Chu Hsi-ning explained

Chu Hsi-ning
Language:Chinese
Birth Place:Suqian, Jiangsu, Republic of China
Birth Name:Chu Ch'ing-hai
Birth Date:16 June 1927
Death Place:Taipei, Taiwan
Children:Chu T’ien-wen, Chu T’ien-hsin, and
Module:
Child:yes
P:Zhū Xīníng
W:Chu1 Hsi1-ning2
Also Known As:Birth name
P2:Zhū Qīnghǎi
W2:Chu1 Ch'ing1-hai3

Chu Hsi-ning (born Chu Ch'ing-hai; 16 June 1927 – 27 March 1998) was a Chinese writer based in Taiwan.

His daughters Chu T’ien-wen and Chu T’ien-hsin are also famous writers.

Life

Chu was born in Suqian, China. In 1945, he entered an art college in Hangzhou, but dropped out to join the nationalist army in the struggle against the communists. He reached the rank of colonel. He was one of the soldiers who accompanied Chiang Kai-shek to Taiwan in 1949. He came to prominence as a writer in the 1950s and remained productive until his death.

He can be grouped with anti-communist writers or the soldier writers; his fiction displays an interest in the impact of modernity on ordinary people and in the clash of social forces. These are concerns he inherited from the May Fourth Movement and the writers of the 1930s. However, Chu Hsi-ning, unlike many Chinese writers of the 1930s, was a conservative. His stories reinforce traditional communal values and a morally Christian worldview.

Chu is the father of writers Chu T’ien-wen and Chu T’ien-hsin, together with whom he participated in the Three-Three series of publications in the late 1970s. The "threes" stand for the Three Principles of the People and for the Christian trinity.

Works translated to English

YearChinese titleTranslated English titleTranslator
1959大布袋戲"The Great Puppet Show"[1] Hua-yuan Li Mowry
1961鐵漿"Molten Iron"[2] Nancy Chang Ing
"The Wolf"Hou Chien[3]
1963破曉時分"Dawn"
1969冶金者"The Men Who Smelt Gold"[4] George Kao
多少舊事煙塵"Remembrances of Days Gone By"[5] Wu Wang Heng-ling
1973將軍與我"The General"[6] David Steelman
1989我在北京"I Was in Peking June 3–6, 1989"[7] Daniel T. Hu

"Dawn" was adapted into a 1968 film directed by Sung Tsun-shou and produced by Li Han-hsiang, starring Peter Yang.

Notes and References

  1. The Chinese PEN, Autumn 1980.
  2. Book: The Ivory Balls & Other Stories. 1970. Mei Ya.
  3. Book: An Anthology of Contemporary Chinese Literature: Taiwan, 1949–74. National Institute for Compilation and Translation. 1975.
  4. Renditions, Autumn 1973.
  5. The Chinese PEN, Spring 1975.
  6. Book: Winter Plum: Contemporary Chinese Fiction. 0-89644-658-1. 1982. Chinese Materials Center.
  7. The Chinese PEN, Autumn 1989.