Beauty and Madness: Yau Kong-kin's Drama, Poetry, and Film

She kept her heart for herself to eat when she was hungry – Yau Kong-kin's Love Poem Yau Kong-kin wrote avant-garde literature and practiced art when he was young. Then devoted himself to the mainstream film industry. After many years of experience and persistence, he became a well-known screenwriter in Taiwan, Hong Kong and mainland China. His life and writing experiences have been intertwined with the changing film trends as well as cultural and artistic landscapes in Hong Kong and Taiwan since the 1960. This book traces Yau's creative process from his early years to his later years, focusing on films, and also covering drama, poetry, novels and his artistic and literary creation concepts. At the same time, it includes Yau's early plays, novels, poems and experimental film and drama notes, alongside his correspondences with friends discussing about literature and art, in a view to present Yau's creative process from multiple perspectives. Yau Kong-kin (1940-2013) was a screenwriter, poet, film coordinator and director. He was born on Gulangyu Island, Fujian, and moved to Taiwan with his family in 1949. After graduating from the Film and Drama School of Taiwan Art College, he studied in Honolulu, Hawaii. In 1965, he and Zhuang Ling launched the "Theatre" quarterly, and together with editors from Hong Kong and Taiwan, translated and introduced contemporary Western film theories and drama works to a Chinese speaking audience. He directed the play "Waiting for Godot", and filmed the bold and avant-garde experimental short film "Alienation", forming the first wave of Taiwan's experimental films that spread to Hong Kong. In 1966, Yau joined Shaw Brothers Studio in Hong Kong as an editor. He worked with directors such as Chang Cheh, Chu Yuan, Ann Hui, Kwan Kam-Pang, and Johnnie To under the pen names of Dai Anping, Qiu Dai Anping, and Qiu Shui Chang An. His important works include "The Killer Rings" (1968, Yue Feng), "The Big Boss" (1971, Chang Cheh), "Escape from Coral Cove" (1982, Tang Kim-Ming), "Boat People" (1982, Ann Hui), "The Story of Woo Viet" (1982, Ann Hui), "The Wild Girls" (1984, Fang Ling-Ching), "Dream Lovers" (1986, Au Ting-Ping), "Underground Romance" (1986, Kwan Kam-Pang), "Red Dust" (1988, Kwan Kam-Pang), and "Center Stage" (1992, Kwan Kam-Pang). These are all famous Hong Kong films with brilliant achievements, and many of them are the director's representative works. His screenwriting works have earned him the Hong Kong Film Award for Best Screenplay three times, and he is highly respected by his peers in the film industry. The Hong Kong Screenwriters Association regards him as a master. Yau Kong-kin continued his poetic, delicate, and avant-garde style and directed "The Magnificent Concubine" (1985) and "Ah Ying" (1993). He moved to New York in the early 1990s and settled in Beijing in his later years. He never stopped writing poetry and published poetry collections such as "Dead Wife, Z, and Miscellaneous Thoughts" and "Starting Again When You're More Debauched".