Eileen Chang (traditional Chinese: 張愛玲; simplified Chinese: 张爱玲; pinyin: Zhāng Àilíng; Wade–Giles: Chang Ai-ling; September 30, 1920 – September 8, 1995), also known as Chang Ai-ling, Zhang Ailing, or by her pen name Liang Jing (梁京), was a Chinese and American writer. She was born in Shanghai to a family with a noble background and learned to read and write in both Chinese and English. Between 1943 and 1945, she became well-known for her writing in Japanese-occupied Shanghai. In 1952, she moved from the newly formed People's Republic of China to British Hong Kong and later to the United States. Since she was rediscovered in the late 1960s, she has become one of the most widely read and highly praised writers in the Chinese-speaking world.

Life

Chang was born Zhang Ying in Shanghai, China on September 30, 1920. She was the first child of Zhang Zhiyi and Huang Suqiong. Chang’s maternal great-grandfather, Huang Yisheng, was a well-known naval commander. Her paternal grandfather, Zhang Peilun, married Li Ju’ou and became the son-in-law of Li Hongzhang, an important official in the Qing court. Chang was also raised by her paternal aunt, Zhang Maoyuan.

In 1922, when Chang was two years old, the family moved to Tianjin. At age three, her father introduced her to Tang poetry. Starting in 1924, her father often brought home additional wives and became addicted to opium, which caused arguments between her parents. During this time, Chang’s mother decided to travel with her aunt to study in France. In 1927, after her father promised to stop using drugs and having affairs, Chang and her mother returned to Shanghai. Chang’s parents eventually divorced in 1930; she and her younger brother, Zhang Zijing, were raised by their father.

At age 18, Chang became very sick with dysentery. Instead of seeking medical help, 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 stayed with her for nearly two years until she went to university.

Chang started school at age 4. She became very skilled in English in addition to her native Chinese. In 1937, she graduated from an all-female Christian boarding high school, St. Mary’s Hall in Shanghai, even though her family was not religious.

At a young age, influenced by her mother, Chang began painting, playing the piano, and learning English.

In 1939, Chang was accepted to the University of London with a full scholarship, but she could not attend because of World War II. Instead, she studied English literature at the University of Hong Kong, where she met her lifelong friend, Fatima Mohideen. When Chang was one semester away from finishing her degree in December 1941, Hong Kong was taken over by the Empire of Japan. Chang’s famous works were written during the Japanese occupation.

In 1943, Chang met her first husband, Hu Lancheng, when she was 23 and he was 37. They married the following year in a private ceremony, with Fatima Mohideen as the only guest. During the short time Hu courted Chang, he was still married to his third wife. Although Hu was labeled a traitor for working with the Japanese during World War II, Chang remained loyal to him. Soon after, Hu moved to Wuhan to work for a newspaper. While staying at a local hospital, he seduced a 17-year-old nurse, Zhou Xunde, who later moved in with him. After Japan was defeated in 1945, Hu used a different name and hid in Wenzhou, where he married Fan Xiumei. Chang and Hu divorced in 1947.

In 1956, while living at MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire, Chang met Ferdinand Reyher, an American screenwriter nearly 30 years older than her. During a time when they were briefly apart in 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 to tell Reyher she was arriving in Saratoga. Reyher had the chance to propose in person but refused, saying he did not want the child. Chang had an abortion shortly after. On August 14, 1956, the couple married in New York City. After the wedding, they moved back to New Hampshire. After suffering from strokes, Reyher became paralyzed and died on October 8, 1967.

On September 8, 1995, Chang was found dead in her apartment on Rochester Avenue in Westwood, Los Angeles, by her landlord. Friends said she had died of natural causes several days before her body was discovered, after she stopped answering her phone. Her death certificate states she died from cardiovascular disease. As requested in her will, she was cremated without a memorial service, and her ashes were scattered in the Pacific Ocean.

After Chang’s death, Stephen Soong became the executor of her estate, later succeeded by his son, Roland Soong. 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 Young Marshall. In 2015, Roland Soong gave Chang’s manuscripts to Hong Kong scholar Rosanna Fong for organization and research.

Career

At the age of 10, Chang’s mother gave her the name Aìlíng, which is a version of the name Eileen written in Chinese letters. This happened because Chang was preparing to attend an English school. While in high school, Chang read Dream of the Red Chamber, one of the four most famous classical novels in Chinese literature. This book influenced her writing throughout her life. Chang showed strong talent in writing, and her work was published in the school magazine. The next year, at the age of 12, she wrote her first short novel.

Chang’s writing was shaped by the places she lived. Shanghai and Hong Kong in the 1940s were settings for many of her early novels. Her writing style mixed traditional storytelling with modern stories about city life. She also focused on understanding the feelings and thoughts of her characters.

In 1943, Chang met Zhou Shoujuan, a well-known editor. She gave him some of her writing, and with his help, she became one of the most popular new writers in Shanghai. In the next two years, she wrote some of her most famous works, including Love in a Fallen City and The Golden Cangue. In her English version of The Golden Cangue, Chang used simpler sentences and words to make the story easier to read.

In 1944, several of Chang’s short stories and novellas were collected in a book called Romances (Chuan Qi). The book became very popular in Shanghai, increasing Chang’s fame among readers and in the literary world.

In 1945, a book of Chang’s essays titled Written on Water (Líu Yán) was published. Her writing was considered very mature for her age. In the introduction to Written on Water, Nicole Huang wrote that Chang used essays to explore the connection between personal life and public issues. Chang experimented with new ways of writing in the 20th century. In an essay called “Writing of One’s Own,” she reflected on how she used a new kind of language in her novella Lianhuantao (Chained Links).

In the early years of her career, Chang was known for a comment about her writing.

In 1945, Chang’s popularity decreased because of cultural and political changes after World War II. This decline worsened after the Nationalist government lost the Chinese Civil War to the Communists. In 1952, she left mainland China for Hong Kong, ending her writing career in Shanghai. In Hong Kong, she worked for the United States Information Service (USIS), which promoted American interests abroad. During this time, she wrote two anti-Communist books: The Rice Sprout Song (Yang Ge) and Naked Earth (Chidi zhi lian, sometimes called Love in Redland). She later translated both books into Chinese and published them in Taiwan. The Rice Sprout Song was her first novel written entirely in English.

Chang wrote Naked Earth at the request of USIS agents, who provided her with a plot outline. According to Brian DeMare, the book reflects the fear of Communism during the Cold War and lacks the poetic style found in her other works.

Chang also translated English books into Chinese, including The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving. Her translation of The Old Man and the Sea was used as Cold War propaganda by the USIS and influenced her writing of The Rice Sprout Song.

In 1955, Chang moved to the United States, where she struggled to become an English writer. Her work was often rejected by publishers. Her move from Hong Kong to the U.S. marked a major change in her career.

In the 1960s, Chang looked for jobs in translation or screenplay writing. She tried to adapt a screenplay for Hollywood with Chinese themes but failed because an agent thought the story had too much complex content. In 1960, she became an American citizen and moved to Taiwan for more opportunities, returning to the U.S. in 1962.

Betrayal is a common theme in Chang’s later works, such as her English essay A Return to the Frontier (1963) and her final novel Little Reunions (2009, published after her death). Her later writings contain more tragedies and betrayals than her earlier works.

In 1962, while living in San Francisco, Chang began writing The Young Marshal, a novel about the love story between Chinese general Zhang Xueliang and his wife, Zhao Yidi. She hoped this would help her gain recognition in America. However, the book’s many Chinese names and complex history led her editor to criticize the early chapters, which hurt her confidence. She eventually stopped working on the story. In 2014, her literary executor, Roland Soong, published the unfinished novel, 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. These were her attempts to write in a style different from mainstream American literature, but they were not published until 2010.

In 1966, Chang had a writing residency at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. In 1967, she worked briefly at Radcliffe College. In 1969, she became a senior researcher at the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, under the invitation of professor Shih-Hsiang Chen. Her research focused on Chinese Communist terms and the novel Dream of the Red Chamber. In 1971, after Chen’s death, Chang left Berkeley. In 1972, she moved to Los Angeles. In 1975, she completed the English translation of The Sing-song Girls of Shanghai, a late Qing novel written in Wu Chinese by Han Bangqing. The manuscript was later found at the University of Southern California and published after her death 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 titled Table of Love and Hate (Aizengbiao), which reflected her thoughts from her school years. The essay was published after her death in the July 2016 issue of Taiwan’s Ink magazine and in the autumn-winter issue of China’s Harvest magazine.

Influence

Eileen Chang was a writer who focused on real life and modern ideas. Her most important work was creating a unique story about wartime experiences. Instead of writing about large events like national salvation or revolution, she wrote about the small, everyday lives of ordinary people during times of social change and violence. She also showed modern history through vivid descriptions of colors, shapes, and emotions, and by comparing historical events with personal, domestic life.

In the 1970s, Chang’s influence helped many writers in Taiwan. This led to the rise of a group of writers known as the "Chang School writers," including Chu T’ien-wen, Chu T’ien-hsin, Lin Yao-de, and Yuan Chiung-chiung.

After the 1970s, during the post-Mao era, people in mainland China began studying literary history from before the revolution. This renewed interest in Eileen Chang’s work made her name closely linked to the achievements of a past time. Similar to how she inspired writers in Taiwan, Chang influenced many young women writers in mainland China during the 1980s and 1990s. Other writers who were inspired by her include Wang Anyi, Su Tong, and Ye Zhaoyan.

Eileen Chang was listed as one of four important female writers in Shanghai during the Republic of China era. These women included Su Qing, Guan Lu, and Pan Liudai. She was also listed as one of four important female writers during the same time, along with Lü Bicheng, Xiao Hong, and Shi Pingmei. Dominic Cheung, a poet and professor at the University of Southern California, said that if the Chinese civil war had not happened, Chang might have won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

In popular culture

Eileen Chang's stories are often turned into movies and plays. One well-known movie is Lust, Caution (2007), directed by Ang Lee. This film is based on Chang's novella of the same name and features actors Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Tang Wei. The movie received the Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival and the Golden Horse Award for best film in 2007. Other films based on Chang's work include Love in a Fallen City (1984) and Love After Love (2020). The 2020 film is based on Chang's story Aloeswood Incense: The First Brazier, and both Love in a Fallen City and Love After Love were directed by Ann Hui. Love in a Fallen City was also made into plays by the Hong Kong Repertory Theatre in 1987, 2002, and 2005. In 2006, the theatre performed the play in Cantonese in New York, Shanghai, and Toronto.

A 20-episode television series titled The Legend of Eileen Chang, written by Wang Hui-ling and starring Rene Liu, was shown in Taiwan in 2004.

In 2005, Malaysian singer Victor Wong released a song titled "Eileen Chang" ("Zhang Ailing").

Taiwanese writer Luo Yijun used quotes and themes from Chang's writing and life in his novel Daughter.

In 2020, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Chang's birth, the University of Hong Kong hosted an online exhibition titled Eileen Chang on its museum website. The exhibition showed how Chang began her career as a writer.

Films

The following scripts were written by Chang:

• Bu Liao Qing (1947) (不了情, Unending Love, based on the novel 多少恨, published as a movie script)
• Long Live the Mistress! (1947) (太太萬歲, Long Live the Missus!)
• Miserable at Middle Age (1949) (哀樂中年)
• The Golden Cangue (1950) (金鎖記)
• The Battle of Love (1957) (情場如戰場, script written in 1956)
• A Tale of Two Wives (1958) (人財兩得, script written in 1956)
• The Wayward Husband (1959) (桃花運, script written in 1956)
• The June Bride (1960) (六月新娘)
• The Greatest Wedding on Earth (1962) (南北一家親)
• Father Takes a Bride (1963) (小兒女)
• The Greatest Love Affair on Earth (1964) (南北喜相逢)
• Please Remember Me (1964) (一曲難忘, also known as 魂歸離恨天)

The following are films based on Eileen Chang's novels:

• Love in a Fallen City (1984) (傾城之戀)
• Rouge of the North (1988) (怨女)
• Red Rose White Rose (1994) (紅玫瑰與白玫瑰)
• Eighteen Springs (1997) (半生緣)
• Lust, Caution (2007) (色，戒)
• Love After Love (2020) (第一爐香)

Portrait

Zhang Ailing. A portrait created by Kong Kai Ming, displayed at the Portrait Gallery of Chinese Writers, which is located in the Hong Kong Baptist University Library.