What kind of book can be called an author's "strip-dance"? Eileen Chang, the writer of Lust, Caution, on which Ang Lee based his award-winning opus, gave an answer in her newly published autobiographical novel.
Named Little Reunion (Xiao Tuan Yuan), the book came out in Hong Kong and Taiwan late last month, 14 years after her death. It depicts Chang's relations with her family members and the bitter love story with her first husband Hu Lancheng, a collaborator for the Japanese during World War II.
For most non-Chinese readers, Chang is best known for Lust, Caution but in Chinese communities, she is an iconic figure who provided sharp insights into human emotions and has a wide group of fans, many of them writers themselves, including Chu T'ien-wen in Taiwan and Jia Pingwa on the mainland.
Hsia Chih-tsing, a retired professor of Chinese at Columbia University, called her the most gifted Chinese writer to emerge in the 1940s and compared her with acclaimed writers like Flannery O'Connor and Franz Kafka.
But to her devoted fans Chang's personal life has been mysterious. She had few friends. Even editors of Taiwan-based Crown Press never met her in person after decades of cooperation. In 1988, a Taiwan reporter followed her to Los Angeles, where she lived her last days as a recluse, and fumbled in her garbage.
The affairs of Chang's declining aristocratic family and details of her love affairs in the book have, unsurprisingly, stirred up heated talk among Chinese readers and critics.
Hong Kong writer Michael Lam describes the book as "a voluntary strip-dance".
"This book is 10 times more thrilling than Kenneth Anger's veil-lifting Hollywood Babylon," he writes in Apple Daily, a Hong Kong newspaper. "Few writers will reveal their coldness and cruelty like Chang, and do not care about forgiveness or cheap sympathy at all."
Chen Zishan, professor of Shanghai-based East China Normal University and a Chang expert, reminds readers to bear in mind the book is still a novel, although autobiographical.
"This book is full of shocks," he says. "My first and strongest feeling is the story does have a very close connection with her real life. But as I read on, I kept being shocked. She wrote about her mother and aunt, who are so different from the impression we get from her other books. Which story is the real one? I think it still needs time to tell."
Chen says that Roland Soong, executor of Chang's estate, has mailed him a copy of Chang's manuscript. He will do some research on that and other historical materials about Chang before giving an answer on how close to real life the book is.
The book is capturing common readers, too.
Mei Ping, a translator in Shanghai, booked the novel online the second day it was published in Taiwan and got it after a week.
Although the book uses traditional Chinese characters and the vertical, right-left way of printing format - different from the mainland format - she thinks the adjustment to her reading habits is worthwhile.
"Never was a book so detailed about her life and affairs. To a fan this is very tempting."
But Chen considers the book more than just a look into Chang's personal life.
"I would rather set it in a broader social setting," he says. "Major events in her times, such as the fall of Hong Kong and Shanghai, and the war against Japanese aggression are presented. From the book we see the psychological responses of Chang's social class to these events and learn about the literary circles at that time."
Chang died lonely in her Los Angeles apartment in 1995. But her noble background, the contrast between her fame and her cloistered way of living, her relationship with a notorious traitor and her renowned works like Lust, Caution and Love in a Fallen City, to name just a few among those adapted into films and TV, keep her name in the limelight.
Chen, although an established scholar of Chang, holds a conservative attitude toward the "Chang media carnival" every time something new about her is revealed, and encourages a broader vision of modern Chinese literature.
"I should say the phenomenal discussion of Chang is partly attributed to the media's hype, which seems reasonable in view of Chang's dramatic life experiences and most recently, Ang Lee's film," he says.
"However, I have to remind both media and readers that we have a lot more valuable writers in modern Chinese literature history. Why not put Chang against a broader setting? She was outstanding in her era, but we have many other modern writers who are equally excellent."
(China Daily March 24, 2009)
