From Little Readers to Women

Author: Bing Xin
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-08-01
Features: The author Bing Xin (1900—1999), originally named Xie Wanying, also known as Bing Xin Lady, was from Minhou, Fujian. She studied at the preparatory department of Union Women's University before and during the May Fourth Movement. In 1921, she joined the Literary Research Association. In 1923, she went to the United States for studies and returned in 1926, teaching successively at Yanjing University and Tsinghua University's Women's College of Arts and Sciences. After the victory of the War of Resistance, she went to Japan and returned in 1951. She held positions such as member of the Chinese Federation of Literary and Art Circles and secretary of the Secretariat of the Chinese Writers' Association. The prose collection Letters to Little Readers expresses the author's care and support for children, as well as her hope for the future. Bing Xin rose to prominence on the new literary scene with "problem novels," with representative works such as The Solitary Suffering of a Person and Autumn Wind and Autumn Rain, and thus became one of the earliest members of the Literary Research Association. However, she drew more attention from the literary world with her poetry collections Starry Sky and Spring Water. These two collections imitated Tagore's Stray Birds so obviously, but the self-expression conveyed in the poems, the exploration of life, and the praise of nature perfectly aligned with the May Fourth Movement, thus pioneering the "Spring Water Style" of short poems and creating what is known as the "era of popular short poems."