Eileen Chang facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Eileen Chang
Chang in British Hong Kong in 1954
Born	Zhang Ying (張煐) (1920-09-30)September 30, 1920 Shanghai, Republic of China
Died	September 8, 1995(1995-09-08) (aged 74) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Pen name	Liang Jing (梁京)
Occupation	Novelist essayist literature author playwright screenwriter short story writer
Education	St. Mary's Hall
Alma mater	University of Hong Kong St. John's University
Period	1932–1995
Genre	Literary fiction
Spouse	Hu Lancheng ​ ​ (m. 1944; div. 1947)​ Ferdinand Reyher ​ ​ (m. 1956; died 1967)​
Relatives	Zhang Peilun (grandfather) Li Hongzhang (great-grandfather)
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese	張愛玲
Simplified Chinese	张爱玲
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Zhāng Àilíng Gwoyeu Romatzyh Jang Ayling Wade–Giles Chang1 Ai4-ling2
Liang Jing
Chinese	梁京
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Liáng Jīng Wade–Giles Liang2 Ching1

Eileen Chang (traditional Chinese: 張愛玲; simplified Chinese: 张爱玲; pinyin: Zhāng Àilíng; Wade–Giles: Chang¹ Ai⁴-ling²), born on September 30, 1920, and passing away on September 8, 1995, was a famous Chinese-American writer. She was also known as Chang Ai-ling or Zhang Ailing. Sometimes, she used the pen name Liang Jing.

Eileen Chang was a well-known female writer in Chinese literature. She was famous for showing what life was like in Shanghai and Hong Kong during the 1940s. She came from a noble family and learned both Chinese and English in Shanghai.

She became very popular as a writer in Shanghai between 1943 and 1945, when Japan occupied the city. Later, after the Communist Party took control of China, she left the country. In the 1960s and 1970s, people rediscovered her work. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, she became famous again in Taiwan, Hong Kong, mainland China, and among Chinese people living abroad. By the early 1990s, she was popular in China once more.

Chang was a writer who focused on real-life events and modern ideas. She was special because she wrote about wartime in a unique way. Instead of big stories about national heroes, she wrote about the small, everyday lives of ordinary people. She showed how social changes and violence affected men and women in their daily routines. Her writing also used colors, lines, and moods to describe history. She often mixed historical events with scenes from home life.

Life Story

Growing Up in China

Eileen Chang was born Zhang Ying (張煐) in Shanghai, China, on September 30, 1920. She was the first child of Zhang Zhiyi and Huang Suqiong. Her family had a long history of important people. Her great-grandfather, Huang Yisheng, was a famous naval commander. Her grandfather, Zhang Peilun, married the daughter of Li Hongzhang, a very important official in the Qing court. Eileen also spent her childhood with her paternal aunt, Zhang Maoyuan.

In 1922, when Eileen was two, her family moved to Tianjin. When she was three, her father introduced her to classic Chinese poetry. Around this time, her mother decided to travel to France to study. In 1927, Eileen and her mother returned and settled in Shanghai. Her parents divorced in 1930. After that, Eileen and her younger brother, Zhang Zijing, were raised by their father.

School Days

The gate of Eddington House in Shanghai, where Eileen Chang lived in 1942.

Eileen Chang started school at age four. She became very good at English, in addition to her native Chinese. In 1937, she finished high school at St. Mary's Hall, Shanghai, which was an all-girls Christian boarding school. Her family was not religious, but she still attended.

From a young age, her mother encouraged her to paint, play piano, and learn English. These activities helped her develop her talents.

In 1939, Chang was accepted to the University of London with a full scholarship. However, she could not go because World War II had started. Instead, she studied English Literature at the University of Hong Kong. There, she met her lifelong friend, Fatima Mohideen. In December 1941, Hong Kong was taken over by Japan. Chang was just one semester away from finishing her degree. Many of her famous works were written during this time of Japanese occupation.

Marriages and Family Life

In 1943, Eileen Chang met her first husband, Hu Lancheng. She was 23, and he was 37. They got married the next year in a small ceremony. Hu Lancheng had worked with the Japanese during World War II. Even though this made him unpopular after the war, Chang remained loyal to him for a time. They divorced in 1947.

Later, while living in New Hampshire, Chang met an American screenwriter named Ferdinand Reyher. He was nearly 30 years older than her. They married on August 14, 1956, in New York City. After their wedding, they moved back to New Hampshire. Ferdinand Reyher became ill and passed away on October 8, 1967.

Later Years and Passing

On September 8, 1995, Eileen Chang was found deceased in her apartment in Los Angeles. Her landlord discovered her body after she had not answered her phone. Friends believed she had passed away naturally a few days earlier. Her death certificate stated she died from heart disease. According to her wishes, she was cremated without a memorial service. Her ashes were scattered in the Pacific Ocean.

After her death, Song Qi was in charge of her literary works.

Writing Career

Early Success in Shanghai

When Eileen was 10, her mother changed her name to Aìlíng, which sounds like "Eileen." This was to prepare her for an English school. In high school, Chang read Dream of the Red Chamber, a very important Chinese novel. This book greatly influenced her writing throughout her life.

Eileen showed great talent for writing, and her stories were published in her school magazine. The next year, at age 12, she wrote her first short novel.

Chang's writing was deeply affected by the places she lived. Shanghai and Hong Kong in the 1940s became the settings for many of her early novels. She was known for mixing old and new styles in her stories. Her language and way of telling stories were like traditional Chinese novels, but her settings were modern city dramas. She also liked to explore the inner thoughts and feelings of her characters.

In 1943, Chang met a famous editor named Zhou Shoujuan. She gave him some of her writings. With his help, Chang quickly became a very popular new writer in Shanghai. Over the next two years, she wrote some of her most famous works. These included Love in a Fallen City (Qing Cheng Zhi Lian) and The Golden Cangue. When she translated The Golden Cangue into English, she made the sentences simple so more readers could understand it.

Several of her short stories and novellas were put together in a book called Romances (Chuan Qi) in 1944. It quickly became a bestseller in Shanghai. This book made Chang even more famous among readers and in Chinese literary circles.

A collection of her essays, Written on Water (Líu Yán), came out in 1945. People said her writing was very mature for her age. Nicole Huang, who wrote an introduction to Written on Water, said that Chang used essays to connect her life and work. She skillfully blended her private life with bigger public ideas. In 20th-century China, Chang experimented with new ways of writing. In her essay "writing of one's own," she looked back at how she used a new fictional language in her novella Chained Links.

Moving to Hong Kong

After World War II, Chang's popularity decreased because of cultural and political changes. The situation got worse after the Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War in 1949. Eileen Chang realized her writing career in Shanghai was over. So, in 1952, she left mainland China for Hong Kong.

In Hong Kong, she worked for the United States Information Service (USIS). This organization promoted American interests abroad. During this time, she wrote two books that were against communism: The Rice-Sprout Song (Yang Ge) and Naked Earth (Chidi zhi lian). She later translated both of these into Chinese and published them in Taiwan. The Rice-Sprout Song was her first novel written completely in English.

Chang also translated many English books into Chinese. Some of the most famous were The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving.

She then left for the United States in 1955 and never returned to mainland China. Chang found inspiration not only from Western novels but also from local Chinese stories. She did not agree that her works were about war or revolution, and she did not see a connection to Tolstoy's War and Peace.

Life in the United States

In 1955, Chang moved to America. She tried to find a job as an English writer but was not successful. Many publishers rejected her work. Moving from Hong Kong to the U.S. in the 1950s was a big change for Chang. She went from being a famous author to a regular writer.

In the 1960s, Chang was always looking for new job opportunities, especially in translating and writing movie scripts. She once tried to adapt a script for Hollywood with Chinese themes. However, the agent thought the main character had too many changes and too much depth for a Hollywood film. Chang became a U.S. citizen in 1960. She traveled to Taiwan for more opportunities and returned to the U.S. in 1962.

A common theme in Chang's later works is betrayal. This can be seen in her English essay "A Return to the Frontier" (1963) and one of her last novels, Little Reunions (2009). Her later writings often contained more sad events and betrayals compared to her earlier works.

When Chang arrived in America, she started writing three novels based on her own life: The Fall of the Pagoda, The Book of Change, and Little Reunions. In 1963, she finished her English semi-autobiographical novels, The Fall of the Pagoda and The Book of Change. She hoped these would offer a different writing style to American readers, but they were not successful at the time. These full-length novels were not published until 2010, 15 years after she passed away. These three novels helped bring Chang's fame back and drew new attention to her works. In 1966, Chang had a writing residency at Miami University in Oxford. In 1967, she had a short-term job at Radcliffe College.

In 1969, a professor named Shih-Hsiang Chen invited Chang to be a senior researcher at the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She researched special terms used by Chinese Communists and also studied Dream of the Red Chamber. In 1971, Professor Chen passed away, and Chang left her position at Berkeley. In 1972, Chang moved to Los Angeles. In 1975, she finished the English translation of Shanghai Flowers, a famous novel from the Qing Dynasty. The manuscript for this translation was found after her death and later published.

Chang's later writing style was greatly shaped by her own difficult life experiences. For example, she often wrote about betrayals between mothers and daughters. As she turned her memories into many autobiographies, her later writing style became more refined. Chang was skilled at describing the small details of families in her novels. This helped her readers understand the characters' feelings and situations.

Eileen Chang is considered one of China's four "women geniuses," along with Lü Bicheng, Xiao Hong, and Shi Pingmei.

Her Impact on Others

In the 1970s, Eileen Chang's work had a huge impact on many writers in Taiwan. Several generations of "Chang School writers" emerged, meaning writers who were inspired by her style. Some notable Taiwanese authors include Chu T’ien-wen, Chu T’ien-hsin, and Yuan Chiung-chiung.

Later, in mainland China, after the Mao era, people started looking back at older literary works. This led to a new "Eileen Chang fever" across the country. Her name became a symbol of a glorious time from the past. Just like in Taiwan, a group of young women authors in the 1980s and 1990s were clearly inspired by Chang. Some important mainland Chinese authors influenced by her include Wang Anyi, Su Tong, and Ye Zhaoyan.

Dominic Cheung, a poet and professor, once said that if it weren't for the Chinese civil war, Eileen Chang might have won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

A film based on Chang's novel ..., Caution received mixed reviews but became one of the most discussed films in recent years. It won awards at the Venice Film Festival and the Golden Horse Award in 2007. The famous director Ang Lee directed the film, and it starred well-known actors Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Tang Wei.

One of Chang's most famous works, Love in a Fallen City, has been adapted into stage plays by the Hong Kong Repertory Theatre multiple times. In 2006, the play was even performed in New York, Shanghai, and Toronto, bringing international attention to her story.

In 1997, some of Chang's original writings were given to the East Asian Library at the University of Southern California (USC). Most of these were works she created in America, including her translation of "The Sing-song Girls of Shanghai."

Works in English Translation

• Half a Lifelong Romance (1948, English: 2016)
• Little Reunions (2018)
• Love in a Fallen City (1943, published in English in 2006)
• The Golden Cangue
• ..., Caution (2007)
• Naked Earth (1956)
• The Rice-Sprout Song: a Novel of Modern China
• The Rouge of the North
• Traces of Love and Other Stories
• The Sing-song Girls of Shanghai (Chang's translation of Han Bangqing's novel)
• Written on Water
• Sealed Off (封鎖)
• Jasmine Tea (茉莉香片)

Films Based on Her Work

Many of Eileen Chang's stories have been made into movies. Here are some of them:

• Qing Cheng Zhi Lian (1984) (傾城之戀, Love in a Fallen City)
• Yuan Nu (1988) (怨女)
• Hong Meigui Yu Bai Meigui (1994) (紅玫瑰與白玫瑰, The Red Rose and the White Rose)
• Ban Sheng Yuan (1997) (半生緣, Eighteen Springs)
• ..., Caution (2007) (色，戒)
• Love After Love (2020 film) (第一爐香)

See also

• Chinese literature