Eileen Chang 張愛玲 (A Great Chinese Author of the Modern Era)

This book I am reading 同學少年都不賤, a book describing Eileen Chang’s former classmates is really absorbing. A good author can project one into a situation despite the distance of time, age and culture. Chang brings the reader into a particular point in time and you are really there despite the fact that the people and places she describes are long vanished.

She apparently was most famous for a short period of time during the early 1940s in wartime Shanghai, though she died alone not too long ago (1995) in an apartment in West Los Angeles. Her outlook on life was formed during her unhappy childhood and during this turbulent period of time in what was a vanishing life for many people in pre-revolution coastal China. That is probably why her memories of high school, college and early adult life are particularly poignant. Difficulties have that effect on people’s lives.

I know I can remember difficult times in my life that happened years ago as if they were yesterday and they’re not painful memories by any means. I can remember what I ate, the fun times and emotions I had in the midst of difficult circumstances. On the other hand, good times seem to fly by. That’s probably one reason why I keep a blog. My life is (our lives are) so good at this point, and so different in some ways, that I want to remember.