Eileen Chang

Ailing Zhang

"Shanghai, 1930s. Shen Shijun, a young engineer, has fallen in love with his colleague, the beautiful Gu Manzhen. He is determined to resist his family's efforts to match him with his wealthy cousin so that he can marry the woman he truly loves. But dark circumstances--a lustful brother-in-law, a treacherous sister, a family secret--force the two young lovers apart. As Manzhen and Shijun go on their separate paths, they lose track of one another, and their lives become filled with feints and schemes, missed connections and tragic misunderstandings. At every turn, societal expectations seem to thwart their prospects for happiness. Still, Manzhen and Shijun dare to hold out hope--however slim--that they might one day meet again. A glamorous, wrenching tale set against the glittering backdrop of an extraordinary city, Half a Lifelong Romance is a beloved classic from one of the essential writers of twentieth-century China."--

A Novel

Half a Lifelong Romance

An espionage thriller set against the backdrop of World War II Shanghai recounts the relationship between Mr. Yee, a powerful political figure, and Wang Jiazhi, a young woman who is swept up in a perilous game of emotional intrigue with Mr. Yee, in a volume that is accompanied by the screenplay for the film, an essay on the making of the film, and film stills. Simultaneous. (A Focus Features film, written by James Schamus & Wang Hui-Ling, directed by Ang Lee, releasing September 2007) (Performing Arts)

The Story

Lust, Caution

These stories combine an unsettled, probing, contemporary sensibility, keenly alert to sexual politics and psychological ambiguity.

Love in a Fallen City

An NYRB Classics Original After leaving the Mainland for Hong Kong in 1952, Eileen Chang was commissioned by the United States Information Service to write two books, one of which was her magnificent novelNaked Earth. Far from being a simplistic exercise in anti-Communist propaganda (two previous novels Chang wrote were pro-Communist),Naked Earth is a powerfully moving, Balzacian tale that follows two young students, Liu Ch'uen and Su Nan, who fall in love at a time when, as Chang writes, “the whole country lay stretched out like an open palm, ready to close around any one person at any minute.” Mao's land reform movement is in full force, and Liu and Su Nan are sent to a farm to help the peasants take over the fields. The work is hard, the nights long, and slowly it becomes clear that spies abound. Both Liu and Su Nan harbor festering secrets that are pulling them apart and Liu is eventually imprisoned by his enemies and sent to fight on the Korean front. A romance, a thrilling drama, a tragedy,Naked Earth is a stunning work of twentieth-century fiction by one of China's most revered modern novelists.

Naked Earth

In 1940s' Shanghai, Jiazhi's life is a front. A patriotic student radical, her mission is to seduce a powerful employee of the occupying government and lead him to the assassin's bullet. But she begins to wonder if she can coldly take Mr Yi to his death. Or is she beginning to fall in love with him?

There were two women in Zhenbao�s life: one he called his white rose, the other his red rose. One was a spotless wife, the other a passionate mistress. Isn�t that just how the average man describe a chaste widow�s devotion to her husband�s memory � as spotless, and passionate too? Maybe every man has had two such women � at least two. Marry a red rose and eventually she�ll be a mosquito-blood streak smeared on the wall, while the white one is �moonlight in front of my bed.� Marry a white rose, and before long she�ll be a grain of sticky rice that�s gotten stuck to your clothes; the red one, by then, is a scarlet beauty mark just over your heart. In Eileen Chang�s eloquent and evocative novella, Zhenbao is a devoted son, a diligent worker, and guarded in love. But when he meets a friend�s spoilt, spirited, desirable wife, he cannot resist her charms, or keep their relationship under his control. As he succumbs to passions and resentments, Red Rose, White Rose is both sensual and restrained.

Red Rose, White Rose

Portrays the horror the land-reform movement brings to a southern village in China during the early 1950s and the peasants' desperate attempts to survive the impending famine and government abuse

The Rice Sprout Song

A Novel of Modern China

This story is about a young girl who traveled from Shanghai to Hong Kong to attend a university, which is transparently Hong Kong University. In the midst of her studies, the Second World War broke out and Hong Kong fell to the Japanese army. The novel ends with the girl returning to Shanghai.

The Book of Change

Bangqing Han

Han Pang-ch'ing

Han Bangqing

Professor Bangqing Han

Considered one of the great works of Chinese fiction, The Sing-song Girls of Shanghai is a story of desire and virtue set in the pleasure quarters of nineteenth-century Shanghai. Han Bangqing, himself a frequent habitué of the city's notorious brothels, reveals a world populated by lonely souls who seek consolation amid the pleasures and decadence of Shanghai's demimonde. From beautiful sirens to lower-class prostitutes, from well-respected patrons to repugnant criminals, The Sing-song Girls of Shanghai brings the romantic games of the sing-song girls to vivid life, as well as the tragic consequences faced by those who unexpectedly fall in love with their customers. Han Bangqing also tells his story from a male point of view, revealing the danger of becoming trapped between desire and propriety. First translated in draft by the legendary Chinese writer Eileen Chang, and later revised by Eva Hung, The Sing-song Girls of Shanghai combines psychological realism with modernist sensibilities and is a pioneering work of Chinese fiction.

The Sing-song Girls of Shanghai

Eva Hung

Traces of Love and Other Stories

Vier jonge mensen ontdekken dat gezinsverplichtingen in strijd zijn met liefde in het China van de jaren dertig.

roman

De liefde van een half leven

This is the first of two semi-autobiographical novels written originally in English which depict Chang's childhood years in Tianjin and Shanghai. The book introduces a young girl growing up amid many family entanglements with her divorced mother and spinster aunt during the 1930s.

The Fall of the Pagoda

In 1940s Shanghai, beautiful young Jiazhi spends her days playing mahjong and drinking tea with high society ladies. But China is occupied by invading Japanese forces and things are not always what they seem in wartime. Jiazhi's life is a front. A patriotic student radical, her mission is to seduce a powerful employee of the occupying government and lead him to the assassin's bullet. Yet as she waits for him to arrive at their liaison, Jiazhi begins to wonder if she is cut out to be a femme fatale and coldly take Mr Yi to his death. Or is she beginning to fall in love with him? A passionate tale of espionage, deception and love, Lust, Caution is accompanied here by four further dazzling short stories by Eileen Chang.

Eileen Chang is now recognized as one of the greatest modern Chinese writers, though she was completely erased from official histories in mainland China.-- Her semi-autobiographical novels depict in gripping detail her childhood years in Tianjin and Shanghai, as well as her student days in Hong Kong during World War II, and shed light on the construction of selfhood in her other novels. --This previously unpublished semi-autobiographical novel continues the story begun in The Fall of the Pagoda, following the girl's experiences as a student at the University of Victoria in Hong Kong, including the city's 1941 fall after Pearl Harbor. Hiding in shelter to escape air raids, she vividly conveys her sense of alienation both as a sojourner in a distant land and as a displaced refugee of war.--This previously unpublished work is essential to any scholar or loyal fan of Eileen Chang.-

The Naked Earth

L'amore arreso

Relates the events in the life of a Chinese lower-class woman trapped within the confines of an unhappy arranged marriage, resulting in her gradual descent into madness

The Rouge of the North

"These firsthand accounts examine the subtle and not-so-subtle effects of the Japanese bombing and occupation of Shanghai and Hong Kong. Eileen Chang writes of friends, colleagues, and teachers turned soldiers or wartime volunteers, and her own experiences as a part-time nurse. Her nuanced depictions range from observations of how a woman's elegant dress affects morale to descriptions of hospital life."--BOOK JACKET.

Ailing Zhang

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