China Has More Ethnic-Minority WritersThe number of ethnic-minority writers in China is growing rapidly, and now there are 100 times as many as there were fifty years ago, an expert said.China's 55 ethnic-minority groups all have their own writers, no matter how small the populations of some of them. There are now about 6,000 such writers in China's national or provincial writers' societies. In addition, the China Society of Ethnic Literature and the China Association of Ethnic Writers have 600 members each, according to Liang Tingwang, a professor at the Central Nationalities University and vice-chairman of the China Society of Ethnic Literature. Wang Pizhen, an ethnic Naxi writer, has written some 100 historical novels, and Mongolian writers have published more than 70 novels over the past two decades. In the early 1950s, only about a dozen ethnic-minorities has professional writers, due to a lack of education for ethnic groups. Many others had just oral literature or recorded events only by carving notches on wood. Chinese writers of some nationalities are transcending their folk literature and joining the mainstream of China's literature and even becoming part of world literature, critics said. |
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