Talented Daughters of the Civil War
During the Republican era, there were four major literary talents in Shanghai: Zhang Eiling, Su Qing, Guan Lu, and Pan Liudai, the first two of whom are best known for their sympathy. Su Qing said, “I only look at Zhang Eiling,” while Zhang Eiling said, “I can’t be proud of comparing myself with Bing Xin and Bai Wei, but I am willing to be compared with Su Qing.”
The self-respecting Eileen Chang came from a famous family, her real name was Zhang Ying, her grandfather Zhang Peilun was the son-in-law of Li Hongzhang, a famous minister in the late Qing Dynasty, and her grandmother Li Ju Couple was the eldest daughter of Li Hongzhang. Her father, Zhang Zhiyi, was a typical relic, and her mother, Huang Suqiong, had traveled to England and was more Europeanized. Growing up in such a family, Eileen Chang first studied in private schools and then entered an aristocratic school.
When Zhang Ying was 10 years old, in 1930, her parents divorced, and in that year, her name was changed to Zhang Eiling for the convenience of enrolling in high school. “At the age of 14, Zhang Zhiyi married Sun Youfan, and Zhang Eiling and her younger brother Zhang Zijing grew up under the abuse of their stepmother. At one point, Sun Youfan slandered Zhang Zhiyi, who not only beat her severely, but also pulled out a pistol and threatened to kill her. These experiences during her adolescence were not unrelated to the formation of Eileen Chang’s withdrawn, high-strung and sensitive personality.
At the age of 19, Eileen went to the University of Hong Kong to study at the Faculty of Arts, and at the end of 1941, after the Japanese occupied Hong Kong, Eileen returned to Shanghai to study at St. John’s University, where she dropped out for financial reasons. In the two years of 1943 and 1944, Zhang Eiling shot to fame in Shanghai by publishing short and medium-length novels such as Crumbs of Shen Xiang, Love in a Fallen City, Heart Sutra, and The Golden Lock. From those flowing words, you will feel that her grasp of the world and human feelings is so exquisite, rounded, calm and full of worldly sentiments. Perhaps it was this wisdom, this insight into worldly affairs, that helped her escape from the calamities of life.
During this period, Zhang Eiling met Hu Lancheng, a writer and deputy head of the propaganda department of Wang Jingwei’s regime, with whom she became emotionally entangled, and in 1944, they secretly married. In 1944, they secretly got married. However, Hu Lancheng, who was a flirtatious man by nature, lived with another person outside of marriage, and finally Zhang Eiling chose to break up with him in 1947.
After watching the Chinese Communist Party, she chose to leave
Before the establishment of the Chinese Communist Party in 1949, Zhang Eiling had some illusions about the “liberated areas” of the Chinese Communist Party due to hearsay, and wrote two novels, “Eighteen Springs” and “Xiao Ai”, which had positive comments on the Chinese Communist Party. For this reason, she stayed in Shanghai after 1949 with a wait-and-see attitude. Naturally, the Chinese Communist Party could not forget to “take under its wing” this famous writer on the Shanghai Bund.
In July and August 1950, under the arrangement of Xia Yan, a Shanghai cultural official and the CCP’s royal literary figure, Zhang Eiling accompanied a Shanghai literary delegation to the rural areas of northern Jiangsu to participate in the land reform work.
This two-month period was the closest she had ever been to the Chinese public, but it was also the most embarrassing and painful period for her. The “poverty and backwardness” and “excessive struggle” she saw were far from the “writing about heroes” and “glorifying the land reform” she was asked to write at that time. “She was confused between what to write, what not to write, and what to write. She admitted that she could not write “works of the type generally referred to as ‘monuments’ of the times”, and that she “did not intend to try”. She felt that she did not fit in with the society, and her keen insight led her to leave. Her relationship with Hu Lancheng, the constant comments about her as a “cultural traitor” and the threats from the political side finally made her leave mainland China.
In July 1952, at the age of 32, Zhang Eiling refused to be retained by Xia Yan and left for Hong Kong on the pretext of “continuing her studies at the University of Hong Kong, which had been suspended due to the war”, and then for the United States. At this time, the Chinese Communist government was not as strict as it would later be in censoring departures.
Soon after Zhang’s departure, the Communist Party launched one campaign after another in mainland China. If Zhang had stayed on the mainland, she would not have escaped the “Anti-Rightist Movement” in 1957, let alone the Cultural Revolution that followed. Had she stayed on the mainland, her arrogance might have made her choose to kill herself, just as Fu Lei and Lao She did, with the belief that “a man can be killed but not humiliated”. However, Eileen Chang was Eileen Chang, and her insight into the current situation allowed her to escape from bad luck and die at the age of seventy-four.
The blocked novel
After Zhang Eiling left China for Hong Kong, she wrote two novels, “Love on the Red Earth” and “Yangge”. Although all of Zhang’s other novels can be published in China, these two novels have been blocked by the Chinese Communist Party because of their anti-communist content.
The novel depicts the destruction and control of humanity by the Chinese Communist Party, which has no place for the individual, let alone free will, in front of the Party, which controls the whole society. Yangge, on the other hand, shows the brutality of the Communist Party’s violent agrarian reform and how the peasants’ resistance is broken down and they are finally reduced to slaves of the regime. The imagery of “Yangge” is a metaphor for the people’s forced smiles and pretended happiness, revealing the distortion of the peasants’ souls under political oppression.
In her novel, Zhang Eiling predicts, “The times are rushed, already in the midst of destruction, and there is still more destruction to come.”
Conclusion
True to Eileen Chang’s prediction, China suffered unprecedented destruction under the Chinese Communist Party, and at least 80 million Chinese were persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party. How wise was Eileen Chang’s turn to leave back then?
2017-06-13
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