| Works: Works by Eileen Chang |
| 1955 | The Rice Sprout Song. The first book published after this highly praised Chinese author immigrates to the United States probes the ironies of life under the Communists. Chang's inspiration for the novel is a newspaper article about a party member who finds himself questioning orders to shoot peasants who are raiding a granary during a famine. His potential victims, he realizes, are the very ones responsible for filling the granary. |
| Wikipedia: Eileen Chang |
| Eileen Chang 張愛玲 |
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| Born | September 30, 1920 Shanghai, China |
| Died | September 8, 1995 (aged 74) Los Angeles, California, United States |
| Pen name | Liang Jing |
| Occupation | novelist, essayist, screenwriter |
| Writing period | 1932-1995 |
| Genres | Literary fiction |
| Spouse(s) | Hu Lancheng (1944-1947) Ferdinand Reyer (1956-1967) |
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Eileen Chang (simplified Chinese: 张爱玲; traditional Chinese: 張愛玲; pinyin: Zhāng Ailíng) (born Zhang Ying (张瑛); September 30, 1920–September 8, 1995) was a Chinese writer. She also used the pseudonym Liang Jing (梁京), though very rarely.
Her works frequently deal with the tensions between men and women in love, and are considered by some scholars to be among the best Chinese literature of the period. Chang's portrayal of life in 1940s Shanghai and occupied Hong Kong is remarkable in its focus on everyday life and the absence of the political subtext which characterised many other writers of the period. Yuan Qiongqiong was an author in Taiwan that styled her literature exposing feminism after Eileen Chang's. A poet and a professor at University of Southern California, Dominic Cheung, said that "had it not been for the political division between the Nationalist and Communist Chinese, she would have almost certainly won a Nobel Prize".[1]
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Chang was born in Shanghai on September 30, 1920 to a renowned family. Her paternal grandfather, Zhang Peilun (張佩綸), was son-in-law to Li Hongzhang, an influential Qing court official, and her maternal grandfather, Huang Yisheng (黄翼升) was a prominent naval commander.
In 1922, her family moved to Tianjin, where she started school at the age of four. When Chang was five, her mother left for the United Kingdom after her father took in a concubine and later became addicted to opium. Although Chang's mother did return four years later following her husband's promise to quit the drug and separate from the concubine, a divorce could not be averted. Chang's unhappy childhood in a broken family could very well have contributed to the pessimistic overtone in her later works.
The family moved back to Shanghai in 1928, and two years later, her parents divorced. Chang was renamed Ailing, a transliteration of Eileen, in preparation for her entry into the Saint Maria Girls' School. By now, Chang had started to read Dream of the Red Chamber, one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature, which would influence her work throughout her career. Even in secondary school, Chang already displayed great talent in writing and her writings were published in the school magazine. In 1932, she wrote her debut short novel.
After a fight with her stepmother and her father, she ran away from home to stay with her mother in 1938. Chang received a scholarship to study at the University of London in the following year, but had to give up the opportunity because of the ongoing war in China. Instead, she went to study literature at the University of Hong Kong and met her life-long friend Fatima Mohideen (炎樱) there. When Chang was just one semester short of earning her degree, Hong Kong fell to the Empire of Japan on December 25, 1941 and Chang had to leave occupied Hong Kong for her native Shanghai.
Her original plan was to finish her bachelor's degree at Saint John's University, but she had to drop out after only two months due to a lack of money. She refused to get a teaching or editorial job, as she was determined to do what she was best at—writing.
In the spring of 1943, Chang was introduced to a famous editor, Shoujuan Zhou (周瘦鹃), and gave him a few pieces of her writing. With Zhou's backing, Chang soon became the hottest new writer in Shanghai. Between 1943 and 1944, she wrote some of her most acclaimed works, including Qing Cheng Zhi Lian (倾城之恋) and Jin Suo Ji (金锁记). Her literary maturity was said to be beyond her age.
Chang met her first husband Hu Lancheng (胡兰成) in the winter of 1943 and married him in the following year in a secret ceremony. Fatima Mohideen was the witness. At the time of their relationship, Hu Lancheng was still married to his third wife. Chang loved him dearly in spite of both this and his being labeled a traitor for collaborating with the Japanese.
After the marriage, Hu Lancheng went to Wuhan to work for a newspaper. When he stayed at a hospital in Wuhan, he seduced a 17-year-old nurse, Zhou Xunde (周训德), who soon moved in with him. When Japan was defeated in 1945, Hu used a fake name and hid in Wenzhou, where he fell in love with yet another country girl, Fan Xiumei (范秀美). When Chang tracked him to his refuge, she realized she could not salvage the marriage. They finally divorced in 1947.
In the spring of 1952, Chang migrated back to Hong Kong, where she worked as a translator for the United States Information Service for three years. She then left for the United States in the fall of 1955, never to return to Mainland China again.
In MacDowell Colony, Chang met her second husband, the American screenwriter Ferdinand Reyher, whom she married on August 14, 1956. While they were briefly apart (Chang in New York City, Reyher in Saratoga, New York), Chang wrote to Reyher that she was pregnant with his child. Reyher wrote back to propose. Although Chang did not receive the letter, she called the next day telling Reyher she was going up to Saratoga. Reyher got a chance to propose to her in person, but insisted that he did not want the child.
After their marriage, they stayed in New York City until October 1956 before moving back to MacDowell Colony. Chang became a U.S. citizen in July 1960, then went to Taiwan to look for more opportunities (October 1961 - March 1962). Reyher had been hit by strokes from time to time, and eventually became paralyzed. Reyher died on October 8, 1967. After Reyher's death, Chang held short-term jobs at Radcliffe College (1967) and UC Berkeley (1969-1972).
Chang relocated to Los Angeles in 1972. Three years later, she completed the English translation of The Sing-song Girls of Shanghai (海上花列傳, literally Biographies of Shanghai Flowers, or Courtesans), a celebrated Qing novel in the Wu dialect by Han Bangqing (韓邦慶, 1856-1894). The manuscript for the translated English version was found after her death, among her papers at the University of Southern California, and published. Chang became increasingly reclusive in her later years.
Chang was found dead in her apartment on Rochester Avenue in Westwood, California on September 8, 1995, by her landlord. That she was found days after her death testifies to her seclusion. Her death certificate states that the immediate cause of her death was Arteriosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease (ASCVD). She was survived by her brother Zhang Zijing (张子静) (December 11, 1921- October 12, 1997). Neither Chang nor her brother had any children. Chang's life-long friend Fatima Mohideen died a few months earlier, in June 1995 in New York. According to Chang's will, Chang was cremated without any memorial services and her ashes were released into the Pacific Ocean.
She willed all her possessions to Stephen Soong (宋淇) (who died December 3, 1996) and his wife Mae Fong Soong (鄺文美) in Hong Kong. After Stephen and Mae Fong Soong's death, their daughter and son, Elaine and Roland, hold the Estate of Eileen Chang's works.
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Chang wrote several film scripts. Some of her works have been filmed and shown on the silver screen as well.
The following are the scripts that Eileen Chang wrote as a screenwriter:
The following are films adapted from Eileen Chang's novels:
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
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Copyrights:
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 | Works. The Chronology of American Literature, edited by Daniel S. Burt. Copyright © 2004 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more |
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