Jia-lin Peng

Jia-lin Peng was born in China.  He completed an M.A. in Creative Writing at Concordia University in Montreal in 1989.  The five stories that comprised his M.A. thesis, Pilgrimage to Peking and Other Stories, are included in his first collection, Wild Cat: Stories of the Cultural Revolution, along with seven additional stories.

Fiction (Short stories)

Wild Cat: Stories of the Cultural Revolution

Dunvegan, Ont.: Cormorant Books, 1990.

Publisher’s Synopsis.

If you want to know about Tienanmen, read about its roots in the so-called ‘Cultural Revolution’, where the full force of authority crashed down on the heads of innocent Chinese, particularly professionals, artists, and intellectuals.  Meet Wild Cat, a natural storyteller and con man, who manages to enchant and exploit his avid listeners in the village, but not to avoid the hand of fate.

Jia-lin Peng is a witness and survivor of that terrible period in Chinese history and his stories, while moderated by wit, humour and engaging human detail, capture the complexities of life in this world of denunciation, betrayal, and violence, where the possession of an English typewriter is enough to guarantee imprisonment or death.