Zhang Kangkang (simplified Chinese: 张抗抗; traditional Chinese: 張抗抗; pinyin: Zhāng Kàngkàng; born as Zhang Kangmei (simplified Chinese: 张抗美; traditional Chinese: 張抗美), July 3, 1950, Hangzhou) is a Chinese writer.
Life
editZhang was born into a family of Communist intellectuals. Her first name, Kang-Kang, means 'resistance-resistance.' She belongs to a generation affected by the Chinese Cultural Revolution.[1]
Zhang was among the few young people sent to the remote countryside to be 're-educated by the poor and lower-middle-class peasants.[1] At the age of 19, Zhang volunteered to go to Heilongjiang Province, where she faced a life marked by deprivation and abuse by the party cadres assigned to re-educate the new arrivals before going on to study in Harbin in 1977.[2] She joined the China Writers Association in 1979 and was the deputy chairwoman of the Chinese Writers Association in Heilongjiang.[2]
She returned to the city eight years later after the death of Mao Zedong and was allowed to resume her studies. In 1979, Kang-Kang published her first work, 'The Right to Love.' The book reflects on freedom and resistance against an oppressor.[1]
She is married to a fellow writer, Jiang Rong, known for his 2004 novel, Wolf Totem.
Works
edit- The Boundary Line (1975)
- The Right to Love (1979)
- Summer (1981)
- The Pale Mists of Dawn (1980)
- Aurora Borealis (1981)
- The Wasted Years (Translated in Seven Contemporary Chinese Women Writers)[3]
- Selected Works about Educated Youth. (Includes stories 'The Peony Garden', 'Cruelty' and 'Sandstorm')
- The Tolling of a Distant Bell (Translated by Daniel Bryant in Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 16.3 (1984): 44-51, and Contemporary Chinese Literature (see below): 98-105)
- Northern Lights (Chapter 7 translated by Daniel Bryant in Chinese Literature, Winter 1988, pp. 92–102.)
- The Invisible Companion (Translated by Daniel Bryant. Beijing: New World Press, 1996.)
- The Peony Garden (Translated by Daniel Bryant, Renditions 58 (2002): 127-39.)
References
edit- ^ a b c "Female Writer Zhang Kangkang". www.china.org.cn. Retrieved 2023-07-31.
- ^ a b Xu, Qingbo (5 November 2014). The Evolutionary Feminism of Zhang Kangkang and the Developing Dialogue between Darwinism and Gender Studies (PDF) (Thesis). University of Helsinki.
- ^ Zhang, Jie (1982). Seven Contemporary Chinese Women Writers. Chinese Literature. ISBN 978-0-8351-1600-8.
Further reading
edit- Richard King (ed. 2003) Living With Their Past: Post-Urban Youth Fiction. Hong Kong: Renditions Paperbacks, Research Center for Translation, Chinese University of Hong Kong. 2003. ISBN 962-7255-26-2
- Daniel Bryant (1989) Making it Happen: Aspects of Narrative Method in Zhang Kangkang’s ‘Northern Lights’. In Modern Chinese Women Writers: Critical Appraisals, ed. Michael Duke, Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1989, pp. 112–34.
- Contemporary Chinese Literature: an Anthology of Post-Mao Fiction and Poetry, ed. Michael Duke, Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1985