Xiao Ping

• Professor in Film, Television and Communication

Xiao Ping is a children's literature writer and professor of Drama Studies. Her representative works are the Muyang Going to School series, Xiao Ping's Best Children's Book series, and Hello and Good Night, Dear Friend!, which is a picturebook of children’s symphonic poems. She has won many prestigious awards, including the National Outstanding Children's Literature Award and the Chen Bochui International Children's Literature Award. Her work has been featured in the International Youth Library's (IYL) annually published catalogue "The White Ravens." In addition to her many achievements, she is also the founder of the influential club of “Non-roaring Moms," which provides open classes focusing on parent-child growth and family communication.

Keynote Abstract

Beauty and Rhyme: Jin Bo and Chinese Children's Sonnets

The sonnet originated in Europe in the fourteenth century. It spread to China in the early twentieth century and was deeply loved by the Chinese people. Mr. Jin Bo was the first poet to try to write children’s sonnets in China in the 1990s, which are wonderful works in contemporary Chinese children’s poetry. Bo combines elements of the ‘garland poem,’ such as anadiplosis, with that of the ‘guluti’ (轱辘体) or ‘windmill style’ of Chinese poetry, a unique poem that is visually circular and can start from any Chinese character within the circle. Through this combination, he creatively writes children’s sonnets that conform to Chinese aesthetics and rhythm. In particular, Mr. Jin Bo skillfully integrates the garland poem into fairy tales and novels for the young, forming a strange sense of musical beauty in which people can not only see the shadow of the opening poems in Chinese classical novels but also fully feel the charm of the ‘crown of sonnets’ from Western poetry, making it difficult for children to put these delightful stories down. In this talk, I will explore the transnational exchange of poetic aesthetics on display in Mr. Jin Bo’s works for children, looking at examples such as Woodee’s Adventure, Tracing the Little Green Men, and Jin Bo’s Selected Sonnets within Six Decades.