Weatherhead Books on Asia
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
LITERATURE David Der-wei Wang, Editor Wra:y WtfItWV UvM~IUC£ Ye Zhaoyan, Nanjing I937: A Love Story, translated by Michael Berry Makoto Oda, the BreakingJewel, translated by Donald Keene THE REVOLUTIONARY YEARS, 1936-1976
Han Shaogong, A Dictionary 0/ Maqiao, translated by Julia Lovell Takahashi Takako, Lonely Woman. ttanslated by Maryellen Toman Mori Chen Ran, A Private Life, translated by John Howard-Gibbon Takeuchi Yoshimi, What Is Modernity? Writings o/Takeuchi Yoshimi, translated by Richard Calichman EOfTED BY
A:yD.D~ Eileen Chang, Written on Woter. translated by Andrew F. Jones David McCann, editor, the Columbia Anthology 0/ Modern Korean Poetry HISTORY, SOCIETY, AND CULTURE Carol Gluck, Editor Richard Calichman, editor, ContemJ>omryJapanese 7hought
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(19 01 - 1994)
W
idely believed to have been the real-life inspiration
behind the paradigmatic New Woman heroine Mei
in Mao Dun's Rainbow, Hu Lanqi was born in 190I
into a Sichuanese family who supported th¢ movement to overthrow
the Qing dynasty. Emboldened by the ideological currents of the May
Fourth movement, she broke from an arranged marriage in 1921 and left
to teach briefly at a girl's school in Chongqing before en­
in a teacher's college. There she
and became active in
eign imperialism. Together with a relatively small cohort of women re­
cruits, including, most famously, Xie Bingying and
Yiman, she
had been accepted into the training program for
students at the
Wuhan Central Military and Political Institute. After the program was
dissolved due to the collapse of the United Front, she transferred to the
Nationalist Central Women's Department under the leadership of He
Xiangning (1878-I972) and helped unionize women workers in Wuhan.
Before long, as the KMT purges of radical elements grew more intense,
she was forced to flee with Lu Jingqing (19°7-1993), who at the time was
also on the staff of the Women's Department, to Wuchang and eventu­
ally Shanghai. In I928, having been effectively blacklisted by the KMT,
she left for Europe. In Berlin, she briefly shared a flat with He Xiang­
ning and joined the Chinese-speaking group of the German Commu­
nist Party through the introduction of He's son Liao Chengzhi. follow­
ing the September 18th Incident in 1931, which transpired while Hu
happened to be back in China on a brief visit,
returned to Germany
and became involved in organizing overseas Chinese students into an
One of the highlights of this period, as she
Hu Lanqi
71
later recall, was meeting the prominent
leader
Clara Zetkin
Hu was arrested and imprisoned for her
activities in the spring
of 1933 for three months, and was released only
Song Qingling and
Lu Xun intervened by lodging a formal protest on her behalf with the
German consulate in Shanghai. Deported
the German
Hu settled briefly in France and then England. In 1934 she began
an account of her experience, excerpts of which appeared in the French
newspaper Le Monde. The work was so well received internationally that
it soon came out in English, German, Russian, and Spanish translations.
Upon Hu's return to China in 1936, the text was serialized in its en­
tirety in the radical women's journal Women's Life, edited by Shen Zijiu.
The following year the text was published in book form under the tide
In a German Women's Prison by the Shanghai Life Bookstore. It went
into multiple reprintings and was reportedly used as teaching material
at Yan' an. Now a celebrity, Hu Lanqi was invited to the Soviet Union as
a Chinese representative at the First Congress of Russian Writers, where
she is said to have been singled out for praise by the literary luminary
Maxim Gorky.
Between 1937 and 1940 Hu Lanqi worked alongside other well-known
female activists in Shanghai, including Chen Bo'er and Wang tiying, to
the Chinese Women's Wartime Relief Association, a United
Front org-anization aimed at mobilizing women to assist in the war effort.
As part of this project, she
working-class women for service on
the front lin.." H"r wartime
consisted primarily of reportage,
pc£~ullal accounts of her
traveling with a
division. Many of these appeared in Xinhua Daily and Women's Life,
which had relocated to the interior when war broke out, as well as in
individual volumes. She also collaborated with Xie Bingying and Xia Yan
on a collection of essays on patriotic themes entitled On the Songhu Battle
Line (I938). After Japan's defeat, Hu Lanqi
as the chief editor of
Guizho u Daily. She eventually settled down in Beijing, where she
and, in her spare time, translated German children's literature. Like many
other veteran activists, Hu fell victim to the Antirightist Campaign in
I957 and was expelled from the party. In 1975 she finally returned to her
native Sichuan province, where she completed a memoir of her early
career as a political activist. Hu Lanqi died in Chengdu in 1994·
The excerpts here are from In a German Women's Prison, Hu Lanqi's
autobiographical account of her time in jail with female political detain­
72
WRITING WOMEN IN MODERN CHINA
ees as well as ordinary petty criminals. While the account as a whole is
animated by mild humor as the author documents the everyday chal­
lenges of the ordeal of imprisonment, at the center of the text is the
loftier political theme of female solidarity across lines of class and na­
tional identity.
Itt/ tl/
9en,ulIl/ YVtH,U/l/ ~- Pr/StJIl/
(193 6 )
Chapter 6. A Piece of Chocolate
of Sunday as the happiest time of the week, but I
spent my Sunday waiting in anxiety, anger, and depression, pacing back and
forth in my small prison cell. Though I no longer felt the anxiety and fatigue
of the previous day when I got up that morning, I still hated the iron barrel
of a prison wall that sunlight could not even penetrate. It was a hot June day,
but my hands and feet were stiff with cold and my nose was running. And I
could not exercise to work up a sweat because the place was too narrow and
there was nothing to do. If things went on like this, I knew I would get sick.
No matter what, it was not worth getting sick on top of being imprisoned.
I had to consider my health. With that in mind, I would wash my
and brush my teeth with the water from the bucket as soon as I got up
every morning. After that I would made good use of the tiny space to do some
exercises. As long as I exercised, I would sweat a little bit.
After I drank my coffee, the woman guard opened the door so I could get
some water to wash the floor. Ordinarily I liked washing the floor, but on this
day I found it tedious. In a few minutes my mood was quite different from
when I got up, so I did not work very hard. I did not feel like touching the
bucket in front of me, nor did I make much of an effort as I dragged the mop
across the floor. I mopped the same spot over and over again. In a word, I was
overcome with boredom and did not put the kind of effort into my work that I
usually did. But thinking about it again, I really had nothing to feel depressed
about, and people would not have been able to find any disappointment or
sadness in my words. Still, I felt rather unhappy on this day!
The gloomy morning passed, and after lunch the woman guard came to open
PEOPLE USUALLY THINK
Hu
73
the cell door as usual for our break in the yard. Out in the open, I felt relaxed
at once and gave a deep sigh. Many of the women inmates looked at me with
a smile when I joined their marching ranks. On their faces I could not detect
any trace of anxiety. It had seemed that they were already myoid friends upon
our first encounter, and it was hard to tell which of them were dose friends and
which were strangers. Their eyes were filled with sympathy and warmth.
Mrs. Heinrich took out a paper packet from her pocket and quickly passed
it to a lady behind her, murmuring something, which I could not hear because
she was too far away and her whisper sounded like buzzing bees. Her eyes were
fixed on the packet until it finally reached my hand, at which point a happy
appeared on her face.
The lady who handed me the packet started to talk to me in a low and
voice, "Comrade, you've got to eat! Don't let the potatoes upset your
I was dumbfounded, and only when I saw her passionate eyes look­
ing at me did I grasp her words, which were so gentle, yet so powerful! The
voice expressed the deep feeling of a loving mother toward her children. Hear­
ing her words and seeing what the women had done, I was too moved to say
anything, and tears kept rolling down my cheeks like pearls from a loosened
necklace, pouring out all the sadness that had accumulated over the past few
days. As it had never been easy to contain my sadness, I broke into sobs. The
more they kindly comforted and coaxed me, the more sorrowfully I wept,
until I was almost out of breath.
When the woman guard went to unlock the side gate, the young girl in
a gray skirt, about seventeen or eighteen years old, tiptoed over to me like a
waitress in a restaurant and put her hand on my shoulder. She said, "Be coura­
geous! Don't cry! You must get through this!"
In spite of her encouragement, her own eyes were also moist. I did not ex­
plain anything to her but grasped her hands with tears flowing from my eyes
like a bottomless spring.
My tears were not from cowardliness, nor from sadness, because I would
never beg for their sympathy! I was bitterly crying because I was moved by
their brave act and my tears were an expression of my gratitude. I did not
think I was a coward.
The outdoor break, just like any other before, came to an end with the
guards' pushing and pulling us back to the cells. In my cell, I opened the
packet and inside saw a big piece of chocolate. I had already guessed that it
was something to eat when Mrs. Heinrich passed it to me.
What's the value of a piece of chocolate? But if you knew that it was some­
thing given to me by a person who was also in prison and had no more free­
74
WRITING WOMEN IN MODERN CHINA
dom than myself, then what would you think? The women in this prison
all considered political prisoners by the German fascists, who had charted
women a road like this; "Go to church!" Go to the kitchen!" "Look after
children!" Or else, "Go to
'lhe German working people were already in a wretched situation,
those sent to jail definitely suffered more in even worse conditions. It was not
easy for female prisoners to get hold of even a little food. Considering their
lack of money and the prison conditions, food was extremely rare and pre- '
cious. Yet they gave up their chocolate that was so valuable and hard to come
by and let me have it, urging me, "You've got to eat! Don't let the potatoes
upset"your stomach!"
Such words made me think; I was not the only one living on potatoes, for
every-one here ate the same meals as I did. But why weren't they afraid of ruin­
ing their own health? Why did they worry about me? Why hadn't they saved
the treat for themselves instead of giving it to me? Now I knew why. Although
the chocolate was not worth a penny, it actually represented a
valuable than anything in the world! Such fdendship, such compassion, only
existed in prison, only among revolutionaries and the oppressed. It could not
be found among members of the leisure class, who hardly had any compas­
sion at all. 1hey would snatch a lifesaving crust of bread from the hands of a
starving man and stash it away in their warehouses, and would certainly never
away any of their own food for no reason. Of course, they sometimes
offer you a sweet in order to use you. lheir ulterior motive is to make you
repay with your whole life. Aren't such sweets more poisonous than arsenic?
Yet they call them "mercy" and "charity." 1hey calculate such favors very careand don't bestow them unless they can recoup more than they originally
gave. Once you are no longer useful to them, they won't give you a penny.
Oppressed people, however, know no such thing as "mercy." Nor do they
have any of the shallow sentiments of the petite bourgeoisie. They have only
passion. When Mrs. Heinrich gave me the chocolate, she did not expect any
payback or gratitude from me, nor was she showing me pity. It was out of the
true solidarity that exists among revolutionary comrades that she saved the
valuable chocolate and gave it to me. And no, it was not limited to a piece of
chocolate. Should it be necessary to help me, she would not hesitate to be­
stow things of even greater value. And it was not just Mrs. Heinrich. The
in the gray skirt and the other women prisoners, especially the white-haired
old lady, had all exuded very sincere and strong love. With their courageous
actions and optimistic morale, they were sure to be able to carry the burden
of a great cause.
Hu Lanqi
75
With that thought, I was profoundly moved, and tears streamed down again
as I held the chocolate in my hand. Although I was not weak and knew that
my tears were out of gratitude for having received solace from a comrade, and
although I did not want to cry, I could not hold back. Feeling the furility of
I tried hard to close my eyes, but the tears were like torrents breaking
a dam and I felt great pressure in my chest. So I had to let myself go
and burst into a loud cry.
After a long spell of sadness, my bitter sobs broadened my mind and
my view. The loneliness and depression were whisked away from the
bottom of my heart and I felt unusually peaceful and calm, as lie:ht as a bird
Hying in the sky.
TIle chocolate, like a dab of glue, bonded my heart and those of its
owners on the same battle front.
had gone. A thin slice of dawn crept up the iron window of the
prison cell. As I woke up, the church bells in the distance played the rhyth­
mic and sonorous tune for the hour and clanged four times. It was still too
early to rise, but I quietly got out of bed and tiptoed to the door. Listening
I could not hear any snoring or other human sound; the whole place
was as quiet as an ancient, lonely temple in the wilderness. I then went back
to bed, rolled up the blanket, and gently put the small square desk on the
bed and the stool on the desk. I took the chocolate, whose tinfoil wrapper
was still shiny with white light, out of the drawer. As I thought of the friend
who had given it to me, my heart started to pound so fast in excitement that
I could hardly breathe. I opened the wrapper and brought the chocolate to
my lips.
Mrs. Heinrich, T adore you! lhe white-haired old lady, I kiss you with ali my
heart! lhe girl in the gray skirt, a kiss to you. My sweetest kiss to you all, all the
fighters in our struggle!
I climbed onto the desk, stepped on the stool, and, straining on my toes,
with my left hand clinging to the wall, I used the chocolate to scratch this on
the ceiling: "Oppressed classes and nations, unite to struggle for the happiness
of working people allover the world!"
The chocolate was barely enough to complete those words, but the strokes
were dearly visible and filled more than half of the ceiling. I returned the desk
and SLOol to their original places and quickly made up the bed. Since it was
still too early to be up, I crawled back under the covers and opened my eyes
to gaze at the words on the ceiling, feeling so happy and excited. My heart
Was like a white cloud in an autumn sky that continuously sent Out a passion
to
76
WRITING WOMEN IN MODERN CHINA
Chapter I9. A Huge Prison
for women, when taking in a few hundred people, was like
a big lion gobbling down a few steamed buns without showing any trace on
its stomach. Tea for dinner was delivered to our wards in a huge iron urn on
a cart, much bigger than the coffee urn used in the jail at the police station,
although I had also been greatly shocked on seeing the coffee urn there.
One or two hundred prisoners were housed on each floor, and the women
here would have made an excellent female army had they been able to under­
go some military training! Of course, there would be trouble if such women
ever rose in rebellion. Therefore, the ruling class would never teach them com­
bat skills. Instead, they jail such women with iron locks and bars like birds
in a cage, and don't release them until their limbs and nerves are numbed by
prison and they are stripped of the desire to fly, even though they still see the
vast sky.
My new prison cell was a square room smaller than the one at the police
station. Besides the toilet at the head of the bed, there was also a washbasin
hanging on the wall. Next to the washbasin was nailed a double-decked shelf,
on which there was a crockery bowl and mug, a wooden board on which west­
erners cut sausage, a spoon, a fork, and a small knife. None of those had been
allowed in the cell at the police station. Here I had more water, too, whereas
in the first prison there had been only a small jar of it. In addition to a big
of water for cleaning one's face and teeth and cleaning the dishes, there was
also a large bucket of water for deaning the desk, stool, shelves, and floor. The
bedding, all white, also looked more decent. I did not see the blue-checkered
sheets used at the police station. The bed was made of wire and a steel frame.
Whereas in the first prison, the terrible iron window never showed the sky,
here, because the roof was lower and the window much wider, the moonlight
could shine in and the air in the room was much fresher. Over there, the elec­
tric lights were for decoration only and the guard would order lights out as
early as six o'clock in the evening, even though it did not get dark until nine
0' dock in the summer in Berlin. All in all, everything here seemed superior
to the other place, not to mention the wooden plaques on the wall bearing
various moral teachings, such as the sayings ofJesus: "Ifanyone strikes you on
the right cheek, turn to him the other one also," and so on.
There's nothing comfortable about being in jail, but transferring from a bad
prison to a better one can inspire fresh interests and ideas. Consequently, I had
a hard time falling asleep the first night, and yet still woke up very early the
next morning, feeling nervous inside, as if a new life had begun.
THIS HUGE PRISON
Hu
77
I was out of bed when it was barely daylight. I did some exercises on the
floor till I was drenched in sweat. Then I bathed with the water from the buck­
et and afterward used the same water to mop the floor. Doing this reminded
me of a story I had heard when I was a child. Because water was in such short
in Gansu province in northwest China, people there would use a small
bowl of water to wash first their face, then their feet, and then use the same
water for other purposes. But now, in the more civilized Europe, who would
expect that I would be doing just that!
By the time I had cleaned up the cell, it was broad daylight. I suddenly
heard somebody talking but could not make out what the voice was saying.
That was strange, because I had already heard people talking the day before.
Why couldn't I now tell who was saying what, or where the voices were com­
ing from? Sometimes the voices seemed to come from the sky, sometimes to
pop up from under the floor, and sometimes they sounded as though they
were right next to me. Finally, I could hear clearly. They were saying:
"Sixteen of them, and one Asian {tirl, but I don't know if she is Chinese or
Japanese."
The words were not as noisy or confusing as the day before. It seemed that
two or three people were talking. One was to my left, another seemed to be
opposite, and the third seemed to be below me. What is going on? I wondered. I
decided to investigate. Naturally, I had to use the desk and chair. First, I moved
the desk to the window, then climbed on it with the help of the chair. I grasped
the corner of the window attached to the roof by iron hooks to look out.
Oh, was I dreaming? How could this be? I thought. From this disgusting
window, I could even see the sky. Oh, blue sky, with drifting white douds! The
morning air, cool and fresh, gently brushing against my face! I could
believe this was really happening. But through the rows of double-glazed win­
dows, iron bars on the outside and wooden frames with glass panes on the in­
side, there were many people with their faces partially in view peering out just
like I was. The voices I heard came from the mouths of those people looking
through the windows. If I had not seen this so dearly or heard it so distinctly,
and actually held onto the corner of the window with my own hands, I would
have suspected it was all just a dream!
I was so happy that I forgot I was a detainee. I stood behind the window
and greeted the others, nodding, talking, and in the meantime forgot about
everything else. I did not even notice the woman guard who came to deliver
breakfast until all of a sudden her rude shouting jolted me back to
This guard was not as old as the head guard, nor as large as the fat guard,
though she was fairly heavyset. Short in stature, she had a barrel for a belly,
78 WRlTlNG WOMEN IN MODERN CHlNA
Hu Lanqi 79
and not only were her body and face round, her hands and feet were too.
When she cursed, she sounded like a barking dog.
Curse me though she did, she could not deprive me of my breakfast. But
when the work woman handed me my coffee and bread, the guard glared at
me with displeasure before slamming the door and locking it. At that moment
I could not help thinking of the tall woman guard and my friend Anna. How
I missed them!
Soon after finishing my coffee, I heard footsteps in the yard, the footsteps
of many people. I used the same method, of course, of moving the desk to the
window and stood on top of it to look out. I saw crowds of women wearing
the same blue twill uniforms walking around in the yard. Because I was on
the top floor and the window was toO small, I could not make out their faces.
Only by straining on my tiptoes with great effort and looking through a corner
of the window could I see at an angle the faces of the people passing that spot.
Among them was the work woman who had delivered my coffee and bread
and whom I had not realized until now was also a prisoner. But she did not
look like a political prisoner, and was probably somebody like Anna.
With the lesson learned earlier in the morning, this time I kept an eye on
the door and listened for the guard's footsteps. I had experienced many times
the guards' sneaky ways of always spying on us. That was their job.
When the guard came to unlock the doors to let us out for the break, I
had already hopped down to the floor and moved the desk back to its place. I
thought, Let's see whatyou can say! But she was so cunning that she found some
other infraction and gave me another dressing down. Seeing that my water
and iron bucket were still empty, she asked me whether I had the brains to
know that I was supposed to take rj1em out to get water when breakfast was
served. What she said was right, but I did not like her stern, fat face!
Especially intolerably insulting were the crude, mean curses that she spat
out of her thick lips. I was used to a life of freedom and felt great indignation
at the way she treated me. However, under such intense pressure, what was I
to do? I could do nothing but pretend to be deaf, as if not hearing what she
said.
Out in the open, I immediately spotted the girl student named Sarah with
brown eyes, black hair, thin lips, and good manners. We were already ac­
quainted from school, and had lived on the same street. I had been told that
she was a friend of Mr. Wei who had come to Germany from America. When
we saw each other, we greeted each other with our eyes and walked together
once we were outside in the yard.
The yard for our break was somewhere down below my window and, sur-
rounded by buildings on all sides, seemed very small. Looking up at the sky, I
felt myself trapped in a deep, square well. Still, with a green lawn in the center,
it was better than the police station yard that was covered in horse dung.
While I walked with Sarah, my eyes searched the crowd and I spotted Anja,
Maria, and Kate of the Socialist Party, but never found Mrs. Heinrich. Sarah
was talking freely, as were many others. I was surprised by this and asked her,
"Can people speak at will here?" Sarah, as if telling a story, said "Yes." She
continued, "Here we are not considered prisoners but detainees. We are not
civil or criminal offenders, we have never stolen anything, so we're treated
better than the convicts here. For instance, they get only a half-hour break,
but we get one hour. Ihey cannot talk while walking outside, but we can say
whatever we like, choose to walk with whomever we like, and change position
in the line." Pointing to the huge building, she added, "Those on the first to
fourth floors are not political prisoners. Though they are degenerate, they are
very pitiable. Some of them hate us very much."
"Why should they hate us?" I did not understand and looked at her in
puzzlement.
"'the more people imprisoned here, the fewer rations they get. This prison
does not have the budget for so many people, and now there's not enDugh
food for all the inmates. You have to admit this is an excellent strategy on the
part of the fascists: on the one hand, they can jail us, and on the other, they
can make those ignorant women hate us...."
Sarah's words sounded reasonable, but I still believed that this was Just an­
other stupid move by the fascists. It might work for a while, cheating the
broad masses of laboring people who were blinded in the darkness of the old
society. However, the new society had already showed its brilliant rays, and the
dark mist of the old could not last much longer.
Maria had something different to say when she walked with me, maybe
because she had had a different experience. She told me to keep an eye on
the other inmates, and warned me that not all of them'were revolutionaries
and that some were spies. She said that I could be imprisoned longer now
that I had been transferred here rather than released from the police sta­
tion. She told me to write to the warden to petition for my release, or for
deportation out of the country. A revolutionary, according to her, should be
working on the outside, rather than kept in prison all the time. She was also
quite confident in her own case and believed her sentence would for sure
be overturned.
A bell somewhere clanged once, and Maria said we had used half of the
break time and that the inmates could change positions in the line as they
, ..~.-~..,..",..~...,-
80
WRITING WOMEN IN MODERN CHINA
liked. Since Anja had indicated that she would like to walk with me, I
company with Maria.
Anja and I walked side by side, her hand on my shoulder and my
around her waist. We kept talking, and I asked her where Mrs. Heinrich
gone and why she was not here. She replied that Mrs. Heinrich had
separated from us and put in Ward 7, on the floor below us. We were in
9, on the sixth floor.
She then asked me, "What do you think about this place?"
I said, "Better than the police station."
"No, no! This place may look more civilized from the outside, but d'-Luauy
it's very reactionary inside. Since yesterday afternoon, I have been scolded
times by the guard."
"Was it the fat, short woman guard?" I asked.
"Yes."
"Hmm, she has also yelled at me twice," I said. "She looks just like a bear."
"Ha! Ha! You are right." Anja completely agreed and could not help laugh­
ing heartily. "Let's call her Bear then!"
"Let's call her Bear then!" We both started laughing, as if we had done
something very funny.
Our conversation flowed on and on like endless river waters just released
from a dam. What was more important, we exchanged our cell addresses. She
pointed out her cell for me, and I told her my location. Her window was on
the north facing south, near the corner to the east. My window was on the
west facing east, near a corner to the south. If we both stood at the window,
we could partially see each other's face. Had we not been so far apart, we
might have been able to stand at the windows to talk to each other, as an
open secret.
We were deeply engrossed in our conversation, and I told her how the
women inmates here hated us and how I saw the issue. She seemed greatly
moved, saying, "The old society still exerts great influence! However, the cre­
ation of the new society is just like the sun over the ocean and will soon rise
up in the sky!" Her eyes shone with indomitable enthusiasm.
4
CbvXM~' (1906- 1 99 1 )
iving in France until the mid-1930S, veteran May Fourth writer
Chen Xuezhao had solidified her reputation as an outspoken
feminist in progressive literary and intellectual circles back in
China through regular contributions to avant-garde journals, yet she had
remained aloof from the leftist politics into which so many of her con­
temporaries were being drawn. It was not until her return to China in
1935, amid the deepening national crisis and under surveillance by KMT
police, that her sympathies for the Communist Party began to grow. In
1938, she accepted a special reporting assignment from National Dispatch
magazine and traveled with her young son and husband to the Com­
munist base at Yan'an to gather material and conduct interviews for a
collection of journalistic essays-what would eventually be published in
Hong Kong under the title Interviews at Yan' an (1940). Other female
reporters had preceded her, including the Americans Agnes Smedley and
Nym Wales, but she would be the first Chinese woman writer to docu­
ment life at the Communist guerrilla base. The first selection here, "The
Essentials and Ambience of Life," is from that collection and focuses on
the spartan material conditions of everyday life in Yan'an while evoking
the unique esprit de corps that the author witnessed during her ten-month
visit. In 1940, Chen returned to reside permanently in Yan'an as a com­
mitted member of the community, working alongside Ding Ling, Ai Siqi,
Bai Lang, and others as an editor at the party newspaper, Liberation Daily.
Her critically acclaimed autobiographical novel To Be Working Is Beauti­
ful (1949) gives a moving account of the author's personal metamorphosis
as she moved from the bohemian milieu she inhabited in the twenties
in Shanghai and Paris to her idle days as a young doctor's wife in the
KMT-controlled interior to her newfound political calling at Yan'an.
The novel examines the autobiographical heroine's ideological transfor­
mation, including the profound impact of Mao's Rectification campaign
in I942 , during which urban middle-class intellectuals and writets such as
L