By all standards Wang Meng (1934- ) has had a tremendously successful career. Easing out of his problematic role as Cultural Minister in 1989, Wang was nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1994 by the Chinese Literary Society. He has published more than 100 books and was listed as the 24th most commercially successful writer in China in 2010 with a net worth of 1.75 million yuan. This past year a village on the border of Kazakhstan opened a museum in his honor. Unlike other contemporary Han intellectuals who have been exiled to Chinese Central Asia, Wang spent most of his life in Xinjiang living with Uyghurs in Ghulja (Yining) on the border of Kazakhstan. He wrote numerous books about his experiences with Uyghurs which addressed the way he came to appreciate Xinjiang culture and learn Uyghur language. Relative to Ai Qing (who I wrote about last week), Wang was able to transform his exile into the Central Asian landscape into a tremendously productive career. By utilizing an ethnographer’s curiosity, Wang was able to …