Xi Xi

In this Chinese name, the family name is Zhang.

Zhang Yan
Native name	張彥
Born	(1937-10-07) October 7, 1937 Shanghai
Pen name	Xi Xi
Occupation	Teacher novelist poet
Alma mater	Grantham College of Education
Notable works	Shops My City A Woman Like Me Mourning a Breast

Xi Xi/Hsi Hsi (Chinese: 西西; pinyin: Xī Xī, born October 7, 1937 in Shanghai) is the pseudonym of the Chinese author and poet Zhang Yan (Chinese: 張彥; pinyin: Zhāng Yàn). She was born in China and came to Hong Kong at the age of twelve. She was a teacher and now a Hong Kong-based writer. Her works are also popular in Taiwan and mainland China. She has become rather well known to Hong Kong secondary school students, not only due to her other works, but in particular "Shops" (店鋪), one of her essays which was adopted as reading material for the Chinese Language paper of Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination (HKCEE) by the then-Hong Kong Examinations Authority. In 2019, Xi Xi was the recipient of the Newman Prize for Chinese Literature.

Childhood

Zhang Yan
Traditional Chinese	張彥
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Zhāng Yàn Yue: Cantonese Jyutping Zoeng1 Jin6 Hong Kong Romanisation Cheung Yin

Xi Xi
Chinese	西西
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Xī Xī Yue: Cantonese Jyutping Sai1 Sai1 Hong Kong Romanisation Sai Sai

Xi Xi's ancestors came from Zhongshan, Guangdong. She was born in Pudung, Shanghai, where she attended primary school, in 1937. According to her, despite her Hong Kong Identity Card showing her birth year as 1938 and her believing so the whole of her life, when consulting family documents after the death of her sister, she was actually born in 1937. In 1950, she immigrated to Hong Kong with her parents. Her father worked at Kowloon Motor Bus as a ticket checker. In addition, he had been a Division A soccer team trainer and, later, a referee since he was in Shanghai, thus Xi Xi had developed an immense interest in soccer when she was young. Xi Xi has two brothers and two sisters.

Later, Xi Xi attended secondary school at Heep Yunn School, where lessons were taught in Cantonese; she started her English-instructed lessons from Form 4. As a junior secondary student, she began to write for the local newspapers and magazines.

Early writing career

Her first piece, a fourteen-line modern Chinese poem, was published in Everyone's Literature (人人文學) in the 1950s. When Xi Xi was studying in Form 3, she won the first prize in the senior section of a writing competition organised by Learn-mates (學友). In 1957, she continued her studies at the Grantham College of Education (later merged with other constitute colleges to form the Hong Kong Institute of Education), and became a teacher at Farm Road Government Primary School after graduation. Besides poetry, novels, essays, fairy tales and translated literature, Xi Xi also wrote TV screenplay in the 1960s, like The Dark Green Age (黛綠年華) and The Window (窗), and numerous movie review. She was one of the pioneers in the field of experimental films in Hong Kong.

Xi Xi contributed in columns of various newspapers and magazines:

• 1960s: A fairytale column in Tin Tin Daily (天天日報), "Movies and Me" (電影與我) in Chinese Students' Weekly (中國學生周報), and "Bull's Eye and Me" (牛眼和我) in Express Daily (快報);
• 1970s: "My Scrawling Room" (scrapbook) (《我之試寫室》剪貼冊) in Express Daily;
• 1980s: "Notes on Reading" (閱讀筆記) in Express Daily, "The Flower Column" in Sing Tao Daily, "Four Pieces of Jade" (四塊玉) in United Daily News, "Siu Ming Chow" (小明周), a children's column about paintings, in Ming Pao Monthly, "Ear-man" (隨耳想), a musical column, in Sing Tao Daily, and "How Xi Xi Views Soccer" (西西看足球), a featured column for the World Cup, in Ming Pao.

Moreover, she was the editor of Chinese Students' Weekly poetry section (1960s), as well as of Thumb Weekly (大拇指周報) (1975–1977) and Plain Leaf Literature (素葉文學) (1981–1984), which was the 68-volume magazine first published in 1980 by Su Yeh Publications, a publisher founded by Xi Xi and her friends. Su Yeh Publications dedicated itself with publishing works by Hong Kong authors. Up to 1984, The publishing company had produced books of 22 categories, including A Loafer Who Burnt His Guitar (焚琴的浪子), a collection of Ma Lang's (馬朗) poems; A Tour in Mirrors (鏡遊), a Chinese movie critics collection by Lin Nian-tong (林年同); and My Resplendence (我的燦爛), a Zhong Ling-ling's (鍾玲玲) essay and poem collection. The publishing company continued its paper-based publishing until 2015.

Novels and short stories

My City was published in 1979. Originally a serial on the newspaper Hong Kong Express, she presented the world as seen through young people's eyes. She also illustrated the serial with her own drawings, attached along each publication on the newspaper. While the serial was not an attempt to critique on social issues, it indeed presented issues such as overcrowded spaces and overloading academic pressure. It has now become a staple in Hong Kong literature, ranked 51st by Yazhou Zhoukan as one of the 100 best Chinese novels in the 20th century. It also became the inspiration of the 2015 documentary My City directed by Fruit Chan.

Deer Hunt, published in 1982, was inspired by the history during the Qing Dynasty when Qianlong was the emperor at that time. The novel described a plan of assassinating the emperor, and the remembrance of the emperor to his grandfather Kangxi. It was reprinted twice in Taiwan, once in 1986 and once in 1999.

Xi Xi enjoyed travelling, and she had been to countries such as those in Eastern Europe, Turkey, Egypt, Greece, and, most frequently, mainland China. These places had given much inspiration to her writing. In 1983, United Daily News published Xi Xi's A Woman Like Me (像我這樣的一個女子), a collection of short stories written between 1976 and 1982, and it was the first time her works were introduced to Taiwan people. It won Xi Xi the Recommended Novella Prize, the highest honor in the United Daily News 8th Novel Prize.

The 1992 novel Mourning a Breast (哀悼乳房) was written to document her feelings, thoughts, and encounters during her treatment with breast cancer, which she was diagnosed with in 1989. Due to the complications of cancer surgery, she lost the function of her right hand by 1999 and had to write with her left hand. The novel was nominated by China Times in 1992 as one of the ten best books of the year. It was also the inspiration of the 2006 movie 2 Become 1 starring Miriam Yeung.

Later writing career

"Shops" is an essay written by Xi Xi, which was adopted as the reading material for the Chinese language paper of the HKCEE. This passage depicted the ageing buildings, squatters, and old-fashioned traditional shops in Central and Western District, particularly in Sheung Wan and Sai Ying Pun, as well as other activity in this hustling district. She expressed her nostalgia towards her childhood, and the reminiscence towards the disappearing old shops due to the drastic urban development.

Flying Carpet (飛氈), a novel inspired from the history of Hong Kong in the past one hundred years, was published in 1999. In the novel, Hong Kong was given the name of Fertillia (肥土鎮), a town at the edge of Dragonland (巨龍國), a projection of China, and the novel described how the town transformed in three generations.

In 2009, Xi Xi published the essay and photograph collection, The Teddy Bear Chronicles (縫熊志). She donated the teddy bears sewn and photographed in the book to the Chinese University of Hong Kong Library in 2018. In 2016, a collection of poems by Xi Xi was published in English under the title Not Written Words, which received the Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize in 2017. In 2019, Xi Xi was awarded the Newman Prize for Chinese Literature and the Cikada Prize.

Further reading

• Chinese Writers on Writing featuring Xi Xi. Ed. Arthur Sze. (Trinity University Press, 2010).
• Not Written Words by Xi Xi (Author), Jennifer Feeley (Translator). (Zephyr Press, 2016).
• 西西研究資料（一至四冊盒裝）. Eds. 王家琪、甘玉貞、何福仁、陳燕遐、趙曉彤、樊善標. (Chung Wa Books, 2018).
• 西方科幻小說與電影──西西、何福仁對談. (Chung Wa Books, 2018)

Portrait

• Xi Xi. A Portrait by Kong Kai Ming at Portrait Gallery of Chinese Writers (Hong Kong Baptist University Library).