【推荐2】Born in Ryazan, Russia, the hometown of Russian poet Sergei Yesenin, Anastasia Podareva seems to be destined for a similar career.

Podareva, 28, has loved poetry since she was a girl, when her father would introduce her to works by great Russian poets such as Alexander Pushkin and, of course, Yesenin. Growing up, she wrote many poems in both Russian and English. After she came to China to study in 2013, the world of Chinese poetry opened up before her.

She soon gave herself a poetic Chinese name, Tang Xilan, with “tang” referring to the Tang Dynasty (618-907), when Chinese poetry entered a golden age, and both “xi” and “lan” are characters taken from The Book of Songs, the earliest collection of Chinese poetry. Her name means an orchid (兰花) that blooms in the morning.

“One thing that strikes me in reading and writing Chinese poetry is the power of the language-it’s melodious (悦耳的) and rhythmic,” says Podareva in My China Surprise, a video series produced by 21^st Century.

Over the past decade, Podareva has won awards in multiple poetry writing competitions, published her own Chinese poetry collections, and participated in Chinese Poetry Conference, one of the leading poetry-themed TV programs in China. On top of that, her most unforgettable memory is that one of her poems was turned into a song. And even better: She sang it herself. The poem, titled If, was written in early of 2020 at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

After witnessing China’s unity as it faced the pandemic, Podareva felt as one with the Chinese people. “I wanted to create something positive to help inspire and encourage people in times of difficulty,” she says. “Some people may praise China in a very straightforward way, but I prefer to express my feelings about the country through different styles of poems.”

【推荐3】Sadaf’s childhood was happy. She enjoyed going to school and meeting her friends. But one day, she returned home running a high temperature.

“We thought it was regular flu. But we were told that I would not be able to walk ever again now,” she recalls.

Sadaf was just 10 years old then. After the family was turned down by doctors in Kashmir, they went to Mumbai, where an operation was performed to treat her legs. But eventually, Sadaf had to rely on a wheelchair to move around. By this time, she had to discontinue her education.

Things worsened when her father, her “only source of support”, passed away. “Everyone except my father doubted my capabilities. But he always encouraged me to dream big. I missed him.”

“There were days when I would end up crying all day, sitting alone in my room. I was getting into depression,” she says.

“By now, I’ve realized that I have to either end my life or struggle to prove myself. I chose the latter. I wanted to prove to the world that people like me can also achieve something. I had just lost my ability to walk, not my ability to use my brain,” she adds.

That is when Sadaf decided to step up for herself. In 2015, she opened a shop but had to shut it a couple of years later as the work affected her eyesight. She says, “But I wanted to try my hands at everything. So I decided to play basketball as well. I have also been awarded multiple times by the Jammu and Kashmir Basketball Association.”

Recently, Sadaf tried selling unique spices of the Kashmir valley. “Today, I have established my own business without anyone’s emotional or financial support. People would question me what I could achieve sitting in a wheelchair, when their educated and able-bodied children sat idly (闲散地). Now the very same people give my example to others,” she says.

Sadaf believes that people with disabilities should never doubt themselves. “If you hear others say something not so positive, you may end up depressed. Instead of living within the confines (限制) of a room, try to prove yourself,” she advises.

【推荐1】French writer Annie Ernaux won the 2022 Nobel Prize in literature on Oct. 6. She is the first French female to win the prize, following 15 male winners. In the words of the Nobel Committee, Ernaux was given the award “for the courage and clinical acuity (敏锐的洞察力) of her writing.”

Born in 1940 in a village in Nonnandy, France, Ernaux grew up in a working-class environment. Her parents ran a combined grocery store and cafe. She studied in Rouen and Bordeaux, taught in secondary schools and then, for 23 years, worked for a French distance-learning university. Her shelf of two-dozen books began with fiction (Cleaned Out in 1974) but soon moved into a form of creative autobiography.

A Woman’s Story (1987), an emotional account of her mother’s life and death from Alzheimer’s disease, better promoted her reputation in France. The injustices of class, gender and background stand out in this work. Her most welcomed book, however, was The Years, published in 2008 and describing herself and wider French society from the end of World War II to the present. The seemingly casually (随意地) mentioned goods and songs in the novel are actually carefully selected by her and concerned by the public, so readers of all ages can find familiar content and clear memories.

Though the matters Ernaux describes in her books are serious and even sometimes heavy, they are always written in simple language. Ernaux described her style as flat writing through which she aims to tell her stories objectively (客观地) unshaped by flowery description or intense emotions.

“Her path to being an author was long and tough,” the Swedish Academy said. “And when she with great courage shows the suffering of the experience of class, describing shame or inability to see who you are, she has achieved something admirable and lasting,”Anders Olsson, chairman of the Nobel Committee for Literature added.

【推荐3】Jon Fosse has won the 2023 Nobel Prize in literature, “for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable”. The 64-year-old playwright is not well-known outside his home country of Norway. But the author is internationally celebrated in literary circles and has been called “the most produced living playwright”.

Fosse grew up on a rural farm near Strandebarm, Norway, where his grandparents lived in one house while he, his parents, and two sisters lived in another. His father worked as a manager of Strandebarm Cooperative, a local grocery store, and his mother was a caregiver. Fosse started writing at age 12 or 13, first composing song lyrics and later trying poems.

In 1979 Fosse graduated from high school and moved to Bergen, where he began working for the newspaper Gula Tidend. That same year he became a father, and the following year he married the mother of his child. In the next decades he married twice more and had five additional children. Meanwhile, throughout the 1980s he studied at the University of Bergen, receiving a Master of Art in comparative literature in 1987.

Also during the 1980s, Fosse published his first novels, namely Red, Black, whose topic is suicide, and Stringed Guitar, about a mother in a difficult situation after locking herself out of her house where she has left her baby.

The playwright began as a novelist, and did not break through as a theater writer until he was in his 40s. His international reputation as a playwright was confirmed in 1998, with a Paris production of his first play Someone Is Going to Come, which had been written in 1992. Since then, his work has been performed in more than 60 countries around the world, according to his translator, Ann Henning Jocelyn. According to his publisher, Fosse’s work has been translated into more than 40 languages, and there have been more than 1,000 different productions of his plays.