Qiu Huadong

b. 1969, Changji, Xinjiang

Writer

A leading writer of new urban fiction in the 1990s, Qiu Huadong capitalizes upon his experience as a Beijing journalist with extensive social networks to write contemporary fiction with a strong ethnographic dimension. Qiu studied Chinese literature at Wuhan University from 1988 to 1992, and moved to Beijing after graduation to work as the cultural-affairs reporter for the business journal China Commercial Times (Zhonghua gongshang shibao). Since first publishing poetry at age sixteen, Qiu has published over twenty works, including three novels, collections of short stories, novellas, poetry and essays, and an Internet novella (see web literature). His works have been translated into English, Japanese and German.

His novel City Tank (Chengshi zhanche, 1997) focuses on a wide variety of artists attempting to survive in an increasingly commercial Beijing, illuminating the choices confronting artists in a post-revolutionary consumer society. Another novel, Fly Eyes (Yingyan, 1998), describes young urban professionals. Many of his characters change careers in the early 1990s from artists or teachers to business professionals. In recollecting their past idealism, those who are satiated with their materialistic lifestyle attempt to live more simply but perish in their attempt to seek spiritual value in contemporary society, whereas the ‘survivors’ live prosaic, middle-class lives.

See also: He Dun; Humanistic Spirit, ‘Spirit of the Humanities’; xiahai

Further reading

Visser, Robin (2000). The Urban Subject in the Literary Imagination of Twentieth Century China’. PhD diss., Columbia University, 159–84, 265–80.

ROBIN VISSER