Belinda Chang

Pen name
Traditional Chinese 章緣[1]
Simplified Chinese 章缘
Real name
Traditional Chinese 張惠媛[1]
Simplified Chinese 张惠媛

Belinda Chang (born 1963) is a Chinese-language author from Taiwan.[2] She graduated from National Taiwan University's Chinese department, and went on to earn a master's degree in performance culture from New York University.[3] After living in the United States for thirteen years, she later relocated to Beijing and then Shanghai.[2][4]

Career

Chang launched her writing career while living in the United States and working as a reporter for the World Journal. Her son was born around the time of her first collection of short stories.[5] That collection, entitled Women in the Locker Room, featured sixteen stories; her next collection, The Night of the Flood, contained fourteen. Most of her protagonists were women from Taiwan who had come to the United States for their studies.[1] Her third work and first full-length novel, The City of Plague, described the mid-life crises of the Chinese residents of Queens, New York City's Flushing district; she wrote it as a form of farewell to her own youth. Many readers in Taiwan mistook the title as a reference to SARS, but in fact it came from a 1999 outbreak of West Nile virus infections in New York, which had provided Chang's original impetus for writing the novel.[5]

In June 2004, Chang announced that she would follow her husband to Beijing, China, where he was being sent by his employer, a mobile phone technology company. The North America Chinese Writers' Association held a farewell banquet in her honor.[2] After arriving in China, she finished her third collection of short stories, Two Ships in the Night, which touched on the themes of middle age, having children, and living in China; in total, they had taken her seven years to write. She and her family would live in Beijing for barely more than a year before relocating to Shanghai in August 2005. After the move, Chang flew to San Jose with her son to visit relatives and took a cruise to Alaska before returning to her new home in Shanghai.[4] A collection of essays featuring her lives in Beijing and Shanghai was published in 2008, titled Being the Neighbor of Eileen Chang. Chang has since been drawn to the lives and struggles of people from Taiwan living in Shanghai, and thus completed another short story collection on the subject, titled Crossing the Boundary.

Critical response

Chang's short stories have received a positive critical response from literary critics C. T. Hsia and David Der-wei Wang.[6] Her works won her the "Best short story from a new author" prize from her publisher, as well as a later literary prize from the Central Daily News.[7]

Works

References

  1. 1 2 3 "旅美台裔作家张惠媛：写小说是玩味人生的一种方式/U.S.-based Taiwan author Belinda Chang: Writing is a way of enjoying life", Book Tide (in Chinese), 2000-06-25, retrieved 2008-02-16
  2. 1 2 3 "紐約青年華文作家張惠媛將遷居北京/Young Chinese-language author Belinda Chang to relocate to Beijing", Liberty Times (in Chinese), 2004-06-11, retrieved 2008-02-16
  3. ↑ The Changing-Room Women, back matter
  4. 1 2 "章緣返美探親，出版新書《擦肩而過》/Belinda Chang returns to the U.S. to visit relatives, publishes new book 'Two Ships in the Night'", World Journal (in Chinese), 2005-08-04, retrieved 2008-02-17
  5. 1 2 Chen, Tsu-yu (2003-11-03), "章緣寫《疫》與四十歲道別/Belinda Chang writes 'Plague' to bid farewell to being 40", United Daily News (in Chinese), archived from the original on 2008-02-03, retrieved 2008-02-16
  6. ↑ Two Ships in the Night, back matter: "章緣的小說「表現出敏銳的觀察力和同情心」(王德威)、「情節編聯巧妙，細膩處令人骨悚不已」(李奭學) 、「無懈可擊，讀來極為感人」(夏志清)。"
  7. ↑ Being Eileen Chang's Neighbour, back matter
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