Auditory within five miles - New Generation Chinese Writers' Library

Author: Chen Dawei
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2007-01-01
Features: Chen Dawei is originally from Guilin, Guangxi, and grew up in Ipoh, a multicultural city in Malaysia. He studied in Taipei. His innate heritage and later experiences haved Chen Dawei's "peripheral" identity. He once humorously described himself as "dust of identity" in "Nanyang Epic." However, being "peripheral" has allowed him to face multiple centers—Mainland China, Taipei, and Kuala Lumpur—giving him access to richer resources. He examines the Chinese mainland from the perspective of Nanyang and reflects on Nanyang from Taipei. Through his own creations, he recreates a rarely acknowledged perspective on immigration history: the "peripheral" state of immigrants is not a tragedy of exile but rather harbors the power of historical wisdom. In dialogue with or even confrontation against powerful "centers," the "peripheral" also demonstrates its "heterogeneous" and "hybrid" strength.
The New Generation Chinese Writers Collection—strongly recommended by Professor Wang De-wei, a renowned sinologist and professor at Harvard University, includes three works: Huang Jinshu's Dying in the South, Chen Dawei's Auditory Perception Within Five Miles, and Zhong Yiwen's Island Chronicle. The selected writers, with their peripheral cultural identities, express sharp avant-garde thoughts, exploring the "existential anxiety" of identity and the "classic anxiety" of overseas Chinese literature history, presenting a distinct landscape of Chinese literature. Especially, their works reflect a dual peripheral consciousness, a sense of historical subjectivity, and a nostalgia for Nanyang, which differ significantly from those of the second and third generations of Chinese literature. The publication of this collection holds great literary, literary historical, and literary exchange significance. These three authors' books are the first time they have been published in mainland China, filling a gap in literary publishing.