The published German version of White Tower includes ten stories selected respectively from White Shell, a collection of stories for children and Blue Five-pointed Star, a collection of stories for teenagers, both of which were written by Cheng Wei.
Cheng Wei is called a gifted writer of children's literature by the critics. The children's behavior and psychology are accurately and vividly portrayed everywhere in her works. The language of her novel is very characteristic of children, making your feel as if a child were telling you about his or her own story, full of children's fun. It can be said that her stories create a bridge between the children and the real world, which is very helpful for the growth of children.
Most of the heroes and heroines of Cheng Wei's short stories are middle school students, who are less childish and think more about friendship and life, which is one of the characteristics of the teenagers in their adolescence. Cheng Wei keenly grasps the delicate changes in the feelings of the children at this age. They are becoming more sensitive, demanding more self-esteem, having more questions than answers and becoming even rebellious. They are trying to learn more about the society, their peers and themselves. Through the lively depiction of the teenagers in her stories, Cheng Wei describes their rich inner world and their exploration.
On this book, Sabine Groenewold, a famous German publisher once made the following comment, "The stories written by Cheng Wei describe a totally different world where the boys and girls, however, are meeting the same problems as their western counterparts. The freshness, delicacy and tenderness in her works enable us to realize the common feelings of mankind, full of sense of morality, without any preaching. Hope to read more of her work."
Cathrin Schmid, a famous Swiss literature critic and a journalist, once made the following comment on White Tower,"Compared with some other contemporary Chinese literary works available to the western people, the stories by Cheng Wei are real and credible, without any self-pity or self compassion. I say there is no self-pity in the work because the children in the stories are courageous in their lives. They grow up after they get to know the real world and even get disappointed. The writer doesn’t deliberately create a happy ending for her stories, instead the children depicted accept the disappointments, stop to ponder for a while, and then move on."
White Tower tells the stories about the children who are growing up, their insight into themselves and the adult world, their loneliness, sadness, disappointment, their tolerance of the real world and their hope for the future. The book delves into the heart and describes a poetic picture in simple but beautiful words. The ten stories selected are full of freshness, as fresh as a clean street in a spring drizzle, a magnolia in a neglected corner of a garden and a soft beach and sea wind. (By Yu Huixun) |
