Zhang Kangkang Explained

Zhang Kangkang (; born as Zhang Kangmei, July 3, 1950, Hangzhou) is a Chinese writer.

Life

Zhang 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.

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

• 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.)

Further reading

• 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.
• 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

Notes and References

1. Web site: Female Writer Zhang Kangkang . 2023-07-31 . www.china.org.cn.
2. Xu . Qingbo . The Evolutionary Feminism of Zhang Kangkang and the Developing Dialogue between Darwinism and Gender Studies . 5 November 2014 . University of Helsinki .
3. Book: Zhang, Jie . Seven Contemporary Chinese Women Writers . 1982 . Chinese Literature . 978-0-8351-1600-8 . en.