Guest lecture on Chinese literature at the University of Copenhagen

On September 7, Danish Cultural Institute took part in arranging an open guest lecture by the four Chinese authors Bi Feiyu 毕飞宇, Yang Hongying 杨红樱, Dongxi 东西, and Ge Fei 格非 at the University of Copenhagen.

The lecture took place following a seminar hosted by the Danish Cultural Institute, which brought together representatives from the China Writers Association and the Danish Authors Society, as well as several representatives of the Danish literary community.

The lecture was opened with a reading from each of the four authors, which gave the audience a first-hand impression of the many facets of contemporary Chinese literature: from Yang Hongying reading her rhythmic and poetic children’s literature, which carries stylistic traces of classical Chinese, to Bi Feiyu’s reading from his book ‘Massage’ (推拿), which is ripe in vernacular language, and from which he left out a few passages, jokingly commenting that several members of the audience were too young for its explicit content.

Following the readings, the authors shared with the audience the motivation and inspiration underlying their work, and the floor was then opened for questions from the audience, who took the opportunity to engage with the authors.

The lecture attracted around 70 attendants, which demonstrated a substantial and widespread interest in the event from many different sides. We were joined not only by students of China Studies at the University of Copenhagen, but also by high school students of Chinese, authors and translators, academics, teachers, as well as Chinese living and working in Denmark.

The lecture was organized by the Danish Cultural Institute in collaboration with China Writers Association, Mai Corlin of the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies at the University of Copenhagen , ThinkChina, and Asian Dynamics Initiative.