Bird Talk and Other Stories by Xu Xu
Modern Tales of a Chinese Romantic
Xu Xu (1908-1980) was one of the most widely read Chinese authors of the 1930s to 1960s. His popular urban gothic tales, his exotic spy fiction, and his quasi-existentialist love stories full of nostalgia and melancholy offer today's readers an unusual glimpse into China's turbulent twentieth century. These translations--spanning a period of some thirty years, from 1937 until 1965--bring to life some of Xu Xu's most representative short fictions from prewar Shanghai and postwar Hong Kong and Taiwan. The Afterword illustrates that Xu Xu's idealistic tendencies in defiance of the politicization of art exemplify his affinity with European romanticism and link his work to a global literary modernity.
Xu Xu 徐訏 (1908-1980) was an influential Chinese writer who enjoyed tremendous popularity throughout the late 1930s and 1940s. After graduating from Peking University in 1931 he moved to Shanghai in 1933 to begin his literary career. He left for Paris to continue his studies in 1936 and returned to China during the war against Japan. He moved to Hong Kong in 1950, where in his later fiction he mostly explored the theme of nostalgia experienced by countless Chinese displaced during the civil war. Xu Xu's works were banned on the mainland from 1949 until the 1980s, but his work is now widely read in China and is a frequent source material for television and the stage. In Hong Kong Xu Xu edited several literary journals and taught Chinese literature at different colleges and universities, eventually chairing the Chinese Department at Hong Kong Baptist University until his death in 1980.
Frederik H. Green is associate professor of Chinese at San Francisco State University. He is the author of numerous articles and book chapters on the literature and culture of the Qing dynasty and the Republican Period, Sino-Japanese cultural relations, post-socialist Chinese cinema, and contemporary Chinese art. He holds a BA in Chinese Studies from Cambridge University and an MPhil and PhD in Chinese literature from Yale University. He currently resides in San Francisco.
