Breakout stage for Chinese books
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Mo Yan
His works are predominantly satires of society. He writes brutally vibrant stories about conformity and rural life in China.
Some of his works include "Red Sorghum" (1993), "Republic of Wine" (2001), and "Life and Death are Wearing Me Out" (2008)
Zhu Wen
"I Love Dollars and Other Stories of China" (2007) is a collection of six short stories that depict the chaos and dark comedy of China in the 1990s.
Literature is a tangible record of a particular era and its relevant issues. Through its own magic, it can inspire and influence thoughts, beliefs and vision for the future of individuals and nations.
At the recent Singapore Writers Festival 2009, a nine-day event co-organized by Singapore's National Arts Council and The Arts House, more than 100 writers from Asia and Western countries explored a variety of genres from horror and thriller to children's literature.
Readers had face-to-face meetings with famous writers at the biennial event. Among them from around 20 counties were Chinese novelist Yan Lianke and poet Duo Duo who espoused their understanding of Chinese literature to the international audience.
Yan, 51, an award-winning writer of novels and short stories, was invited to lecture on a "Fictional Look at History" and "Our Roots." Writing since 1979, he has been translated into more than 10 languages.
His work "Enjoyment" published in 2004 was acclaimed in China and won the novel category in the Lao She Literature Award. Most of his works focus on Chinese farmers and their lives.
"All my relatives live in Henan Province, one of the poorest areas of China," he says. "Most of them can't read. But I feel the obligation to write something about their lives. I will touch more upon rural life and the deep complexity of the land in my new works."
Unlike many other writers who settled in a foreign country, Yan, who is now based in Beijing, says he never left his China roots and it is "how to preserve the root that matters most."
Duo Duo is the pen name of contemporary Chinese poet Li Shizheng, born in Beijing in 1951.
He started writing poetry in the early 1970s and many of his early poems critiqued the "cultural revolution" (1966-76) from an insider's view.
Often considered part of the "Misty" school of contemporary Chinese poetry, he distanced himself from literary trends or labeling. Having lived in the Netherlands for 15 years, he returned to China in 2004 and teaches at Hainan University.
Duo Duo recollected his mixed emotions on leaving his homeland and shared thoughts about returning at the panel discussion with Yan.
"Wherever I go, the language of Chinese is deeply rooted in my soul. It is all I have," he says. "Unlike novelists, who can get famous with a work of several hundred thousand words, we poets can write for a whole life yet only be remembered for a sentence or two."
Singapore's acting minister for information, communications and the arts, Lui Tuck Yew, told the writers festival: "In this era of the new media, with blogs, short messaging service, Twitter and Facebook, words often become abbreviated and truncated beyond recognition.
"Literature is not only for the privileged few. It is a vital component of a nation's heritage," Lui says.
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