ABSTRACT
Among the independent fiction writers, Eileen Chang (Zhang Ailing in Chinese spelling) (1920–1995) is perhaps the most internationally renowned, not just because she resided and wrote in the US till the end of her life, but also because most of her literary works are translated into English. Moreover, a film Lust, Caution directed by Ang Lee, the world-renowned film director, was based on an adaptation of her short story with the same title, and has made her name even more widely known. The literary career of Eileen Chang has since the mid-1980s become a popular subject in Chinese literary studies. The great interest in the writer and her works developed into a cultural fever in the 1990s both in and out of China, which has not yet subsided. So far, scholars have produced several biographies, hundreds of research articles and monographs, numerous filmic and dramatic adaptations, and the cultural fever culminated in the publication of her complete works. Chang was born into a wealthy family of high-ranking officials of the late Qing Dynasty. Her paternal grandfather was related to the famous or notorious Qing prime minister Li Hongzhang. Her childhood, however, was not a happy one, for his parents were divorced when she was very small. She went to a Christian school for female students in Shanghai and was admitted by the University of London upon graduation. But she was unable to go to England due to the war and instead went to the University of Hong Kong studying English literature. She was unable to finish her college education after Hong Kong fell to the Japanese in 1941 and returned to Shanghai. In 1943, she published her first two stories in a literary journal, which inaugurated her literary career. Her debut in the literary scene was a pleasant surprise to many influential writers who viewed her as a promising young writer whose artistic maturity went beyond her age.
