Gao Ertai, (born 1935) is a Chinese writer, calligrapher and artist who was born near

Nanjing Nanjing or Nanking is the capital of Jiangsu, a province in East China. The city, which is located in the southwestern corner of the province, has 11 districts, an administrative area of , and a population of 9,423,400. Situated in the Yang ...

. He is well known in China for his contributions to aesthetic theory and teaching. Gao was detained and sentenced to forced labour by the

Chinese Government The government of the People's Republic of China is based on a system of people's congress within the parameters of a Unitary state, unitary communist state, in which the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) enacts its policies through people's ...

due to his work and has been in and out the camp over twenty years. Finally, his wife Maya and he escaped to

Hong Kong Hong Kong)., Legally Hong Kong, China in international treaties and organizations. is a special administrative region of China. With 7.5 million residents in a territory, Hong Kong is the fourth most densely populated region in the wor ...

and now they live in

Las Vegas Las Vegas, colloquially referred to as Vegas, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and the county seat of Clark County. The Las Vegas Valley metropolitan area is the largest within the greater Mojave Desert, and second-l ...

in the United States. He has published four collections of essays on beauty and freedom in Chinese. Parts of ''In Search of My Homeland,'' biography and memoir of his years of persecution, have been translated and published in French and German. Gao is currently a visiting scholar at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, and, in the past, he taught at

Lanzhou University Lanzhou University () is a public university in Lanzhou, Gansu, China. It is affiliated with the Ministry of Education of China. The university is part of Project 211, Project 985, and the Double First-Class Construction. Founded in 1909, the ...

, Sichuan Normal University,

Nankai University Nankai University is a public university in Tianjin, China. It is affiliated with the Ministry of Education of China. The university is part of Project 211, Project 985, and the Double First-Class Construction. Nankai University was establ ...

, and

Nanjing University Nanjing University (NJU) is a public university in Nanjing, Jiangsu, China. It is affiliated and sponsored by the Ministry of Education. The university is part of Project 211, Project 985, and the Double First-Class Construction. The univers ...

Selected works

* ''On Beauty'' (1957) * ''The Struggle of Beauty'' and ''Beauty'' (1987) * ''The Symbol of Freedom'' (1987) * ''In Search of My Homeland'' (2009)

References

1935 births Living people Chinese artists Nanjing {{China-writer-stub