One of the guardians of the Demon Hero, the Demon Hero - Zhang Ailing

Zhang Ailing (1920-1995), whose real name is Zhang Lang, was a famous female writer. His ancestral home is Fengrun, Hebei.

His father was the son of Zhang Peilun, a famous minister in the late Qing Dynasty, his mother was the granddaughter of Huang Yisheng, the commander of the seven provinces of the Yangtze River in the late Qing Dynasty, the daughter of Huang Zongyan, the stepmother was the daughter of Sun Baoqi, the premier of the Beiyang Government, and her grandmother was the youngest daughter of Li Hongzhang.

During the fall of Shanghai, he successively published short and medium stories such as "Agarwood Crumbs, the First Incense", "Love in a Fallen City", "Heart Sutra", and "The Golden Lock", which shook the Shanghai literary circle.

In 1932, Zhang Ailing published her debut short story "Unfortunate Her" in the school's school magazine.

In 1933, her first essay "Twilight" was published in the school magazine.

In 1934, Zhang Ailing's father and the daughter of Sun Baoqi, the former prime minister of the Republic of China, held a wedding, at the same time, Zhang Ailing and her younger brother also grew up under the abuse of her stepmother, Zhang Ailing once beat her because her father listened to her stepmother's slander, and took out a pistol and threatened to kill her, once her younger brother broke a piece of glass, and was beaten by her stepmother.

In 1937, several novels were published in a number of publications, and in the year he graduated from secondary school.

In 1938, after Zhang Ailing had a verbal conflict with her stepmother and father, she ran away from home to join her mother Huang Suqiong.

In 1939, she was awarded a scholarship to the University of London. He was ready to study abroad, but due to the outbreak of the Second World War, he was transferred to the Faculty of Arts of the University of Hong Kong. While studying at the University of Hong Kong, Eileen Chang met a lifelong friend, Fatima Mohideen, a Sri Lankan woman.

After the outbreak of the Pacific War on December 8, 1941, the Japanese army occupied Hong Kong on December 25.

In 1942, Zhang Ailing had to interrupt her studies and return to Shanghai. She attended St. John's University, but two months later she dropped out due to financial hardship. At this time, she chose to engage in literary creation for a living. At that time, she rented an apartment in Eddington on Hurd Road (Changde Apartment). The current address is Room 51, No. 195 Changde Road, Shanghai (moved to Room 65 in 1942), adjacent to my aunt.

She began writing film reviews for English-language newspapers, and in 1943, Eileen Chang met Zhou Shoujuan, a famous writer and editor in Shanghai. Get appreciated. In the two years of 1943 and 1944. He was able to publish a number of sensational short and medium-length stories, including "Agarwood Crumbs: The First Incense", "Love in a Fallen City", "Heart Sutra", "The Golden Lock", etc., and became famous in Shanghai during the fall of the year.

1944 year. Zhang Ailing became acquainted with Hu Lancheng, deputy director of the Propaganda Department of Wang Jingwei's regime and a writer, and had a relationship with him. In 1944, after Hu Lancheng divorced his second wife, he and Zhang Ailing secretly married in Shanghai (only Yan Ying and Hu Lancheng's niece Hu Qingyun were present at the wedding).

Soon, Hu Lancheng went to Wuhan to run a newspaper, and while in the hospital, he seduced a 17-year-old nurse, Zhou Xunde, and lived with him.

In 1945, Japan surrendered, Hu Lancheng assumed the alias Zhang Jiayi and fled to Wenzhou, Zhejiang, where he taught in Wenzhou Middle School. During his exile, Hu Lancheng and Fan Xiumei lived together. In 1946, Zhang Ailing went to Wenzhou to visit.

In 1946, Zhang Ailing cooperated with film director Sang Arc to write a script, which was quite successful. In 1947, Zhang Ailing wrote a letter to join hands with Hu Lan, who was on the run.

After the change of government in Shanghai in 1949, Zhang Ailing stayed in Shanghai.

In 1950, Zhang Ailing participated in the Shanghai Literary and Art Delegation to participate in the land reform in the rural areas of northern Jiangsu for two months, but she was puzzled because she could not write a work that "praised the land reform" required by the government.

She felt out of place with the social environment at the time, coupled with her relationship with Hu Lancheng, and faced political pressure.

In 1952, claiming to "continue his studies interrupted by the war", he left Chinese mainland and moved to Hong Kong.

While in Hong Kong, Eileen Chang worked for the United States Information Service. He began to write the novels "Yangge" and "Love in the Red Land", which are set during the "land reform" period.

Because the work did not conform to the mainstream style of the authorities, it was criticized as a "poisonous weed". In the mainland literary circles, Zhang Ailing has also been regarded as a negative example for a long time, and it was not until after the reform and opening up that there was some change.

During her time in Hong Kong, Eileen Cheung met her lifelong friends, Chung Man-mei and Song Qi. Under the support of Song Qi, he became one of the main screenwriters of Dianmao. The screenwriter's income became Zhang Ailing's main source of income for the next eight years.

Eileen Chang translates the Qing Dynasty novel "Flowers of the Sea" in the United States, or writes works reminiscing about old Shanghai, while Lai Ya is a left-wing writer, and their works are not accepted by mainstream American society, so the couple's life is quite embarrassing.

Later, he relied on Taiwan's "Crown" publishing group to reprint his novels in the 1940s to extract royalties to make a living.

In 1955, Zhang Ailing went to the United States to settle down.

In 1956, Eileen Chang lived in MacDowell Colony in St. Petersburg, New Hampshire, where she met and became pregnant with the 65-year-old left-wing playwright Ferdinand Reyher, and the two married that same year.

In 1960, Eileen Chang became a U.S. citizen.

In 1961, Eileen Chang traveled to Hong Kong and Taiwan to seek opportunities, and this was the only time she visited Taiwan in her lifetime, where she met with her cousin Zhang Xiaoyan.

Zhang Ailing first went to Taipei, where the famous painter Xi Dejin took her around, and then went to Hualien for sightseeing accompanied by the writer Wang Yuhe.

At the beginning of this century, the Chinese manuscript of Eileen Chang's "Revisiting the Border City" describing a travelogue in Taiwan was exposed, which is the only article about Taiwan that Eileen Chang has only seen.

In 1967, Eileen Chang was invited to be a writer-in-residence at Radcliffe School in the United States, and began translating the Qing Dynasty novel "The Legend of the Sea Flowers" into English.

In 1969, Eileen Chang moved to California and was hired by the University of California, Berkeley.

In 1973, Eileen Chang settled in Los Angeles and lived in a simple apartment in her later years.

In 1995, Eileen Chang's landlord found out that she had died at the age of 75 in her apartment on Rochester Avenue in the Westwood District, Los Angeles, California, and the direct cause of death was arteriosclerosis and cardiovascular disease. During her lifetime, Eileen Cheung had a total of about $28,000 in US dollar deposits.

In 1997, Zhang Cuo, a scholar in the United States, established the "Eileen Chang Cultural Relics Special Collection Center" at the University of Southern California, and with the consent of Song Qi's widow Zheng Wenmei, she sent two boxes of Eileen Chang's posthumous manuscripts to the USC Library, including the English translation of "Flowers of the Sea" that has not yet been finalized.

Eileen Chang created a large number of literary works during her lifetime. Genres include novels, essays, film scripts, and literary treatises, and her letters have been studied as part of her writings.

Anecdote: "When Zhang Ailing was in Shanghai, she liked special clothes. In the "Three Portraits of Shanghai Female Writers" painted by Shanghai cartoonist Wen Ting at that time, the famous female writers Su Qing and Pan Liudai, who were active in Shanghai at the same time, were defined as "Su Qing who was busy with work" and "Pan Liudai who made snake troubles", respectively, while Zhang Ailing's characteristics were "dazzling in strange costumes".

During the period of the Republic of China, Zhang Ailing, Su Qing, Guan Lu, and Pan Liudai were the four talented women who were famous in Shanghai's literary circle, and became victims of Shanghai's glamorous and green culture and the pleasures of high-ranking officials and nobles.

During the same period, there were also a large number of "young writers" in Shanghai. They are reserved with each other, and when they talk about the female writers of their contemporaries, they all express pride and do not give in to each other: "I don't read the works of female writers at present", "I never read the works of female writers".

Su Qing and Zhang Ailing sang to each other as if singing a double reed: "Just look at Zhang Ailing" (Su Qingyu), "Compare me with Bingxin and Bai Wei, I really can't be proud, only comparing myself with Su Qing I am willing." (Eileen Chang).

Pan Liudai said to Hu Lancheng that Zhang Ailing has aristocratic blood (Li Hongzhang's great-granddaughter), and bitterly ridiculed this relationship as if an old hen drowned in the Pacific Ocean, and Shanghainese eat the tap water of the Huangpu River and claim to "drink chicken soup". I don't know. 」

When Eileen Chang was studying in the liberal arts at the University of Hong Kong, she had a friend Yan Ying, who described it many times in the book and recorded some quotations from Yan Ying.

Zhang Ailing's description of Yan Ying is: "Yan Ying's surname is Mohidian, and her father was an Arab Ceylonese (present-day Sri Lanka), a Muslim who opened a Mohidian jewelry store in Shanghai. Her mother is from Tianjin, and she broke up with her family in order to marry a young Indian overseas Chinese, and she has not been in contact with her for many years.

Yan Ying's aunt lives in Nanjing, and I have been to their house, which is a typical conservative northern family. Yan Ying entered the British school in Shanghai and served as a prefect, the head student assigned by the school, excellent in character and learning, and good popularity, able to convince the public.

When we went back to Shanghai and went to St. John's University, she graduated, and I was physically exhausted from working and studying, and I couldn't make ends meet and was too far behind. (To be continued......)