Legends from the Swiss Alps（瑞士阿爾卑斯山的傳說） （Edited by Leung Ping-kwan, Andrea Rieme

The Alps have always been the prime icon of Swissness. Often idealized or aestheticized, this world of high peaks shrouded in clouds, of dark forests and verdant flower-studded meadows, of wild animals and isolated chalets with their rugged peasants and cows and goats has generated a wealth of local myths and legends. 
 
In the past the mountains were still the haunt of spirits and demons. With today's urbanization the Alpine world is perceived in different ways ─ as a sublime, unspoiled world of beauty, purity and innocence, the realm of freedom, a field of energy and mysticism; as a link to one's true nature, to one's childhood; or as a place of long winters, loneliness, depression, but also purity and redemption. 
 
Collected by Swiss students of Chinese at the University of Zurich as a pendant to their study of the ghost world in modern Chinese films, the seventy-five legends published in this collection entertainingly reveal the fascinating co-existence of the real and the imaginary in the Swiss Alpine world.
 
About the Editors
Leung Ping Kwan (梁秉鈞, 1949 — 2013) was one of the most celebrated men of letters in Hong Kong. Writing mainly in the Chinese language under his pen name Yasi (也斯), he was a prolific poet, novelist, essayist, translator, researcher, teacher, scholar, as well as literary, film and cultural critic, photographer and videographer, whose work traversed back and forth comfortably across different media, and geographic and cultural borders. Known as PK to his many friends, his Cantonese language pen name Yasi best describes the spirit behind his work: both Chinese characters, Ya and Si, are what could be described as discourse devices, without any specific meaning. They carry no ideological undertones, nor are they limited by any preconceived ideas or beliefs, much like Leung Ping Kwan the man himself.
 
Andrea Riemenschnitter is Chair Professor of Modern Chinese Language and Literature and Deputy Director of the Institute of Asian and Oriental Studies at the University of Zurich. She studied Music, Sinology, German Literature and Sociology in Munich, Bonn, Taipei and Goettingen. Awards include the title of Honorary Fellow at Lingnan University, Hong Kong as well as visiting (senior) fellowships at ARI NU Singapore, UC Berkeley, Beijing Normal University, Shanghai Fudan University, Tsing Hua University Beijing, and IFK International Research Center for Cultural Studies, Vienna. She has published extensively on Ming/Qing travel literature as well as modern and contemporary Chinese/Sinophone literature, theatre and film, focusing on aesthetic negotiations, socio-historical issues, and theoretical discourses and debates.