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Wen Shaoxian

writer

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 28, 2026
Entity authorityQ7982238 ↗
Source-derived summary

Wen Shaoxian (Chinese: 溫紹賢), born 4 December 1934) also known as Wan Siu Yin is a literary writer, famous for his short stories about the lives of the new immigrants from the mainland in Hong Kong. He is expert in writing political and historical novels. Wen is a translator and editor by profession and is also a professor of translation and comparative grammar.

Biography

Wen was born in Hong Kong in an intellectual family. His father was a schoolmaster all his life. When Hong Kong was occupied by the Japanese invaders in 1941, his family had to flee Hong Kong and go back to their ancestral home in Qingyuan County, Guangdong Province, where his mother died of typhoid fever some time later. In the several years that followed, the family led a poor and unstable life there. After the war, Wen and his elder brother came back to Hong Kong to live with their grandmother who was the chief cook of an English taipan family. In 1954, he was admitted to Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China, majoring in English language and literature. Upon his graduation in 1958, he was assigned to do odd jobs in a remote mountainous area in Guangxi Province .

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Wen Shaoxian” as writer. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Shaoxian and writer.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1934, 1941, 1954, 1958—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1934-12-04. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Shaoxian and writer providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Wen Shaoxian”, the useful work is to connect “writer” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7982238. VIAF identifies the subject as 11397253. The Library of Congress control number is n88122004. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1934, 1941, 1954 and 1958.

Critical limits

A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Wen Shaoxian”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Wen Shaoxian primary sources, Wen Shaoxian archive and Shaoxian research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Wen Shaoxian”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Wen Shaoxian” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.