 Daughter of the famous writer
Ru Zhijuan, Wang was born on march 6, 1954 in Nanjing. Her ancestral
home is Tong'an, Fujian Province. In 1955, she moved with her mother
to Shanghai, where she attended schol untill 1969. In that year,
she was sent to Anhui Province to live and work with the peasants,
or as the policy was then described "to get re-educated by
the poor and lower-middle peasant." Later, she was admitted
to the Xuzhou Prefectural Art Troupe, and in 1975, she made her
debut as a young writer with the essay " Marble." She
was transferred in 978 to the China Welfare Society in Shanghai,
where she was assigned to edit the magazine Childhood. Her story
"Who's the Would-be Captain?" published in 1979 won a
third-class prize for children's literature. In 1983, Wang Anyi
participated in the International Writing Program at the University
of Iowa.
Choosing the lives of young people as the main focus, she wrote
the short story, "Rustling Rain" (1981), which establishes
her as a promosing young woman writer. "Rustling Rain"
expresses the younger generation's expctations and pursuit of
love and ideals as seen through a girl's tender but restless feeling.
Wang's deepening understanding of life can be seen in several
of her later works, such as Coda (1981), "The Destination"
(1981), and "Lapse of Time" (1982), the latter a winner
of the Prize for Best Novelette of 1982. The short Noel, Daliu
Village, and its companion piece, Xiaobao Village (1985), both
depict relationships among common people. The latter, however,
is much more noteworthy for its insights into community life and
its synchronic and diachronic treatment of language. It is also
notable for its artistic style and fresh and original subject
matter. Recently, Wang has published a suite of "love"
novels including Love Affairs in the Wild Mountains, Love Affairs
in a Small Town, and Love Affairs in the Beautiful Valley, all
of which demonstrate her bold treatment of the themes of love
and sex. Wang is now a professional writer associated with the
Shanghai branch of the Chinese Writers' Association.
The themes treated by Wang predestined her to become widely recognized
as a speaker for China's younger generation, and a breaker of
the taboos that hide sexuality and canal love from view in the
modern Chinese context. Her main works include "Who's the
Would-be Captain?" (1979), "The Destination" (1981),
"Coda" (1981), "Life in a Small Couryard"
(1981), "Lapse of Time" (1982), "The Stage, a Miniature
World" (1983), "Xiaobao Village"(1985), "Love
Affairs in a Small Town"(1986), and "Between Themselves"
(1978). These works represent for her a new departure, with love
themes that explore fatal sexual attraction and tensions between
deep emotional love and dull ordinary marriage in ways that are
challending and, to her Chinese public, unusally explicit.
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