Zhang Kangkang

Zhang Kangkang (simplified Chinese: 张抗抗; traditional Chinese: 張抗抗; pinyin: Zhāng Kàngkàng; born as Zhang Kangmei (simplified Chinese: 张抗美; traditional Chinese: 張抗美), July 3, 1950, Hangzhou) is a Chinese writer.

Life

Zhang was born into a family of Communist intellectuals. Her first name, Kang-Kang, means 'resistance-resistance.' She belongs to a generation affected by the Cultural Revolution.^[1]

Zhang was among the young people sent to the remote countryside to be re-educated by the poor and lower-middle-class peasants.^[1] At the age of 19, Zhang volunteered to go to Heilongjiang Province, where she faced a life marked by deprivation and abuse by the party cadres assigned to re-educate the new arrivals before going on to study in Harbin in 1977.^[2]

Zhang's 1975 novel Dividing Line was one of the significant novels about the experiences of sent-down youth, a major literary genre during the Cultural Revolution.^[3]: 179

She joined the China Writers Association in 1979 and was the deputy chairwoman of the Chinese Writers Association in Heilongjiang.^[2]

She returned to the city eight years later after the death of Mao Zedong and was allowed to resume her studies. In 1979, Kang-Kang published her first work, 'The Right to Love.' The book reflects on freedom and resistance against an oppressor.^[1]

She is married to a fellow writer, Jiang Rong, known for his 2004 novel, Wolf Totem.

Works

• Dividing Line (1975)^[3]: 179
• The Right to Love (1979)
• Summer (1981)
• The Pale Mists of Dawn (1980)
• Aurora Borealis (1981)
• The Wasted Years (Translated in Seven Contemporary Chinese Women Writers)^[4]
• Selected Works about Educated Youth. (Includes stories 'The Peony Garden', 'Cruelty' and 'Sandstorm')
• The Tolling of a Distant Bell (Translated by Daniel Bryant in Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 16.3 (1984): 44-51, and Contemporary Chinese Literature (see below): 98-105)
• Northern Lights (Chapter 7 translated by Daniel Bryant in Chinese Literature, Winter 1988, pp. 92–102.)
• The Invisible Companion (Translated by Daniel Bryant. Beijing: New World Press, 1996.)
• The Peony Garden (Translated by Daniel Bryant, Renditions 58 (2002): 127-39.)