Shanghai (Yoshiko Yamaguchi) in Shanghai, 1945 At the age of 10, Chang's mother renamed her as Aìlíng, a
transliteration of Eileen, in preparation for her entrance into an English school. While in high school, Chang read
Dream of the Red Chamber, one of the
Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature, which influenced her work throughout her career. Chang displayed great literary talent and her writings were published in the school magazine. The following year, she wrote her debut short novel at the age of 12. 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. 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, ) (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 ) in 1945. 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." During this time, she wrote two anti-communist works,
The Rice Sprout Song (
Yang Ge, ) and
Naked Earth (
Chidi zhi lian, 赤地之戀, sometimes known in English as
Love in Redland), both of which she later translated into Chinese and published in Taiwan.
The Rice Sprout Song was Chang's first novel written entirely in English. 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.
United States In 1955, Chang moved to America, struggling to become an English writer. Her work was rejected by publishers many times. 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. In 1966, Chang had a writing residency at
Miami University in
Oxford, Ohio. Her research topics included Chinese Communist terminology and the novel
Dream of the Red Chamber. In 1972, Chang relocated 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 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. ==Influence==