Liu Yichang (7 December 1918 – 8 June 2018), born Liu Tongyi in Shanghai to a family from Zhenhai, Ningbo, was a Hong Kong novelist and editor regarded as a pioneer of modernist literature in the city. A 1941 graduate of St John's University in Shanghai, he edited the literary supplements of the National Gazette and the Sweeper in wartime Chongqing from 1942, and after returning to Shanghai in 1946 founded the supplement of the Peace Daily and the Huaizheng press. He settled in Hong Kong in 1948 and spent decades editing supplements for the Hong Kong Times, the Sing Tao Evening News and the Express; in 1951 he was executive editor of Sing Tao Weekly and editor of West Point, and in 1953 briefly edited the Federal Daily in Kuala Lumpur. In 1962 he began serialising his novel The Drinker in the Sing Tao Evening News; published as a book in 1963, it uses stream of consciousness to portray an alcoholic writer and is regarded as China's first full-length stream-of-consciousness novel. His 1972 novella Intersection, built on two parallel threads, evokes old tenements and urban memory. His other works include Temple, Ceramics and Wrong Number, drawing on the lives of ordinary city dwellers. In 1985 he founded the monthly Hong Kong Literature and edited it until 2000, printing experimental fiction and criticism and encouraging many younger writers. The Drinker and Intersection respectively inspired Wong Kar-wai's 2046 and In the Mood for Love. He received the Medal of Honour in 2001, the Bronze Bauhinia Star in 2011 and the Hong Kong Arts Development Council's Life Achievement Award in 2015, and died on 8 June 2018 aged ninety-nine.
Liu Yichang brought stream of consciousness and shifts in time and space into the Hong Kong novel, and through the newspaper supplements he edited and the monthly he founded, Hong Kong Literature, he published experimental writing and nurtured a generation of authors. The urban memory in his fiction reached beyond the page to shape Hong Kong cinema.
Achievements
- 1962 · Began serialising The Drinker in 1962; collected as a book in 1963, it is regarded as China's first full-length stream-of-consciousness novel.
- 1985 · Founded the monthly Hong Kong Literature and edited it until 2000.
- 2015 · Received the Life Achievement Award from the Hong Kong Arts Development Council.