A village woman in Rongchang County, Chongqing, has become a famous writer of folk literature after doing odd jobs for 16 years in Jiangsu Province.

 

Guo Fengying, 38, was born in Luoguan Village in Rongchang. When she was young, she was a keen reader and liked listening to the folk stories and legends that adults told her. After graduating from high school, she taught Chinese in the village primary school and started writing novels.

 

In 1991, Guo decided she was fed up with the routine in the village and left for Jiangyin in Jiangsu, where a relative lived. Even as she did odd jobs to support her family, she continued writing novels and stories based on the folk tales she heard in her youth.

 

Since 1996, many of those folk stories have been published in major newspapers in Jiangsu. Guo has become a member of the province's association of folk literature.

 

(China Daily March 23, 2007)