17 March 2014: The Happy Hsiungs: Diana Yeh on a Chinese-British Literary Couple

With Alan Babbington-Smith

When: 17 March 1:00 p.m.

Where: The Beijing Bookworm

Tickets: RMB 65

About:

The Happy Hsiungs recovers the histories of a Chinese literary couple who lived, worked and wrote in Britain from the 1930s onwards. Shih-I Hsiung shot to worldwide fame with his play Lady Precious Stream, while Dymia Hsiung was the first Chinese woman to publish an account of life as an immigrant in Britain. Diana Yeh recounts the Hsiungs’ childhoods in turn-of-the-century China, their youth in the radical May 4th era, and their lives in Britain and the United States. Alan Babbington-Smith will discuss with Yeh how the Hsiungs’ “performed” identities conformed to Western ideals of gender, sexuality, and ‘Chineseness’.