P R E S S   R E L E A S E

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Gao Xingjian, the Nobel Laureate in Literature 2000 and author of Soul Mountain and One Man's Bible, will make a three-day visit to Hong Kong in January 2001.

Arriving on 29 January, Mr. Gao will visit The Chinese University of Hong Kong on 30 January where he will deliver a public lecture and give a press conference afterwards.  On 31 January, he will visit the City University of Hong Kong and give another talk in the morning, and also attend a reception hosted by Ming Pao Enterprise Corporation Limited in the afternoon.  Mr Gao will leave for Taiwan on 1 February.  Details of his visit will be announced later.

While this will be his first visit to Hong Kong since receiving the Nobel Prize, Mr. Gao has been well-known in local cultural and academic circles ever since the late eighties, when several of his plays were staged here.  He first visited Hong Kong in 1993 at the invitation of the Institute of Chinese Studies of The Chinese University of Hong Kong to deliver the first Sin Wai Kin Lecture on Contemporary Chinese Culture, and he directed the premier of his play The Other Shore at the Academy of Performing Arts in 1995.  The play was subsequently translated into English by Professor Fong Chee Fun of CUHK, who became one of his nominators for the Nobel Prize this year.  A number of his works in Chinese have been published here in Hong Kong, and his ink-brush paintings were frequently exhibited in a local art gallery.  It is therefore expected that Mr. Gao's visit will draw a great deal of attention and publicity.