Critics almost unanimously agreed it was Ma's writing that first awoke Chinese writers' consciousness of the narrative.

Sun Ganlu, another member of the avant-garde writers, once said: "A whole generation of writers are under Ma Yuan's shadow."

Although Ma has disappeared from the literary arena for more than 10 years, the name still sells books. Some of his past writings were reprinted recently.

Although each book has not been reprinted in abundance, a total of more than 10,000 copies have been sold.

After Ma left the Tibet Autonomous Region in the late 1980s where many of his most impressive novels were set, he moved from city to city in China and tried his luck in many cultural fields. His collection of essays, Liangge Nanren (Two Men), recorded this period of his life. Ma has an earnest and enterprising spirit that is commonly shared by many Western writers from Daniel Defoe to Mark Twain, experts said.

"The most important thing is 'living'," he said satisfactorily in an interview with China Daily.

Perhaps the only thing in his life that cannot be easily dismissed is the fact he has hardly finished a novel since he left Tibet. "It's heart-ripping for me to recognize this," he said once during an earlier interview.

In the past two years, Ma has finally settled at Tongji University in Shanghai teaching the classics and fiction writing.

Unlike his friend Ge Fei, who prefers to follow the orthodox academic routine of teaching, Ma, as one of the most famous contemporary writers, gives lectures depending chiefly on personal writing and reading experience.

His two collections of essays, Xugou Zhi Dao (The Knife of Fabrication) and Yuedu Dashi (Reading the Masters), are both based on his class lectures and reveal some deep reflections and unique insights of an industrious reader and writer.

At the same time, "novel-writing has become my principal concern again," he said.

When Ma was young his dream was to become the first Chinese writer to win a world literary prize.

Now it is to write a book that is continuously read and loved by generations of readers.

(China Daily December 18, 2002)