Biography: Renowned Chinese novelist Yan Lianke was born in an impoverished region of Song County, Henan Province in 1958. His parents, illliterate farmers who lacked the means to send him to university, encouraged him to enlist in the army, where he rose in the ranks to become a propaganda writer. Upon returning to civilian life, Yan embarked on a career as a novelist. Over the last 30 years, he has produced an extensive body of work that ranges from novels, novellas and short fiction to essays and criticism. Although he has had two of his novels banned in China and was, for a period of three years, prohibited from obtaining a passport or travelling abroad, Yan continues to speak honestly about the impact that government censorship - and self-censorship - have had on contemporary Chinese writers.
His full-length novels include: The Dream of Ding Village (丁庄梦, Ding Zhuang Meng), a tale of the blood trade and subsequent Aids epidemic in a rural Henan village; The Joy of Living (Alt title: The Living, 受活, Shou Huo), a sweeping tale of the lives of disabled rural villagers from the Chinese Communist revolution through the years of reform and opening; The Sunlit Years (日光流年, Riguang Liunian); Solidity of Water (Alt title: Hard as Water, 坚硬如水, Jianying Ru Shui) and Serve the People (为人民服务, Wei Renmin Fuwu), which was banned in China and later translated into English, French and Japanese.
He has published ten collections of novellas and short stories: among them, the critically acclaimed Days, Months, Years (年月日, Nian Yue Ri), Song of the Plow (耙耧天歌, Palou Tiange) and a five-volume set of his collected works. He is a member of the Chinese Writers’ Association and the recipient of numerous literary awards, including the first and second Lu Xun Literary Prizes and the Lao She Award for literary excellence, awarded in recognition of his novel The Joy of Living (受活, Shou Huo), considered by many to be his master work.
Partial Bibliography:
丁庄梦, Ding Zhuang Meng (Dream of Ding Village), Shanghai Art and Literature Press, January 2006.
没有边界的跨越, Meiyou Bianjie de Kuayue (There is No Crossing Borders), Yangtze Art and Literature Press, August 2005.
受活, Shouhuo (The Joy of Living), Chunfeng Art and Literature Press, January 2004.
最后一名女知青 Zuihou Yiming Nu Zhiqing (The Last Sent-down Girl), Shidai (Times) Art and Literature Press, September 2003.
潘金莲逃离西门镇, Pan Jinlian Taoli Ximenzhen (Pan Jinlian Flees West Gate Village), Shidai (Times) Art and Literature Press, August 2003.
夏日落, Xia Ri Luo (Summer Sunset), Chunfeng Art and Literature Press, January 2002.
日光流年, Riguang Liunian (The Sunlit Years), Shidai (Times) Art and Literature Press, October 2001.
坚硬如水, Jianying Ru Shui (Solidity of Water/Hard As Water), Yangtze Art and Literature Press, January 2001.
ESWN has a nice summary of articles about Yan, particularly about Dream of Ding Village.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2012-09/18/content_15764181.htm
Related:
The 2011 Man Asian Literary Prize shortlist was announced yesterday, and we were thrilled to see Cindy Carter's translation of Yan Lianke's novel Dream of Ding Village appear as the only Chinese novel. This year's shortlist is long: an unprecedented seven books. Conventional wisdom might indicate that, since three of the past four prize-winners have been Chinese, Yan Lianke has something of an institutional handicap. Let's hope that's not the case—this is a very worthy book.
By Eric Abrahamsen, January 10 '12, 10:25p.m.
Whilst I was looking the other direction, Cindy Carter's translation of Yan Lianke's novel Dream of Ding Village was published by Grove Press in the US and Constable and Robinson in the UK. Take a look at this book (there's a Kindle edition!), it's a good one, by one of China's best contemporary authors. And an excellent translation!
Congratulations Cindy!
By Eric Abrahamsen, January 14 '11, 1:06p.m.
Machine translation has been in the news lately, so I thought it might be interesting to conduct an experiment. I've chosen four different Chinese texts (excerpts from a novel, a film and two newspaper interviews), translated them into English with Google Translate, and added my English translations (three of which have appeared on Paper Republic in the past year). I'm sure most of the translators in our forum have their own machine-translation stories...hope you'll share. That's not to say that machine translation is pointless: ten years from now, we will be taking this a lot more seriously. But in the meantime, we might as well have our bit of fun.
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By Cindy M. Carter, March 11 '10, 9:50a.m.
From March 5-19, 2010, the Beijing Bookworm will be holding its annual literary festival. During the same period, Bookworm locations in Chengdu and Suzhou will also be hosting authors, readings and events. Here's a tentative schedule for some Chinese authors who will be doing readings/Q&A sessions at the Beijing location (PLEASE NOTE that this is a TENTATIVE schedule - check Bookworm site for updates and ticket prices.)
Sunday, March 7, 3 pm - Li Er - 李洱
Sunday, March 14, 6 pm - Yan Lianke - 阎连科
Monday, March 15, 7:30 pm - Bi Feiyu - 毕飞宇
Tuesday, March 16, 12:30 pm - Hong Ying - 虹影
Tuesday, March 16, 8:30 pm - Miao Wu and Xu Zechen - 徐则臣: Chinese Urban Fiction
By Cindy M. Carter, January 24 '10, 3:45p.m.
Maybe it's a meaningless list based on dubious statistics, but it's still fun. There are the usual popular authors, with a strong showing from writers of children's books and young adult literature. Nice to see some very worthy and serious authors on the list this year: Wang Meng, Yan Lianke and Alai, among others. To paraphrase Deng Xiaoping, 让部分作家先富起来 ("Let some of the writers become wealthy first.")
The highest-paid authors in China, 2009 edition
By Cindy M. Carter, December 1 '09, 8:43a.m.
The second annual Sino-English Literary Translation training course ended last Friday night, the conclusion of a week of workshops and seminars so tightly-packed that those of us present hardly had time to post. I hope other participants might chime in here with their thoughts, but I wanted to make a brief report.
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By Eric Abrahamsen, March 24 '09, 11:19a.m.
Yan Lianke’s latest novel – a satirical take on the less-than-honourable behaviour of Beida and Tsinghua University professors – aroused a storm of protest from some of them. So I was looking forward to this week’s post-graduate seminar in the Beida Chinese Department, where Elegy and Academe was due to be discussed.
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By Nicky Harman, December 4 '08, 5:02a.m.
The Guardian's Hay festival coverage starts off with a big picture of Yan Lianke, looking like he's pretending he belongs there. The first of their excerpts from Hay-festival attendees comes from Julia Lovell's translation of his novel Serve the People. We're going to see if we can post some comments from Yan himself on the whole Hay experience, once he's back in China.
Edit: That picture seems to have been taken in China. He belongs there after all, guess that’s just his regular expression.
By Eric Abrahamsen, May 23 '08, 6:33p.m.
Yan Lianke is quite the interview subject! Australian paper The Age just ran a very long piece on Yan, which gives a wider window on his early development and attitudes towards writing than previous articles. He also mentions his current work in progress, possibly to be published next year:
The work in progress is an unflattering fable, "funny and ridiculous", about China's contemporary intellectuals, who Yan believes have been co-opted by the Government. "They lack the courage to face up to the real situation," he says.
Asked what the real situation is, he replies promptly: "Chaos. China is in chaos, politically, economically, medically, morally and some people are the beneficiaries of this chaos, including intellectuals. Those at the grassroots, the masses, are the ones suffering, but in facing this kind of situation Chinese intellectuals can't see clearly."
In the past, Yan says, there were great pressures on writers and it was understandable to some degree that people didn't dare speak out. But now, he says, there is no excuse. "Now it is a self-imposed censorship, so the situation is more tragic."
By Eric Abrahamsen, July 29 '07, 6:54p.m.
A very interesting article in the Washington Post today brings up the damage censorship does to Chinese art, mostly via the example of Yan Lianke and his novels. The bulk of the article is given over to the mechanisms of censorship, and how Yan waters down his work to make it publishable, though I was excited to read this paragraph:
Yan's little compromise illustrates one of the most tragic aspects of the Communist Party censorship that is imposed on journalism and art in China. In many ways, the country's 1.3 billion people are being deprived of the full bloom of their culture, with thousands of artists like Yan forced to calculate how much they can get away with rather than cutting loose with their talent unfettered.
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By Eric Abrahamsen, July 10 '07, 6:47p.m.
A very short translated excerpt from the first page of Yan Lianke's 2006 novel, Dream of Ding Village (丁庄梦). When he is at his best, Yan is an extraordinarily lyrical writer who uses rhyme, rhythm, repetition and cadence to great effect. The first chapter of Dream of Ding Village is a joy to read aloud in Chinese - musical and prose-poetic, it establishes the tone of the entire novel and introduces refrains that the author returns to again and again. I am not sure that I have done this justice in my translation, but it is a labor of love and a work in progress.
"A day in late autumn, a late autumn dusk, the dusk of a late autumn day. Because of the autumn, because of the dusk, the sun that sets above the East Henan plain bloods up into a ball, making red of earth and sky..."
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By Cindy M. Carter, June 12 '07, 2:49a.m.
