{"id":402452,"date":"2018-07-03T10:30:12","date_gmt":"2018-07-03T14:30:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/?p=402452"},"modified":"2018-07-03T09:57:14","modified_gmt":"2018-07-03T13:57:14","slug":"the-best-female-chinese-novelist-youve-never-heard-of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2018\/07\/03\/the-best-female-chinese-novelist-youve-never-heard-of\/","title":{"rendered":"The Best Female Chinese Novelist You’ve Never Heard Of"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
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To say that Xiao Hong’s life was rough is a serious understatement.<\/div>\n

She was born in 1911, during one of China’s most turbulent periods, all leading up to the Second Sino-Japanese War. In addition to the cultural turmoil, Xiao’s mother passed away when she was nine, leaving her to be raised by an abusive father whom she ran away from at the age of 20. In Harbin, she barely avoided being sold to a brothel, but still ended up pregnant, abandoned by her fianc\u00e9, and living in desperate poverty.<\/p>\n

In 1933, Xiao Jun, the publisher of a local newspaper, befriended her and gave her the space and means to start writing. Over the next nine years, she produced one of the most powerful literary oeuvres in Chinese history. At a time when nationalistic literature was the norm, she focused on the lives of ordinary people struggling to survive. Her first novel,\u00a0The Field of Life and Death<\/em>, was one of the earliest works to depict life under Japanese rule, focusing on the tortured lives of several peasant women. She also co-wrote a collection of autobiographical essays,\u00a0Market Street<\/em>, and\u00a0Tales of Hulan River<\/em>, her most successful long novel.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Around that same time (1940), she started serializing\u00a0Ma Bo’le’s Second Life<\/em><\/a>, the first part of a planned trilogy that would satirize the war and the rampant patriotism of the time. Unfortunately, in 1942, at the age of 30, she passed away from health complications, leaving both the trilogy unfinished, and the novel itself.<\/p>\n

For years, her work remained in obscurity in China and elsewhere, but interest in her work has grown immensely in recent times, and today, Xiao Hong is remembered as one of the definitive writers of China\u2019s Republican era. In fact, over the past half-dozen years,\u00a0two\u00a0<\/em>biopics have come out about her life. The first,\u00a0Falling Flowers<\/em>, is available on\u00a0Netflix<\/a>, and below you’ll find a trailer for\u00a0The Golden Era.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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