Yilin Zhong Explained

Yilin Zhong
Birth Place:	China
Education:	MA in Cultural Studies (UK) BA in Drama (China)
Occupation:	Novelist, journalist, screenwriter, columnist, radio presenter, poet, literary and drama critic
Genre:	Literary fiction, literary criticism, essay, poem, play, screenscript
Language:	Chinese (native), English
Period:	1984–present
Website:	(CN) (EN)

Yilin Zhong is a British-Chinese journalist, screenwriter and author. She is the author of seventeen novels, two film screenplays, ten books and many other work including poems and literary reviews. She currently lives in London.^[1]

Early life

Yilin Zhong was born in China. Her father was a literary editor at the China Federation of Literary and Art Union in Beijing but was exiled to southwest China as miner during the Cultural Revolution. Zhong wrote her first poem at five which was published when she was seven,^[2] and her first short story was published at the age of twelve in Shanghai Youth Literature. At thirteen, she wrote a research thesis 'Who broke up the wood-stone engagement?' and it was released in the academic journal A Dream of Red Mansions Journal^[3] in 1993.

At fourteen, Zhong wrote her first full-length novel Embracing the Sun, which was not published. Her second novel Sunshine and the Monsoon, written at sixteen, was published in 1995 and won her national reputation as the youngest talented writer;^[4] Zhong was interviewed by China Central Television's Book Review.^[5] In 1992, Zhong received an award voted by national readers for a short story released in Shanghai Youth Literature as the "Best Work of The Year".

At the age of sixteen, Zhong was offered admission by three top art universities in China. She decided to go to the Central Academy of Drama and studied Drama Literature and Play Writing, while she also passed the exam for the Theatre Director Department.^[6]

Education

Zhong studied at the Central Academy of Drama in Beijing, China, and achieved a distinction BA degree in Drama Literature and Playwriting.

In 2002, Zhong left China to obtain her MA degree in Cultural Studies from the University of Warwick.^[7] After her graduation, she fully immigrated to the UK and has since been living in London.^[1]

Career

Yilin Zhong started her creative literary writing when she was five. In 1995, she published her first novel Sunshine and the Monsoon.^[8] From 1995 to 2002, while Zhong was in Beijing, she worked for Beijing TV station, Beijing Broadcasting station and various magazines and newspapers,^[9] published five books, including three novels, one essay and one short story collection.^[10] Meanwhile, she also became a successful journalist^[11] and received a National Award for her exceptional contribution on reporting the IT technology blooming in China. Zhong wrote a film script 'Sunshine and the Monsoon' (adapted from her own novel) at the age of nineteen and won the Excellence Award for Chinese Youth Film Script in 1996. Her translation work 'In a Station of the Metro' (Ezra Pound) was collected into Chinese national high school's Literature Textbook^[12] and Chinese universities' textbook for American Literature.^[13] Her letter to the editor was published in 'One person's Literary History' (by Cheng Yongxin, Editor-in-chief of Harvest Literary Magazine) as one of writers' documentaries in contemporary Chinese literature.^[14] Before immigrating to the UK, Zhong was one of the notable contemporary women writers in China,^[15] and belonged to the 'Post 70s Generation' writers community.^[16]

After immigrating to the UK in 2002, Zhong has been living in London anonymously and continued writing fiction and essays in Chinese. London Single Diary (2009) was her first series written in the UK and published in China; the twin work London Love Story was published in 2010 and ranked at #3 on Amazon bestselling fiction list. Her novel Chinatown (written in 2005 in London) was released in 'Harvest' in 2011, which gathered American Chinese writer Ha Jin, British Chinese writer Yilin Zhong, and Taiwanese writer Qi Bang Yuan's works as a 'Special Issue of Oversea-Chinese Writers', which sold out in three months. Zhong attended the London Book Fair in 2012 and met many Beijing writer friends, such as the Vice Editor-in-chief of People's Literature and Pathlight magazines, recalled their friendship in Beijing in his published London Diaries.^[17] Zhong also wrote London theater reviews for newspapers and National Drama Study,^[18] and was cited by Shakespeare beyond English published in the UK.^[19] In 2013, her novel Personal Statement (written in 2000 at Beijing) was published in Shanghai.

In 2013, Zhong joint a reality dating TV show of Channel 4 and appeared on First Dates as herself. This was her first public appearance in the UK and she became the TV advertising model in its first season.^[20] In 2014, Harvest published the Kindle version of Chinatown; then the paperback edition was published in 2015, and was appraised to have filled the 'remarkable blank space of illegal immigration in contemporary Chinese literature history' (Editor's Review).^[5] In March 2015, Yilin Zhong had her first interview since 2002 with Harvest literary magazine for her new book Chinatown, and the interviewer recommended that 'one of this literary work's very great significance', is that 'it has changed our understanding of the world'.^[21]

In 2015, Zhong took a trip to New York, and then began to write her first novel in English: Dear New York,(1-4); Book 1-3 were written between Dec 2015 and March 2016 in London and Book 4 was completed in May 2016 in New York. She also sketched a new fiction Miss China and a non-fiction Folks of New York at Manhattan, and then wrote her first collection of poems in English after coming back to London in the fall of 2016. In October 2017, Zhong wrote her latest fiction The Private Scene as the third book of the personal statement trilogy, which was a derivative work of the second book of the trilogy, In London. The novel In London was written in 2005 in London and was published in February 2018 in China, having an unpublished foreword written by Wenfen Chen-Malmqvist, plus a few thousand words relating to political events were deleted due to the publishing censorship in China.^[22] In 2017-18, Zhong wrote her column The London Scene for Southern Weekend newspaper, her first column in Chinese media.^[23] Up until 2021, Zhong has published ten books including eight novels, all sold out.^[24]

Speech Ban

On 6 February 2020, right after the death of Dr. Li Wenliang, one of the COVID-19 'eight gentlemen' in Wuhan, Yilin Zhong posted a Weibo to question Dr. Li's death as suspicious, suspecting that he did not pass away from natural causes dead but was killed by some Wuhan malfeasance officers in order to destroy evidence of their malfeasance during the Coronavirus spreading from December 2019 to January 2020. Her post was immediately deleted by Sina Weibo and she was forbidden to post for one week. Then she was scolded by a large number of Chinese official media, alongside CNN who also suspiciously questioned Dr. Li Wenliang's death.^[25] One week later, on 14 February, the day of being 'allowed' to speak, Yilin Zhong at once published a 5,000-word inference article 'Li Wenliang's Life and Death Line' on her Weibo account with the cached photo, analyzing Dr. Li Wenliang's life line from the day he was infected and separately hospitalized for 21 days until he was finally diagnosed, to when he was officially 'declared' to have died after 26 days of hospitalization.^[26] She was immediately banned to speak on Weibo again and her Weibo account with 78,500 followers was then closed for a year.^[27] On 13 February, right after the Chinese central government removed two Party Committee Secretaries in Hubei, Yilin Zhong found the broadband at her London home was suddenly cut off by the hacker.^[28]

In April 2020, when Yilin Zhong was interviewed by Jiemian News in China, she reviewed the Covid-19 issue since 6th Feb up to April and criticized a series of erroneous decisions by Hubei government, including concealing the epidemic figures, delaying Li Wenliang’s treatment and leading to his death, etc. However, because of the sensitive content, the news article only limitedly reported a few points she made,^[29] ^[30] so she had to post her full speech content on Youtube.^[31] Then almost at the same time when Wuhan writer Fang Fang has published her 'Wuhan Diary' in both USA and Germany, Amazon.com sent Yilin Zhong an official notification notifying her that they had closed her KDP author's account and had removed all her books from the Kindle Store, despite the fact that all her Kindle books are fiction works and were published via KDP more than three years ago.^[32] On 6 December 2021, a few months after Zhong's Weibo account was recovered from the one year ban, Weibo has officially announced to have permanently closed Yilin Zhong's Weibo account with 83,808 fans and all contents became invisible, due to her 'harmful speech' regarding Covid-19 and other political reviews.^[33] On 7 December, Zhong's Wechat official account 'Yilin Zhong in London' was also closed down with all her articles deleted, which means now she was banned from public sight in China.

Bibliography

Novel

Sunshine and the monsoon 《阳光雨季》(Novel, January 1995)
Say love 《言情》(Novel, September 1998)
A love Fiction 《非一般爱情小说》(Novel, September 2001)
London Single Diary 《伦敦单身日记》(Novel, August 2009)
London Love Story 《伦敦爱情故事》(Novel, May 2010)
Personal Statement 《北京北京》（原名《个人现状》）(Novel, June 2013)
Chinatown (2015 novel) 《唐人街》(Novel, January 2015)
In London (2018 novel) 《在伦敦》（原名《文本生活》）(Novel, February 2018)

London Single Lady Series《伦敦单身女郎》系列 (Fiction, Season 1-5)

S1. The Mayfair Affair 《伦敦恋爱物语》(Novel)
S2.London Map of Romance 《伦敦爱情地图》(Novel)
S3.London Single Lady 《伦敦单身女郎》(Novel)
S4.Single Girl's Diary 《单身女郎日记》(Novel)
S4 extra. A 36 Hours' Film 《一场36小时的电影》(Novella)
S5.London Single Fairytale 《伦敦单身童话》(Novel)

Essays and short stories

Eyes in Subway 《地铁里的眼睛》(Essay collection, January 2001)
Going to Tibet 《去往拉萨》(Short Story collection, January 2005)
London Single Diary 《伦敦单身日记》系列(season 1-4)

Other works

The Postmodern Life 《后现代生活》(Novel)
Postmodernism and the Third World 《后现代主义与第三世界研究》(Research Essay, in English)
Sunshine and the Monsoon 《阳光雨季》电影剧本(Film Screenplay, Winner of Excellence Award for Chinese Youth film script in 1996)
London Love Story 《伦敦爱情故事》电影剧本(Film Screenplay, adapted from the published novel)
Dear New York, (Book 1-4, Novel, in English)
Poems Written in London (Poetry Collection, in English)
The Private Scene (Novel)
The London Scene (Collection of short stories)

Notes and References

Web site: Chinatown's Invisible Residents. Shanghai Daily. 30 August 2015.
Web site: Zhongkun_news_society-hot/钟鲲-资讯-资讯热点. Hanwang Book City/汉王书城. 22 Nov 2010. 28 February 2015. Zh.
Web site: A Dream of Red Mansions Journal/红楼梦学刊. 1993. 28 February 2015. Zh.
Web site: Writing the memory of youth_China Book News/书写青春记忆_中华读书报. 11 April 2001. Guangming Net/光明网. 1 March 2015. Zh.
Web site: The Postmodern Chinese living in their imagination-'Chinatown' Introduction and Book Review/《唐人街》：在伦敦的中国人. 2 March 2015. China Writer Net/中国作家网. 10 March 2015. Zh.
Web site: People: Chinese Writer Yilin Zhong exploring love in London/人物特写：在伦敦寻找爱情的华人女作家钟宜霖. 4 August 2015. BBC. 4 August 2015. Zh.
Web site: Warwick Classnotes. Warwick. 10 Feb 2016.
Web site: I do not select Wang Shuo_Ouline online/我不选王朔！-欧览在线. Frank Meinshausen. Suhrkamp. 6 Dec 2004. 28 February 2015. Zh.
Web site: National Love_Eastern News Daily/倾国之恋-东方早报. Eastern News Daily/东方早报. 28 July 2012. 1 March 2015. Zh.
Web site: 洛希 . March 2007 . Yilin Zhong, A single girl in London_Beatles Magazine/钟宜霖，单身女人在伦敦_《甲壳虫》 . 1 March 2015 . China Knowledge Net/中国知网 . Zh.
Web site: Discover Zhongkun's literary sky_TV interview record_CCTV/感受钟鲲的文字天空_采访记录_中央电视台. CCTV. 17 Dec 2001. 1 March 2015. Zh.
Web site: Translations of Pound's 'In a Station of the Metro'_New Textbook People's Education Edition_Obligatory 1 teaching plan/庞德《地铁车站》的诸种译文_新课标人教版_必修1教案课件. Chinese textbook room/语文轩. 24 April 2010. 28 February 2015. Zh.
Web site: The Directory and Content of Selected Readings in American Literature/《美国文学选读（第3版）》目录内容. Higher Education Publishing House/高等教育出版社. 1 June 2011. 8 October 2015. Zh.
Web site: One Person's Literary History/《一个人的文学史》. 程永新. Tianjing Renminmeishu Publishing House/天津人民美术出版社. 1 Oct 2007. 1 March 2015. Zh.
Web site: Post 70s generation's text_Youth News/70年代生青年作家群的情感文本_《青年时讯》. China.com.cn/中國網. 24 May 2001. 28 February 2015. Zh.
Web site: New generation's writing_Cultural Friday_China.com.cn/新生代寫作的優勢與局限_文化星期五_中國網. Beijing Daily/《北京日报》. 29 Nov 2000. 28 February 2015. Zh.
Web site: London Book Fair's 7 days Diaries/《伦敦书展七日记》. 邱华栋. Fiction Forest/小说林. January 2014. 1 March 2015. Zh.
Web site: London Theater: Chinese 'Richard III'/在伦敦观剧：中国版《理查三世》·南方日报数字报·南方报网. 钟宜霖. Southern News Daily/南方日报. 30 May 2012. 28 February 2015. Zh.
Book: Shakespeare beyond English: A Global Experiment. Bennett. Susan. Carson. Christie. 2013-08-29. Cambridge University Press. 9781107435476. 80. en.
Web site: First dates-Mating Season-Channel 4. Channel 4. 28 February 2015.
Web site: Dialogue: Exploring the value of literature in contemporary time through characters' various lives in 'Chinatown'/对话: 从《唐人街》的众生百态看现世中文学的价值. 党霄羽. Harvest Literary Magazine/《收获》文学杂志社. 1 March 2015. 1 March 2015. Zh.
Web site: Yilinzhong blogspot. 6 March 2018.
Web site: http://www.infzm.com/content/130486 . zh:南方周末专栏. 11 Nov 2017. Zh.
Web site: http://blog.sina.com.cn/zhongkun . zh:钟宜霖的博客. 20 May 2016. Zh.
News: 都护 . 西域 . 警惕！有些人在用李文亮医生之死"带节奏" . 18 February 2020 . Guancha.cn . 8 February 2020.
Web site: Zhong . Yilin . 李文亮的生死线/Dr. Li Wenliang' life and death line . yilinzhong.blogspot.com . blogspot.com . 18 February 2020.
Web site: Zhong . Yilin . Zhong's weibo . Weibo.com . Weibo . 18 February 2020.
Web site: Zhong . Yilin . Zhong's comment . YouTube . YouTube . 18 February 2020.
News: 王磬、古典 . Under the lockdown: Oversea writers . 14 April 2020 . Jiemian . sina . Jiemian . 8 April 2020 . sina news.
News: 王磬 . 古典 . 【特写】疫情下的海外华人作家 . 14 April 2020 . Jiemian . 8 April 2020 . Jiemian.
Web site: Yilin . Zhong . Yilin Zhong's review on Covid-19 . youtube . youtube . 14 April 2020 . youtube review.
Web site: Yilin . Zhong . Amazon closed my author's account . weixin.com . weixin blog . 14 April 2020.
Web site: Yilin . Zhong . Weibo closed 31 accounts . dayoo.com . dayoo.com . 12 December 2021.