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Eileen Chang (p=Zhāng Àilíng；September 30, 1920 – September 8, 1995), also known as Chang Ai-ling or Zhang Ailing, or by her pen name Liang Jing (梁京), was a Chinese people-born American essayist, novelist, and screenwriter.
Chang was born to an aristocratic lineage and educated bilingually in Shanghai. She gained literary prominence in Japanese-occupied Shanghai between 1943 and 1945. However, after the Communists defeated the Nationalists in the Chinese Civil War, she fled the country. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, she was rediscovered by scholars such as C. T. Hsia and Shui Jing. Together with the re-examination of literary histories in the post-Mao era during the late 1970s and early 1980s, she rose again to literary prominence in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mainland China, and the Chinese diaspora communities.Nicole Huang, " Chang, Eileen (Zhang Ailing) 1920–1995." Encyclopedia of Modern China, edited by David Pong, vol. 1, Charles Scribner's Sons, 2009, pp. 193–195. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Accessed 24 Mar. 2019.
In 1922, when Chang was two years old, the family relocated to Tianjin. When she was three, her father introduced her to Tang poetry. Beginning in 1924, her father often brought back prostitutes or concubines and became heavily addicted to opium, which led to fights between her parents. During this time, Chang's mother decided to travel with her aunt to study in France. In 1927, after Chang's father promised to end his drug usage and extramarital affairs, Chang and her mother came back and settled in Shanghai. Chang's parents eventually divorced in 1930; she and her younger brother Zhang Zijing (張子靜; 1921–1997) were raised by their father.
At the age of 18, Chang contracted dysentery. Instead of seeking medical treatment, her father beat her and forced her to stay in her bedroom for six months. Chang eventually ran away to live with her mother and then stayed with her mother for nearly two years, until she went to university.
At an early age, under her mother's influence, Chang began painting, playing piano, and learning English.
In 1939, Chang was accepted to the University of London on a full scholarship, but was unable to attend due to World War II. Instead, she studied English Literature at the University of Hong Kong, where she met her lifelong friend, Fatima Mohideen (炎櫻; died 1995). When Chang was one semester short of earning her degree in December 1941, Hong Kong fell to the Empire of Japan. Chang's famous works were completed during the Japanese occupation.
In 1956, while living in MacDowell Colony, Chang met and became involved with the American screenwriter Ferdinand Reyher, a Philadelphia native nearly 30 years her senior.Stevens, Wallace, and Holly Stevens. “Letters to Ferdinand Reyher: Edited with an Afternote by Holly Stevens.” The Hudson Review, vol. 44, no. 3, 1991, pp. 381–409. JSTOR. During the time they were briefly apart in New York (Chang in New York City, Reyher in Saratoga), Chang wrote to Reyher that she was pregnant with his child. Reyher wrote back to propose. Although Chang did not receive the letter, she telephoned the following morning to inform Reyher she was arriving in Saratoga. Reyher had a chance to propose to her in person, but insisted that he did not want the child. Chang had an abortion shortly afterward. On August 14, 1956, the couple married in New York City. "Eileen Chang and Lust, Caution". Focus Features. November 26, 2007. Retrieved April 26, 2011. After the wedding, the couple moved back to New Hampshire. After suffering a series of strokes, Reyher eventually became paralyzed, before his death on October 8, 1967.
After Chang's death, Stephen Soong (宋淇; 1919–1996) became the executor of her estate, succeeded by his son Roland Soong (宋以朗). In 1997, the Soong family donated some of Chang's manuscripts to the East Asian Library at the University of Southern California, including the English translation of "The Sing-song Girls of Shanghai" and the unfinished manuscript of the novel "The Young Marshall." In 2015, Roland Soong handed Eileen Chang's manuscripts to Hong Kong scholar Rosanna Fong (馮睎乾) for organization and research.
Chang's writing was heavily influenced by the environment in which she lived. Shanghai and Hong Kong in the 1940s were the background of many of her earlier novels. She was known for her "aesthetic ambivalence" where the narrative style and language were reminiscent of the traditional "linked-chapter" novel while the setting was more in line with modern urban melodramas. Chang also sought to probe and examine the psychology of her characters.
In 1943, Chang was introduced to the prominent editor Zhou Shoujuan and gave him a few pieces of her writing. With Zhou's support, Chang soon became the most popular new writer in Shanghai. Within the next two years, she wrote some of her most acclaimed works, including Love in a Fallen City and The Golden Cangue. In her English translation of The Golden Cangue, Chang simplified English expressions and sentence structures to make it easier for readers to understand.
Several short stories and novellas were collected in Romances ( Chuan Qi, 傳奇]]) (1944). It instantly became a bestseller in Shanghai, boosting Chang's reputation and fame among readers and also the Chinese literary circle.
A collection of her essays appeared as Written on Water ( Líu Yán 流言]]) in 1945.Nicole Huang, "Introduction," in Eileen Chang, Written on Water, translated by Andrew F. Jones (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), ix-xvi. Her literary maturity was said to be far beyond her age. As described by Nicole Huang in the introduction to Written on Water, "The essay form became a means for Eileen Chang constantly to redefine the boundaries between life and work, the domestic and the historic, and meticulously to weave a rich private life together with the concerns of a public intellectual." In 20th century China, Chang experimented with new literary language. In her essay entitled "writing of one's own," Chang retrospectively remarks on her use of a new fictional language in her novella Lianhuantao ( Chained Links).
In the early years of her career, Chang was famously associated with this comment:
Chang wrote Naked Earth at the direct request of the USIS and used a plot outline supplied by USIS agents. According to academic Brian DeMare, the book is a consequence of the anti-Communist paranoia of the United States Cold War mentality and lacks the poetry and nuance of Chang's other works.
She also translated a variety of English works into Chinese, most notably The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving. Chang's translation of The Old Man and the Sea was seen as Cold War propaganda for the USIS and is argued to have directly influenced her writing and translating of The Rice Sprout Song.
In the 1960s, Chang was constantly searching for new job opportunities, particularly ones that involved translating or writing screenplays. Chang once tried to adapt a screenplay for Hollywood with Chinese elements, but was unsuccessful because the agent thought the role had too much content and psychological changes. Chang became an American citizen in 1960 and headed to Taiwan for more opportunities, returning to the United States in 1962.
Betrayal is an overarching theme in Chang's later works, notably in her English essay "A Return to the Frontier" (1963) and one of her last novels Little Reunions (2009, published posthumously). Compared to her previous works, there are many more tragedies and betrayals in her writings later in her life.
In 1962, when she resided in San Francisco, Chang started writing the English novel The Young Marshal based on the love story between the Chinese general Zhang Xueliang and his wife, Zhao Yidi, with an aim to break into the American literary world. However, due to the multitude of Chinese names and complex historical background in the book, her editor gave a poor evaluation of the initial chapters, which greatly undermined Chang's confidence in the writing. With her interest in Zhang Xueliang waning, she abandoned the story. In 2014, Eileen Chang's literary executor, Roland Soong, managed to have the unfinished novel published, with a Chinese translation by Zheng Yuantao.
In 1963, Chang also wrote two novels based on her own life: The Fall of the Pagoda and The Book of Change. Both were believed to be her attempts to offer an alternative writing style to mainstream America; she did not succeed. The full-length novels were not published until 2010. "Fall of the Pagoda Records Eileen Chang's Childhood". Beijing Today. April 30, 2010. Retrieved December 19, 2010. "Sept 3: Book Launch – Eileen Chang's The Book of Change". August 27, 2010. Retrieved December 19, 2010. "Eileen Chang's first English autobiographical novel published". People's Daily. Retrieved December 19, 2010.
In 1966, Chang had a writing residency at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. In 1967, Chang held a short-term job at Radcliffe College. In 1969, upon the invitation of Shih-Hsiang Chen, a professor of Oriental Languages at the University of California, Berkeley, Chang became a senior researcher at the Center for Chinese Studies of Berkeley. Her research topics included Chinese Communist terminology and the novel Dream of the Red Chamber. In 1971, the year Chen died, Chang left her post at Berkeley. In 1972, Chang relocated to Los Angeles. In 1975, she completed the English translation of The Sing-song Girls of Shanghai, a late Qing Dynasty novel written in Wu Chinese by Han Bangqing. The manuscript for the translation was found among her papers at the University of Southern California and published posthumously in 2005.
In 1978, Crown Magazine published Chang's novellas Lust, Caution and Fu Hua Lang Rui, as well as her short story "Xiang Jian Huan".
In 1990, Chang began writing an essay "Table of Love and Hate" (愛憎表), a reflection of her thoughts during her school days. The essay was published posthumously in the July 2016 issue (Issue 155) of Taiwan's Ink magazine and in the autumn-winter issue of China's Harvest magazine.
During the 1970s, Chang's legacy had such a significant impact on many creative writers in Taiwan that several generations of "Chang School writers" (張派作家) emerged,Su, Weizheng 蘇偉貞 (2006). Copying: On the Generations of Taiwanese Chang School Creative Writers 描紅：臺灣張派作家世代論 Taipei: Sanmin shuju. notably Chu T’ien-wen, Chu T’ien-hsin, , and Yuan Chiung-chiung.Wang, David Der-wei (2016). Methods to Imagine China. History· Fictional Writing· Narration (想象中国的方法 历史·小说·叙事).Tianjin: Baihua Wenyi chu ban she. p. 248–251.
With collective efforts to unearth the literary histories of the pre-revolutionary days in the post-Mao era, a renewed Eileen Chang "fever" swept through the streets of mainland China. The name Eileen Chang became synonymous with the glories of a bygone era. As with Taiwan in the 1970s, a group of young women authors who were clearly inspired by Chang rose to prominence in the 1980s and 1990s. Other notable Mainland China authors influenced by Chang include Wang Anyi, Su Tong, and Ye Zhaoyan.
Chang has been listed as one of the four women literary geniuses in Shanghai during the Republic of China era, alongside Su Qing, Guan Lu, and Pan Liudai. Chang has also been listed as one of the four women literary geniuses during the Republic of China era, along with Lü Bicheng, Xiao Hong and Shi Pingmei.Lin Shan, Lv Bicheng, A Woman Genius, Beijing: Jilin Publishing Group Ltd., 2012. Dominic Cheung, a poet and professor of East Asian languages at the University of Southern California, said that had it not been for the Chinese civil war, Chang would have been a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature.
A 20-episode TV series, The Legend of Eileen Chang, written by Wang Hui-ling and starring Rene Liu, aired in Taiwan in 2004.
Malaysian singer Victor Wong wrote a song titled "Eileen Chang" ("Zhang Ailing") in 2005.
Taiwanese writer Luo Yijun includes quotations and themes from Chang's writings and life in his novel Daughter.The novel Daughter is featured as a chapter in the collection:
In 2020 on the occasion of the centennial celebration of Chang's birth, an online exhibition Eileen Chang at the University of Hong Kong was presented on the website for the University Museum and Art Gallery, Hong Kong. The exhibition pieced together a narrative that highlights the early stages of Chang's literary career.. Exhibition curated by Nicole Huang 黃心村, Florian Knothe and Kenneth Shing-Kwan Chan 陳承焜.
| Novella |
| Novella |
| Novella; self-translated into English in 1981 |
| Novella |
| Novella |
| Novella |
| Essay collection |
| Novella |
| Novel; originally serialized as 十八春 ( Eighteen Springs) |
| Novella; published under pseudonym Liang Jing |
| Novel; self-translated into English in 1956 |
| Novel; written in English and self-translated into Chinese |
| Novel; written in English |
| Novella |
| Novella |
| Novella; published posthumously |
| Novel; completed in 1979 and published posthumously |
| Novel; written in English; completed in 1963 and published posthumously |
| Novel; written in English; completed in 1963 and published posthumously |
The following are films adapted from Eileen Chang's novels:
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