Ah Cheng

{{short description|Chinese author and screenwriter (born 1949)}} {{Infobox writer | image = | caption = | name = Ah Cheng | native_name = 阿城 | native_name_lang = zh | pseudonym = | birth_name = Zhong Acheng ({{lang|zh|锺阿城}}) | birth_date = {{birth date and age|1949|04|05}} | birth_place = Beijing, China | death_date =  | death_place = | resting_place = | occupation = author, screenwriter | language = Chinese | alma_mater = | period = 1984–present | genre = Novel, screenplay | subject = Xungen movement | movement = | notable_works = ''The Chess Master'' | spouse = | partner = | children = | relatives = | awards = Nonino (1992) | signature = | signature_alt = | website =  }} '''Zhong Acheng''' ({{lang-zh|t=鍾阿城|s=钟阿城|p=Zhōng Āchéng}}; born 1949), often known by his pseudonym '''Ah Cheng''', is a Chinese author and screenwriter.<ref>{{cite journal |language=zh |author1=Peng Dingning ({{lang|zh|彭叮咛}}) |script-title=zh:阿城：作家眼中的作家 |trans-title=Acheng: A Writer in the Eyes of Writers |journal=Culture and History Vision |volume=630 |location=Yuhua District, Changsha, Hunan |publisher=Integrated Media Center of the Hunan Provincial Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference |year=2022 |pages=70–73 |issn=1672-8653}}</ref> He is often associated with the 1980s “root-seeking” literary movement. His best-known works are a trilogy of novellas – ''The Chess Master'' ({{lang-zh|c=棋王|p=Qí Wáng}}; 1984), ''The King of Trees'' ({{lang-zh|c=树王|p=Shù Wáng}}; 1985), ''The King of Children'' ({{lang-zh|c=孩子王|p=Háizi Wáng}}; 1985)– which draw on rural life during the Cultural Revolution.<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal |last=Zhou |first=Zuyan |date=2016 |title=Dao and Reconstruction of Cultural Identity in Contemporary Chinese Literary and Mass Media Products |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/24886579 |journal=Modern Chinese Literature and Culture |volume=28 |issue=2 |pages=223–284 |issn=1520-9857}}</ref>

==Life and work== Ah Cheng's father, Zhong Dianfei, was in charge of the Chinese Communist Party's Propaganda Bureau. In 1956, as part of the Hundred Flowers campaign, he wrote an article criticizing political interference in films and was sent to the countryside. Ah Cheng had to sell his father's books to support the family, and read these Chinese and western classics before doing so. During the Cultural Revolution, Ah Cheng was also sent to the countryside, working in Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, and Yunnan, where he became a popular storyteller.<ref name="TreesAfterword">{{cite book |last1=McDougall |first1=Bonnie S. |title=The King of Trees |date=1989 |publisher=New Directions Publishing |chapter=Afterword}}</ref>

In 1976, he returned to Beijing on leave and witnessed the Tiananmen Square protests triggered by Zhou Enlai's death. His sketch of Zhou was published in the first issue of ''Jintian'', an unofficial literary magazine founded by Bei Dao and others.<ref name="TreesAfterword" />

In 1979, Ah Cheng and his wife moved to Beijing. Together with He Dong, Ma Desheng, Wang Keping, Huang Rui, Li Shuang, Qu Leilei and Ai Weiwei, Ah Cheng founded the Stars Group (XingXing), an assembly of untrained, experimental artists who challenged the strict tenets of Chinese politics. As a political and artistic group, they staged exhibitions around Beijing, making way for avant-garde art in China.

Ah Cheng also began writing stories about his life in Yunnan. One of these, ''The Chess Master'', was published in ''Shanghai Literature'' in July 1984. It was praised in ''Wenyi Bao'', the journal of the China Writers Association, that October, and won an award in December. ''The King of Trees'' was published in ''Chinese Writers'' in January 1985, and ''The King of Children'' later that year in ''People's Literature''. Collections of his work were published in Hong Kong and Beijing that year, and in Taipei in 1986.<ref name="TreesAfterword" /> His narratives employ traditional Chinese folklore, Confucian and Daoist motifs, and classical storytelling techniques, marking a deliberate return to formal realism and cultural roots in contrast to earlier revolutionary literature.<ref name=":0" />

Mo Yan, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, regarded Ah Cheng as his literary idol during his school years. Wang Shuo, a leading author of the new Beijing School, considered Ah Cheng a top-tier writer in the Beijing literary circle. Taiwanese fiction writer Chu Tʽien-wen recalled Ah Cheng’s exceptional storytelling ability and keen insights into life.<ref name=":1" />

At the peak of his fame, Ah Cheng moved to the US and earned a living on manual labor and random jobs including dog-walking and wall painting. According to him, the US is no different than the places he was sent to as a child - Inner Mongolia and Yunnan. Far from China's literary circle and critics, he kept writing in the States, where he had gone to "find a desk to write at with no-one looking over my shoulder."<ref>{{Cite web |last= |first= |date=1994 |title=Towards Normality-- An Interview With Ah Cheng |url=http://www.taiwan-panorama.com/en/Articles/Details?CatId=7&Guid=ffc5534d-254c-4183-83c4-e98c020ea93e&postname=Towards+Normality--+An+Interview+With+Ah+Cheng&srsltid=AfmBOor1upAHCMiRDyvDbWF7gGspuS6ZxgvPF610FbfwOjJN2lZcYNKz&utm |access-date=2025-07-03 |website=Taiwan Panorama Magazine {{!}} An international, bilingual magazine for Chinese people around the world |language=}}</ref><ref name=":1">{{Cite web |date=2021-10-09 |title=能得诺贝尔奖的作家或许不少，但阿城只有一个 |url=https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_14810642?utm |website=thepaper.cn}}</ref>

Chen Kaige, another contributor to ''Jintian'', adapted ''The King of Children'' into his third film, ''King of the Children'' (1988), and Ah Cheng began working as a screenwriter.<ref name="TreesAfterword" />

Ah Cheng won the 1992 International Nonino Prize in Italy.

==Works==

===Screenplays=== *''Yue Yue'' (1986) *''Hibiscus Town'' (1986) *''Painted Skin'' (1992) *''Springtime in a Small Town'' (2002) *''The Go Master'' (2006) *''The Assassin'' (2015)

===Novels and novellas=== *"The Chess Master", also translated as "The King of Chess" (1984) *"The King of Children" ({{Lang-zh|t=孩子王|s=孩子王|p=Háizi wáng)}}) (1985) *"The King of Trees" ({{Lang-zh|t=樹王|s=树王|p=Shù wáng)}}) (1985) *''Unfilled Graves'' ({{Lang-zh|t=空墳|s=空坟|p=Kōng fén)}})

===Collections=== *''Three Kings: Three Stories from Today's China'' (trans. by Bonnie McDougall), published 1990 by Collins-Harvill (London).<ref>''Three Kings'' in Open Library entry, accessed 28 December 2010.</ref> *''The King of Trees'' (omnibus of "King of Trees", "The King of Chess", and "The King of Children") (trans. by Bonnie McDougall), published by New Directions Publishing in 2010.

== References == <references/>

== Further reading== * {{Cite book |last=Hong |first=Zicheng |title=中国当代文学史 (zhong guo dang dai wen xue shi) |date=2010 |publisher=Peking University Press |isbn=978-7-301-15373-4 |series= |location=Beijing |language=Chinese |trans-title=History of Contemporary Chinese Literature}}

==External links== * {{IMDb name|id=0155553|name=Ah Cheng}}

Category:1949 births Category:Living people Category:Screenwriters from Beijing Category:Chinese male short story writers Category:20th-century Chinese short story writers Category:International Writing Program alumni Category:20th-century Chinese male writers Category:20th-century Chinese novelists Category:Short story writers from Beijing