Fang Fang is the pen name of Wang Fang, born in Nanjing on 11 May 1955. A Chinese novelist, she is known for her portrayals of working-class and impoverished lives, a concern that runs through much of her fiction. Her work gained international attention in 2020 with her diary of the lockdown in Wuhan.
She studied Chinese at Wuhan University, graduating in 1978. She began writing poetry in 1975 and published her first novel in 1982. She went on to write several novels, some of which received national literary prizes. In 2010 she won the Lu Xun Literary Prize, one of the most prestigious awards in Chinese letters.
During the 2020 lockdowns in Hubei, she began sharing a daily account of life in Wuhan on social media. The diary combined her own observations with anonymous interviews with other residents and drew wide attention at home and abroad. Her critical view of the government's handling of the crisis brought both support and sharp criticism, and some online critics labelled her a traitor. Her legacy is debated: she is praised for documenting the pandemic with courage, and her case raises questions about literature, censorship and national loyalty.
Key works
- Wuhan Diary (2020), a diary of the Wuhan lockdown first published on social media.
- Feng Jing (1987), a novel about everyday life in China.
- Qin Duan Kou (琴断口), a work from her later narrative output.
Original Filopedia text based on Wikipedia (es) and Wikipedia (en) and Wikidata.