Xiao Sa

Xiao Sa蕭颯 (also: Hsiao Sa ), origin. Xiao Qingyu蕭慶餘, (born March 4, 1953 in Taibei台北) is a Chinese or Taiwanese author.

Life

Her family is originally from Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, mainland China. After her mother married a soldier, she followed him to Sichuan Province . At around five years old, Xiao Sa learned that she had been adopted as a little girl, and she later began looking for her birth parents. She learned from her adoptive parents that she originally came from a large family and that her birth parents did not have enough financial means to take care of her properly. At the age of twelve she decided on the stage name Xiao Sa. The Chinese character sa颯 denotes, among other things, the sound of the wind.

She remained an only child in the adoptive family and attended the University of Education for Girls ( Taibei shili nüshi zhuan臺北市 立 女 師專) in Taibei, where she graduated in 1973 at the age of 21. Since then she has been working as a primary school teacher, including in the Danshui district in northern Taibei. She started writing at the age of sixteen, and in 1972 her first collection of short stories, “The Long Dam” ( Chang di長堤), was published before she graduated from school .

In 1976 she married the director Zhang Yi張毅 (* 1951), they had a daughter in 1980 and separated in 1986. Even after the separation, they continued to work together and, for example, wrote scripts together. From 1995 she worked primarily in the field of film and television. Xiao has been working on a new novel since 2003. Although some of the stories, including "My Son Hansheng" and "My Relatives in Hong Kong", were translated into English in Taiwan a year after their publication date, there are also few translations of her works, so she is unknown in Western countries.

Prizes and awards

Xiao Sa is known in Taiwan as well as on the mainland and is one of the most important authors of the 1980s and 1990s in Taiwan. She is one of the so-called "new generation writers" ( xin shidai zuojia新 時代 作家). She has received numerous awards in the course of her career to date. With the beginning of the 1980s, numerous social upheavals took place in Taiwan, which resulted in a wealth of new literary publications. This was promoted by the two major competing newspapers United Daily News ( Lianhe bao聯合 報) and China Times ( Zhongguo shibao中國 時報) (this newspaper is regarded as affiliated with the Chinese National Party ( Guomindang國民黨, formerly Kuomintang , English Chinese Nationalist Party ) and classified as conservative, while the China Times is more liberal). The so-called fukan副刊 ("supplement", also wenxue fukan文學 副刊, "literature supplement" ) enjoyed some popularity at this time. In 1985 there were 15 different literature supplements, 13 literature magazines and 19 poetry magazines. Both newspapers invested in the authors of the baby boom generation and sponsored annual literary competitions, public readings, workshops, forums and youth camps. The focus was on young, as yet unknown authors, so that historians later referred to this period as the "Taiwan woman authorship period". Because Xiao Sa met these criteria, she was promoted by the United Daily News, which contributed significantly to her fame and made her known. In 1979 she received the literary award for the short story Wo er Hansheng我 兒 漢 生 ("My son Hansheng"). A year later, she again won first prize for Xiafei zhi jia霞飛 之 家 ("The Xiafei Family"). 1981 was followed by a prize from the Chinese Society for Literature and Art ( Zhongguo wenji xiehui wenyi jiang中國 文藝 協會 文藝 獎). In 1984 she received the literary prize of the competing China Times for Xiao Ye小 ("The Little Ye").

With the boom in the literary industry, the development of Taiwan New Cinema went hand in hand. Many stories and novels by well-known authors have been filmed, including some by Xiao Sa. At the Golden Horse Film Festival ( Jin ma jiang金馬獎), which has been held annually in Taibei since 1962, she and her husband received the 1985 award for the best screenplay for Wo zheyang guo le yi sheng我 這樣 過 了 一生 (“This is how I lived”, based on Xiafei zhi jia ). In 1986 the first two film adaptations of their stories were broadcast, namely Wo de ai我 的 愛 ("My Love"), based on Weiliang de ai唯 良 的 愛 ("Weiliang's Love") and Wo er Hansheng , both directed by Zhang Yi. A total of five of her stories have been filmed so far.

Works

year	title
1972	Chang di長堤
1977	Riguang yejing日光 夜景
1978	Erdu miyue二度 蜜月
1981	Where he is Hansheng我 兒 漢 生
	Xiafei zhi jia霞飛 之 家
	Ru meng ling如夢 令
1983	Aiqing de jiaojie愛情 的 孝 節
1984	Si le yi ge guozhong nüsheng zhihou死 了 一個 國 中 女生 之後
	Shaonian Ah Xin少年 的 阿辛
	Xiao Zhen yisheng de aiqing小鎮 醫生 的 愛情
1986	Weiliang de ai唯 良 的 愛
1987	Fan xiang zhaji返鄉 劄記
	Zou guo congqian走過 從前
1989	Aiqing de yanse愛情 的 顔色
	Rest baituo zhangfu de fangfa如何 擺脫 丈夫 的 方法
1993	Dansheng Yihui單 生 薏 薏
1995	Jiedahuanxi皆大歡喜

literature

• Carver, Ann C. (1990), Bamboo Shoots After the Rain: Contemporary Stories by Women Writers of Taiwan. New York: Feminist Press.
• Chang, Kang-i Sun and Stephen Owen (Eds.) (2010), The Cambridge History of Chinese Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Duke, Michael S. (eds.) (1989), Modern Chinese Women Writers: Critical Appraisals. Armonk, New York: Sharpe.
• Faurot, Jeannette L. (Ed.) (1980), Chinese Fiction from Taiwan: Critical Perspectives. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
• Haddon, Rosemary M. (1996), Oxcart: Nativist Stories from Taiwan 1934-1977. Edition Cathay, Bd. 18, Dortmund: Projektverlag.
• Hillenbrand, Margaret (2007), Literature, Modernity, and the Practice of Resistance: Japanese and Taiwanese Fiction - 1960–1990. Chinese Studies Vol. 11, Leiden: Brill.
• Hung, Eva (1992), Contemporary Women Writers: Hong Kong and Taiwan: An Authorized Collection. Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong.
• Lau, Joseph SM (Liu Shaoming) (ed.) (1976), Chinese Stories from Taiwan: 1960-1970. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Markgraf, Katharina (2011), The short story "Xianggang qinqi" 香港 親戚 by the Taiwanese author Xiao Sa 蕭颯 - literary translation and translation criticism . Master's thesis, Institute for Sinology, Tübingen.
• Martin, Helmut (1996), Taiwanese Literature - Postcolonial Ways Out: Colonial Era, Postwar Literature and Literary Historiography. Book reviews on Chinese, Taiwanese and Japanese literature. Chinabilder Dortmund: Project publisher.
• Wang, David Der-Wei and Carlos Rojas (Eds.) (2007), Writing Taiwan: A New Literary History. Durham: Duke University Press.
• Wu Tingrong 吴 亭 蓉 (2002), Xiao Sa jiqi xiaoshuo de san zhong zhuti蕭颯 及其 小説 的 三種 主题 (Three main motifs in Xiao Sa's stories). Tainan: Guoli Chenggong Daxue.
• Wu, Fatima (1991), "From a Dead End to a New Road of Life: Xiao Sa's Abandoned Women". World Literature Today 65/3: 427-32.

Web links

• "The Study of Taiwan Literature: An International Perspective" .
• "Women's Literature in Taiwan (I)" .
• "Taiwan Review: 'A Delight to Look Forward to' - Hsiao Sa" .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Page no longer available , search in web archives: