Leung Ping-kwan, (, 12 March 1949 – 5 January 2013) pen name , was a Hong Kong poet, novelist, essayist, translator, teacher, and scholar who received the Hong Kong Medal of Honour (MH). He was an important long-time cultural figure in Hong Kong.
Life Yesi was born in Xinhui District in Guangdong during 1949. The same year, his family settled in Hong Kong, and he was raised there. His father died when he was four.
He began writing in the 1960s and quickly became known as a translator of foreign-language literature and for his editorial work on a number of literary publications targeted at young Chinese readers in both Hong Kong and Taiwan.
After graduating from Hong Kong Baptist College, now Hong Kong Baptist University, with a bachelor's degree in English (BA in English Language and Literature), Yesi got a job first as a secondary school teacher, then as the editor of the arts supplement of the South China Morning Post (SCMP). In 1978, he went to America for further studies. In 1984, Yesi obtained his PhD in comparative literature at the University of California, San Diego. His thesis was titled "Aesthetics of Opposition: A Study of the Modernist Generation of Chinese Poets, 1936-1949".
Yesi returned to Hong Kong after earning his doctorate. He taught at the Department of English Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Hong Kong. In 1998 he obtained a position as a professor in comparative literature in the Chinese Department at Lingnan University. Later on, he also became director of the Research Institute for the Humanities. He specialized in teaching literature and film, comparative literature, the literature of Hong Kong, modern literary criticism, and Chinese literary writing.
Yesi had achievements across many areas of literature, including poetry, prose, novels, drama, and literary and cultural criticism. He wrote mostly in Chinese. However, his English works were also published in the Hong Kong magazine Muse and his poetry and prose have been translated into English, French, Korean, Japanese, Arabic, Portuguese, and German.
In 2010, Yesi stated publicly that he had been diagnosed with lung cancer. He died on 5 January 2013.
Timeline
Timeearly 1960sBegan his writing career1960sActively introducing foreign literature into Hong Kong, including the French New Novel, American underground literature, and Latin American literature writing in many genres, including poetry, prose, fiction as well as critical essays1978Studies at the University of California, San Diego, specializing in modern Chinese poetry and western modernismLater on, he returned to Hong KongTaught at the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Hong Kong (1985-1997) and then joined the Department of Chinese at Lingnan University as Chair of Comparative Literature, and as Director of the Centre for Humanities Research under the Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences (1997-2013)2013Leung died peacefully at Union Hospital in Hong Kong. His last wish was for Hong Kong Literature to receive the attention it deserves, and good writers from Hong Kong to be acknowledged, both locally and globally. Information in this table is extracted from Leung's biography in the book "Leung Ping Kwan (1949 – 2013), A Retrospective".
"Yesi" "Yesi" is a combination of two meaningless words, both interjections, in Chinese. According to Yesi, people usually adopt a pen name that contains meanings, which would give the readers a fixed feeling or impression towards their works before they read them. Yesi wanted to break out of this, hence, he used the combination of two meaningless words, which usually appear in classical Chinese literary works, as his pen name.
Prominent themes and concerns
Images of Hong Kong
This poem embodies the spirit and concerns of Yesi's work, including tone and recurrent themes. Later, this poem would be used as an example for further analysis of Yesi's style.
We need a fresh angle, nothing added nothing taken away, Always at the edge of things and between places. Write with a different color for each voice; … So now, once again, they say it’s time to remodel and each of us finds himself looking around for –what?
Observation, perception, and angle Many of Yesi's works are concerned with the way we look at the world, and also how we are perceived by other people—trying to discover new angles for observing the world, while inevitably the object of others’ perception as well. The opening sentence of “Images of Hong Kong” clearly declares: “I need a new angle”. In many of Yesi's works, the narrator wants not only to see the world, but also to look at it in a unique way, different from mainstream perceptions.
However, Yesi's narrators are introspective and aware that they are part of what's happening. The novel Paper Cut-outs () is composed of two story lines, each about the narrator's interaction with a female friend. The two story lines can be read as separate stories, yet, they contrast and complement each other in details and contents. Both his friends faced a catastrophe nearly at the end of the story, and the narrator says: ” (161)
(Translation: A relationship would be affected by other relationships. Observers’ feelings are mixed into the relationship of the observed. Outsiders and observers are also part of what he or she is observing. We can blame certain violent acts… However, when tragedy happens, who can be responsibility-free?)
The narrator feels sorry for what happened to his friends, and for not being able to do anything, except narrate and watch the problem grow, and turn into a catastrophe.
Flânerie Observation in Yesi's poems almost always associated with flânerie. More precisely, the narrator is very often a flâneur. Yesi writes about different places and even flânerie itself. Images of Hong Kong includes many different locations: Guangguang studio in Nathan Road, Star Ferry clock tower, Aberdeen, China Club, and so on. In the poem On a Road, A Wanderer: I choose my own direction big fish glide in the aquariums food stalls offer whopper fishballs I'm not lured … I don’t have to see so clearly … if by chance the city glare blinds me I glance away, keeping my own pace The above describes how the narrator strolling unaffected by the surroundings. He observes and sees “big fish glide”, “food stalls”, and so on, yet uses the outer appearance of the city, to search his heart. It is notable that he “[doesn’t] have to see so clearly”. Again, the narrator keeps himself different from others.
Nostalgia and history There is very often a sense of pity for the disappearing past in Yesi’s works. For example, in Images of Hong Kong, the people do not paint on photos “any more”, and the “old portrait” cannot be reproduced. Like this portrait, in many of Yesi's works, we can see things that are disappearing with the past. Also, the narrator says that history is a “montage of images”, and evaluates if Hong Kong's past is only figures of famous buildings like the Star Ferry. He suggests that the past should be read with “a fresh angle" and reviews the way to looking into the past.
Hong Kong Yesi is recognized as a Hong Kong poet, not only because he grew up in the city, but more importantly due to his concern for it. Images of Hong Kong show such concern, as the narrator wants to find a new angle to shoot Hong Kong. Moveover, Some of Yesi's other poems are about places in Hong Kong, such as Winter Scene from Tai Mei Tuk, Reclaimed Land in Tai Kok Tsui, and Midway, Quarry Bay. Apart from the sense of place, Hong Kong serves as an important context for Yesi's novels. Again, take Paper Cut-outs as an example; the narrator's two female friends actually symbolize Hong Kong people's identity. This is also how Chinese culture and Western culture failed to understand or merge with one other in Hong Kong. For example, Qiáo 喬, a modern women, is a character showing that Hong Kong people do not understand their Chinese origin very well, but on the other hand, are not completely westernized. She cannot understand or grasp the feelings in traditional Chinese poems. Moreover, her face is so pale that it would reflect the color of her surroundings:
。
(Translation:The billboard outside the bus filled the latter’s windows with light blue, so as Qiáo’s face…When the bus passes through a sea of light yellow, her face also reflects in yellow.)
This symbolizes the cultural identity of Hong Kong, actually quite fragile. Without rooting in Chinese or Western culture, Hong Kong does not have, or has not created, any distinct culture. They are easily affected by others, and reflect others’ colors.
Even in the most seemingly unlikely sphere to be associated with Hong Kong, Yesi shows his concern for the city. For him, travelling has a lot to do with home. The book Leung Ping Kwan (1949 – 2013), A Retrospective 回看.也斯, says that “[e]very foreign place he visited invoked in him even deeper thoughts about Hong Kong. He wrote copiously about his cross-border experiences, in prose and in poetry, from eastern culture to western culture, from literature and art to cultural observations, from old ideas to new concepts, posing questions that would not have been formulated if he had not left Hong Kong, and trying to portray, to a Hong Kong wallowing in old habits, new sets of emotion and knowledge in hope of a change.”
In short, Yesi's works are deeply concerned with Hong Kong, no matter what the topic or context.
Characteristics of Yesi's works
Personification of places and objects Yesi often personified places and objects in his poems. Some of these poems include Central, Europe After Rain, and Bittermelon. Yesi would talk gently to the personified objects, as if they were his friends. In Europe After Rain, the narrator walks into a church, and talks to the place: “I shiver in the cold. You don't seem to have heard my prayer. Your four walls are mottled, the ancient stories have turned into reliefs, in the flickering light and shadow your magnificent and inevitabilities of history.”
Very often, there are interactions of “I” and “you” in Yesi's works, but the latter is sometimes an object or a place.
Voice, tone, and narrative There is a sort of double voicing in Yesi's poems, multiple layers of meaning. In the poem Bittermelon: he says: You're not worn-out or beaten-down, you're just resting. The loudest song's not necessarily passionate; the bitterest pain stays in the heart. Is it because you've seen lots of false sunlight, too much thunder and lightning, hurt and hurting... The narrator not only converses with objects and places but also to the reader. He asks “[i]s it because you've seen lots of false sunlight…too many indifferent and temperamental days” that you have stopped talking about your sufferings? The questions give us a feeling that the narrator sympathizes with us, the readers, and gently inquires as to our situations. Instead of readers reading the poem, the poem seems to read us as well.
Your silence is much to be admired; you keep the bitter taste to yourself. ... in the wind, our bittermelon, steadily facing worlds of confused worlds of confused bees and butterflies and a garden gone wild