Zhang Chengzhi

Zhang Chengzhi is a contemporary author. Often named as the most influential Muslim writer in China, his historical narrative ''History of the Soul'', about the rise of the Jahriyya Sufi , was the second-most popular book in China in 1994.

Biography

Zhang was born in Beijing in 1948 to Hui parents of Shandong origin. Despite his Muslim ancestry, he was raised as an atheist. He graduated from in 1967, at the height of the Cultural Revolution. According to the ''People's Daily'', Zhang was the first person to call himself a ""; he used it as his pen name during his student days. Then on May 29, 1966, just two weeks after the ''People's Daily'' announced the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, Zhang convinced around ten other senior-level students to use the collective name "Mao Zedong's Red Guards" in addition to their individual signatures when signing a denouncing their school officials; three days later, they issued another large-character poster under the same collective name, entitled "We Must Resolutely Carry Out the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution to its End", with over one hundred signatures. Soon, students from all over Beijing began to call themselves "Red Guards".



After his graduation, Zhang was "" to Ujimqin Banner in Xilin Gol League, Inner Mongolia, where he lived for four years before returning to Beijing. Soon after his return, he entered the archaeology department of Peking University, graduating in 1975. He began his writing career in 1978, with the publication of a poem in entitled "Son of the People" and a Chinese-language short story "Why does the rider sing?" . That same year, he entered a master's program in history at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences's Department of , from which he graduated in 1981. In 1983, he received funding to go to Japan as an international exchange scholar, where he conducted research at Tokyo's Tōyō Bunko, the largest Asian studies library in Japan. Aside from Chinese and Mongolian, Zhang also speaks , and once audited a class in at the Central University for Nationalities.

Literary career

Zhang is often identified as a representative of the so-called , despite the fact that he himself dismisses entire concept of ''xungen''. His work repeatedly touches on the themes of martyrdom, everlasting tradition, and resistance to materialism and urban life. Unlike many other authors who lived through the Cultural Revolution and regret the chaos it created in their lives, even Zhang's early works such as ''Rivers of the North'' and ''Black Steed'' exhibit a noticeable level of idealism about his time as a Red Guard, and clearly demonstrate his desire to rebut the presumptions of scar literature. Analyses of Zhang's impact on Chinese literature and thought vary greatly. Zhu Xueqin expressed his admiration of Zhang for "casting off his old self" and taking a "firm stand" for idealistic values and against ethnocentrism. Dru Gladney, in contrast, analysed Zhang's popularity in terms of a larger trend of consumerist exoticisation of "ethnic chic" in 1990s China. Some scholars, both in China and abroad, go further in rendering harsh judgments: they denounce Zhang as "xenophobic" and criticise his continued support of Maoism even after his conversion to Islam.



The early 1980s have been described as Zhang's "lyrical phase". As a result of his works during this period, he has been described as one of China's first practitioners of "" fiction.

Works

* 黑骏马 ; 1981

** edition: ''The Black Steed''; 1990, Panda Books, . ISBN 0835120775. Translator: Stephen Fleming.

** edition: 黒駿馬, 1994, Waseda University Press, Japan. ISBN 4657930362. Translator: 岸 陽子.

** edition: ''Mon beau cheval noir''; 1999, Philippe Picquier, France. ISBN 2877304353. Translator: unknown.

** Movie adaptation ''A Mongolian Tale'' released in 1995 by Beijing Youth Film Studio

* 北方的河 ; 1984

** edition: 北方の河, 1997, Romandō. ISBN 479521042X. Translator: 磯部 祐子

* 金牧场 ; October 1987

* 心灵史 ; January 1991

* 回教から見た中国―民族?宗教?国家 ; April 1993, Chūō Kōbunsha. In . ISBN 4121011287.

* 清洁的精神 ; 1994

* 鞍と筆―中国知識人の道とは何か , November 1995, Ohta Books. In . ISBN 4872332261.

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Scholarly works

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* The section "Constructing a 'Clean Spirit'" is one of the only chapter-length analyses of Zhang in an English-language scholarly work.

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