Eileen Chang
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Eileen Chang (Template:Zh-tsp) (September 30, 1920 – found dead September 8, 1995) was a Chinese writer. She had also used the pseudonym Liang Jing (梁京), which is almost unknown. Her works frequently deal with the tensions between men and women in love.
Life
Born in Shanghai on September 30, 1920, to a renowned family, Eileen Chang's paternal grandfather Zhang Peilun was a son-in-law to Li Hongzhang, an influential Qing court official. Chang was named Zhang Ying (张瑛) at birth. Her family moved to Tianjin in 1922, where she started school at the age of four.
When Chang was five, her birth mother left for Britain after her father took in a concubine and grew addicted to opium. Although she did return four years later, following his promise to quit the drug and split with the concubine, a divorce could not be averted. Chang's unhappy childhood in the broken family probably gave her later works their pessimistic overtone.
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The family moved back to Shanghai in 1928. Two years later, Chang was renamed Eileen (her Chinese first name, Ailing, was actually a transliteration of Eileen) in preparation for her entry into the Saint Maria Girls' School.
During her secondary education, Chang was already deemed a genius in literature. Her writings were published in the school magazine. In 1939, she was accepted into the University of Hong Kong to study Literature. She also received a scholarship to study in the University of London, though the opportunity had to be given up when Hong Kong fell to the Japanese in 1941.
Chang then returned to Shanghai. She fed herself with what she was best at - writing. It was during this period when some of her most acclaimed works, including Qing Cheng Zhi Lian (倾城之恋) and Jin Suo Ji (金锁记), were penned.
Chang met her first husband Hu Lancheng (胡兰成) in 1943 and married him in the following year. She loved him dearly, despite he being already married as well as labelled a traitor to the Japanese. When Japan was defeated in 1945, Hu escaped to Wenzhou, where he fell in love with yet another woman. When Chang traced him to his refuge, she realized she could not salvage the marriage. They finally divorced in 1947.
In 1952, Chang migrated to Hong Kong, where she worked as a translator for the American News Agency for three years. She then left for the United States in the fall of 1955, never to return to Mainland China again.
In New York, Chang met her second husband, the American scriptwriter Ferdinand Reyer, whom she married in August 1956. Reyer was paralyzed after he was hit by strokes in 1961, while Chang was on a trip to Taiwan, and eventually died in 1967. After Lai's death, Chang held short-term jobs at Radcliffe College and UC Berkeley.
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Chang relocated to Los Angeles in 1973. Two years later, she completed the English translation of The Biography of Hai Shang Hua (海上花列傳), a celebrated Qing novel written in the Wu dialect.
Chang was found dead in her apartment on September 8, 1995, by her Iranian landlord. According to her will, she was cremated without any open funeral and her ashes were released to the Pacific Ocean.
Bibliography
Chang's main works include:
- Ban Sheng Yuan (半生缘, Yuan of Half a Life, also known as Eighteen Springs)
- Qing Cheng Zhi Lian (倾城之恋, Love that Falls a City)
- Jin Suo Ji (金锁记, Record of a Golden Lock)
- Hong Meigui Yu Bai Meigui (红玫瑰与白玫瑰, The Red Rose and the White Rose)