MCLC: Cheng Naishan dies

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Cheng Naishan dies
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Source: China Daily (4/23/13):
http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/culture/2013-04/23/content_16437739.htm

Death ends 'great love' for Shanghai
By Zhang Kun in Shanghai (China Daily)

Shanghai writer Cheng Naishan, 67, died of leukemia early on the morning
of April 22.

Recognized as a voice of Shanghai, Cheng had a career documenting the
city's history, legacy and anecdotes.

Her latest works include a column titled The Swan Pavilion in Shanghai
Literature, and a series of six essays composed in Shanghai dialect,
published in Xinmin Evening News from last November to March 13.

The six essays recounted the cultural legacy of Shanghai, including
detailed accounts of old stories about facial cream, tailors and coffee
parties.

"She can write adeptly about the lower-class life experience of dumping
the chamber pot, as well as upper-class social life between coffee cups,"
says Lyu Zheng, editor of the Shanghai Dialect column for Xinmin Evening
News, praising Cheng's accurate recording of the city's history.

"They are trivial stories of the past, but somehow reflect the changes of
Shanghai," Cheng used to say about the Swan series.

Cheng was born in Shanghai in 1946 to a family of established bankers. She
moved with her parents to Hong Kong temporarily, from 1949 to the mid
1950s. She started creative writing when she worked as a teacher of
English after graduation from college in Shanghai. Her first collection of
short stories, Death of a Swan, was published in 1982.

Her award-winning novel The Blue House was semi-autobiographical. It tells
about a senior financial executive and his family that have weathered 30
years of political vicissitudes. It was translated into English, French
and Esperanto.

Cheng turned to non-fiction writing in the 1990s and published a series of
books: Shanghai Tango, Shanghai Lady, Shanghai Fashion, Shanghai Roman,
Shanghai Saxophone, and others. Shanghai Gentleman, the latest, has just
been translated into English, and will come out later this year.

"Naishan has great love for the city of Shanghai, especially the district
of Jing'an," says her husband, Yan Erchun. "She was born and raised here.
There are endless stories she wanted to write about Shanghai."

Cheng was a dedicated and productive writer. "She would say a day without
writing was not worth living," Yan says by phone. Late in her career, the
history of Shanghai became a heated subject and "even people who neither
lived here nor know about it" wrote about Shanghai and often told untrue
stories. "She always wanted to write more and believed a metropolis like
Shanghai was worth writing about," Yan says.

Cheng was diagnosed with leukemia in the winter of 2011. Despite
chemotherapy and other treatments, she went on with her writing whenever
she could.

Lyu from the Xinmin Evening News received a phone call from Cheng in
October 2012. "She was laughing and joking that she just made a narrow
escape from death," Lyu says. Cheng discussed with the editor about her
ideas for a series of pieces for the column.

"She would call me every time she filed the story, sharing details behind
each piece, and discussing the accurate expression in Shanghai dialect,"
Lyu recalls. "She was a quick hand, and I published her pieces as soon as
they arrived."

Cheng's death will leave a gap in the lineage of the cultural narrative of
Shanghai, Lyu says.

Cheng was a writer who caught hold of the spirit of old Shanghai, says
Wang Xiaoying, a fellow woman writer in Shanghai. "Few writers wrote well
about the city. Cheng Naishan is a most outstanding of us," she says.

Cheng lived in Hong Kong temporarily in the 1990s. She worked as the Hong
Kong correspondent for New Weekly and wrote stories that ranged from
outlining the city cultural landscape to an exclusive interview with its
most famous comedy movie director, Stephen Chow.