ABSTRACT
https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315288291/a1eedcaa-57fc-4fca-9a39-2ae5e50fda7a/content/fig8_B.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> Deng Gang, the pen name of Ma Quanli (b. 1945), is from Liaoning Province, although his ancestral home is Mouping County, Shandong Province. His father was labeled a "historical counterrevolutionary" for having worked as an accountant before the Communist takeover in 1949 and was sentenced to twelve years in prison in 1958. This was a disaster for the whole family. Deng Gang had to drop out of school when he was thirteen, and he became an apprentice in a welding factory. Unable to support the family with his meager income, he worked after his regular shift as a "sea seeker" (haipengzi), a diver gathering shells and sea delicacies for a living. The poverty and humiliation that he suffered during his formative years, not to mention the psychological devastation of the Cultural Revolution, left such a deep scar on him that he became quite emotional when talking about his past. However, the traumatic experience he went through has become, as he says, an inexhaustible repertoire for his fiction.
