Eileen Chang, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

Eileen Chang

Chinese writer and screenwriter

Date of Birth: 30-Sep-1920

Place of Birth: Shanghai, China

Date of Death: 08-Sep-1995

Profession: screenwriter, writer, translator, journalist

Nationality: United States

Zodiac Sign: Libra

Eileen Chang (September 30, 1920 – September 8, 1995), also known as Zhang Ailing or Chang Ai-ling, was a Chinese-born American essayist, novelist, and screenwriter. Chang was born with an aristocratic lineage and educated bilingually in Shanghai.
She gained literary prominence in Japanese-occupied Shanghai between 1943 and 1945.
However, her meteoric rise was short-lived due to her wartime marriage to Hu Lancheng, who was deemed as a Japanese collaborator, and the Communist takeover of China, after which she fled the country.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, she was rediscovered by scholars such as C.
T.
Hsia and Shui Jing.
Together with the re-examination of literary histories in the post-Mao era during the late 1970s and early 1980s, her work became popular once again among Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mainland China, and the Chinese diaspora communities.Chang’s most important contribution was her construction of an alternative wartime narrative, one that deviated from the grand accounts of national salvation and revolution.
In her most important works, her impressionistic view of modern history displays colors, lines, shapes, textures, and moods, which are often crystallized in the changing styles of women’s clothes.