A Cheng

A Cheng or Ah Cheng (born April 6, 1949 in Beijing ) is the pseudonym of the Chinese writer and screenwriter Zhong Acheng ( Chinese  鍾 阿城  /  钟 阿城 , Pinyin Zhōng Āchéng ). He is considered a representative of the Xungen literature .

Life

A Cheng was born on April 6, 1949, the son of the film theorist Zhong Dianfei. This published an article during the Hundred Flowers Movement in which he criticized the intervention of politics and bureaucracy in filmmaking. He was then sent to Tangshan for re-education and rehabilitated in 1960. That year, A Cheng started attending Beijing High School. His classmates included the later poet Bei Dao and director Chen Kaige .

However, his schooling was interrupted by the Cultural Revolution of 1966, as a result of which his parents were deported to the countryside. He himself was first sent to Shanxi , but asked to be sent from there to Inner Mongolia in order to be able to draw landscapes there. A short time later, however, he wished to be brought to Yunnan because of the beauty of the landscape there, where he remained until 1979.

That year, artist Fan Zeng A Cheng made it possible for him to return to Beijing after discovering his passion for drawing in Yunnan. After his return, A Cheng began working as a layout artist and illustrator for Shijie tushu magazine and was part of the artistic community.

After the success of his first novel, Schachkönig, in 1984, he resigned and devoted himself entirely to writing screenplays and film adaptations. It was here that his collaboration with director Teng Wenji began . In 1985 he published the two novels Tree King and children King and the short story collection chess king . In 1986 several short texts were published under the title Biandi fengliu .

In 1987 A Cheng emigrated to the USA , where he was invited to give university lectures. In the following years he published regularly for the journal Jiushi niandai .

Scripts

• Painted Skin (Hua pi zhi yinyang fawang, 1993)
• Springtime in a Small Town (Xiao cheng zhi chun, 2002)
• The Go Master (Wu Qingyuan, 2006) on Wu Qingyuan
• The Assassin (Cìkè Niè Yǐnniáng, 2015)

Novels

• Chess King ( Chinese  棋王 , Pinyin qíwáng ), 1984
• Tree King ( Chinese  树 王 , Pinyin shùwáng ), 1985
• King of Children ( Chinese  孩子 王 , Pinyin háizi wáng ), 1985

Translations

• Ah Cheng: Three Kings, trans. and introd. by Bonnie McDougall. Collins Hrvill 1990
• A Cheng: Tree King - Child King - Chess King. Stories from China. Translated by Anja Gleboff, Dortmund: Projekt-Verlag, 1996

literature

• Noël Dutrait: Analysis d'un succès. A Cheng et son œuvre . Biography et thématique. In: Études chinoises . tape 11 , no. 2 , 1992, p. 35-75 ( afec-etudeschinoises.com [PDF]).
• Laifong Leung: Contemporary Chinese Fiction Writers . Biography, Bibliography, and Critical Assessment. Routledge, New York 2017, ISBN 978-0-7656-1760-6 , pp. 9-11 .

Web links

• Literature by and about A Cheng in the catalog of the German National Library
• A Cheng at theInternet Movie Database(English)