Famed Hong Kong novelist, wartime journalist, and literary magazine editor Liu Yichang passed away yesterday at the age of 99. The SCMP has a timely tribute to the “giant of modern literature”:
Born in Shanghai on December 7, 1918, and originally named Liu Tongyi, Liu Yichang first came to Hong Kong in 1948 and settled down in the city with his wife Lo Pai-wun in 1957.
In a writing career spanning more than six decades, Liu published over 30 books including novels, literary reviews, essays, poems and translated works.
He is credited with establishing modern literature in Hong Kong, with many of his works carrying the city’s unique metropolitan flavour. Liu was also known for discovering and nurturing a number of outstanding Hong Kong-based writers, including late poet Leung Ping-kwan, who went by the pen name Yesi, and author Zhang Yan, also known as Xi Xi.
If Liu’s name doesn’t ring a bell for you, the best-known adaptation of his work might: Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar-wai’s 2000 masterpiece, In the Mood For Love. Writer and translator Eileen Chengyin Chow — who’s well worth a follow in general for fans of modern and not-so-modern Chinese literature and poetry — commemorated Liu’s passing yesterday with an instructive thread on the late novelist’s relation with Wong:
The great modernist Hong Kong writer Liu Yichang 劉以鬯 passed away today. Peripatetic, diasporic, cosmopolitan – Liu’s life and work embodied a lesser known trajectory of modern Chinese literature. Wong Kar Wai’s IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE was inspired by 2 of his best known stories. pic.twitter.com/jONyGdiNBt
— eileen chengyin chow (@chowleen) June 9, 2018
“All memories are sodden.”
「所有的記憶都是潮濕的。」
-from “Drunkard” 酒徒 by Liu Yichang 劉以鬯.
And opening intertitle of Wong Kar Wai’s film 2046 pic.twitter.com/TFNcYDV1Ys— eileen chengyin chow (@chowleen) June 9, 2018
According to Wong Kar Wai, his film ITMFL -and especially Tony Leung’s Chow Mo-wan -was an homage to Liu Yichang and his generation of diasporic Chinese writers who lived through war and dislocation.
Two stories worthy of rediscovery: 酒徒 (The Drinker) and 對倒 (Tête-bêche). pic.twitter.com/LtSQ7jm4bJ— eileen chengyin chow (@chowleen) June 9, 2018
See the full thread here, and if you’re interested in reading Liu’s work, you can find a translated short story of his here, and a story collection available in paperback on Amazon.
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Cover image: “He remembers those vanished years. As though peering through a dusty window pane – the past was something he could see, but not touch. He always longed for all that had past. If he could shatter that dusty glass, he could walk back into those vanished years.” – Liu Yichang / Wong Kar-wai (translated by Eileen Chengyin Chow)
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