Bai Xianyong

Bái Xiānyǒng (also: Kenneth Hsien-yung Pai, Pai Hsien-yung, Chinese 白先勇 , Pinyin Bái Xiānyǒng ; born July 11, 1937 in Guilin , Republic of China ) is a Chinese author.

biography

Bái Xiānyǒng was born in southeast China to the well-known Kuomintang general and warlord Bai Chongxi (Pai Chung-hsi). He had nine siblings with whom he was raised in the Muslim faith.

His family moved within mainland China a number of times and temporarily lived in Nanjing , Shanghai and Chongqing . Due to the events of the Chinese civil war , she fled to Hong Kong, where Bái Xiānyǒng attended the La Salle Catholic boys' college from 1948 to 1952. In 1952 the family moved to Taiwan . In 1956, he began to study hydraulic engineering at Cheng Kung National University in Tainan , as he planned to work on the Three Gorges Dam project. Soon after, however, he discovered his interest in literature and in 1957 switched to the Taiwan State University in Taipei to study English literature . In 1960 he founded the literary magazine Moderne Literatur (Xiandai wenxue) with some other students , in which he was able to show his talent and published his first works. In 1964 he received a scholarship to the Writers Workshop of the University of Iowa and studied creative writing and literary theory. After getting his MA in 1964 , he became a professor of Chinese literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara . In the USA he changed his religion and became a Buddhist . Bái Xiānyǒng has been retired (UCSB) since 1994 and is almost no longer literary active.

Characteristic

Bái Xiānyǒng wrote most of his literary works from the perspective of a marginalized social figure who often experiences terrible and unheard-of experiences. He presents himself as a neutral observer and maintains the emotional distance between the narrator and the narrated. His only novel “Sons of Evil” / Nièzǐ was made into a film in 1986 and he wrote the screenplay.

Works

1958 Old Jin, short story
1960 - Yu Qing Sao, short story
1960 - The dream in the moonlight, story
1964 - youth, short story
1964 - Death in Chicago, short story
1964 - Ascent of a skyscraper, story
1964 - A day in the land of happiness, story
1964 - The trip to Rire Island, short story
1969 - A sky full of twinkling stars, story
1971 - People in Taipei (臺北人, Táiběirén), 14 stories
1976 - Lonely with Seventeen (Jimo de shiqi sui), short stories
1983 - Sons of Evil (孽子, Nièzǐ), novel

Filmography

1986 Nièzǐ (The Outsiders / Sons of Evil), screenplay (pseud. Shiang Yeong)
1998 Gui lin rong ji (My Rice Noodle Shop) Literary source: "Gui li rong ji / Rong at the flower bridge"
2003 Nièzǐ (Crystal Boys) TV series
2005 Gu lian hua (Love's Lone Flower /); Literary template: "Gu lian hua / flowers of lonely love"

swell

Wolf Baus's epilogue in: Bai Xian Yong. "Lonely at Seventeen". Diederichs, Cologne 1986, ISBN 3-424-00856-7 , pp. 191-205
Wolf Baus: "Literature and literary politics in Taiwan after 1945". In: Helmut Martin u. a. (Ed.): “View over the sea. Chinese Tales from Taiwan ”. Frankfurt am Main 1982, pp. 16-42
Wolfgang Kubin: "The view from the edge: Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau." In: Wolfgang Kubin: The Chinese literature in the 20th century. In History of Chinese Literature . Volume 7, Munich 2005, pp. 251-270
Bai Xian Yong: “The Chinese Student Movement Abroad: Exiled Writers in the New World. Speech given in Singapore in 1981 ”. In: Bai XianYong: "mingxing kafei guan: bai xianyong lunwen zawen ji." Taipei 1984. pp. 33-37. German translation in: Helmut Martin (Ed.): “Bittere Träume. Self-portrayals of Chinese writers ”. Taipei 1992, pp. 199-205
Charlotte Dunsing: "Taiwanese Reality in Literature". In: Helmut Martin: “View over the sea. Chinese Tales from Taiwan ”. Frankfurt 1982, pp. 385-400

Web links

Literature by and about Bai Xianyong in the catalog of the German National Library

personal data
SURNAME	Bai, Xianyong
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Bái, Xiānyǒng
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Chinese author
DATE OF BIRTH	July 11, 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH	Guilin , Republic of China