Leung Ping-kwan


Leung Ping-kwan, whose pen name was Yesi, was a Hong Kong poet, novelist, essayist, translator, teacher, and scholar who received the Hong Kong Medal of Honor and was an important long-time cultural figure in Hong Kong.

Life

Yesi was born in Xinhui District in Guangdong during 1949. The same year, his family settled in Hong Kong, and he was raised there. His father died when he was four.
He began writing in the 1960s and quickly became known as a translator of foreign-language literature and for his editorial work on a number of literary publications targeted at young Chinese readers in both Hong Kong and Taiwan.
After graduating from Hong Kong Baptist College, now Hong Kong Baptist University, with a bachelor's degree in English, Yesi got a job first as a secondary school teacher, then as the editor of the arts supplement of the South China Morning Post. In 1978, he went to America for further studies. In 1984, Yesi obtained his PhD degree in comparative literature at the University of California, San Diego. His thesis was entitled "Aesthetics of Opposition: A Study of the Modernist Generation of Chinese Poets, 1936-1949".
Yesi returned to Hong Kong after earning his doctorate. He taught at the Department of English Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Hong Kong. In 1998 he obtained a position as a professor in comparative literature in the Chinese Department at Lingnan University. Later on, he also became director of the Research Institute for the Humanities. He specialized in teaching literature and film, comparative literature, the literature of Hong Kong, modern literary criticism, and Chinese literary writing.
Yesi had achievements across many areas of literature, including poetry, prose, novels, drama, and literary and cultural criticism. He wrote mostly in Chinese. However, his English works were also published in the Hong Kong magazine Muse and his poetry and prose have been translated into English, French, Korean, Japanese, Arabic, Portuguese, and German.
In 2010, Yesi stated publicly that he had been diagnosed with lung cancer. He died on 5 January 2013.

Timeline

Time
early 1960sbegan his writing career
1960sactively introducing foreign literatures into Hong Kong, including the French New Novel, American underground literature, and Latin American literature writing in many genres, including poetry, prose, fiction as well as critical essays
1978studies at the University of California, San Diego, specializing in modern Chinese poetry and western modernism
Later on, he returned to Hong KongTaught at the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Hong Kong and then joined the Department of Chinese at Lingnan University as Chair of Comparative Literature, and as Director of the Centre for Humanities Research under the Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences
2013Leung died peacefully at Union Hospital in Hong Kong. His last wish was for Hong Kong Literature to receive the attention it deserves, and good writers from Hong Kong to be acknowledged, both locally and globally.

"Yesi" is a combination of two meaningless words, both interjections, in Chinese. According to Yesi, people usually adopt a pen name that contains meanings, which would give the readers a fixed feeling or impression towards their works before they read them. Yesi wanted to break out of this, hence, he used the combination of two meaningless words, which usually appear in classical Chinese literary works, as his pen name.

Prominent themes and concerns of Yesi's works

Images of Hong Kong
This poem embodies the spirit and concerns of Yesi's work, including tone and recurrent themes. Later, this poem would be used as an example for further analysis of Yesi's style.

We need a fresh angle, nothing added nothing taken away,

Always at the edge of things and between places.

Write with a different color for each voice;

…

So now, once again, they say it’s time to remodel

and each of us finds himself looking around for –what?

Observation, perception, and angle

Many of Yesi's works are concerned with the way we look at the world, and also how we are perceived by other people—trying to discover new angles for observing the world, while inevitably the object of others’ perception as well. The opening sentence of “Images of Hong Kong” clearly declares: “I need a new angle”. In many of Yesi's works, the narrator wants not only to see the world, but also to look at it in a unique way, different from mainstream perceptions.
However, Yesi's narrators are introspective and aware that they are part of what's happening. The novel Paper Cut-outs is composed of two story lines, each about the narrator's interaction with a female friend. The two story lines can be read as separate stories, yet, they contrast and complement each other in details and contents. Both his friends faced a catastrophe nearly at the end of the story, and the narrator says:
人與人之間的關係互相牽連，混合了我們這些其他人的感情。我們這些旁觀者一下子也牽涉其中了，我們可以指責某種偏激行為…但當不幸的事發生了，我們可以置身事外嗎?”

The narrator feels sorry for what happened to his friends, and for not being able to do anything, except narrate and watch the problem grow, and turn into a catastrophe.

Flânerie

Observation in Yesi's poems almost always associated with flânerie. More precisely, the narrator is very often a flâneur. Yesi writes about different places and even flânerie itself. Images of Hong Kong includes many different locations: Guangguang studio in Nathan Road, Star Ferry clock tower, Aberdeen, China Club, and so on. In the poem On a Road, A Wanderer:

I choose my own direction

big fish glide in the aquariums

food stalls offer whopper fishballs

I'm not lured

…

I don’t have to see so clearly

…

if by chance the city glare

blinds me

I glance away,

keeping my own pace


The above describes how the narrator strolling unaffected by the surroundings. He observes and sees “big fish glide”, “food stalls”, and so on, yet uses the outer appearance of the city, to search his heart. It is notable that he “ have to see so clearly”. Again, the narrator keeps himself different from others.

Nostalgia and history

There is very often a sense of pity for the disappearing past in Yesi’s works. For example, in Images of Hong Kong, the people do not paint on photos “any more”, and the “old portrait” cannot be reproduced. Like this portrait, in many of Yesi's works, we can see things that are disappearing with the past. Also, the narrator says that history is a “montage of images”, and evaluates if Hong Kong's past is only figures of famous buildings like the Star Ferry. He suggests that the past should be read with “a fresh angle" and reviews the way to looking into the past.

Hong Kong

Yesi is recognized as a Hong Kong poet, not only because he grew up in the city, but more importantly due to his concern for it. Images of Hong Kong show such concern, as the narrator wants to find a new angle to shoot Hong Kong. Moveover, Some of Yesi's other poems are about places in Hong Kong, such as Winter Scene from Tai Mei Tuk, Reclaimed Land in Tai Kok Tsui, and Midway, Quarry Bay. Apart from the sense of place, Hong Kong serves as an important context for Yesi's novels. Again, take Paper Cut-outs as an example; the narrator's two female friends actually symbolize Hong Kong people's identity. This is also how Chinese culture and Western culture failed to understand or merge with one other in Hong Kong. For example, Qiáo 喬, a modern women, is a character showing that Hong Kong people do not understand their Chinese origin very well, but on the other hand, are not completely westernized. She cannot understand or grasp the feelings in traditional Chinese poems. Moreover, her face is so pale that it would reflect the color of her surroundings:
外面廣告牌上的一大幅粉藍色填滿所有窗口，喬的臉孔染上一片粉藍。…經過一片淺黃，她的臉又泛上淺黃。

This symbolizes the cultural identity of Hong Kong, actually quite fragile. Without rooting in Chinese or Western culture, Hong Kong does not have, or has not created, any distinct culture. They are easily affected by others, and reflect others’ colors.
Even in the most seemingly unlikely sphere to be associated with Hong Kong, Yesi shows his concern for the city. For him, travelling has a lot to do with home. The book Leung Ping Kwan, A Retrospective 回看.也斯, says that “very foreign place he visited invoked in him even deeper thoughts about Hong Kong. He wrote copiously about his cross-border experiences, in prose and in poetry, from eastern culture to western culture, from literature and art to cultural observations, from old ideas to new concepts, posing questions that would not have been formulated if he had not left Hong Kong, and trying to portray, to a Hong Kong wallowing in old habits, new sets of emotion and knowledge in hope of a change.”
In short, Yesi's works are deeply concerned with Hong Kong, no matter what the topic or context.

Characteristics of Yesi's works

Personification of places and objects

Yesi often personified places and objects in his poems. Some of these poems include Central, Europe After Rain, and Bittermelon. Yesi would talk gently to the personified objects, as if they were his friends. In Europe After Rain, the narrator walks into a church, and talks to the place:
“I shiver in the cold. You don't seem to have heard my prayer. Your four walls are mottled, the ancient stories have turned into reliefs, in the flickering light and shadow your magnificent and inevitabilities of history.”
Very often, there are interactions of “I” and “you” in Yesi's works, but the latter is sometimes an object or a place.

Voice, tone, and narrative

There is a sort of double voicing in Yesi's poems, multiple layers of meaning. In the poem Bittermelon: he says:

You're not worn-out or beaten-down,

you're just resting.

The loudest song's not necessarily passionate;

the bitterest pain stays in the heart.

Is it because you've seen lots of false sunlight,

too much thunder and lightning, hurt and hurting...


The narrator not only converses with objects and places but also to the reader. He asks “s it because you've seen lots of false sunlight…too many indifferent and temperamental days” that you have stopped talking about your sufferings? The questions give us a feeling that the narrator sympathizes with us, the readers, and gently inquires as to our situations. Instead of readers reading the poem, the poem seems to read us as well.

Your silence is much to be admired;

you keep the bitter taste to yourself.

...

in the wind, our bittermelon, steadily facing

worlds of confused worlds of confused bees and butterflies and a garden gone wild

The narrator seems to be talking to himself and also to the author. Yesi's narrators often try to position and view themselves in a way different from the mainstream. Above “our bittermelon” is described as “steadily facing worlds of confused bees and butterflies and a garden gone wild”. This seems to describe the narrator, or perhaps Yesi himself, trying to walk in “ own pace” without being distracted by the world, or by mainstream values. Some of Yesi's first and second person narrators do interchange with each other. In Paper Cut-outs, when the narrator refers to his friend Yáo 瑤, he always uses second person narrative “you”. The book's narrative sometimes changes, and the narrator refers to readers, characters, and himself with the plural pronoun “we”. Similarly, in the above poem, in the end the bittermelon becomes “ours” at last.

Influences on Yesi's works

Latin-American magical realism

Yesi “was the first to bring in Latin American literary icons such as Gabriel Garcìa Márquez, Pablo Neruda, Jorge Luis Borges and Mario Vargas Llosa before they were widely known”. His works are also heavily influenced by magical realism. Many critics have noted how Yesi used magical elements to interpret reality in his novels. For example, a critic analyzed magic realism in Yesi's novel “Shih-man the Dragon-keeper” 《養龍人師門》.
Another example: the description of Qiáo's room in Paper Cut-outs demonstrates features of magic realism. The narrator visits Qiáo, who is a psychotic. In her room, “many red birds are drawn on the white walls, approximately thirty” 白色牆壁上畫滿紅色鳥兒，一共有好幾十隻. She “walks close to the walls, between the red birds” 她走近牆邊，走入那些紅色的鳥兒中間. The “birds listen to and obey her!” 鳥兒是聽話的！ “Each of her birds have names. Good Bò Bò. Fā Fā was naughty yesterday, and Wá Wá hasn’t eaten for a few days” 她的鳥兒都有名字。柏柏乖，發發昨天淘氣，娃娃幾天不吃東西了. The birds fly in the room. “She touches the wings of one of the birds”, and a bird “stops on fingertip”. Although the birds are painted on the walls, Qiáo regarded them as alive. Imagination becomes reality in this passage.

Modernism

seeks to write novels in a way that reflects a human being's inner thoughts, which are often fragmented. Yesi's novels also write about different moments in life that are perhaps not consistent. In the novel Paper Cut-outs, linkage between the two seemingly separate story lines is imagined and drawn by readers. There is no clear message imposed by the author. Paper cut-outs are like fragmented moments, words, and phrases, which are all broken into parts. The connections between the fragments are vague; ambiguity is an important feature of modernism.

Chinese literature

Chinese literature also heavily influences Yesi's work. Elements of Chinese culture, like folk and opera, can be seen in his works. Elements of Cantonese opera can be seen in his work Paper Cut-outs. Also, he inherited some of the traditional Chinese forms of writing. For example, his Bittermelon poem praises this plant, which symbolizes virtues stressed in Chinese culture – patience and endurance. The narrator credits bittermelon for its “silence”, saying it "keep the bitter taste to ”. This means being willing and able to endure suffering and not making others feel pity. The poem echoes the Chinese literary tradition of praising an object that symbolizes virtue and good people.

Other art media

Yesi was not satisfied with just language. Other art media were also sources of inspiration; for example performance art, photography, and film. He “entered into countless dialogues with artists of different media”, and even collaborated with them to write literary works. For example, dancer Mui Cheuk Yin performed the dance “Kikikoko”, and Yesi wrote a poem inspired by her performance – Ladder Street. Yesi's work is also influenced by his interest in film. He often writes as if he is shooting a scene with his camera. For example, the narrator keeps looking for an angle in Images of Hong Kong and in another poem, City of Films is introspective in evaluating the best way to capture Hong Kong like a movie shooting:
...then in the second half, find you're your enemy's son
life goes on without knowing what’s happened
if reality's too hard, there’s always soft focus
the world's still out there, the PR guy’s at the door
with new schemes for artful promotion
and for the film a new title

Achievements

Yesi was recognized as both a writer and a scholar, received various literary awards, and was invited as visiting scholar to universities across the globe. The German professor Wolfgang Kubin commented that Yesi was “a rare Hong Kong writer with a global vision”.
Some examples of recognition are provided as follows:

Awards

Creative writing

Books
Prose
Poetry
Fiction


Selected Works

Books
Books
  • 2012 Sichtbares und Verborgenes Gedhte, Hong Kong: MCCM Creations.
  • 2009 Von Jade und Holz. Klagenfurt/Celovec: Drava Verlag. 136 pp.
  • 2000 Von Politik und den Früchten des Feldes. Berlin: Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, 81 pp.
  • 2000 Seltsame Geschichten von Vögeln und Blumen. Hong Kong： Goethe Institute, 48 pp.
Books
  • 2011《也斯詩集》池上貞子編 日本: 思潮社, 181pp.
Books
  • 2012 Mapa Refeito. Macau: Publicado pela Associação de Estória em Macau. 117pp.
Stories, poems and essays '
Books
Books a1n9d8 5C iti《《書與城市》. Hong Kong: Xiangang; reprint: OUP,2002, 299pp.
Articles
Articles
  • 2007 <胡金銓電影︰中國文化資源與六O年代港台的文化場域>, Vol.8, No.1, Jan. 2007.
  • 2006〈翻譯與詩學〉, 《江漢大學學報》, Vol.24, No.6. Dec., 2005. 21-26
  • 2005〈中國三、四O 年代抗戰詩與現代性〉, "JMLC", 6.2/7.1, 159-175.
  • 2005〈「改編」的文化身份：以五十年代香港文學為例〉,《 東亞現代中文文學國際學報》 Vol.1, No.1, Sept. 2005.
  • 2004〈王家衛電影中的空間〉, 《王家衛的映畫世界》, Hong Kong: Joint Publishing Co. Ltd, 2004, 24-25.
  • 2003〈兩類型的殖民論述：黃谷柳與張愛玲筆下四O 年代的香港〉,《作家》22 期, Hong Kong：Hong Kong Writers‘ Association, 31-47.
  • 2003〈從國族到私情──華語通俗情節劇的變化──《藍與黑》的例子〉, 《邵氏影視帝國：文化中國的想像》 ,第四屆香港文學節論稿匯編, 港藝術發展局Hong Kong Arts Development Council. 71 – 78.
  • 2002〈張愛玲與香港〉,《再讀張愛玲》, Hong Kong：University of Oxford Press, 175-183.
  • 2002〈在時差中寫作〉, 《香港文學》, No. 208, April 2002, 8-10.
  • 2002〈都市文化與香港文學：歷史、範圍與論題〉, 《作家》, No.14, Feb,2002, 95-111.
  • 2001〈魯迅的《故事新編》〉, 《香港作家》 No.5, Oct., 2001, 9-12.
  • 2001〈聞一多的「現代」與「中國」〉,《香港文 學》, No. 201, 40-45.
  • 1989〈都市文化與香港文學〉, 《當代》, No. 38, 14-23.
  • 1987〈西方現代文學對香港小說的影響〉, 《比較文學研究》, 1:4, 7-16.
  • 1987〈鷗外鷗詩中的「陌生化」效果〉,《八方》, No. 5. 79-82.
  • 1987〈穆旦與現代的「我」〉《八方》, No. 6, 148-158.
Editorial Work
Co-editor, Legends from the Swiss Alps'', Hong Kong, MCCM Creation.