Ding Ling
Ding Ling, born Jiǎng Bīngzhī on October 12, 1904, in Hunan Province, was a prominent Chinese feminist writer whose life spanned a tumultuous eighty-two years marked by significant political upheaval. Orphaned by her father's death and raised by her mother, a teacher who instilled feminist ideals in her, Ding Ling emerged as a progressive thinker early on. She pursued her education at various institutions, ultimately attending Peking University, where she engaged with influential literary figures and began developing her writing career.
Her literary journey was deeply intertwined with her political activism; Ding Ling became a committed Communist after witnessing the execution of her husband by Nationalist forces. Her works often highlighted the social injustices faced by women, and she became known for her candid portrayals of female experiences. Despite achieving literary recognition, including the Stalin Literary Prize for her novel "The Sun Shines over the Sanggan River," she faced severe repression during political purges, resulting in imprisonment and the banning of her books.
After her release in the late 1970s, Ding Ling resumed writing, albeit with a more restrained voice. Her legacy remains significant in feminist literature and Chinese cultural history, reflecting the struggles and resilience of women in a rapidly changing society.
Subject Terms
Ding Ling
Chinese novelist, nonfiction writer, playwright, short fiction writer, and editor.
- Born: October 12, 1904
- Birthplace: Anfu (now Linli), Hunan Province, China
- Died: March 4, 1986
- Place of death: Beijing, China
Biography
In a lifetime spanning eighty-two years, Chinese feminist writer Ding Ling lived through many political vicissitudes. Born in the province of Hunan into a once-wealthy family, Ling lost her father when she was three. Because he died deeply in debt, his widow began working as a teacher to repay his debtors. She was concerned about the status of women in China and imbued her daughter with many of the feminist ideas for which Ding Ling became known. The young woman accompanied her mother on travels to provincial schools, where they sometimes witnessed student demonstrations.
At age fifteen, Ling entered a progressive school in Changsha, where her teachers encouraged her writing. Here she was first exposed to Western literature. In 1920, when she refused to be drawn into an arranged marriage, she left Changsha for Shanghai, where she enrolled in the People’s Girls’ School, an institution with left-leaning intellectual roots. She soon left this school and embarked on a self-designed program of literary study and painting, living as economically as she could.
Ultimately, Ling attended Peking University, where she met a poet, Hu Yepin, her common- law husband, who fathered her first child. Struggling to survive economically with jobs as a governess and a secretary, Ling decided on impulse to return to Shanghai to try becoming an actress. Although she failed to break into the movies, her exposure to Shanghai’s film world provided her with the material for her first short story, “Mengke.” She repeated the basic theme of this story, the social debasement and exploitation of women, in many of her early feminist works.
Ling became a devout Communist after the Nationalist police executed her husband in 1931. She assumed the editorship of a major Communist literary journal and wrote stridently about social injustice. In 1933, the Nationalist police kidnapped her and imprisoned her for three years. Finally she escaped to Communist-controlled Yanan, where she was considered a Communist hero. She became editor of the party’s newspaper The Liberation Daily, and began to write articles about the inferior status of women in Communist China.
The party was increasingly intruding upon free expression. It demanded that writers follow predetermined standards and employ upbeat endings designed to glorify the party. Agreeing to write according to such standards, Ling published The Sun Shines over the Sanggan River, for which she was awarded the Stalin Literary Prize. In this book, Ling portrays the political confusion and frustration of China’s peasants.
In 1957, Ling was arrested, stripped of her citizenship, and imprisoned in the Great Northern Wilderness. Her books were banned. She spent five years in solitary confinement in Quincheng Prison. Late in the 1970s, she was released and began to write again, although her later writing is understandably restrained.
Author Works
Drama:
Ding Ling xi ju ji, pb. 1983
Long Fiction:
Muqin, 1933
Taiyang zhao zai Sangganhe shang, 1948 (The Sun Shines over the Sanggan River, 1954)
Nonfiction:
Fang Su yin xiang, 1950 (travel)
Lun si xiang gai zao, 1950
Yi er jiu shi yu Jin Ji Lu Yu bian qu, 1950
Kua dao xin de shi dai lai, 1951
Ou xing san ji, 1952 (travel)
Dao qun zhong zhong qu luo hu, 1954
Zuo jia tan chuang zuo, 1955
Wu nian ji hua song, 1956
Sheng huo, chuang zuo, shi dai ling hun, 1981 (essays)
Ai guo zhu yi di zan ge: Ding Ling deng ping, 1981
Wo di sheng ping yu chuang zuo, 1982
Ding Ling san wen jin zuo xuan, 1983 (selected essays)
Fang Mei san ji, 1984 (travel)
Wen xue tian cai yi wei zhuo shen mo, 1985
Ding Ling shu jian/Wang Zhongchen bian, 1986 (letters)
Yi dai tian jiao, 1988
I Myself Am a Woman: Selected Writings of Ding Ling, 1989
Ding Ling zizhuan, 1996 (Guo Jifang, editor)
Short Fiction:
Zai he an zhong, 1928
Zi sha ri ji, 1929
Wei hu, 1930
Yi ge nu ̈ren, 1930
Yi ge ren de dan sheng, 1931
Shui, 1933
Ye hui, 1933
Yi wai ji, 1936
Su qu di wen yi, 1938
Yi ke wei chu tang di qiang dan, 1938
Ding Ling dai biao zuo, 1940
Tuan ju, 1940
Ju, 1941
Wo zai Xiacun de shi hou, 1944
Jie fang qu duan pian chuang zuo xuan, 1946
Cun zhong de sheng huo, 1950
Shanbei feng guang, 1951
Duan pian xiao shuo, 1984
Shafei nüshi riji, 1985 (Miss Sophie's Diary, and Other Stories, 1985)
Bibliography
Alber, Charles J. Embracing the Lie: Ding Ling and the Politics of Literature in the People’s Republic of China. Praeger Publishers, 2004. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost), search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=303517&site=ehost-live. Accessed 19 June 2017. Focuses on Ding Ling’s life and work after her incarceration and rehabilitation.
Alber, Charles J. Enduring the Revolution: Ding Ling and the Politics of Literature in Guomindang China. Praeger Publishers, 2002. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost), search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=182501&site=ehost-live. Accessed 19 June 2017. Focuses on Ding Ling’s early life and work.
Dien, Dora Shu-fang. Ding Ling and Her Mother: A Cultural Psychological Study. Nova Science Publishers, 2001. A cultural psychological study of the relationship between Ding Ling and her mother.
Feuerwerker, Yi-tsi Mei. Ding Ling’s Fiction: Ideology and Narrative in Modern Chinese Literature. Harvard UP, 1982. A study of Ding Ling’s fiction in the context of modern Chinese literature.
Tang, Xiaobing. Chinese Modern: The Heroic and the Quotidian, Duke UP, 2000. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost), search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=85583&site=ehost-live. Accessed 19 June 2017. Examines episodes in the creation of Chinese modernity during the twentieth century; includes a reading of works by Ding Ling.