Pai Hsien-yung

Pai took up lecturing in 1965 as a professor of Chinese literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara. During his tenure, he prolifically produced short stories characterized by modernist influences. This culminated in Taipei People, his seminal short story collection illustrating the lives of post-war emigres. Additionally, Pai wrote Crystal Boys, a novel dealing with themes of homosexuality and sin and credited for popularizing the Tongzhi genre. After his retirement from lecturing in 1994, Pai's write transitioned to become more thematically cosmopolitan. Compiling work over four decades thematically ranging from the Cultural Revolution, the AIDS epidemic, and isolation in Chinese-American immigrant life, he published New Yorkers in 2007. Pai's interest in Kunqu compelled him to adapt The Peony Pavilion for a younger audience between 2004 and 2005, among wider initiatives to preserve the opera form. Pai remains one of the most important writers of twentieth-century Chinese literature and is a Distinguished Professor-at-Large at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Pai Hsien-yung studied at National Taiwan University, National Cheng Kung University and Taipei Municipal Chien Kuo High School. The recorded working language is Chinese. The field of work recorded is redology and Chinese literature. Employment is recorded with University of California, Santa Barbara. Works named in the authority record are Crystal Boys and Taipei People. Distinctions recorded are honorary doctor of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, honorary doctor of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and National Cultural Award.

• Name — Pai Hsien-yung • Native Name — 白先勇 • Born — 11 July 1937 • Birthplace — Nanning, Guangxi, Republic of China • Education — National Cheng Kung University National Taiwan University (BA) University of Iowa (MFA) • Period — 1958–present • Relatives — Bai Chongxi (father) • Awards — Order of Brilliant Star (2015) Kenneth Hsien-yung Pai (born July 11, 1937) is a Taiwanese and American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. He is often described as a "melancholy pioneer" of modern Chinese literature. Born in Nanning, Guangxi to Kuomintang general Bai Chongxi at the cusp of the Second Sino-Japanese War, Pai endured a childhood mired with illness, isolation, and constant migration across Chongqing, Shanghai, Nanjing, and Hong Kong before reuniting with his family in Taiwan in 1952. Pai co-founded the literary journal Xiandai wenxue while studying English literature at National Taiwan University, and later pursued a Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop. Pai took up lecturing in 1965 as a professor of Chinese literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara. During his tenure, he prolifically produced short stories characterized by modernist influences. This culminated in Taipei People, his seminal short story collection illustrating the lives of post-war emigres. Additionally, Pai wrote Crystal Boys, a novel dealing with themes of homosexuality and sin and credited for popularizing the Tongzhi genre. After his retirement from lecturing in 1994, Pai's write transitioned to become more thematically cosmopolitan. Compiling work over four decades thematically ranging from the Cultural Revolution, the AIDS epidemic, and isolation in Chinese-American immigrant life, he published New Yorkers in 2007. Pai's interest in Kunqu compelled him to adapt The Peony Pavilion for a younger audience between 2004 and 2005, among wider initiatives to preserve the opera form. Pai remains one of the most important writers of twentieth-century Chinese literature and is a Distinguished Professor-at-Large at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Pai Hsien-yung was born July 11, 1937, in Nanning, Guangxi, Republic of China. as the fifth of ten children of Ma Peizhang and Bai Chongxi, a Hui Muslim general of the Kuomintang. Before he turned one year old, Pai's moved back to Guilin, his ancestral home. Pai later described his father as a "stern, Confucian father" with "some soft spots in his heart." Pai was diagnosed with tuberculosis at the age of seven, during which time he would have to live in a separate house from his siblings (of which he would have a total of nine). He lived with his family in Chongqing, Shanghai, and Nanjing before moving to the British-controlled Hong Kong in 1948 as CCP forces turned the tide of the Chinese Civil War. There, Pai studied in La Salle College, a Hong Kong Catholic boys' high school, until he reunited with his family in Taiwan in 1952. In 1956, Pai enrolled at National Cheng Kung University as a hydraulic engineering major because he wanted to participate in the Three Gorges Dam Project. The following year, he passed the entrance examination for the foreign literature department of National Taiwan University and transferred there to study English literature. In September 1958, after completing his first year of study, he published his first short story "Madame Ching" in the magazine Literature. Two years later, he collaborated with several NTU classmates—e.g., Chen Ruoxi, Wang Wen-hsing, Ouyang Tzu—to launch Modern Literature (Xiandai wenxue), in which many of his early works were published. He was also known to frequent the Cafe Astoria in Taipei. Pai went to the US in 1963 to study literary theory and creative writing at the University of Iowa in the Iowa Writers' Workshop. That same year, Pai's mother, the parent with whom Pai had the closest relationship, died, and he attributes this to the melancholy that pervades his work. After earning his Master of Fine Arts from Iowa, he became a professor of Chinese literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and has resided in Santa Barbara ever since. Pai retired from UCSB in 1994. Pai's cousin is Hong Kong radio personality Pamela Peck.

Pai's most famous work of fiction, Taipei People (1971), is a seminal work of Chinese modernism that mixes both literary Chinese and experimental modernist techniques. In terms of his choice of themes, Pai's work is also far ahead of its time. His novel, Crystal Boys (1983), tells the story of a group of homosexual youths living in 1960s Taipei, largely from the viewpoint of a gay youth who is thrown out of his father's home. The novel's comparison of the dark corners of Taipei's New Park, the characters' main cruising area, with the cloistered society of Taiwan of that period proved quite unacceptable to Taipei's then KMT-dominated establishment, though Pai has generally remained a loyal KMT supporter.