Wen Shaoxian (), born 4 December 1934) also known as Wan Siu Yin is a literary writer, famous for his short stories about the lives of the new immigrants from the mainland in Hong Kong. He is expert in writing political and historical novels. Wen is a translator and editor by profession and is also a professor of translation and comparative grammar.
Biography Wen was born in Hong Kong in an intellectual family. His father was a schoolmaster all his life. When Hong Kong was occupied by the Japanese invaders in 1941, his family had to flee Hong Kong and go back to their ancestral home in Qingyuan County, Guangdong Province, where his mother died of typhoid fever some time later. In the several years that followed, the family led a poor and unstable life there. After the war, Wen and his elder brother came back to Hong Kong to live with their grandmother who was the chief cook of an English taipan family. In 1954, he was admitted to Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China, majoring in English language and literature. Upon his graduation in 1958, he was assigned to do odd jobs in a remote mountainous area in Guangxi Province . He was transferred to the Department of Foreign Languages of Guangxi University in 1961. He had successively held the posts of assistant, lecturer and deputy director of the English teaching and researching section there. He was allowed to come back to Hong Kong in 1978.
After he returned to Hong Kong, Wen had served successively as translator, translation copy editor and chief editor in a number of established translation or publishing companies. The number of books he translated and copy-edited amounted to over one hundred. He has been engaged in the study of Chinese-English contrastive grammar and translation for more than three decades. So far he has published nine academic books and a number of theses in this connection. Besides, he has held the post of honorary professor at Sias International University affiliated to Zhengzhou University in Henan Province, China since 2001.
Wen has been engaged in literary work for more than half a century. His literary works include ten novels, three collections of short stories and two biographies. His short stories, characterized by their "unexpected ending," were well received by the readers both in Hong Kong and in mainland China. His New Immigrants, a collection of short stories published in Beijing in 1987, was a best seller in the mainland. Wen's novel Fragrant Port trilogy was published in Beijing in 2000 by the Writers Publishing House, one of the two top literary publishing institutions in China. The Literary Gazette, a very famous literary critical publication in Beijing, regarded it as "a masterpiece faithfully reflecting the vicissitudes of fortune Hong Kong had experienced over the past one hundred years." Of his ten novels, nine have been translated into English, of which the author translated eight and copied-edited the other one. They were published in e-book edition by Everflow Publications in Hong Kong in March and May 2011 respectively and are distributed and sold by Amazon Digital Services, USA.
Wen had spent fifteen years in writing his Fruitless Flowers, a novel series. It consists of five books which were published in Hong Kong in 1987 and 1992 successively. It brings to light for the first time in the form of literature the complete process of all the major political movements waged by Mao Zedong during his 27-year rule over China, along with one tragic story after another taking place during that period. Professor Yuan Liangjun, research fellow with the Institute of Literature under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, wrote in his work 《香港小說流派史》 (History of Different Schools of Fiction in Hong Kong), "Fruitless Flowers is the only novel series so far portraying the ultra-Left errors in China during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. With its grand boldness of vision and very true-to-life settings, the novel series profoundly reflects the tragic history of that period." Tung Rui, a well-known writer in Hong Kong and overseas, said in his article 《溫紹賢系列長篇的成功》 (Wen Shaoxian's Novel Series Is a Success) (published in Literary Free Talk, a very well-known literary review magazine in China, in its issue 2, 1992): "Fruitless Flowers novel series by Wen Shaoxian, has a great and inestimable significance... Fruitless Flowers novel series is a literary work with an epical structure. It serves as a telling witness to the part of tragic history in China. Its value of existence allows of no doubt no matter what its gain or loss would be… Its literary value is sure to coexist with history." Under the new title of Red Memories pentalogy, its one volume revised edition was published in Hong Kong in 2008. Soon it was permanently collected as a rare book by the National Museum of Modern Chinese Literature in Beijing, the most authoritative modern Chinese literature institution in China.
Bibliography
Literary works Book/Article TitlePublication/Publishing Institution1.《瑪莉不是中國人》 (Mary Is not a Chinese); 《史團長應徵》 (Regimental Commander Shi's Bad Dream);《謀生伎倆》 (A Means of Life), and other dozen short stories Wen Wei Po, Weekend Post, Hong Kong (1951–1953)2.《嫂嫂》(Sister-in-Law) (short story) Rainbow Weekly, Hong Kong (9 February 1952) 3.《夢》 (A Dream) (short story, translation work) Rainbow Weekly, Hong Kong (8 March 1952)4.《染髮記》 (Hair Coloring); 《相逢一笑》 (Settle Old Scores with a Smile); 《白馬王子今何在》 (Where Is my Secret Lover Now? ) and other dozen short stories) Wen Wei Po, New Evening Post, Hong Kong (1980 to 1993) 5.《墮胎記》 (The Story of Induced Abortion) (short story) Dangdai (Era) Bi-Monthly, People’s Literature Publishing House, Beijing (June 1985) 6.《比利》(Pele) (literary biography) Sun Ya Publications (HK) Ltd. (1985) 7.《甘地》(Gandhi) (literary biography, co- author) Sun Ya Publications (HK) Ltd. (1985) 8.《移民》 (To Reside Abroad); 《餘孽》 (Leftover Evils); 《替身》(Stand-in) (3 short stories) The Hong Kong Literary Press (March 1986, May 1986 and Feb.1987) 9.《鴻溝》 (An Impassable Chasm) (short story) The Literary Bi-Monthly, People’s Literature Publishing House, Beijing (April 1987) 10.《宿約》 (An Old Promise) (novella) The Literary Bi-Monthly, People’s Literature Publishing House, Beijing (October 1987) 11.《歸宿》 (A Home to Return to) (short story) Tianjin Literature, China (December 1987) 12.《失去了的一代》(The Generation Lost) (Book Five of Fruitless Flowers novel series)e-Book edition: Published by Everflow Publications, Hong Kong (July 2011) Physical book edition: Hong Kong Gold Leaf (International) Publications (1987) 13.《綠印人》 (New Immigrants) (collection of short stories) China Friendship Publishing Company, Beijing (1987)14.《青春淚》 (Tearful Youth) (Book One of Fruitless Flowers novel series)e-Book edition: Published by Everflow Publications, Hong Kong (July 2011) Physical book edition: Hong Kong Gold Leaf (International) Publications (1987)15.《宿約》 (An Old Promise) (collection of short stories) Top-Notch Publications Co., Hong Kong (1988)16.《相逢何必曾相戀》 (Tragic Union) (collection of short stories) Top-Notch Publications Co., Hong Kong (1990)17.《替身》(Stand-in) (short story) Sihai (4-Seas) Bi-Monthly, Beijing (March 1991)18.《馬路風雲》 (Storms over the Road Building Sites) (novel) Top-Notch Publications Co., Hong Kong (1991) Hong Kong Society for the Blind (Braille version, 1992)19. 《魂斷彩虹》 (Rainbow Bridge) (Book Two of Fruitless Flowers novel series)e-Book edition: Published by Everflow Publications, Hong Kong (July 2011) Physical book edition: Hong Kong Gold Leaf (International) Publications (1992)20. 《瀝血殘花》] (Withered Flowers) (Book Three of Fruitless Flowers novel series)e-Book edition: Published by Everflow Publications, Hong Kong (July 2011) Physical book edition: Hong Kong Gold Leaf (International) Publications (1992)21. 《肆虐狂飆》](Awful Catastrophe) (Book Four of Fruitless Flowers novel series) e-Book edition: Published by Everflow Publications, Hong Kong (July 2011) Physical book edition: Hong Kong Gold Leaf (International) Publications (1992)22. 《憔悴損芳姿》 (Pathfinder) Book 1 of Fragrant Port trilogy 23.《春事破寒來》(Working Wonders) Book 2 of Fragrant Port trilogy 24. 《只有香如故》 (Fragrant Forever) Book 3 of Fragrant Port trilogy e-Book edition: Published by Everflow Publications, Hong Kong (July 2011) Physical book edition: Vertex Consultancy (Hong Kong edition, 1998); Writers Publishing House (Beijing edition, 2000)25.《紅的回憶》 (Red Memories pentalogy) (one-volume revised edition of Fruitless Flowers novel series) Everflow Publications, Hong Kong (Sept. 2008)26.《林邊紅屋》 (Dear Pursuit) (novel) e-Book edition: Published by Everflow Publications, Hong Kong (July 2011); sold by Handheld Culture, Hong Kong Physical book edition: Published by Everflow Publications (Feb. 2012)27. 《溫紹賢中短篇小說自選集》 (e-Book edition) (Collection of Shaoxian Wen’s Short Stories)Published by Everflow Publications, Hong Kong (Dec. 2013); distributed by Google Books
Academic works