Baptism by Yang Jiang – An English Translation of Xizao

Yang Jiang, born in 1911, is one of China's most eminent playwrights, essayists, memoirists and translators. She studied at Oxford and the Sorbonne during the 1930s, then returned to China where for many years she was a member of the Literary Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. In recent years she has published a translation of Plato's Phaedo and a memoir of her family, We Three. Baptism is her only novel. It was published in China in 1986, when she was 75, and has been in print ever since.

Playwright, essayist, translator and novelist, Yang Jiang is a legend of modern Chinese literature. With a career spanning more than six decades, Yang has been known for her portraits of Chinese manners in a subtle, sophisticated style. Baptism deals with the mixture of hope and fear that Chinese intellectuals suffered during the first political campaign of the New China. Using her patent style of irony and wit, Yang describes a time that baffled many men and women trying to find a place in a new social order. Even when political fervor and human cruelty is being observed, Yang Jiang never loses her sense of humor and compassion. Baptism is a Chinese masterpiece. -- David Der-wei Wang, Edward C. Henderson Professor of Chinese Literature, Harvard University