June 17, 2002	Monday	Rabi-us-Sani 5, 1423

PARIS, June 16: The Academie Francaise, the quasi-official arbiter of the French language for France, but also a good part of the French-speaking world, has a new member, but he’s not your everyday French writer like most of the other thirty-nine members of this respected but somewhat staid four-century old institution.

After the naming of an African academician, Leopold Sedar Senghor, and of an American member, Julien Green, the Academie Francaise has chosen to include an Asian member, Francois Cheng, 73, a Chinese poet, novelist, essayist, philosopher, translator and calligraphist, as well as specialist of Asian art, who although born in China in 1929, sought political refuge in France 53 years ago, just as Mao Tse-Tung was taking over control of the Chinese mainland.

Francois Cheng was the first to be surprised by the decision of the Academie’s fathers to open up its prestigious doors to the frail nondescript poet and translator whose first French-language book was published only in 1977 at the age of 48.

That work, — L’Ecriture poetique chinoise — proved so successful it opened up the doors to the French publishing world, where Francois Cheng went on to produce an award-winning novel, Le Dit de Tianyi, which, was published in 1998 when he was all of 69, tells the rather autobiographical tale of Tianyi, a man sitting atop a cultural divide, going back and forth between his biological roots in China and the culture of the West.