Xi Xi

(neé Zhang Yan)

b. 1938, Shanghai

Writer

Xi Xi received her primary education in Shanghai, but came to Hong Kong from Guangdong in 1950, where she graduated from college and lives today. She worked as a primary school teacher until 1979, but then decided to involve herself full time with writing. Since her first publication in 1965, she has written short stories and novels, but is also a poet, scriptwriter and film and art critic. She reads a lot of foreign literature and is also interested in the visual arts. She has published many books, including My City (Wocheng, 1979), Marvels of a Floating City (Fucheng zhiyi, 1986) and the collection of short stories A Girl Like Me (Xiangwo zheyang de yige nüzi, 1982). Her writing, at once humorous and acute, is situated at the intersection of city life and individual feeling. Protagonists often try to escape from reality and the coercive urban environment, engaging objects more than human beings, playing with toys as adults, alternating between moods of fresh, childlike joy and of disillusion and derision, all within routine perceptions of daily life.

Further reading

Ng, Daisy S.Y. (2003). ‘Xi Xi and Tales of Hong Kong’.

In Joshua Mostow (ed.) and Kirk Denton (ed. China section), Columbia Companion to Modern East Asian Literatures. New York: Columbia University Press, 578–83.

Xi, Xi (1993). My City: A Hong Kong Story. Trans. Eva Hung. Hong Kong: Renditions.

——(1997). Marvels of a Floating City and Other Stories: An Authorized Collection. Trans. Eva Hung. Hong Kong: Renditions.

——(1997). Une fille comme moi. Trans. Véronique Woillez. Paris: Éditions de l’Aube.

ANNIE CURIEN