Late Writing Career
"Shops" is an essay written by Xi Xi, which has been adopted as reading materials for the Chinese language paper of the HKCEE. This passage illustrates the ageing buildings, squatters, and old-fashioned traditional shops in Central and Western District, particularly in Sheung Wan and Sai Ying Pun, as well as other human behaviour in this hustling district. She expressed her tinge of nostalgia of her childhood, and of the disappearing old shops due to drastic infrastructural development.
Xi Xi enjoyed travelling, and she had been to Eastern Europe, Turkey, Egypt, Greece, and, most frequently, mainland China. These places had given much inspiration to her writing. In 1983, “United Daily News” re-published Xi Xi’s “A Lady Like Me" (《像我這樣的一個女子》) from “Plain Leaf Literature”, and it was the first time her works were known to Taiwan people. And that passage won Xi Xi the Recommended Novella Prize, the highest prize in the United Daily News 8th Novel Prize.
Read more about this topic: Xi Xi
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