Chen Danyan

Chen Danyan, 2008

Chen Danyan ( Chinese  陈丹燕 , Pinyin Chén Dānyàn ; * 1958 in Shanghai , People's Republic of China ) is a Chinese writer.

life and work

The first texts appeared in Chinese magazines as early as the 1970s . After studying Chinese literature at East China Normal University (1978–1982), she worked as an editor for Children's Epoch Magazine .

Since the mid- eighties she has been dealing with the topic of life and the emotional world of adolescent girls, which until then was unfamiliar to Chinese literature. In her autobiographical novel Neun Leben ( 1992 ), also published in German, she worked on her childhood experiences from the time of the Cultural Revolution. For this book she received the UNESCO Prize for Peace and Tolerance and was nominated for the German Youth Literature Prize in 1996. The focus of her more recent work is the examination of the living environment of the young generation in China, which is a generation of only children as a result of the family policy of the one-child family that has long been practiced in China .

Another focus of her writing activities are texts about her hometown Shanghai .

Selected Works

• 1995 - Nine Lives - A childhood in Shanghai. Zurich.
• 1996 - Niuyue jia ri (New York Holidays). Shanghai. ISBN 7-532-11475-9
• 2000 - Shanghai de jin zhi yu ye (Shanghai princess). Beijing. ISBN 7-506-31680-3
• 2002 - Yu he ta de zi xing che. Beijing. ISBN 7-532-12368-5
• 2006 - Shanghai: China's Bridge to the Future (Cultural China, Man and the Land). Rhinebeck, NY. ISBN 0762106409

Web links

• Literature by and about Chen Danyan in the catalog of the German National Library
• Portrait: Chen Danyan (陈丹燕) online magazine of the Goethe-Institut China, September 2010

Note: This article places the family name before the person's first name. This is the usual order in Chinese. Chen is the family name here, Danyan is the first name.