The Monkey Chronicles

**HONG KONG LITERATURE SERIES** **Series Editor: John Minford** After her celebrated "The Teddy Bear Chronicles", Xi Xi turns her creative vision towards the world of the primate kingdom. At the age of 73, despite physical challenges, Xi Xi traveled extensively across Asia, from tropical forests to conservation centers, immersing herself in the natural world of apes and monkeys. This book is one of the remarkable outcomes of this journey. Xi Xi documented 51 endearing ape and monkey puppets that she had sewn, weaving them into a series of insightful dialogues with her friend, the Hong Kong writer Ho Fuk Yan. These discussions cover the depiction of apes and monkeys in Chinese and Western literature, painting, drama, and film, as well as the interconnectedness of humans and their primate relatives. Xi Xi’s words, filled with empathy, reveal the heart of her work: ‘If there is a common theme to our conversation, it is to respect life and speak for those lives that have been discriminated against in the history of human development, and apes are the starting point for this’. The "Monkey Chronicles" is a testament to Xi Xi’s resilience and creativity, offering a poignant meditation on coexistence, environmental ethics, and the power of art to reimagine our place in the natural world. Full Title: The Monkey Chronicles Author: Xi Xi Translator: Jasmine Tong Man & David Morgan Editor: John Minford ISBN: 978-988-237-355-6 Binding: Hardcover Language: English Page: 336 Dimensions: 210 x 170 x 16 mm **About the Author** **Xi Xi** (1937–2022), pseudonym of Cheung Yin, was born in Shanghai and moved to Hong Kong with her family in 1950. In 1957, she graduated from Grantham College of Education and became a teacher at a government primary school. She increasingly focused on her writing career, and her fiction and poetry earned her numerous literary awards, including the 1983 United Daily Award in Taiwan for her short story ‘A Girl Like Me’, the 2019 Newman Prize for Chinese Literature at the University of Oklahoma, and the Cikada Prize awarded by the Swedish Institute in the same year. She also received the Hong Kong Arts Development Council’s 16th Life Achievement Award in 2022. Xi Xi’s literary works spanned across novels, essays, modern poetry, and literary criticism. She published over 45 books, including My City, Not Written Words, The Teddy Bear Chronicles, Carnival of Animals: Xi Xi’s Animal Poems, and many more. **About the Translators** **Jasmine Tong Man** is now a visiting lecturer specialising in literary translation at various tertiary institutions in Hong Kong. She earned her PhD in Translation Studies in 2001. Her translation work includes Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast (Book One) and Amiri Baraka’s poetry into Chinese. In collaboration with David Morgan, she has translated Leung Ping-kwan’s poems and short stories, as well as Wei Ya’s children’s poetry, into English. Recently, she has been crafting bilingual stories about life in Hong Kong, featuring her own watercolour illustrations. **David Morgan** has collaborated with Jasmine Tong Man on various translations from Chinese to English for almost twenty years. He has also made a number of extended translations from Spanish to English and of short stories from French to English by the Palestinian novelist Mahmoud Shahin. **About the Editor** **John Minford** is Emeritus Professor of Chinese at The Australian National University.