Zhang Ailing is undoubtedly the most maverick female writer in China's modern literary world. She became famous at a young age and was regarded as a talented writer. Different from the traditional woman who looks down on her eyes, she has a famous saying: "Become famous while it is early". She is the first writer in China to model her book. She is withdrawn and indifferent, and she doesn't like and is not good at dealing with people. She is infatuated with love, like a moth to a fire; She drifted all her life and finally died in an apartment in America. Many days after her death, she was discovered by the landlord.
The formation of a person's personality may have a lot to do with her growing experience. Zhang Ailing was born in a declining aristocratic family in the late Qing Dynasty. Her grandfather was Zhang Peilun, an important official in the late Qing Dynasty, and her grandmother was Li Hongzhang's daughter. She was born at the end of the Qing Dynasty, an era when the old and the new alternated. On the one hand, introducing foreign modern progressive ideas, on the other hand, there are always some feudal adherents who are not enterprising and have empty pockets. Zhang Ailing's family belongs to the latter. Although it has declined, it is still necessary to pay attention to dignity and ostentation. Everyone in the family is very careful in calculating money. The relationship between family members seems very close, but in fact they are very distant from each other. She received little love when she grew up. This also caused her precocity and indifference in character.
The birth of Zhang Ailing provided inspiration for her later creation. She wrote about how many declining aristocratic families lived in a big city like Shanghai, facing the alternation of the old and the new. For example, Cao in The Golden Lock married the Chiang family. This family enjoyed a wonderful time when the old man was an official in the former dynasty, and a new era came. They lost their main income because they couldn't be an official. Children and grandchildren have no skills to make a living, indulge in pleasure, and still visit kiln, smoke opium, sell ancestral fields and live in empty land.
This is all Zhang Ailing's personal experience. She hates these fathers and stepmother who live in the old society and is determined to break free from that decadent environment. When her father couldn't afford her to go to school and kicked her out of the house, she chose to study abroad with her divorced mother. Mother gave her two "fair choices": either spend money to dress up, step into society and get married; Either study and use the money used to decorate yourself as tuition. Zhang Ailing chose the latter, and 1939 was admitted to the University of Hong Kong (in fact, she had been admitted to the University of London at that time because the tuition was too high).
Because of the fall of Hong Kong, Zhang Ailing returned to Shanghai, the city in her life. She began to publish articles in magazines and gradually became famous. Fate has opened the curtain for her, and the story is quietly staged. Like the story of all young women in literature and art falling in love with love rat, Zhang Ailing met the doom of her life-Hu Lancheng.
1943, Hu Lancheng, who worked in Wang puppet government, read Zhang Ailing's novel in the newspaper and marveled at the birth of a talented woman. She went to her house at once. When she left, Zhang Ailing went out to see her off, and they walked side by side. Hu Lancheng suddenly said in her ear, "Why are you so tall?" . "Zhang ailing bowed his head, that moment, she fell in love with him.
Like all things, knowing each other and loving each other is always beautiful. 1944, in Zhang Ailing's home, they got married. In fact, they only wrote a marriage book: "May the years be quiet and the world be stable, and Zhang Ailing and Hu Lancheng get married." It bribed the witness, Yan Ying, Zhang Ailing's college friend. 1944-1945 is the period when Zhang Ailing's talents broke out. She has created such masterpieces as Love in the City, The Golden Lock, Red Rose and White Rose.
1945, when the Japanese army was defeated, Hu Lancheng fled and came to Wuchang. But he is too caring and too playboy. Just after he left Zhang Ailing, he hooked up with a teenage nurse and later hooked up with a country widow. He cheated and hurt Zhang Ailing, which brought a near-devastating blow to her body and mind. 1946, Zhang Ailing sent Hu Lancheng 300,000 yuan and a letter, which wrote: "I don't like you anymore, and you don't like me anymore." When countless people called her a traitor, she insisted on being with him; In the end, she chose to end this relationship. She is actually a woman who dares to love and hate.
After experiencing the civil war, Zhang Ailing first went to Hong Kong after liberation and later settled in the United States. She has been wandering all her life and has not had a good life in America. She works as a teaching assistant and leads a poor life. I don't want to say more about the tragic old age of this girl who was once hailed as a genius here. I just want everyone to remember what she looked like when she was young and the time she wrote.
Zhang Ailing has been living alone. Her life is full of loneliness, and sometimes she may feel a little lonely. But this kind of loneliness, from a certain angle, is loneliness, freedom, independence, attitude and supported by her talent. She once said: "I can escape everything, but I can't escape the desolation of this life." Maybe she will feel desolate and helpless after the vicissitudes of the world, but it also brings inspiration to her writing. Everything in the past will be a beautiful memory. Life is always mixed with sorrow and joy, prosperity and desolation alternate, as Zhang Ailing did, and so did old Shanghai.