Feng Jicai

Feng Jicai (simplified Chinese: 冯骥才; traditional Chinese: 馮驥才; pinyin: Féng Jìcái) is a contemporary Chinese author, artist and cultural scholar.

Biography

Born in Tianjin in 1942 to a family originally from Ningbo, Zhejiang province, Feng rose to prominence as a pioneer of the Scar Literature movement that emerged after the Cultural Revolution. He has published close to one hundred literary works that span a number of different topics, styles and genres. His major works include Ah!, The Carved Pipe, The Tall Woman and Her Short Husband, The Miraculous Pigtail, Three Inch Golden Lotus, Zebra Finches, Ten Years of Madness: Oral Histories of China's Cultural Revolution, and Extraordinary People in Our Ordinary World. His work has been translated into English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Russian, Dutch, Spanish, Korean and Vietnamese; internationally, more than forty of his literary works have been published.

Feng is also a cultural scholar. He proposed and directed the Project to Save Chinese Folk Cultural Heritages, and over the last two decades he has campaigned to preserve urban culture and traditional villages.

Feng is currently an honorary member of the Literature and Arts Association, honorary president of the China Folk Literature and Art Association, and an adviser to the State Council. He is also dean, professor and PhD supervisor at the Feng Jicai Institute of Literature and Art, Tianjin University, vice chair of the National Intangible Cultural Heritage Evaluation Group, and director of the China Traditional Village Protection Expert Committee. He used to be vice chairman of the China Association for Promoting Democracy Central Committee, vice chairman of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, chairman of the Chinese Folk Literature and Art Association, member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference Standing Committee, and chairman of Tianjin Federation of Literary and Art Circles.