Yilin Zhong was born in China. Her father was a literary editor at the China Federation of Literary and Art Union in Beijing but was exiled to southwest China as miner during the Cultural Revolution. Zhong wrote her first poem at five which was published when she was seven,[3] and her first short story was published at the age of twelve in Shanghai Youth Literature. At thirteen, she wrote a research thesis 'Who broke up the wood-stone engagement?' and it was released in the academic journal A Dream of Red Mansions Journal[4] in 1993.
At fourteen, Zhong wrote her first full-length novel Embracing the Sun, which was not published. Her second novel Sunshine and the Monsoon, written at sixteen, was published in 1995 and won her national reputation as the youngest talented writer;[5] Zhong was interviewed by China Central Television's Book Review.[6] In 1992, Zhong received an award voted by national readers for a short story released in Shanghai Youth Literature as the "Best Work of The Year".[citation needed]
At the age of sixteen, Zhong was offered admission by three top art universities in China. She decided to go to the Central Academy of Drama and studied Drama Literature and Play Writing, while she also passed the exam for the Theatre Director Department.[1]
Education
Zhong studied at the Central Academy of Drama in Beijing, China, and achieved a distinction BA degree in Drama Literature and Playwriting.
In 2002, Zhong left China to obtain her MA degree in Cultural Studies from the University of Warwick.[7] After her graduation, she fully immigrated to the UK and has since been living in London.[2]
Career
Yilin Zhong started her creative literary writing when she was five. In 1995, she published her first novel Sunshine and the Monsoon.[8] From 1995 to 2002, while Zhong was in Beijing, she worked for Beijing TV station, Beijing Broadcasting station and various magazines and newspapers,[9] published five books, including three novels, one essay and one short story collection.[10] Meanwhile, she also became a successful journalist[11] and received a National Award for her exceptional contribution on reporting the IT technology blooming in China. Zhong wrote a film script 'Sunshine and the Monsoon' (adapted from her own novel) at the age of nineteen and won the Excellence Award for Chinese Youth Film Script in 1996.[citation needed] Her translation work 'In a Station of the Metro' (Ezra Pound) was collected into Chinese national high school's Literature Textbook[12] and Chinese universities' textbook for American Literature.[13] Her letter to the editor was published in 'One person's Literary History' (by Cheng Yongxin, Editor-in-chief of Harvest Literary Magazine) as one of writers' documentaries in contemporary Chinese literature.[14] Before immigrating to the UK, Zhong was one of the notable contemporary women writers in China,[15] and belonged to the 'Post 70s Generation' writers community.[16]
After immigrating to the UK in 2002, Zhong has been living in London anonymously and continued writing fiction and essays in Chinese. London Single Diary (2009) was her first series written in the UK and published in China; the twin work London Love Story was published in 2010 and ranked at #3 on Amazon bestselling fiction list. Her novel Chinatown (written in 2005 in London) was released in 'Harvest' in 2011, which gathered American Chinese writer Ha Jin, British Chinese writer Yilin Zhong, and Taiwanese writer Qi Bang Yuan's works as a 'Special Issue of Oversea-Chinese Writers', which sold out in three months. Zhong attended the London Book Fair in 2012 and met many Beijing writer friends, such as the Vice Editor-in-chief of People's Literature and Pathlight magazines, recalled their friendship in Beijing in his published London Diaries.[17] Zhong also wrote London theater reviews for newspapers and National Drama Study,[18] and was cited by Shakespeare beyond English published in the UK.[19] In 2013, her novel Personal Statement (written in 2000 at Beijing) was published in Shanghai.
In 2013, Zhong joint a reality dating TV show of Channel 4 and appeared on First Dates as herself. This was her first public appearance in the UK and she became the TV advertising model in its first season.[20] In 2014, Harvest published the Kindle version of Chinatown;[21] then the paperback edition was published in 2015, and was appraised to have filled the 'remarkable blank space of illegal immigration in contemporary Chinese literature history' (Editor's Review).[6] In March 2015, Yilin Zhong had her first interview since 2002 with Harvest literary magazine for her new book Chinatown, and the interviewer recommended that 'one of this literary work's very great significance', is that 'it has changed our understanding of the world'.[21]
In 2015, Zhong took a trip to New York, and then began to write her first novel in English: Dear New York,(1-4); Book 1-3 were written between Dec 2015 and March 2016 in London and Book 4 was completed in May 2016 in New York. She also sketched a new fiction Miss China and a non-fiction Folks of New York at Manhattan, and then wrote her first collection of poems in English after coming back to London in the fall of 2016. In October 2017, Zhong wrote her latest fiction The Private Scene as the third book of the personal statement trilogy, which was a derivative work of the second book of the trilogy, In London. The novel In London was written in 2005 in London and was published in February 2018 in China, having an unpublished foreword written by Wenfen Chen-Malmqvist, plus a few thousand words relating to political events were deleted due to the publishing censorship in China.[22] In 2017-18, Zhong wrote her column The London Scene for Southern Weekend newspaper, her first column in Chinese media.[23] Up until 2021, Zhong has published ten books including eight novels, all sold out.[24]
Speech Ban
On 6 February 2020, right after the death of Dr. Li Wenliang, one of the COVID-19 'eight gentlemen' in Wuhan, Yilin Zhong posted a Weibo to question Dr. Li's death as suspicious, suspecting that he did not pass away from natural causes dead but was killed by some Wuhan malfeasance officers in order to destroy evidence of their malfeasance during the Coronavirus spreading from December 2019 to January 2020. Her post was immediately deleted by Sina Weibo and she was forbidden to post for one week. Then she was scolded by a large number of Chinese official media, alongside CNN who also suspiciously questioned Dr. Li Wenliang's death.[25] One week later, on 14 February, the day of being 'allowed' to speak, Yilin Zhong at once published a 5,000-word inference article 'Li Wenliang's Life and Death Line' on her Weibo account with the cached photo, analyzing Dr. Li Wenliang's life line from the day he was infected and separately hospitalized for 21 days until he was finally diagnosed, to when he was officially 'declared' to have died after 26 days of hospitalization.[26] She was immediately banned to speak on Weibo again and her Weibo account with 78,500 followers was then closed for a year.[27] On 13 February, right after the Chinese central government removed two Party Committee Secretaries in Hubei, Yilin Zhong found the broadband at her London home was suddenly cut off by the hacker.[28][26]
In April 2020, when Yilin Zhong was interviewed by Jiemian News in China, she reviewed the Covid-19 issue since 6 February up to April and criticized a series of erroneous decisions by Hubei government, including concealing the epidemic figures, delaying Li Wenliang’s treatment and leading to his death, etc. However, because of the sensitive content, the news article only limitedly reported a few points she made,[29][30] so she had to post her full speech content on Youtube.[31] Then almost at the same time when Wuhan writer Fang Fang has published her 'Wuhan Diary' in both USA and Germany, Amazon.com sent Yilin Zhong an official notification notifying her that they had closed her KDP author's account and had removed all her books from the Kindle Store, despite the fact that all her Kindle books are fiction works and were published via KDP more than three years ago.[32] On 6 December 2021, a few months after Zhong's Weibo account was recovered from the one year ban, Weibo has officially announced to have permanently closed Yilin Zhong's Weibo account with 83,808 fans and all contents became invisible, due to her 'harmful speech' regarding Covid-19 and other political reviews.[33] On 7 December, Zhong's Wechat official account 'Yilin Zhong in London' was also closed down with all her articles deleted, which means now she was banned from public sight in China.
Bibliography
Novel
Sunshine and the monsoon 《阳光雨季》(Novel, January 1995)
