Living with Their Past: Post-Urban Youth Fiction
By Zhang Kangkang
Edited by Richard King
2003
144 pages
ISBN 962-7255-26-2
In a career spanning thirty years, Zhang Kangkang has published novels, novellas, short stories, memoirs and numerous essays, making her one of China's leading contemporary writers.
A teenager at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, Zhang was caught up in the Mao's campaign to send educated urban youth "down" to poor and remote parts of rural China. On their return to the cities in the late 1970s, many began to write about their experience, and "urban youth (zhiqing) literature" was born. Zhang became one of its leading exponents.
The theme of these stories is that of urban youth—back in the cities but no longer young—confronting their past. In these stories the reader encounters the experiences which shaped and still haunt an entire generation of Chinese.
' Living with Their Past includes ... three stories ... Each of the stories is followed by a dialogue between Richard King and the writer. The introduction provides readers with both useful information on the author and her writing and the editor's comments on the stories and on zhiqing literature....'
一Pacific Affairs