Geling Yan

Yan was born in Shanghai, China in 1959 into a family of scholars and writers. She is the second child of Yan Dunxun and Jia Lin. She has an elder brother Yan Geping (严歌平).^[4] Her father is an alumnus of the College of Architecture and Urban Planning of Tongji University.^[5]

The Cultural Revolution broke out when Yan was seven. She witnessed the brutality of the movement first-hand, which became a "life time obsession" and a recurring theme in her works.^[6][7]

At the age of 12, Yan joined the People's Liberation Army as a ballet dancer in Chengdu, and travelled with the dance troupe around China including in Tibet.^[6] In 1979, she volunteered as a war correspondent in the Sino-Vietnamese War. She was discharged from the PLA with a rank equivalent to lieutenant colonel.^[8] She left China after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and has since lived in the United States and Germany.^[9]

Yan holds a bachelor's degree in literature from Wuhan University, and a Master's in Fine Arts in Fiction Writing from Columbia College Chicago.^[10]

Yan published her first novel in 1985 during her military service at China. In the early 1990s, she went to the US and sharpened her writing skills at Columbia College, Chicago through a three year creative writing program.^[11] During and after her study, she continued to write in Chinese, publishing award-winning short stories, novellas, and novels in the U.S., Taiwan, and mainland China. She was considered by some scholars in mainland China and Taiwan as one of the most important Chinese-language authors in the United States.^[12]

As of 2023, Yan has published over 40 books and has won over 30 literary and film awards. Her works have been translated into twenty-one languages.^[10]

Yan views writing as a disciplined profession, approaching her novels with meticulous craftsmanship. To ensure her stories and characters remain grounded in reality, she self-funded extensive field research: living among locals, consulting primary witnesses, and even embedding herself in the gambling dens of Macau to ensure every character felt authentic.^[11]

Yan's friction with Beijing likely started after the 2014 film Coming Home boosted sale for her book The Criminal of Lu Yanshi, a story depicting the tragic fate of intellectuals during the political campaigns in post-1949 China.^[6] In late 2020, when Covid 19 broke out in Wuhan, Yan published an article titled "Hide, Hide, Hide" criticizing Beijing's cover-up that cost lives of many, including whistleblower Dr. Li Wenliang.^[44][45]

In February 2022, Yan was blacklisted in China after appearing on a YouTube chat hosted by Zhou Xiaozheng, a former associate professor of sociology at Renmin University. During the video chat, Yan criticized the Chinese government’s handling of the Xuzhou chained woman incident and echoed remarks by Zhou, who described Chinese leader Xi Jinping as a "human trafficker" for imposing large mandatory "donations" on foreign families adopting Chinese orphans.^[46][47] Baidu Baike deleted Yan's entry and the searches for her name on Sina Weibo became unavailable.^[46] Zhang Yimou’s film One Second, adapted from Yan's novel, was released with her name removed from the credits.^[43] Although the blacklisting cut off Yan from opportunities in screenwriting and publishing in mainland China, it also granted her "freedom" and "peace" in her literary creation. She switched to self-publication through New Song Media, a publishing house she set up with her husband in Berlin.^[6]

Yan's ex-husband is Li Kewei; they divorced in the 1990s. In 1992, Yan married her second husband Lawrence Walker in San Bruno, California. Walker is a diplomat. They have no biological children together, but have adopted a Chinese girl, Yanyan.^[48]

Yan currently resides in Berlin, Germany with her husband Walker.^[10][49]