Eileen Chang (1920–1995), born Zhang Ying in Shanghai of Fengrun, Hebei ancestry, was a writer who also worked as a screenwriter in Hong Kong. The granddaughter of the Qing official Zhang Peilun and connected to Li Hongzhang's family, she entered the University of Hong Kong in 1939 but left when the Japanese attacked the colony, returning to Shanghai in 1942. Her stories of 1943, among them Aloeswood Incense: The First Brazier, Love in a Fallen City and The Golden Cangue, made her name. In 1946 she wrote her first two screenplays, Unending Love and Long Live the Missus (both 1947), both directed by Sang Hu and well received. Returning to Hong Kong in 1952, she worked for the United States Information Service and met the couple Stephen Soong and Eva Kwong, who became lifelong friends. From 1955 she joined the Cathay script committee and, from 1957 to 1964, wrote many screenplays for the company, including The Confused Lover (1957), The Wayward Husband (1959) and June Bride (1960). She died in Los Angeles in September 1995.
Known first as a novelist, Chang left several screenplays for the Shanghai and Hong Kong film worlds of the 1940s to 1960s. Her close reading of urban romance and psychology influenced later literary adaptations and strengthened the dialogue between literature and cinema in Chinese-language film.
Achievements
- 1943 · Published Aloeswood Incense: The First Brazier, Love in a Fallen City and The Golden Cangue, making her name
- 1947 · Her first screenplay, Unending Love, was released, directed by Sang Hu
- 1957 · Wrote The Confused Lover for Cathay