Wang Xiaobo

Biography

Chinese writer, born in Beijing in 1952. Sent to the countryside in Yunnan as a rusticated youth, he worked as a village teacher and a factory hand before entering the Renmin University of China in 1978 to study trade economics; he took a master's degree at the University of Pittsburgh, taught briefly at Peking and Renmin universities, then resigned to write full time. In 1991 his novella The Golden Age won the 13th United Daily News fiction prize. He died suddenly of a heart attack in 1997, and his essays and fiction have since sustained a lasting "Wang Xiaobo phenomenon" among mainland readers. The Silent Majority is his best-known essay collection.