Gao xingjian biography of barack obama

Biography of Gao Xingjian

Gao Xingjian, a Chinese novelist, playwright, translator, and critic, was born on January 4, 1940, in the picturesque town of Hangzhou, near Shanghai, which was under Japanese occupation at the time. His father was a banker and his mother an actress, which later had a negative impact on his life under Mao Zedong's rule. Gao experienced the Japanese occupation during his childhood and completed his studies at the French Department of the Beijing Foreign Languages Institute in 1962. He began writing at an early age but was forced to burn all his manuscripts during the Cultural Revolution when he was sent to a labor camp for re-education.

Until 1979, when China adopted reform policies, Gao was forbidden to publish his books and leave his hometown without "special permission." It was only after Deng Xiaoping came to power that some reform-minded theaters decided to stage some of Gao Xingjian's plays. During this time, some of his admirers began to refer to Gao as the "Chinese Solzhenitsyn." Unlike his Russian counterpart, Gao Xingjian did not describe the horrors of the Chinese Gulag in his works, even though he had experienced them firsthand. Instead, he mainly focused on the hardships and adversities faced by the "little man" from various Chinese provinces. However, the brief period of thaw in relation to Gao Xingjian and his works from the Chinese authorities did not last long. In the mid-1980s, all his books, including his most famous work, "Soul Mountain," were banned, and he once again faced political persecution.

In 1981, his first book, "Some Reflections on Contemporary Prose Art," was published, and in 1982, he made his theatrical debut with the play "Alarm Signal" at the Beijing People's Art Theater. His second play, "Bus Stop" (1983), was condemned as ideologically harmful (Gao Xingjian drew inspiration from the aesthetics of Beckett and Artaud), and his third play, "The Other Shore" (1986), was completely banned. To avoid repression, Gao hid in the forests and mountains of Sichuan province, traveling from the source to the mouth of the Yangtze River over ten months. In 1987, Beijing sent Gao Xingjian into "honorary exile," and two years later, after the tragic events of Tiananmen Square, he was deprived of his Chinese citizenship. All his works were declared "counter-revolutionary propaganda" in the People's Republic of China. He settled in Paris after leaving China and later obtained French citizenship to freely express his ideas without restrictions. He left the Communist Party ranks only in 1989, following the famous events at Tiananmen Square.

Gao Xingjian received three literary awards in France and Belgium, not only as a novelist and playwright but also as a talented calligrapher and a gifted artist who painted in the national style of "guohua." He is also involved in translation and directing, and is considered one of the founders of the new Chinese literature. The pinnacle of Gao Xingjian's work is considered to be the extensive novel "Soul Mountain," which spans about 800 pages.

Gao Xingjian became the first Chinese writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2000 for his "works of universal significance, marked by bitterness for the human condition in the modern world," which "open up new paths for Chinese prose and drama."