The Four Steps to the Sky

One of the Guardians of the Magician - Eileen Chang

Zhang Ailing (1920-1995), surnamed Zhang Ying, was a famous female writer. Later, due to school needs, her mother transliterated her English name and changed her name to Ailing.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 admiral of the seven provinces of the Yangtze River in the late Qing Dynasty, and Huang Zongyan's daughter. Received an excellent education.

During the fall of Shanghai, successively published

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

In 1956, Eileen Chang lived in poverty at the McDowell Art Camp (y) in Petersburg, New Hampshire, where she met and became pregnant with the 65-year-old left-wing playwright Fernn Reyher. people get married.

In 1960, Eileen Chang became an American citizen.

In 1961, Zhang Ailing went to Hong Kong and Taiwan to seek opportunities. This was the only time she visited Taiwan in her lifetime, and she met her cousin Zhang.

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

At the beginning of the century, the mid-draft of Eileen Chang's "Revisiting the Frontier Town", which described Taiwan's travel notes, was exposed. This is the only chapter about Taiwan that Eileen Chang has seen so far.

In 1967, Eileen Chang was invited to be the writer-in-residence of Radcliffe School in the United States, and began to translate the Qing Dynasty novel "Biography of Shanghai Flowers" into English.

In 1969, Zhang Ailing moved to California and was employed by the University of California, Berkeley.

In 1973, Zhang Ailing settled in Los Angeles, and lived in the apartment in her later years.

In 1995, Eileen Chang's landlord discovered that she had died in an apartment on Rochester Avenue in the Westwood District of Los Angeles, California. She was 75 years old and died directly of arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease.Eileen Chang left a total of about 8000 U.S. dollars in deposits during her lifetime.

In 1997, Zhang Cuo, a scholar living in the United States, established the Zhang Ailing Special Collection Center at the University of Southern California. With the consent of Song Qi’s widow Mei, he sent two boxes of Zhang Ailing’s manuscripts to the USC Library, including the English translation of "Shanghai Flower" Not finalized.

Zhang Ailing created a large number of academic works in her life.Types include novels, essays, film dramas, and academic works, and her letters have also been studied as part of her works.

Wen: "When Zhang Ailing was in Shanghai, she liked special clothes. Among the three portraits of Shanghai female writers painted at the Shanghai Cartoonist Pavilion, the definition of the famous female writers Su Qing and Pan Liudai who were active in Shanghai at the same time was that they were busy with editing work. Su Qing and Pan Liudai, the snake charmer, and Zhang Ailing are characterized by outlandish attire.

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 circles.

During the same period, Shanghai also had a large number of young lady writers.They are reserved to each other, each talking about female writers of the same period, they all show pride, and each does not give in: I don't read much works by female writers at present, and I never read works by female writers.

Su Qing and Zhang Ailing sang each other and imitated the double reed: just look at Zhang Ailing (Su Qingyu), and compare me with Bing Xin and Bai Wei. I really can't take pride in it. (Zhang Ailing's language).

In "On Hu Lancheng and Zhang Ailing", Pan Liudai pointed out that Hu Lancheng and Zhang Ailing had aristocratic blood (Li Hongzhang's great-granddaughter), and sarcastically ridiculed that this level is like drowning an old hen in the Pacific Ocean. Shanghainese drink tap water from the Huangpu River and claim to drink chicken soup The distance is the same, and with Shanghai people’s brains, in the near future, the word aristocrat must not be left behind. Later, Eileen Chang went to Hong Kong, and someone told her that Pan Liudai was also in Hong Kong. Eileen Chang replied: Who is Liudai Pan?I do not recognize.

Zhang Ailing had a good friend Yanying when she was studying at the University of Hong Kong. Zhang Ailing described it many times in the book and recorded some quotations from Yanying.

Zhang Ailing's description of Yanying is as follows: Yanying's surname is Moxidian, her father is an Arab Ceyloner (now Sri Lanka), believed in Islam, and opened a Moxidian jewelry store in Shanghai.My mother is from Tianjin. She broke up with the family in order to marry a young Indian overseas Chinese, and has not been in contact with her for many years.

Yanying's aunt lives in Nanjing, and I have been to their house, which is a typical old-fashioned northern family.Yan Ying entered a British school in Shanghai and took up the post of the student head assigned by the school. Besides being excellent in character and learning, she was also popular and able to convince the public. [

We went back to Shanghai to enter St. John's University. She graduated from school, and I was exhausted by working and studying, and the gap was too far to make ends meet, so I immediately studied and sold my life. "