Su Qing (Su Ch'ing) 1917-1982

Su is one of the more controversial of the modern writers. She was often accused of being a collaborator because she became famous and popular as a writer in Japanese-occupied Shanghai. She also wrote a popular but scandalous novel about her unhappy marriage and divorce, Ten Years of Marriage, and then penned a sequel about her life as a divorcee. After her divorce, she was widely accused of supporting herself through immoral relationships with men. In her writings, however, Su vindicated herself and women in general, stressing her status as a professional writer and asserting the power of independence for women. A contemporary of Eileen Chang (Zhang Ailing ±i·R¬Â), she is often compared to Chang in her penetrating insight into social hypocrisy and the battle between the sexes. Like Chang, she had a brilliant wit and a penchant for self-irony. Both her writing and her life were a demonstration to women of an alternative to the enslavement of marriage.