Cheng Ch'ing-wen
Cheng Ch'ing-wen (Chinese: 鄭清文; born September 16, 1932), is a Taiwanese writer and a graduate of National Taiwan University. He worked at the government-run Hua Nan Bank for forty years. His works in English are generally under the transliteration Cheng Ch'ing-Wen and that is how he is described in many English-language publications published in Taiwan. The transliteration Tzeng Ching-wen is also used.
He is a leader of the Taiwanese "nativist" movement. Zheng [or Cheng] is a speaker of the Min Nan or Taiwanese "dialect" of Chinese. He graduated from elementary school in Taiwan with six years of instruction in Japanese, and only thereafter began to learn to write in Chinese
A collection of twelve of his short stories, Three-Legged Horse, was made available in English in 1998, and was a finalist for the 1999 Kiriyama Prize for translation.
He has written both novels, short stories, and works for children. His three works for children (Swallow Heart Berries, Sky Lanterns/Mother, and Picking Peaches) are populated with birds, insects, and other animals that all have the ability to speak, in a manner common to fairy tales.
References
- "A Royal Palm: Cheng Ch'ing-wen as a Writer for Twenty Years" by Peng Jui-Chin, Taiwan Literature October 1977, pp. 176-190
- "The Lonely Royal Palm-Discovering Cheng Ch'ing-wen's stories of Taiwan" ny Hsu Su-lan, Taiwan Daily News December 31, 1997
External links
- Three-Legged Horse ISBN 978-0-231-11386-1 and ISBN 978-0-231-11387-8
- Photo of Writer
- Biography and photo (in Chinese)
- Hua Nan Bank-(in Chinese)