Le Dit de Tianyi

François Cheng (born August 30, 1929, in Nanchang, China) is a Chinese-born French writer, poet, calligrapher, and academician who moved to France in 1948 and became a naturalized French citizen. He is renowned for his essays, novels, and poetry written in French, with notable works including Le Dit de Tianyi (Prix Femina, 1998), L'éternité n'est pas de trop, and Cinq méditations sur la beauté, and achieved the historic distinction of being the first person of Asian origin elected to the Académie française in 2002.