Feng Li

Feng Li was born in Shenyang, China, in 1963. She studied Chinese language and literature and lives and works as a freelance writer in Beijing.

From 1985 to 1990, she worked as a journalist for the Lhasa Evening Paper in Tibet. After her return to China, she worked for seven years as an academic assistant at the Liaoning Research Institute for Art, focusing on dramatic theory. In addition, as a director for the women’s channel of Chinese television, she produced documentary portraits of women between 1995 and 1998. Following this she worked as an editor and translated a series of children’s books by Janosch into Chinese.

She wrote her first stories during her time in Tibet. In reference to Astrid Lindgren’s heroine Pipi Langstrumpf, she publishes her texts under the pseudonym Pipi. Employing an unmistakable style of her own and quiet irony, she recounts everyday life in China – the individual search for happiness, problematic relationships or difficulties in the allocation of an apartment –, without joining the trend of westernisation in literature currently popular among young Chinese writers. However, her prose displays obvious influences from the period of change in which China has increasingly sought to open up its economy and culture.

Her novel “Kewang Jiqing” (1998; Thirst for Passion) received an award as a “nationally outstanding book”. The ordered life of a middle-aged married couple leaves the rails when the man falls in love with another woman. A tragedy unfolds before the background of his striving for self-realisation and fulfilment in love, focusing on the issues of belonging together and the status of the family.