Gao Xingjian, << gow shihng jyahn >> (1940-…), a Chinese playwright, novelist, and essayist, won the 2000 Nobel Prize in literature. Gao is the first Chinese author to win the prize. He is also a noted painter.
Gao was born on Jan. 4, 1940, in Ganzhou, Jiangxi province. From 1957 to 1962, Gao studied French literature at the Beijing Foreign Language Institute. From 1966 to 1976, Chinese society underwent a radical cultural upheaval called the Cultural Revolution. Because Gao’s writings displeased authorities, he destroyed many manuscripts of novels, plays, and articles on aesthetics to prevent them from falling into government hands. He was also sent to a re-education camp in the countryside for “rehabilitation” as punishment for his ideas. He spent six years at hard labor working in the fields. Gao’s experiences during the Cultural Revolution are reflected in his autobiographical novel One Man’s Bible (1999).
In 1981, Gao became a resident playwright at the Beijing People’s Art Theatre. There, he introduced the ideas of such experimental European playwrights as Samuel Beckett and Eugène Ionesco into Chinese drama. One of Gao’s best-known early plays was Bus Stop (1983), which reflected the influence of Beckett. Chinese officials condemned the play as “spiritual pollution” and banned it.
After Bus Stop was banned, Gao spent several months on a walking tour through central Sichuan province to escape government harassment. Gao based his novel Soul Mountain (1990) on the walking tour. Gao had also aroused opposition from the Chinese literary establishment with an essay on aesthetics that challenged the government’s policy on art and literature.
In 1986, Gao’s play The Other Shore was banned for its critical portrayal of the Cultural Revolution. Gao finally left China in 1987 and settled in Paris. He later became a French citizen.
In 1989, Gao wrote his play Fugitives, which he set against the background of the killing of many students during a 1989 protest in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. As a result of the play’s publication, the Chinese government banned all of Gao’s works.
Gao has translated many French writers into Chinese. A collection of five of his later plays was published in English as The Other Shore (1999). A collection of Gao’s stories, Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather, was published in English in 2004. Most of the stories were written before Gao left China in 1987.
