Shanghai and Peking – Penguin Classics Lunches – Hong Ying on Eileen Chang

Posted: September 16th, 2010 | No Comments »

To celebrate their five years in China Penguin are holding a series of relaxed literary lunches throughout September and into December in Shanghai and Peking. It’s a pretty simple idea – get a Penguin author to pick a Penguin Classic they like and talk about it while an audience gets some good food and booze and hopefully listens appreciatively. The lunches will take place at M on the Bund in Shanghai and The Bookworm in Peking. The whole season kicks of this coming Friday (17th) with Hong Ying on Eileen Chang (Zhang Ailing), a writer mentioned numerous times on this blog and one, of course, closely associated with Shanghai. More details on that below.

There’s four more writers and chosen books to come after Hong Ying including:

Janice YK Lee of thee excellent The Piano Teacher fame on Jane Austen’s Emma

Jonathan Fenby of multiple great books and the Penguin History of Modern China on Joseph Roth’s The Radetzky March

(apologies – but you probably saw it coming) Paul French on Andre Malraux’s Man’s Fate

So a mixed bag. I opted for Malraux as it is a stunning noirish thriller set in Shanghai during the vicious insurrectionist battles of 1927 and yet, I reckon, little read these days even by people who are generally quite well read on Shanghai and China otherwise. It’s time to resurrect Malraux and put him firmly back in the Shanghai Lit canon. Details of all these events to follow as they come along.

Renowned Chinese author Hong Ying (Concubine of Shanghai; K: The Art of Love)
launches the Penguin Classics Lunches with a discussion of the work of
Eileen Chang (Zhang Ai-Ling), one of the great writers of 20th century China,
focusing on Lust, Caution and Love In A Fallen City.
The Penguin Classics Lunches celebrate Penguin China’s fifth anniversary
with five lunches over five months, each featuring a noted Penguin author
who will talk about their favourite Penguin Classic.
It’s the perfect way to spend a Friday lunchtime
– good food, good conversation, and good books.

RMB 188, includes a three-course lunch with coffee or tea
Reservations: 6350 9988

Friday, September 17

About the Author: Hong Ying began to write at eighteen when she left home to travel around China. She studied at the Lu Xun Academy in Beijing and Shanghai’s Fudan University. In 1991, she moved to London to work as a writer and moved back to Beijing in 2000. Hong Ying’s novels have been translated into twenty-nine languages and have appeared on numerous bestseller lists. She has won major literary awards in Taiwan and Italy.
In her work, she tends to focus on human stories, hardship and history. Penguin plan to publish new editions of two of Hong Ying’s novels, K: The Art of Love and The Concubine of Shanghai.

Hong Ying

About Eileen Chang: Hong Ying will discuss Eileen Chang’s short fiction – tales of love, longing, and the shifting and endlessly treacherous shoals of family life. Written when she was still in her twenties, these extraordinary stories
combine an unsettled, probing, utterly contemporary sensibility, keenly alert to sexual politics and psychological ambiguity, with an intense lyricism that echoes the classics of Chinese literature.

Eileen Chang

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