Wang Meng, world-renowned writer and former Minister of Culture, delivered a lecture titled “Literature’s Challenge & Reconciliation” at the South Campus the afternoon of April 6. The two-hour event features his life insights from the perspective of a writer and the lecture room was overflowing with students and faculty who were brought together by a shared interest in literature.

Wang Meng’s Profile

Wang Meng was born on October 15, 1934 in Beijing. Nurtured by his father who taught philosophy at a university, he read avidly during his childhood. While a student in high school, he took an active part in the revolutionary movement led by the underground organization of the Chinese Communist Party, which he eventually joined in 1948.
Soon after the founding of the PRC in 1949, he was assigned to work at the headquarters of the Communist Youth League of China. In 1953 he published his maiden work titled "Long Live the Youth." Two years later, he wrote "The young Newcomer in the Organization Department," a realistic portrayal of the clash between youthful and idealistic revolutionaries and older and entrenched party bureaucrats. He was labeled "rightist" in 1957 and sent down to labor on a farm in Xinjiang Province for seven years, where he learned to speak, read and write in Uygur.
A member of the Chinese Writers Association, he has many publications that include "The Wounded", "A Spate of Visitors." "The Butterfly," "Voices of Spring," "The Movable Parts," and "Bolshevic Salute".
In 1985, he became a member of the Central Committee of Party, and later he was appointed head of the Ministry of Culture, an official post from which he resigned in 1989. He is now vice chairman of the CWA.
He has been nominated for 2003 Nobel Prize for literature by the US Chinese Writers' Association. It is the fourth time for the writer to bid the Nobel Prize for Literature. Wang Meng is one of China's most beloved contemporary authors and was minister of culture for three years in the late 1980s.

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