Jury Award and Recommendation Award for the Third The Dream of Red Chambers Award

Sailing Up the Big River

Introduction

Author

Li Yongping was born in 1947 in Kuching, located in Sarawak on the island of Borneo in Malaysia.  He graduated from the National Taiwan University in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures and obtained his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at the University of Washington. He has taught at the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature of the National Sun Yat-sen University and the Department of English Language and Literature of the Soochow University. He is now the Professor of the Graduate Institute of Creative Writing and English Literature at National Dong Hwa University. His works include Son of Borneo, A Lazi Woman, The Jiling Chronicles, The Eagle Haidong Qing, and Rain and Snow: My Childhood in Borneo. His works were awarded “Modern Library 100 Best Chinese Novels”, Recommendation Award of the China Times, United Daily News Novel Award, and 10 Best Chinese Novels of 2008 by the Yazhou Zhoukan.

Chronicle of My Brother Diao Bei

Introduction

This novel records the developments and complexes in China’s history of thoughts. A generation of people has been long trapped by social reality. Their “history” began with a childhood memory of the Cultural Revolution, and they have experienced from reality the futility of idealism – political turmoil and struggles at the highest levels of power that sustained through the 1980s. They lack the power to understand the inevitability of the 1989 incident, and they knew not how to approach the way the educated pursue life. Borrowing the different images of the brothers Diao Dou and Diao Bei, the novel recreated a classic image of the educated individual for the contemporary history of thought. It is, in fact, a depiction of the psyche of Diao Bei by his younger brother Diao Dou, and describes how a generation of elites suffer in the Cultural Revolution, and how they gave up the pursuit for truth afterwards. The desperation, self-mocking, and the pains were unspeakable, and for this reason the narrative was calm and natural.

Author

Diao Dou is from Shenyang of Liaoning. In 1983, he graduated from the Department of Journalism at Beijing Broadcasting Institute. He was the editor of Contemporary Writers Review of Liaoning Writers Association, editor of Yalujiang Magazine of Liaoning Writers Association. His works of novel include Personal Files, Testimony, Coming Home; collection of poetry Records of Love; collection of short stories Throw of the Dice, Ascend Alone, One Night in Tears, Shaken, The Mirror Reappeared, and others. He was awarded the Liaoning Young Writers Award, Liaoning Literary Star Award, Liaoning Literary Award, the 10^th Liaoning Cao Xueqin Novel Award, and Zhuang Chongwen Literary Prize.

Massage

Introduction

Whether in China or in the west, a writer who can see would have some difficulty writing about the blind. To overcome this “barrier”, writers are used to putting the story as an allegory or metaphor – which offers at once transcendence and a way out. Bi Feiyu approached it differently: he “closed his eyes” and spent months of his life in total darkness, which enabled him to write this extraordinary work. The narrative is refined, vivid and energetic, and recounts the details of how the blind strived to work, live and dream with dignity in the urban jungle. They imagined light in the dark. For me, this book is as delectable as “a piece of red-braised pork”.

Author

Bi Feiyu was born in 1964 in Qinghua City of Jiangsu Province. He graduated at the Department of Chinese at Yangzhou Normal University. He was the reporter for Nanjing Daily, and was editor for the literary magazine Yu Hua. His works of novel include What Happened in Shanghai, That Summer, That Autumn, Plains, Massage; four volumes of Essays of Bi Feiyu. His short story Nursing Woman was awarded 1^st Lu Xun Literary Prize; his novelette Corn was awarded 3^rd Lu Xun Literary Prize. He was awarded the Feng Muwen Literary Award, China Novel Association Award, Zhuang Chongwen Literary Prize, Modern Literary Award (Annual Award), People’s Literature Outstanding Novel Award, Academy of Contemporary Chinese Literature Prize, and others.