Jia Pingwa
Introduction
Jia Pingwa was born on February 21st, 1952 in Shangluo, Shaanxi province of China. Now he lives in Xi’an, Shanxi province. He started publishing works in 1974. He graduated from Chinese literature department of North West University in 1975. After graduation, he worked as a literature editor for several years. In 1982, he worked in Xi’an literature federation. After then, he became a full-time writer and was engaged in professional writing. He is the member of national committee of CPPCC, chairman of the writers’ association of Shaanxi province and Xi’an people’s congress.
Works and Awards
1978 FULL MOON (《满月儿》) The first national award for the best short stories.（全国优秀短篇小说奖） 1984 LA YUE•ZHENG YUE（《腊月•正月》）The author's association of China the third national excellent novelette award（中国作协第三届全国优秀中篇小说奖） 1987 FU ZAO（《浮躁》）Mobil pegasus prize for literature in the United States（美国美孚飞马文学奖） 1997 FEI DU （《废都》） The French mina foreign literature（法国费米娜文学奖） 2008 QIN QIANG （《秦腔》）Mao dun literature prize（茅盾文学奖） 2011 ANCIENT FURNACE （《古炉》）Shi Naian literature prize（施耐庵文学奖）
Something about QIN QIANG
“Qin Qiang ” is a traditional opera in Jia Pingwa’s hometown. However, His writing purpose is not to introduce the opera. Qin QIANG stands for the traditional forms. The writer said, ”I have seen the traditional forms in my hometown be lost step by step, and I want to save the dying process of this paragraph. So I need to build a monument.”(“我目睹故乡的传统形态一步步消亡，想要保存消亡过程的这一段，所以要立一个碑。以后农村发展了，变化了，与我都没有关系，但起码这一段生活和我有关，有精神和灵魂的关系。”) In other words, Qin qiang shows Jia Pingwa’s love for his hometown and his thinking about the rural condition after the revolution. To some degree, it tells the life of the writer’s childhood. Qingfeng street in the novel is based on dihua street. Dihua is the street where he lived when I was young. The story has no fixed main character. Almost everyone in the story has a bad ending. The readers can see his sympathy on the peasants and his worries about the development of the countryside in it. Jia Pingwa is good at creating the vernacular novels. He has a high attainments in the jargon. Qin Qiang is a novel about his hometown. It’s full of hometown nostalgia. However, it is difficult for foreign readers to understand and translate because of the dialect writing. So he is not as famous as Yu Hua or Mo Yan in western countries.