Yesi (12 March 1949 – 5 January 2013), born Leung Ping-kwan in Xinhui, Guangdong and raised in Hong Kong, was a poet, novelist, essayist, translator and scholar of comparative literature. He began submitting writing while still at secondary school, published his first work in 1963, and graduated from the English department of Hong Kong Baptist College in 1969. Between 1970 and 1978 he wrote columns for the literary pages of the Hong Kong Times and the Express. In 1972 he co-founded the literary magazine Four Seasons, then went on to study comparative literature at the University of California, San Diego, receiving his doctorate in 1984. Back in Hong Kong he taught at the University of Hong Kong and later at Lingnan University, where he became a chair professor in the Chinese department and, from 1997, director of the Centre for Humanities Research; he also edited the bilingual Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese. His writing spanned poetry, essays, fiction and criticism, and often took Hong Kong's urban spaces, food culture and experiences of displacement as its subject while attending to ordinary city lives and questions of identity and cultural exchange. Key works include the poetry collection Thunder and Cicadas, the story collections Paper Cuts and Postcards from Prague, and the essay collection Postcolonial Affairs of Food and the Heart. In 1991 Postcards from Prague won the fiction prize at the first Hong Kong Biennial Award for Chinese Literature. His work has been translated into many languages, and he lectured at universities overseas. Yesi died of lung cancer in Hong Kong on 5 January 2013, aged 63.
Yesi wove poetry, essays and fiction around Hong Kong's urban spaces and everyday food culture, and as a scholar at Lingnan University long promoted the study of Hong Kong literature within comparative literature, bringing local writing into academic view and influencing a later generation of writers and researchers. His Hong Kong-centred work, translated into many languages, also drew wider overseas attention to the city's literature.
Achievements
- 1972 · Co-founded the literary magazine Four Seasons.
- 1984 · Received a doctorate in comparative literature from the University of California, San Diego.
- 1991 · His story collection Postcards from Prague won the fiction prize at the first Hong Kong Biennial Award for Chinese Literature.