Qiu Xiaolong Biography

Qiu Xiaolong was born and raised in Shanghai. He managed to avoid the worst of Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution by falling ill with bronchitis at the age of 16, so he was able to stay in the city, while his peers left to be "re-educated" in the countryside.  One day while sitting on a bench in Shanghai's Bund he noticed some people studying an English book,  that was the start of an interest that grew into an academic specialty in modernist poetry.

He came to the US in 1988, at the age of about 30, on a Ford Foundation grant.  He chose to study at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, because of his enthusiasm for the poet T.S. Eliot, who was brought up in St Louis before emigrating to the UK at the age of 25. Following the Tiananmen Square massacre he decided not to return to China and instead managed to extricate his wife, Wang Lijun.  Today they live in St Louis with their daughter, Julia.

Qiu Xiaolong is the author of the award-winning Inspector Chen series of mystery novels, including Death of a Red Heroine, A Loyal Character Dancer, When Red Is Black, A Case of Two Cities, Red Mandarin Dress, and The Mao Case. He is also the author of two books of poetry translations, Treasury of Chinese Love Poems and Evoking T'ang, and his own poetry collection, Lines Around China.

Qiu Xiaolong's website

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