Bai Xingjian

Bai Xingjian (simplified Chinese: 白行简; traditional Chinese: 白行簡; pinyin: Bái Xíngjiǎn or Bó Xíngjiǎn; Wade–Giles: Pai Hsing-chien or Po Hsing-chien, 776–826) was a fiction writer and poet in imperial China's Tang Dynasty. He was a younger brother of the famed poet Bai Juyi.

In this Chinese name, the family name is Bai.
Statues of Bai Xingjian, Bai Juyi and Yuan Zhen in Yichang, Hubei, China.

One of his most famous works is the novella The Tale of Li Wa. It has been translated into English many times:

  • by Arthur Waley in More Translations from the Chinese (1919) — as "The Story of Miss Li".
  • by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang in The Dragon King's Daughter: Ten T'ang Dynasty Stories (1962) — as "Story of a Singsong Girl".
  • by Glen Dudbridge in The Tale of Li Wa: Study and Critical Edition of a Chinese Story from the Ninth Century (1983).

It was also translated into many other languages, for example German by Franz Kuhn and French by André Lévy.

Further reading
  • Zhongguo gudian xiaoshuo yanjiu zilao (T: 中國古典小說研究資料), ed., Bo Xingjian yu "Li Wa zhuan" (T: 白行簡與李娃傳). Taipei: Tianyi chubanshe, 1982.


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