Wang Meng (author)

Wang Meng (Chinese: 王蒙; Pinyin: Wáng Méng; b. 1934) is a Chinese writer.

Wang Meng was born in Beijing in 1934. During his middle school years, he was introduced to communist ideology and in 1949 officially joined the Communist Youth League.

Wang Meng has published over 60 books since 1955, including six novels, ten short-story collections, as well as other works of poetry, prose and critical essays. His works have been translated and published in 21 different languages.

In 1956 Wang published a controversial piece, "A New Arrival at the Organization Department" (《组织部来了个年轻人》(Zuzhibu laile ge nianqing ren). This caused a great uproar ^[1] and subsequently led to his being labelled a rightist ("右派分子"). In 1963, he was sent to Xinjiang Province 《新疆》to be "reformed" through labor. It was largely during this period of hardship that he accrued much of the experience that would later become the material for his short stories and novels. Not until 1979 was this injury redressed.

He served as China's Minister of Culture from 1986 to 1989.

In an article in the New Yorker ('Servant of the State', pub. November 8, 2010^[2]) critic Jianying Zha asked, 'Is China's most eminent writer a reformer or an apologist?' in response to the criticism of Wang Meng's public lecture at the Frankfurt International Book Fair on October 18, 2009.

Selected publications

Books available in English

• 100 Glimpses into China: Short Short Stories from China' (by Wang Meng, Feng Jicai, Wang Zengqi and others) (Xu Yihe and Daniel J. Meissner). Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1989.
• Alienation' (Nance T. Lin and Tong Qi Lin). Hong Kong: Joint Publishing Co., 1993.
• Bolshevik Salute: A Modernist Chinese Novel' (Wendy Larson). Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1989.
• Prize-winning Stories from China, 1978-1979' (by Liu Xinwu, Wang Meng, and others). Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1981.
• Snowball' (Cathy Silber and Deirdre Huang). Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1989.
• The Butterfly and Other Stories' (intro. by Rui An). Beijing: Chinese Literature,1983.
• The Strain of Meeting' (Denis C. Mair). Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1989.
• The Stubborn Porridge and Other Stories' (Zhu Hong). New York: George Braziller, 1994.

Notes

Further reading

• Zha Jianying (8 November 2010). "Letter from Beijing: Servant of the State". The New Yorker 86 (35): 60-69.