Hsiao San

(real name Hsiao Ai-mei; known in the USSR as Emi Hsiao). Born 1896, in Hunan Province. Chinese writer, translator, and public figure. Member of the Communist Party of China since 1921.

Hsiao San took part in the May Fourth Movement. In the 1920’s and 1930’s he lived intermittently in the USSR and edited the Chinese edition of the journal Internatsional’naia literatura (International Literature). His anthologies of verse and prose published in Russian, including Poems (1932) and For a Soviet China (1934), dealt with the heroic struggle of the Chinese people for freedom. He translated the Internationale into Chinese (1923).

Hsiao San wrote articles, essays, and short stories about the Chinese people’s national liberation war of 1937–45 against the Japanese aggressors and about the leading role played by communists in that struggle. These works were collected in the anthologies Heroic China (1939), China Invincible (1940), and Chinese Stories (1940). In 1949, Hsiao San joined the national committee of the All-China Association of Workers of Literature and Art. He also took part in the peace movement.

Additional works by Hsiao San are The Great Teacher Marx (1953), The Aesthetic Views of M. Gorky (1950), and In Memory of Outstanding People (1954). Hsiao San has translated into Chinese works by A. S. Pushkin, V. V. Mayakovsky, and other Russian and Soviet poets. His works have not been published since the 1960’s.