Bing Xin

Xie Wanying (Chinese: 謝婉瑩; October 5, 1900 – February 28, 1999),[1] better known by her pen name Bing Xin (Chinese: 冰心) or Xie Bingxin, was one of the most prolific Chinese women writers of the 20th century. Many of her works were written for young readers. She was the chairperson of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles. Her pen name Bing Xin (literally "Ice Heart") carries the meaning of a morally pure heart, and is taken from a line in a Tang Dynasty poem by Wang Changling.

Not to be confused with Xie Bingying.
In this Chinese name, the family name is Xie.
Bing Xin (Xie Wanying)
Bing Xin in the 1920s.
Born(1900-10-05)5 October 1900
Fuzhou, Fujian, Qing china
Died28 February 1999(1999-02-28) (aged 98)
Beijing Hospital, Beijing, China
Alma materYenching University
Spouse(s)Wu Wenzao
ChildrenWu Qing
Parent(s)Xie Baozhang (謝葆璋)
Yang Fuci (楊福慈)
Awards1998 Lu Xun Literary Prize
Bing Xin
Chinese冰心
Literal meaning"Ice Heart"
Xie Wanying
Traditional Chinese謝婉瑩
Simplified Chinese谢婉莹

Bing Xin published her first prose on Morning Newspaper (Chinese: 晨報) The Impressions of the 21st Hearing and her first novel Two Families in August 1919. Before and after studying board in 1923, she began to publish pose letters Jixiaoduzhe (To the Little Readers) 寄小讀者, which became the foundation stone of Chinese children's literature.[2] Bing Xin was hired by University of Tokyo as the first foreign female lecture to teach the Chinese New Literature course. She returned to China in 1951.[3]

Life

Bing Xin was born in Fuzhou, Fujian, but moved to Shanghai with her family when she was seven months old, and later moved yet again to the coastal port city of Yantai, Shandong, when she was four. Such a move had a crucial influence on Bing Xin's personality and philosophy of love and beauty, as the vastness and beauty of the sea greatly expanded and refined young Bing Xin's mind and heart. It was also in Yantai Bing Xin first began to read the classics of Chinese literature, such as Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Water Margin, when she was just seven.

Bing Xin entered Fuzhou Women's Normal School and started preparatory study in 1911. In 1913, Bing Xin moved to Beijing. She entered the science department of Union Women's University and began to learn to become a doctor. Influences by the May Fourth Movement and the New Culture Movement, Bing Xin transferred to the Department of Literature.[2] The May Fourth Movement in 1919 inspired and elevated Bing Xin's patriotism to new high levels, starting her writing career as she wrote for a school newspaper at Yanjing University where she was enrolled as a student and published her first novel. While at Yanjing in 1921, Bing Xin was baptized a Christian, but was throughout her life generally indifferent to Christian rituals.[4]

Bing Xin graduated from Yanjing University in 1923 with a bachelor's degree, and went to the United States to study at Wellesley College, earning a master's degree at Wellesley in literature in 1926. Before and after studying abroad, she wrote prose about her journeys while traveling in foreign countries and sent them back to China for publication. The collection was To the Little Readers, which was an early work of Chinese children's literature. She then returned to Yanjing University to teach until 1936.

In 1929, she married Wu Wenzao, an anthropologist and her good friend when they were studying in the United States. Together, Bing Xin and her husband visited different intellectual circles around the world, communicating with other intellectuals such as Virginia Woolf.

In 1940, Bing Xin was elected a member of the National Senate.[5]

During the war of resistance against Japan, she wrote guanyu nüren (About Women) under the pen name Nan Shi (Mr. Man) in Chongqing, and actively engaged in creation and cultural salvation activities in Kunming, Chongqing and other places.[2]

After war period, Bing Xin worked at the Department of New Chinese Literature at the University of Tokyo, and taught the history of Chinese new literature from 1949 to 1951, and published some short articles in local newspapers.[2]

Later in her life, Bing Xin taught in Japan for a short period and stimulated more cultural communications between China and the other parts of the world as a traveling Chinese writer. In literature, Bing Xin founded the "Bing Xin Style" as a new literary style. She contributed a lot to children's literature in China (her writings were even incorporated into children's textbooks), and also undertook various translation tasks, including the translation of the works of Indian literary figure Rabindranath Tagore.

Because of the translation of Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet, Sand and Foam, Rabindranath Tagore's Gitanjali, The Gardener and other works, she was awarded the National Order of the Cedar by the president of the Republic of Lebanon in 1995.[3] Tagore's prose poems inspired Bing Xin. She wrote the influential pose letters To the Little Readers, which was the best example. Affected by Tagore's pantheism, Bing Xin's creation moves towards the chant of tender love.[6] With Tagore's influence, Bing Xin also created Fanxing and Chunshui. Bing Xin said, when she wrote Fanxing (A Maze of Stars)繁星 and Chunshui (Spring Water)春水, she was not writing poems. She was just influenced by Tagore's Stray Birds and wrote these "fragmented thoughts" in a few words in her notebook then collected into a collection.[7]

Bing Xin's literary career was prolific and productive. She wrote a wide range of works—prose, poetry, novels, reflections, etc. Her career spanned more than seven decades in length, from 1919 to the 1990s.

After the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, China entered a new historical period, and Bing Xin ushered in the second creative climax in her life. In June 1980, Bing Xin suffered from cerebral thrombosis, but she still insisted on writing. The short story Kongchao (Empty Nest)空巢 was published during this period and won the National Excellent Short Story Award.[8]

In September 1994, Bing Xin was admitted to Beijing Hospital due to heart failure. Her condition deteriorated and died on February 28, 1999, in Beijing Hospital at the age of 98. After Bing Xin's death, Zhu Rongji, Li Ruihuan, Hu Jintao and other central leaders, as well as leaders and writers' representatives of the China Writers Association visited her in person in the hospital.[9]

Photo of Bing Xin's bedroom displayed in Bing Xin Literature Museum in Fujian Province.

Legacy

Selected works
  • Jimo (寂寞, Loneliness) (1922)
  • Xianqing (閒情, Leisure) (1922)
  • Chaoren (超人, Superhuman) (1923)
  • Fanxing (繁星, A Myriad of Stars) (1923)
  • Chunshui (春水, Spring Water) (1923)
  • Liu yi jie (六一姐, Six-one sister) (1924)
  • Ji xiao duzhe (寄小讀者, To Young Readers) (1926)
  • Nangui (南歸, Homeward South) (1931)
  • Wangshi (往事, The Past) (1931)
  • Bing Xin Quanji (冰心全集, The Collected Works of Bing Xin) (1932–1933)
  • Yinghua zan (櫻花讚, Ode to Sakura)
  • Wo men zheli meiyou dongtian (我們這裡沒有冬天, No Winter in My Hometown) (1974)
  • Wo de guxiang (我的故鄉, My Home) (1983)
  • Guanyu nuren (關於女人, About Females) (1999)

Works available in English

References
  1. "Bingxin | Chinese author". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2017-10-19.
  2. Moran, Thomas (2007). Chinese fiction writers, 1900-1949. Detroit: Thomson Gale. ISBN 978-0-7876-8146-3. OCLC 68712263.
  3. Wang, Lingzhen (2007). Chinese fiction writers, 1900-1949. Moran, Thomas, 1957-. Detroit: Thomson Gale. pp. 61–70. ISBN 0-7876-8146-6. OCLC 68712263.
  4. Li Daonan (May 17, 2019). "Bing Xin's Christian Faith and Real Life". China Christian Daily.
  5. James Z. Gao: Historical Dictionary of Modern China (1800-1949)
  6. Admussen, Nick (2016-09-01). "Genre Occludes the Creation of Genre". Oxford Handbooks Online. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199383313.013.30.
  7. Liu, Xiaoqing (2019-01-02). "Imitation and creation: Bing Xin's Fanxing (A Maze of Stars) 繁星and Chunshui (Spring Water) 春水". Comparative Literature: East & West. 3 (1): 79–100. doi:10.1080/25723618.2019.1616660.
  8. Wang, Lingzhen (2007). Chinese fiction writers, 1900-1949. Moran, Thomas, 1957-. Detroit: Thomson Gale. pp. 61–70. ISBN 0-7876-8146-6. OCLC 68712263.
  9. Chinese fiction writers, 1900-1949. Moran, Thomas, 1957-. Detroit: Thomson Gale. 2007. ISBN 0-7876-8146-6. OCLC 68712263.CS1 maint: others (link)
  10. Bing Xin Museum Receives Author's Household Estate, CCTV, 2004-03-24, archived from the original on 2011-07-07, retrieved 2010-04-28
  11. Abrahamsen, Eric. "The Bing Xin Children's Literature Award". Paper Republic. Archived from the original on 2016-08-27. Retrieved 2016-07-06.
  12. "List of Bing Xin Award Winning New Works of Children's Literature 2005-2011 2005年-2011年冰心儿童文学新作奖获奖篇目". Chinese-forums.com.
  13. Bing Xin. "The Little Orange Lamp" (PDF). Translated by Gong Shifen.
  14. "chinese-shortstories.com". www.chinese-shortstories.com.
  15. "Bing Xin and The Little Orange Lantern". 29 December 2016.

Further reading

Portrait
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