 100th anniversary year is a happy occasion for Chinese literature.
Before 2000, a dozen Chinese writers and scholars already predicted Gao's winning the Nobel Prize for Literature, including Hu Yaoheng Pan Jun just in 1999. Due to Chinese literature having the longest continuous tradition and having heavily influenced East Asian literature, Chinese language elements are widely used in several languages including Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese. In addition, with 20th century Japanese writers having already won the Prize, many Chinese writers had predicted before 2000 that soon there would be a Literature winner with a Chinese background.
* Gao Xingjian's Swedish translator G?ran Malmqvist, is a member of the Swedish Academy and was responsible for the translation to Swedish for Nobel Prize consideration. Ten days before the award decision was made public, Gao Xingjian changed his Swedish publisher , but G?ran Malmqvist has denied leaking information about the award.
* Gao is the second Nobel laureate to give an Nobel acceptance speech in Chinese .
* Gao has been the center of an artistic piece of video art. The art exhibit is entitled 'Voom' and was presented at the University of Iowa art museum in March 2008.
* 2006, ''Lions Award'', by the New York Public Library at Library Lions Benefit event
* 2000, ''Nobel Prize in Literature''
* 1992, ''''
Life
Gao's original home town is . Born in Ganzhou, Jiangxi, China, Gao has been a citizen since 1997. In 1992 he was awarded the by the French government.
Early years in Jiangxi & Jiangsu
Gao's father was a clerk in the Bank of China, and his mother was a member of the Young Men's Christian Association. His mother was once a playactress of Anti-Japanese Theatre during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Under his mother's influence, Gao enjoyed painting, writing and theatre very much when he was a little boy. During his middle school years, he read lots of literature translated from the West, and he studied sketching, ink and wash painting, oil painting and clay sculpture under the guidance of painter Yun Zongyin .
1950, his family moved to Nanjing, the capital city of Jiangsu Province. 1952, Gao entered the Nanjing Number 10 Middle School .
Years in Beijing & Anhui
In 1957 Gao graduated, and listening to his mother's advice, chose Beijing Foreign Studies University instead of the Central Academy of Fine Arts , although he was thought to be talented in art.
In 1962 Gao graduated from the Department of French, BFSU, and then entered the Chinese International Bookstore , where he became a professional translator. During the 1970s, because of the Down to the Countryside Movement, he went to and stayed in the countryside and did farm labour in Anhui Provice. He taught as a Chinese teacher in Gangkou Middle School , Ningguo Xian , Anhui Province for a short time. In 1975, he was allowed to go back to Beijing and became the group leader of French translation for the magazine ''Construction in China'' .
In 1977 Gao worked for the Committee of Foreign Relationship, Chinese Association of Writers . In May 1979, he visited Paris with Chinese writers including Ba Jin , and served as a French-Chinese translator in the group. In 1980, Gao became a screenwriter and playwright for the Beijing People's Art Theatre .
Gao is known as a pioneer of absurdist drama in China, where ''Signal Alarm'' and ''Bus Stop'' were produced during his term as resident playwright at the Beijing People's Art Theatre from 1981 to 1987. Influenced by European theatrical models, it gained him a reputation as an avant-garde writer. His other plays, ''The Primitive'' and ''The Other Shore'' , all openly criticised the state government.
In 1986 Gao was misdiagnosed with lung cancer, and he began a 10-month trek along the Yangtze, which resulted in his novel ''Soul Mountain'' . The part-memoir, part-novel, first published in Taiwan in 1989, mixes literary genres and shifting narrative voices. It has been specially cited by the Swedish Nobel committee as "one of those singular literary creations that seem impossible to compare with anything but themselves". The book details his travels from Sichuan province to the coast, and life among Chinese minorities such as the Qiang, Miao, and Yi peoples on the fringes of Han Chinese civilisation.
Years in Europe
By 1987, Gao had shifted to Paris, France. The political ''Fugitives'' , which makes reference to the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, resulted in all his works being banned from performance in China.
Selected works
Dramas & Performances
* 《绝对信号》
** 1982, in Beijing People's Art Theatre
** 1992, in Taiwan
* 《车站》
** 1983, in Beijing People's Art Theatre
** 1984, in Yugoslavia
** 1986, in Hongkong
** 1988, in Britain
** 1992, in Austria
** 1999, in Japan
* 《野人》
** 1985, in Beijing People's Art Theatre
** 1988, in Hamburg, Germany
** 1990, in Hongkong
* 《彼岸》
** 1986, published in magazine ''Oct.'' , Beijing
** 1990, in Taiwan
** 1994, translated into by G?ran Malmqvist
** 1995, in The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts
* 《躲雨》
** 1981, in Sweden
* 《冥城》
** 1988, in Hongkong
* 《声声慢变奏》
** 1989, in United States
* 《逃亡》
** 1990, published in magazine ''Today''
** 1990, in Sweden
** 1992, in Germany, Poland
** 1994, in France
** 1997, in Japan, Africa
* 《生死界》
** 1991, published in magazine ''Today''
** 1992, in France
** 1994, in Sydney, Italy
** 1996, in Poland
** 1996, in US
* 《山海经传》
** 1992, published by Hongkong Tian & Di Book Press
* 《对话与反诘》
** 1992, published in magazine ''Today''
** 1992, in Vienna
** 1995, 1999, in Paris
* 《周末四重奏》
** 1999, published by Hongkong New Century Press
* 《夜游神》
** 1999, in France
* 《八月雪》
** 2000, published by Taiwan Lianjing Press
** 19 Dec 2002, in Taipei
* 《高行健戏剧集》
* 《高行健戏剧六种》
* 《行路难》
* 《喀巴拉山》
* 《独白》
Novels
* 《寒夜的星辰》
* 《有只鸽子叫红唇儿》 - a collection of novellas
* 《给我老爷买鱼竿》 - a short story collection
* 《灵山》
* 《一个人的圣经》
Others
* 《巴金在巴黎》
* 《现代小说技巧初探》
* 《谈小说观和小说技巧》
* 《没有主义》
* 《对一种现代戏剧的追求》
* 《高行健·2000年文库——当代中国文库精读》
Works of Gao Xingjian in English
* ''Buying a Fishing Rod for my Grandfather'', short stories, trans. Mabel Lee, Flamingo, London, 2004, ISBN 0-00-717038-6
* ''Soul Mountain'', novel, trans. Mabel Lee, Flamingo, London, 2001, ISBN 0-00-711923-2
* ''One Man's Bible'', novel, trans. Mabel Lee, Flamingo, ISBN 0-06-621132-8
* ''The Other Shore'', plays, trans. G. Fong, Chinese University Press, ISBN 962-201-862-9
* ''Silhouette/Shadow: The Cinematic Art of Gao Xingjian'', film/images/poetry, ed. Fiona Sze-Lorrain, Contours, Paris, ISBN 978-981-05-9207-3
Literature
* ''Trees on the Mountain: an Anthology of New Chinese Writing'' by Stephen C Soong and John Minford. - Hong Kong: The Chinese U.P., copilot 1984.
* ''Gao Xingjian, le moderniste'' // La Chine aujourd'hui NO 41, September 1986.
* ''World Literature with Chinese Characteristics: On A Novel by Gao Xingjian'' by Torbjoern Lodén, // Stockholm journal of East Asian Studies 4, 1993.
* ''Chinese Writing and Exile'' by Gregory B. Lee - Center of East Asian Studies at the University of Chicago, 1993.
* ''Gao Xingjian, the Voice of the Individual'' // Stockholm Journal of East Asian Studies, 6, 1995.
* ''Without Politics: Gao Xingjian on Literary Creation'' by Mabel Lee // Stockholm journal OF East Asian Studies 6, 1995.
* , Robert Nagle, Houston, Texas, 2002.
* ''Pronouns as Protagonists: Gao Xingjian's Lingshan as Autobiography'' by Mabel Lee// Colloquium of the Sydney Society of Literature and Aesthetics at the University of Sydney. Draft Paper, 3-4 Oct. 1996.
* ''Personal Freedom in Twentieth Century China: Reclaiming the Self in Yang Lian's Yi and Gao Xingjian's Lingshan'' by Mabel Lee // History, Literature and Society. - Sydney: Sydney Studies in Society and Culture 15, 1996.
* ''Outer one plus près you réel: dialogues sur l'écriture 1994-1997, entretiens avec Denis Bourgeois'' /trad. par Noeel et Liliane Dutrait. - La route of d'Aigues: l'Aube, 1997.
* ''Gao Xingjian's Lingshan/Soul Mountain: Modernism and the Chinese Writer'' by Mabel Lee, // Heat 4, 1997.
* ''Gao Xingjian, le peintre de l'?me'' by Robert Calvet, // Brèves No 56, more hiver 1999.
* ''Towards A Modern Zen Theatre: Gao Xingian and Chinese Theatre Experimentalism''. Henry Y.H. Zhao, - London: School of Oriental and African Studies, 2000.
Poem by Gao Xingjian
While being forced to work as a peasant - a form of 're-education' under the Cultural Revolution - in the 1970s, Gao Xingjian produced many plays, short stories, poems and critical pieces that he had eventually to burn to avoid the consequences of his dissident literature being discovered. Of the work he produced subsequently, he published no collections of poetry, being known more widely for his drama, fiction and essays. However, one short poem exists that represents a distinctively modern style akin to his other writings.
天葬台
宰了
割了
烂捣碎了
燃一柱香
打一声呼哨
来了
就去了
来去都干干净净
Translation:
Cut
Scalped
Pounded into pieces
Light an incense
Blow the whistle
Come
Gone
Out and out
- 13 April, 1986, Beijing
Painting
Gao is a renowned painter, especially for his ink and wash painting.
Exhibitions
* ''The End of the World'', Germany, 29 Mar - 27 May 2007
* “无我之境·有我之境”, Singapore, 17 Nov 2005 - 7 Feb 2006
* ''Return to Painting'', New York, Perennial 2002
* ''Le go?t de l'encre'', Paris, Hazan 2002
Comments
Official response from mainland China
Although the general position by the Chinese media and current government towards Gao is that of silence, the Yangcheng Evening News , a state-run newspaper, in 2001, criticised one of his works. A Chinese columnist called him an "awful writer", and said that the idea of his winning the Nobel Prize was "ludicrous".
During Gao's early years in China, his works were published and his dramas were performed, and he had a large readership and audience. He was considered an "experimental playwright" or an avant-courier. Since the ban of his works and his migration to Europe, he has become less known - or even unknown - in China.
The Premier Zhu Rongji delivered a congratulatory message to Gao when interviewed by the Hong Kong newspaper ''East Daily'' :
* Q.: ''What's your comment on Gao's winning Nobel Prize ?''
* A.: ''I am very happy that works written in Chinese can win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Chinese characters have a history of several thousand years, and Chinese language has an infinite charm, believe that there will be Chinese works winning Nobel Prizes again in the future. Although it's a pity that the winner this time is a French citizen instead of Chinese, I still would like to send my congratulations both to the winner and the French Department of Culture.''
Comments from Chinese writers
Gao's work has led to fierce discussion among Chinese writers, both positive and negative.
Many Chinese writers comment that Gao's "Chinoiserie," or translatable works, have opened a new approach for Chinese modern literature to the Swedish Academy, and that his winning the Nobel Prize in its 100th anniversary year is a happy occasion for Chinese literature.
Before 2000, a dozen Chinese writers and scholars already predicted Gao's winning the Nobel Prize for Literature, including Hu Yaoheng Pan Jun just in 1999. Due to Chinese literature having the longest continuous tradition and having heavily influenced East Asian literature, Chinese language elements are widely used in several languages including Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese. In addition, with 20th century Japanese writers having already won the Prize, many Chinese writers had predicted before 2000 that soon there would be a Literature winner with a Chinese background.
Trivia
* Gao Xingjian's Swedish translator G?ran Malmqvist, is a member of the Swedish Academy and was responsible for the translation to Swedish for Nobel Prize consideration. Ten days before the award decision was made public, Gao Xingjian changed his Swedish publisher , but G?ran Malmqvist has denied leaking information about the award.
* Gao is the second Nobel laureate to give an Nobel acceptance speech in Chinese .
* Gao has been the center of an artistic piece of video art. The art exhibit is entitled 'Voom' and was presented at the University of Iowa art museum in March 2008.
Prizes
* 2006, ''Lions Award'', by the New York Public Library at Library Lions Benefit event
* 2000, ''Nobel Prize in Literature''
* 1992, ''''
Gao Lian (dramatist)
Gao Lian , courtesy name Ruinan , was Chinese writer, dramatist and encyclopedist born in Hangzhou. He is perhaps best remembered for his play ''Yuzanji'' , a romantic drama about a young impoverished scholar and a Daoist nun. The piece remains a classic of the Ming period theater in thirty-three scenes, some of which are still performed today.
Professionally, Gao remained largely outside of official circles and is an example of a ''Buyi Wenren'' or commoner literatus, many examples of whom lived in the 17th century. His writing suggests that he was a resident of Hangzhou and its celebrated West Lake with his area details. Gao’s encyclopedia, ''Zunsheng Bajian'' , was first published in 1591 and reprinted at least twice more before 1620. Specifically, the eight discourses are as follows:
1. On sublime theories of pure self-cultivation
2. On being I harmony with the four seasons
3. On comport on rising and resting
4. On extending life and avoiding disease
5. On food and drink
6. On pure enjoyment of cultured idleness
7. On numinous and arcane elixirs and medicines
8. On remote wanderings beyond the mundane
''Eight Treatises'' has a distinctly modern ring with its espousal of stress avoidance as a key to overall physical health. In his discussion of mental illness , successfully diagnosed the condition now known as Bipolar Disorder. Interestingly Gao advised his readers to avoid abortion and show concern for the elderly and physically weak. He suggested we attach ourselves to a major religious system or our inner emptiness will invite some manner of physical disease. Overall, his works comprise a virtual treasure trove for early 17th century aesthetics and material culture such as garden architecture, tea culture and dwarf trees. The above items were additional examples of his overall aim at the maintenance of bodily health through a quiet enjoyment of human life.
Professionally, Gao remained largely outside of official circles and is an example of a ''Buyi Wenren'' or commoner literatus, many examples of whom lived in the 17th century. His writing suggests that he was a resident of Hangzhou and its celebrated West Lake with his area details. Gao’s encyclopedia, ''Zunsheng Bajian'' , was first published in 1591 and reprinted at least twice more before 1620. Specifically, the eight discourses are as follows:
1. On sublime theories of pure self-cultivation
2. On being I harmony with the four seasons
3. On comport on rising and resting
4. On extending life and avoiding disease
5. On food and drink
6. On pure enjoyment of cultured idleness
7. On numinous and arcane elixirs and medicines
8. On remote wanderings beyond the mundane
''Eight Treatises'' has a distinctly modern ring with its espousal of stress avoidance as a key to overall physical health. In his discussion of mental illness , successfully diagnosed the condition now known as Bipolar Disorder. Interestingly Gao advised his readers to avoid abortion and show concern for the elderly and physically weak. He suggested we attach ourselves to a major religious system or our inner emptiness will invite some manner of physical disease. Overall, his works comprise a virtual treasure trove for early 17th century aesthetics and material culture such as garden architecture, tea culture and dwarf trees. The above items were additional examples of his overall aim at the maintenance of bodily health through a quiet enjoyment of human life.
Cao Yu
Cao Yu , born as Wan Jiabao , was a renowned playwright, often regarded as China's most important of the 20th century. His most well-known works are ''Thunderstorm'' , ''Sunrise'' and ''Peking Man'' . It is largely through the efforts of Cao Yu that the modern Chinese "spoken theater" took root in 20th-century Chinese literature.
Cao Yu was born into a wealthy family in in the province of Hubei. When he was still an infant, his family's business interests necessitated a move to Tianjin where his father worked for a time as secretary to China's President, Li Yuanhong. Tianjin was a cosmopolitan city with a strong western influence, and during his childhood, Yu's mother would often take him to see western style plays, which were gaining in popularity at the time, as well as productions of .
Such western style theater made inroads in China under the influence of noted intellectuals such as Chen Duxiu and Hu Shih, who were proponents of a wider cultural renewal campaign of the era, marked by anti-imperialism, and a re-evaluation of Chinese cultural institutions, such as Confucianism. The enterprise crystallized in 1919, in the so-called May Fourth Movement.
Between 1920 and 1924, Cao Yu attended a Nankai secondary school, which offered a western style study program. The school maintained a society of dramatic arts in which the students were able to produce various western works, notably those of Henrik Ibsen and Eugene O'Neill, who were well-known authors in China thanks to translations published by Hu Shih. Cao Yu took acting roles in a number of the society's dramatic productions, even going so far as to assume the female role of Nora in Ibsen's ''A Doll's House''. He is also known to have assisted in the translation of Englishman, John Galsworthy's 1909 work, ''Strife''.
After finishing his studies at Nankai secondary school, Cao Yu was first matriculated at Nankai University's Department of Political Science but transferred the next year to Tsinghua University, where he would study until graduating in 1934 with a degree in Western Languages and Literature. During his university studies, Cao Yu improved his abilities in both Russian and English. His course of studies required reading the works of such western authors as Bernard Shaw and Eugene O'Neill, and of Russian authors such as Anton Chekhov and Maxim Gorky, as well as translated works of classic Greek writers, Euripides and Aeschylus. This immersion in western literature would mark Yu's style in all writing genres including the "spoken theater" , which had had little tradition in China prior to Yu's influence. During the course of his last year at the university, Cao Yu completed his first work, ''Thunderstorm'', which would mark a milestone in Chinese theater of the 20th century.
While works of Chinese playwrights previous to Cao Yu are of fundamentally historical interest and were famed in China, they garnered little critical success or popularity on the international stage. By contrast, the works of Cao Yu were marked by a whirlwind of worldwide interest, turning Cao Yu into the first Chinese playwright of international renown.
''Thunderstorm'' is undoubtedly the most popular dramatic Chinese work of the period prior to the of China in 1937. It was first published in the literary magazine, ''Four Months of Literature'', which was founded in 1934 by Chinese intellectuals, Zheng Zhenduo and Jin Yi. Shortly after its publication, a production of the play was mounted in Jinan, and later, in 1935, in Shanghai and in Tokyo, both of which were well received. In 1936, ''Thunderstorm'' debuted in Nanjing, with Cao Yu himself acting in the lead role. In 1938, following its theatrical triumphs, the play was made into two separate movies productions, one in Shanghai and another in Hong Kong, that were almost coincidental versions of one another. The latter production, made in 1957, co-starred a young Bruce Lee in one of his few non-fighting roles . The 2006 movie Curse of the Golden Flower, directed and written by Zhang Yimou, sets the same play in the imperial courts of the late Tang Dynasty.
The plot of ''Thunderstorm'' centers on one family's psychological and physical destruction as a result of incest, as perpetrated at the hands of its morally depraved and corrupt patriarch, ''Zhou Puyuan''. Although it is undisputed that the prodigious reputation achieved by ''Thunderstorm'' was due in large part to its scandalous public airing of the topic of incest, and many people have pointed out not inconsiderable technical imperfections in its structure, ''Thunderstorm'' is nevertheless considered to be a milestone in China's modern theatrical ascendancy. Even those who have questioned the literary prowess of Cao Yu, for instance, the noted critic C. T. Hsia, admit that the popularization and consolidation of China's theatrical genre is fundamentally owed to the first works of Cao Yu.
In Cao Yu's second play, ''Sunrise'', published in 1936, he continues his treatment respecting individuals' progressive moral degradation in the face of a hostile society. In it, the history of several Shanghai women are narrated, and whose stories show their lives disintegrating in response to lack of affection and of acknowledgment by the society surrounding them, leading them down a tragic path from which they cannot escape. In 1937, Cao Yu's third play, ''The Wilderness'' , was released but which enjoyed less success than his previous works. ''The Wilderness'', which was influenced by O'Neill's works, relates a succession of murders and stories of revenge set in a forest. At the time the play was published, social realism was the rage in China, and critics were not pleased with the work's supernatural and fantastical elements. There was a resurgence of interest in ''The Wilderness'' in 1980, however, and Cao Yu, then 70-years-old, collaborated in staging a production of his play. The play was made into a movie in 1987.
After the in 1937, Cao Yu took shelter in the central city of Chongqing, along with the government of Chiang Kai-shek. There he wrote his fourth work, ''The Metamorphosis'', which greatly departed from his previous works, concerning itself with patriotic exaltation. Produced for the first time in 1939, the play is set in a military hospital that is bombed by the Japanese army. Although a change for Cao Yu, he was in good company as concentrating on war themes and settings was favored by most of the prominent Chinese writers active during the Second Sino-Japanese War in areas controlled by the government of Chongqing. By contrast, in northern China, as controlled by Mao Zedong's communists, an altogether different type of literature was developing, dedicated to exalting the .
In 1940, Cao Yu completed the writing of his fifth play, ''Peking Man'', considered his most profound and successful work. Set in Peking as its name implies, and in the then present, surprisingly the work does not allude to the war with Japan at all, but chronicles the history of a well-heeled family that is incapable of surviving and adapting to social changes which are destroying the traditional world and culture in which they live. The title of the work is an allusion to the so-called Peking Man, the proto-human who inhabited the north of China several hundred thousand years ago. Cao Yu's recurrent themes are present, emphasizing the inability of traditional families to adapt themselves to modern society and its customs and ways.
In 1941, while still in Chongqing, Cao Yu completed a theatrical adaptation of the famous work, ''The Family'', by novelist, Ba Jin. His last written work during the Japanese occupation was ''The Bridge'', published in 1945 but not produced as a play until 1947, after the end of the war when Japanese troops in China formally surrendered on September 9, 1945.
During his tenure in Chongqing, Cao Yu taught classes in the city's School of Dramatic Art and completed a translation into Chinese of William Shakespeare's ''Romeo and Juliet''.
Following the end of the war, Cao Yu traveled to the United States with another celebrated Chinese writer Lao She. Together, the pair spent a full year touring the U.S. After returning to China, Yu was hired by a movie studio based in Shanghai to write the screenplay and to direct the 1946 released movie, ''Day of the Radiant Sun'' .
After the in 1949, Cao Yu took on the role of director of Peking's ''Popular Theater Art League'' — A role he would remain in for the rest of his life. Although in his youth Yu had been critical of communist ideology, because his first works, with their portrait of decline and cruelty brought on by bourgeois society, were admitting of a Marxist interpretation, they became very popular in 1960s Chinese society; an epoch in which the ideology of Mao Zedong demanded that all literary creation be in service to the communist cause.
In addition to supervising successive production of his earliest plays, Cao Yu kept on writing, and in 1956, published ''Bright Skies''. Thereafter, in 1961, the decade of his major public recognition, he published ''Courage and the Sword'', his first historical drama. This work, although set at the end of the Zhou Dynasty during the Warring States Period, contains pronounced allusions to the defeat of Mao Zedong's political ideology clothed in his Great Leap Forward. His and others' critiques of Mao, and the struggle for power in the halls of government, ultimately ended in the Cultural Revolution; a campaign enforced by Mao to reaffirm his power and to fight against the bourgeois and capitalist elements surfacing in both the political and cultural spheres. The attacks against intellectuals during the Cultural Revolution affected Cao Yu, causing him distress and alienation. However, he was able to rehabilitate himself after Mao's death and Deng Xiaoping subsequent rise to power as ''de facto'' ruler of China.
Cao Yu's last work was ''Wang Zhaojun'', released in 1979. On December 13, 1996, at 86 years of age, Cao Yu died in Beijing.
*''Thunderstorm'' , 1934.
*''Sunrise'' , 1936.
*''The Wilderness'' , 1937.
*''The Metamorphosis'' , 1940.
*''Peking Man'' , 1940.
*''The Bridge'' , 1945.
*''Bright Skies'' , 1956.
*''Courage and the Sword'' , 1961.
*''Wang Zhaojun'' , 1979.
Biography and Works
Childhood
Cao Yu was born into a wealthy family in in the province of Hubei. When he was still an infant, his family's business interests necessitated a move to Tianjin where his father worked for a time as secretary to China's President, Li Yuanhong. Tianjin was a cosmopolitan city with a strong western influence, and during his childhood, Yu's mother would often take him to see western style plays, which were gaining in popularity at the time, as well as productions of .
Such western style theater made inroads in China under the influence of noted intellectuals such as Chen Duxiu and Hu Shih, who were proponents of a wider cultural renewal campaign of the era, marked by anti-imperialism, and a re-evaluation of Chinese cultural institutions, such as Confucianism. The enterprise crystallized in 1919, in the so-called May Fourth Movement.
Literary beginnings
Between 1920 and 1924, Cao Yu attended a Nankai secondary school, which offered a western style study program. The school maintained a society of dramatic arts in which the students were able to produce various western works, notably those of Henrik Ibsen and Eugene O'Neill, who were well-known authors in China thanks to translations published by Hu Shih. Cao Yu took acting roles in a number of the society's dramatic productions, even going so far as to assume the female role of Nora in Ibsen's ''A Doll's House''. He is also known to have assisted in the translation of Englishman, John Galsworthy's 1909 work, ''Strife''.
After finishing his studies at Nankai secondary school, Cao Yu was first matriculated at Nankai University's Department of Political Science but transferred the next year to Tsinghua University, where he would study until graduating in 1934 with a degree in Western Languages and Literature. During his university studies, Cao Yu improved his abilities in both Russian and English. His course of studies required reading the works of such western authors as Bernard Shaw and Eugene O'Neill, and of Russian authors such as Anton Chekhov and Maxim Gorky, as well as translated works of classic Greek writers, Euripides and Aeschylus. This immersion in western literature would mark Yu's style in all writing genres including the "spoken theater" , which had had little tradition in China prior to Yu's influence. During the course of his last year at the university, Cao Yu completed his first work, ''Thunderstorm'', which would mark a milestone in Chinese theater of the 20th century.
While works of Chinese playwrights previous to Cao Yu are of fundamentally historical interest and were famed in China, they garnered little critical success or popularity on the international stage. By contrast, the works of Cao Yu were marked by a whirlwind of worldwide interest, turning Cao Yu into the first Chinese playwright of international renown.
''Thunderstorm''
''Thunderstorm'' is undoubtedly the most popular dramatic Chinese work of the period prior to the of China in 1937. It was first published in the literary magazine, ''Four Months of Literature'', which was founded in 1934 by Chinese intellectuals, Zheng Zhenduo and Jin Yi. Shortly after its publication, a production of the play was mounted in Jinan, and later, in 1935, in Shanghai and in Tokyo, both of which were well received. In 1936, ''Thunderstorm'' debuted in Nanjing, with Cao Yu himself acting in the lead role. In 1938, following its theatrical triumphs, the play was made into two separate movies productions, one in Shanghai and another in Hong Kong, that were almost coincidental versions of one another. The latter production, made in 1957, co-starred a young Bruce Lee in one of his few non-fighting roles . The 2006 movie Curse of the Golden Flower, directed and written by Zhang Yimou, sets the same play in the imperial courts of the late Tang Dynasty.
The plot of ''Thunderstorm'' centers on one family's psychological and physical destruction as a result of incest, as perpetrated at the hands of its morally depraved and corrupt patriarch, ''Zhou Puyuan''. Although it is undisputed that the prodigious reputation achieved by ''Thunderstorm'' was due in large part to its scandalous public airing of the topic of incest, and many people have pointed out not inconsiderable technical imperfections in its structure, ''Thunderstorm'' is nevertheless considered to be a milestone in China's modern theatrical ascendancy. Even those who have questioned the literary prowess of Cao Yu, for instance, the noted critic C. T. Hsia, admit that the popularization and consolidation of China's theatrical genre is fundamentally owed to the first works of Cao Yu.
''Sunrise'' and ''The Wilderness''
In Cao Yu's second play, ''Sunrise'', published in 1936, he continues his treatment respecting individuals' progressive moral degradation in the face of a hostile society. In it, the history of several Shanghai women are narrated, and whose stories show their lives disintegrating in response to lack of affection and of acknowledgment by the society surrounding them, leading them down a tragic path from which they cannot escape. In 1937, Cao Yu's third play, ''The Wilderness'' , was released but which enjoyed less success than his previous works. ''The Wilderness'', which was influenced by O'Neill's works, relates a succession of murders and stories of revenge set in a forest. At the time the play was published, social realism was the rage in China, and critics were not pleased with the work's supernatural and fantastical elements. There was a resurgence of interest in ''The Wilderness'' in 1980, however, and Cao Yu, then 70-years-old, collaborated in staging a production of his play. The play was made into a movie in 1987.
Writings during the Japanese occupation
After the in 1937, Cao Yu took shelter in the central city of Chongqing, along with the government of Chiang Kai-shek. There he wrote his fourth work, ''The Metamorphosis'', which greatly departed from his previous works, concerning itself with patriotic exaltation. Produced for the first time in 1939, the play is set in a military hospital that is bombed by the Japanese army. Although a change for Cao Yu, he was in good company as concentrating on war themes and settings was favored by most of the prominent Chinese writers active during the Second Sino-Japanese War in areas controlled by the government of Chongqing. By contrast, in northern China, as controlled by Mao Zedong's communists, an altogether different type of literature was developing, dedicated to exalting the .
In 1940, Cao Yu completed the writing of his fifth play, ''Peking Man'', considered his most profound and successful work. Set in Peking as its name implies, and in the then present, surprisingly the work does not allude to the war with Japan at all, but chronicles the history of a well-heeled family that is incapable of surviving and adapting to social changes which are destroying the traditional world and culture in which they live. The title of the work is an allusion to the so-called Peking Man, the proto-human who inhabited the north of China several hundred thousand years ago. Cao Yu's recurrent themes are present, emphasizing the inability of traditional families to adapt themselves to modern society and its customs and ways.
In 1941, while still in Chongqing, Cao Yu completed a theatrical adaptation of the famous work, ''The Family'', by novelist, Ba Jin. His last written work during the Japanese occupation was ''The Bridge'', published in 1945 but not produced as a play until 1947, after the end of the war when Japanese troops in China formally surrendered on September 9, 1945.
During his tenure in Chongqing, Cao Yu taught classes in the city's School of Dramatic Art and completed a translation into Chinese of William Shakespeare's ''Romeo and Juliet''.
Travel to the United States and return to China
Following the end of the war, Cao Yu traveled to the United States with another celebrated Chinese writer Lao She. Together, the pair spent a full year touring the U.S. After returning to China, Yu was hired by a movie studio based in Shanghai to write the screenplay and to direct the 1946 released movie, ''Day of the Radiant Sun'' .
Writings after the founding of the People's Republic of China
After the in 1949, Cao Yu took on the role of director of Peking's ''Popular Theater Art League'' — A role he would remain in for the rest of his life. Although in his youth Yu had been critical of communist ideology, because his first works, with their portrait of decline and cruelty brought on by bourgeois society, were admitting of a Marxist interpretation, they became very popular in 1960s Chinese society; an epoch in which the ideology of Mao Zedong demanded that all literary creation be in service to the communist cause.
In addition to supervising successive production of his earliest plays, Cao Yu kept on writing, and in 1956, published ''Bright Skies''. Thereafter, in 1961, the decade of his major public recognition, he published ''Courage and the Sword'', his first historical drama. This work, although set at the end of the Zhou Dynasty during the Warring States Period, contains pronounced allusions to the defeat of Mao Zedong's political ideology clothed in his Great Leap Forward. His and others' critiques of Mao, and the struggle for power in the halls of government, ultimately ended in the Cultural Revolution; a campaign enforced by Mao to reaffirm his power and to fight against the bourgeois and capitalist elements surfacing in both the political and cultural spheres. The attacks against intellectuals during the Cultural Revolution affected Cao Yu, causing him distress and alienation. However, he was able to rehabilitate himself after Mao's death and Deng Xiaoping subsequent rise to power as ''de facto'' ruler of China.
Cao Yu's last work was ''Wang Zhaojun'', released in 1979. On December 13, 1996, at 86 years of age, Cao Yu died in Beijing.
Bibliography
*''Thunderstorm'' , 1934.
*''Sunrise'' , 1936.
*''The Wilderness'' , 1937.
*''The Metamorphosis'' , 1940.
*''Peking Man'' , 1940.
*''The Bridge'' , 1945.
*''Bright Skies'' , 1956.
*''Courage and the Sword'' , 1961.
*''Wang Zhaojun'' , 1979.
Zhang Junxiang
Zhang Junxiang is a film director and playwright. Born in Zhenjiang in China's Jiangsu province, Zhang was educated first at Tsinghua University in Beijing, then at Yale University in the United States.
Zhang acted in the 1982 film ''Da ze long she'', about an armed conflict between coal miners and management set in the 1920s. In addition to this he also wrote the 1954 war movie ''Ji mao xin''.
Zhang died in Shanghai in 1996.
*''Cheng long kuai xu''
*''Hai xiang ri ji''
*''Cui gang hong qi''
*''Huai shang ren jia
*''Fire on the Plain''
*''Doctor Bethune''
*''Da qing zhan ge''
*''Da ze long she''
*''Cheng long kuai xu''
*''Hai xiang ri ji''
*''Reunion after Victory''
*''Ji mao xin''
*''Doctor Bethune''
Zhang acted in the 1982 film ''Da ze long she'', about an armed conflict between coal miners and management set in the 1920s. In addition to this he also wrote the 1954 war movie ''Ji mao xin''.
Zhang died in Shanghai in 1996.
Selected filmography
As director
*''Cheng long kuai xu''
*''Hai xiang ri ji''
*''Cui gang hong qi''
*''Huai shang ren jia
*''Fire on the Plain''
*''Doctor Bethune''
*''Da qing zhan ge''
*''Da ze long she''
As screenwriter
*''Cheng long kuai xu''
*''Hai xiang ri ji''
*''Reunion after Victory''
*''Ji mao xin''
*''Doctor Bethune''
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)