Bi Feiyu

毕飞宇

Bi Feiyu was born in 1964 in Xinghua, Jiangsu province, and now lives in the capital of the province, Nanjing. He co-wrote the script for Zhang Yimou's Shanghai Triad, and has won the Lu Xun Prize for literature, twice. Two of his novels, Three Sisters (玉米) and The Moon Opera (青衣) have been translated by Howard Goldblatt, who wrote to the author in the 1990s asking for permission to translate "The Ancestors" which appeared in the anthology of short stories from modern China, Chairman Mao Would Not Be Amused. Editor at the literary magazine Yu Hua (雨花) and journalist at the Nanjing Daily for six years, Bi Feiyu only contributed 6,000 words during his entire time there − because he had a nasty editor who didn't appreciate his writing, the author claimed in Suzhou, 2009.

His recent work about blind masseurs, Massage (推拿), has not yet been translated but was successful within China when published in 2008. Bi Feiyu' habitually tells other people's stories rather than his own, but he internalises the characters and embellishes using his own experience and imagination. The story of his novel Three Sisters, one of whom is name Yumi (corn), saw its germ in his childhood experience of watching his father roast corn by the fire as he leaned on the bosom of an older "sister" (not his real sister).

Bi produces well-drawn characters and is often called China's best male writer on the female psyche. His prose can be meandering and his metaphors indulgent, and whilst this doesn't provide for easy or smooth reading, there are some poignant details.

 
Works by Bi Feiyu
Qingyi (青衣), published by Yangtze River Art and Literature Publishing House in May, 2003
Translated as The Moon Opera