Zhang Yu

JeniZhang13@163.com

HUANG GUOSHENG, a businessman and a bilingual Chinese-English writer in Shenzhen, recently had his English novel published in the United Kingdom and the United States.

The book, titled “The Road to Shenzhen,” depicts the story of a young man from western Guangdong Province who moves to Shenzhen to advance his career. The English novel will be sold in the United Kingdom and the United States soon.

A protagonist, Zhou Haonan is a dutiful and industrious businessman and a loving son. He spent over 20 years in Shenzhen and worked very hard to pursue his dream. Although he faced many failures and setbacks, he managed to get back on his feet and carry on. The novel touches on subjects like family relationships, love, friendship as well as humanitarian and commercial issues, and embodies the richness of Chinese culture, especially Cantonese culture.

Inspired by famous Chinese writer and translator Lin Yutang, who published his first novel “Moment in Peking” in 1939 for U.S. readers, Huang decided to publish an English novel after he realized there was a void in the publication of native Chinese authors writing novels in English. He considered it a meaningful endeavor to help Chinese literature go global and thus embarked on his project.

Huang is extensively well-read in foreign literary classics and spent a lot of time working on vocabulary and grammar. Before penning the novel, he perused the English version of “Dream of the Red Chamber” translated by David Hawkes many times.

A businessman who has been engaged in international trade for over 20 years, Huang is also a member of the Guangdong Provincial Writer’s Association and the Translators’ Association of China. His novel “Shenzhen Dream,” the Chinese version of “The Road to Shenzhen,” won fourth place in the China Novel Contest in 2013 and was long-listed for the ninth Mao Dun Literary Prize in 2015.

Previously, he has had poems and stories published and serialized in the Shenzhen Daily and won a writing competition held by Shenzhen Daily in 2000. In addition, he had an English short story published in the American magazine Brilliant Flash Fiction last year.