Xiao Hong Biography and List of Works

Chinese novelist, short story writer, and poet. Xiao Hong led an itinerant life and died in Japanese-occupied Hong Kong at the age of thirty-one. Her writing career spanned less than a decade, but her works have stood as models for later generations of writers. Among Xiao Hong's best-known short stories is 'Hands' (1936), the story of a girl who is deprived of everything she yearns for - knowledge, love and freedom. The protagonist is a dye-workers daughter who is looked down on in school because of her black hands.

   "... I heard a rustling by my pillow as if someone were groping about, and opened my eyes to see Yaming's black hands. She laid the book she had borrowed down beside me.
    "Find it interesting? Did you like it?"
    At first she did not answer. The she covered her face with her hands, and her very hair seemed to tremble as she breathed:
    "Yes!"
   Her voice was trembling too. I sat up in bed. But she ran away, her face still buried in hands as black as her hair."
(from 'Hands')

Xiao Hong was born Chang Naiying to a landlord family in Hunan county in the Northeastern part of China (Heilongjiang). Xiao Hong spent an unhappy childhood under a domineering father, recalling in her memoir that her father "buried his humanity in greed." In 1926 she enrolled in the famous girls' school of Harbin. During these years she read the works of Lu Xun, Xie Bingxin, Upton Sinclair and others, and became involved in the student movement.

When her father arranged for her a marriage she escaped to Beijing. Xiao Hong's intended husband followed her there and she agreed to live with him. They returned to Harbin where in 1932 she met Xiao Jun, a young writer. They started to publish in the local papers. In 1933 she wrote the short stories 'Trek' and 'Tornado' and in the same year her joint collection of short stories with Xiao Jun, Bashe (1933) was published. In 1934 they left Harbin, which was ruled by the Japanese occupiers, and moved to Quigdao. Finally Xiao Hong settled with Xiao Jun in Shanghai, where they became friends with Lu Xun (1881-1936), a distinguished writer in the leftist literary world. Over the next several years she kept one step ahead of Japanese advances, travelling from Wuhan to Chongquing and finally to Hong Kong.

As a writer Xiao Hong made her breakthrough with Sheng si Chang (1935, The Field of Life and Death), which appeared with the help of Lu Xun, who wrote the preface. The work was an instant success and made a strong impact on leftist literary circles and urban readers. It was one of the first literary works to reflect life under Japanese rule. The story depicts village life during the thirties in northeast China and the revolt against Japanese aggression.

Between the years 1935-36 Xiao Hong wrote short stories and essays, which were later collected in Shangshi Jie, Qiao, and Niuche Shang. In 1936 she went to Japan for health reasons and returned to China after the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japan in 1937. Her short stories from the late 1930s include 'Hands', 'Small Town in March' and 'Calls from Wilderness'. While in Changquing she published her remembrance of Lu Xun, Huiyi Lu Xun Xiansheng (1940).

In 1940 Xiao Hong moved to Hong Kong with Duanmu Honglian, a leftist writer. Although at that time she was ill and emotionally spent, she published the first volume of a planned trilogy, Ma Bole (1940), a satire in which she mocked the patriotism of the era and trivialized the ongoing war. In Hulanhe zhuan, (1942, Tales of Hulan River) Xiao Hong focuses on her hometown in Hulan and depicts its people, who still suffer from the feudal heritage, with simple yet poetic language. The novel evokes domestic images and recounts village stage performances, exorcist rites, and festivals but also reveals the barbarous side of life with an account of a ritual killing of a child-bride by her in-laws. - Xiao Hong died of respiratory problems in January 1942, shortly after the colony fell to the Japanese. He poems were not published until 1980.

For further reading: Living China by E. Snow (1936); Battle Hymn of China by A. Smedley (1943); Hsiao Hung by H. Goldblatt (1976); World Authors 1975-1980, ed. by Vineta Colby (1985); Woman and Literature in China, ed. by Anna Gerstlacher (1985); Body, Subject & Power in China, ed. by Angelo Zito and Tani E. Barlow (1994); Encyclopaedia of the Novel, ed. by Paul Schellinger (1998, vol. 2) - Note: Xiao Hong sent to Upton Sinclair a copy of her novel The Field of Life and Death. He responded with a warm letter and a copy of his novel Co-op.

Bashe, (1933)
Sheng si chang, (1935)
Huiyi Lu Xun Xiansheg, (1940)
Ma Bole, (1940)
Hulanhe zhuan, (1942)
Anthology of Modern Chinese Stories and Novels, (1980)