Yang Hongying facts for kids

Yang Hongying (born on May 12, 1962) is a very popular Chinese writer. She writes exciting stories for children. People sometimes call her "China's J. K. Rowling" because her books are so famous. By 2013, she had sold over 50 million copies of her novels! Since 2006, she has been known as one of China's richest writers. Her most popular books are the Mo's Mischief series and the Diary of a Smiling Cat series.

Early Life and Learning

Yang Hongying was born in 1962 in Chengdu, a city in Sichuan Province, China. She was the youngest child of Yang Tianxiao, who worked in an office. She says her parents let her grow up freely and explore her own interests.

When she was very young, she didn't read much. But as a teenager, she discovered amazing Chinese classic novels. Books like Water Margin and Dream of the Red Chamber really captured her imagination. She read parts of them many times. She even studied how the authors introduced each character. She says this helped her a lot when she started writing her own stories.

Her Writing Journey

After finishing her teacher training, Yang Hongying became a Chinese teacher in a primary school in 1980. This was just a few years after the Cultural Revolution ended. At that time, there weren't many fun books for children to read, apart from their school textbooks.

Starting to Write for Kids

After teaching for just one year, she decided to write her own stories for her students. Her very first story was called A Seed in a Swimsuit. It was about a lotus seed floating around in its green "swimsuit." She got the idea from a popular cartoon called Little Tadpoles Looking for Mama. Her class loved the story! This encouraged her to write more than 100 stories over the next few years.

Becoming a Published Author

Soon, a children's newspaper in Shanghai started printing her stories. This made her more widely known, and she got a contract to publish a book. After teaching for seven years, she started a new job. She became an editor of children's books at a publishing house.

In the early 1990s, she became the chief editor at a children's magazine. This is when she began writing a series of short stories. These stories are known in English as Mo's Mischief. They are about a boy named Ma Xiaotiao (or Mo Shen Ma in the English books). He is a bit naughty but has a kind heart. Yang Hongying says she got the idea for Ma Xiaotiao from one of the students she used to teach.

National Success and Popular Series

In 2000, her book A Girl's Diary was published. This book made her famous all over China. It's about a girl who is almost a teenager, and it was inspired by Yang Hongying's own daughter. The novel sold two million copies!

Her Mo's Mischief series became even more successful. By 2013, there were 20 books in the series, and they had sold over 30 million copies. She also started writing the Diary of a Smiling Cat series in 2006. These books are for younger children, usually between seven and nine years old. By 2013, she had written 18 books in this series, selling 20 million copies.

Reaching Readers Worldwide

The publishing company HarperCollins bought the rights to translate her books into other languages. By 2010, they had translated six books from the Mo's Mischief series into English. They sold 200,000 copies of these books. Even though this number is smaller than her sales in China, HarperCollins said that Yang's books were the most successful Chinese books they had brought to English-speaking readers.

In 2010, Yang Hongying was ranked first on the "Fifth China Rich Writers List." In 2012, she published a collection of essays called "Reasons for Loving Zaizai." In November 2019, she launched an educational picture book called "Panda Diary."

See also

In Spanish: Yang Hongying para niños