Happy New Year from the China Fiction Book Club (especially if you were born in the year of the snake, the most unloved/ feared/ despised of the 12 animals). Here's what we posted on twitter (@cfbcuk) earlier...

金蛇出洞！Hoping that the Year of the Snake ("little dragon") will be a good year! Some very famous Chinese writers were born in the Year of the Snake: Qu Yuan 屈原; Lu You 陆游; Wu Jingzi 吴敬梓; Lu Xun 鲁讯, Mao Zedong 毛泽东.
[Source: http://www.shengxiao5.cn/shengxiao/6/shengxiao500.htm …]

Qu Yuan 屈原 (340-278 BCE), Chu ci 楚辞，translated as Songs of the South, David Hawkes (@penguinclassic) Details here

Lu You 陆游 (1125-1210), Late Poems Of Lu You, The Old Man Who Does As He Pleases, tr. Burton Watson (Ahadada, 2007) Details here

Wu Jingzi 吴敬梓 (1701-1754), The Scholars (儒林外史, lit. "The Unofficial History of The Forest" - satire!), tr. Gladys Yang and Yang Xianyi. Details here

Lu Xun 鲁讯 (1881-1936) - see Gloria Davies, Lu Xun's Revolution. Writing in a Time of Violence (Harvard UP, 2013). Details here

Mao Zedong 毛泽东 (1893-1976) - see Talks at the Yan'an Conference on Literature & Art (1943), tr. Bonnie S. McDougall. Details here

As always, we've given amazon etc links for convenience, but please support your local bookshop/library if you can. Spread the word!