Gao Xingjian facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Gao Xingjian
Gao in 2012
Born	(1940-01-04) January 4, 1940 (age 84) Ganzhou, Jiangxi, China
Occupation	Novelist playwright critic translator screenwriter director painter
Language	Chinese
Citizenship	(1940–49)  People's Republic of China (1949–98)  France (since 1997)
Alma mater	Beijing Foreign Studies University
Genre	Meta-theatre, genre resistant
Notable works	Absolute Signal (1982) The Bus Stop (1983) Wild Man (1985) The Other Shore (1986) Soul Mountain (1990)
Notable awards	Nobel Prize in Literature (2000)
Spouse	Wang Xuejun (王学筠); divorced
Chinese name
Chinese	高行健
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Gāo Xíngjiàn Wade–Giles Kao Hsing-chien IPA [kɑ́ʊ ɕǐŋtɕjɛ̂n]

Gao Xingjian (高行健 in Chinese - born January 4, 1940) is a Chinese émigré and later French naturalized novelist, playwright, critic, painter, photographer, film director, and translator who in 2000 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for an oeuvre of universal validity, bitter insights and linguistic ingenuity." He is also a noted translator (particularly of Samuel Beckett and Eugène Ionesco), screenwriter, stage director, and a celebrated painter.

Gao's drama is considered to be fundamentally absurdist in nature and avant-garde in his native China. Absolute Signal (1982) was a breakthrough in Chinese experimental theatre. The Bus Stop (1983) and The Other Shore (1986) had their productions halted by the Chinese government, with the acclaimed Wild Man (1985) the last work of his to be publicly performed in China. He left the country in 1987 and his plays from The Other Shore onward increasingly centered on universal (rather than Chinese) concerns, but his 1989 play Exile angered both the government for its depiction of China and the overseas democracy movement for its depiction of intellectuals. In 1997, he was granted French nationality.

Gao's influences include classical Chinese opera, folk culture, and 20th century European drama such as Antonin Artaud, and he said in 1987 that as a writer he could be placed at the meeting point between Western and Eastern cultures. He is a very private person, however, and later claimed, "No matter whether it is in politics or literature, I do not believe in or belong to any party or school, and this includes nationalism and patriotism." His prose works tend to be less celebrated in China but are highly regarded elsewhere in Europe and the West, with Soul Mountain singled out in the Nobel Prize announcement.

Early life

Born in Ganzhou, Jiangxi, during wartime China in 1940 (Gao's original paternal ancestral home town is in Taizhou, Jiangsu with his maternal roots from Zhejiang), his family returned to Nanjing with him following the aftermath of World War II. He has been a French citizen since 1998. In 1992 he was awarded the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government.

Early years in Jiangxi and Jiangsu

Gao's father was a clerk in the Bank of China, and his mother was a member of YMCA. His mother was once a playactress of Anti-Japanese Theatre during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Under his mother's influence, Gao enjoyed painting, writing and theatre very much when he was a little boy. During his middle school years, he read much translated literature from the West, and he studied sketching, ink and wash painting, oil painting and clay sculpture under the guidance of painter Yun Zongying (simplified Chinese: 郓宗嬴; traditional Chinese: 鄆宗嬴; pinyin: Yùn Zōngyíng).

In 1950, his family moved to Nanjing. In 1952, Gao entered the Nanjing Number 10 Middle School (later renamed Jinling High School) which was the Middle School attached to Nanjing University.

Years in Beijing and Anhui

In 1957 Gao graduated, and, following his mother's advice, chose Beijing Foreign Studies University (BFSU) instead of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, although he was thought to be talented in art.

In 1962 Gao graduated from the Department of French, BFSU, and then he worked for the Chinese International Bookstore (中國國際書店). During the 1970s, because of the Down to the Countryside Movement, he was persecuted as a public intellectual, forced to destroy his early writings, and was sent to the countryside to do hard labor in Anhui Province for six years. He taught as a Chinese teacher in Gangkou Middle School, Ningguo county, Anhui Province for a short time. In 1975, he was allowed to go back to Beijing and became the group leader of French translation for the magazine China Reconstructs (《中國建設》).

In 1977 Gao worked for the Committee of Foreign Relationship, Chinese Association of Writers. In May 1979, he visited Paris with a group of Chinese writers including Ba Jin. In 1980, Gao became a screenwriter and playwright for the Beijing People's Art Theatre.

Gao is known as a pioneer of absurdist drama in China, where Signal Alarm (《絕對信號》, 1982) and Bus Stop (《車站》, 1983) were produced during his term as resident playwright at the Beijing People's Art Theatre from 1981 to 1987. Influenced by European theatrical models, it gained him a reputation as an avant-garde writer. The production of the former work (the title of which has also been translated as Absolute Signal) was considered a breakthrough and trend-setter in Chinese experimental theatre. His book Preliminary Explorations Into the Art of Modern Fiction was published in September 1981 and reprinted in 1982, by which point several established writers had applauded it. His plays Wild Man (1985) and The Other Shore (《彼岸》, 1986) openly criticised the government's state policies. The rehearsal of the latter was ordered to stop after one month.

In 1986 Gao was misdiagnosed with lung cancer, and he began a 10-month trek along the Yangtze, which resulted in his novel Soul Mountain (《靈山》). The part-memoir, part-novel, first published in Taipei in 1990 and in English in 2000 by HarperCollins Australia, mixes literary genres and utilizes shifting narrative voices. It has been specially cited by the Swedish Nobel committee as "one of those singular literary creations that seem impossible to compare with anything but themselves." The book details his travels from Sichuan province to the coast, and life among Chinese minorities such as the Qiang, Miao, and Yi peoples on the fringes of Han Chinese civilization.

Years in Europe and Paris

By the late 1980s, Gao had shifted to Bagnolet, a city adjacent to Paris, France. His 1989 political drama Fugitives (also translated as Exile), about three people who escape to a disused warehouse after the tanks roll into Tiananmen Square on 4 June 1989, resulted in all his works being banned from performance in China and he was officially deemed persona non grata.

Works

Selected works:

Gao Xingjian Center at National Taiwan Normal University

For a long time Gao Xingjian has considered Taiwan his home and has a deep connection with National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU). In 2008, he accepted President Gou Yih-shun's invitation to become an honorary chair professor at the university. In 2011, President Chang Kuo-En traveled to France to extend an invitation, resulting in Mr. Gao becoming a chair professor at the Graduate Institute of Performing Arts in 2012, where he has been teaching courses for several years. His exceptional accomplishments and remarkable contributions to society led him being awarded an honorary doctorate in literature from NTNU in 2017.

Since 2012, NTNU has collaborated closely with Professor Gao to organize a series of events and performances. For instance, in 2012, the university arranged the "Encounter Gao Xingjian at NTNU - Commemorating the Visit of Nobel Laureate in Literature Gao Xingjian." In 2014, NTNU, in conjunction with the National Palace Museum, co-presented the Taiwanese premiere of the cinematic poem "Requiem for Beauty," alongside the publication of the corresponding art book. Furthermore, Professor Gao himself donated and unveiled the Xingjian Hall, a rehearsal room for the Graduate Institute of Performing Arts. The years following saw additional significant events, including the "Gao Xingjian Art Festival" in 2017, where his ink wash painting "The Thinker" was presented, and the "Gao Xingjian Week" in 2019, which introduced courses such as "The Literature and Art of Gao Xingjian" and "Studies on Plays of Gao Xingjian", curses currently offered by NTNU each semester. Meanwhile, the Graduate Institute of Performing Arts performed several of his iconic works, including the Mandarin debut of "Nocturnal Wanderer" (2012), the vibrant rock-and-roll musical "Mountains and Seas" (2013, 2017), the dance theater production "Soul Mountain" (2016, 2017), the monologue "Soliloquy" (2019), and the university repertory production "Soliloquy on Soul Mountain" (2019).

In 2020, Professor Gao celebrated his 10th year as an NTNU chair professor, commemorating this milestone by generously donating various manuscripts and pertinent books to the university. As a testament to the academic bond with Professor Gao and to foster research on his works, NTNU established the Gao Xingjian Center on the sixth floor of the NTNU Library. This center serves as a repository for his writings, documents, and relevant research materials. Leveraging its strengths and distinct characteristics in the realm of arts and humanities, as well as interdisciplinary collaboration across the College of Liberal Arts, College of Arts, and College of Music, NTNU aspires to emerge as a pivotal research hub for Gao Xingjian's works within the Chinese-speaking world.

Trivia

• Gao is the second of the three laureates to give Nobel lecture in Chinese (the other two are Samuel C. C. Ting in 1976 and Mo Yan in 2012).
• Gao is an atheist.

See also

In Spanish: Gao Xingjian para niños

• Chinese literature
• List of Nobel laureates in Literature
• List of Chinese writers