Hsieh Wan-ying (5 October 1900-), known as Ping Hsin, was a poet, essayist, and short story writer. A native of Minhou, Fukien, Hsieh Wan-ying was born into a prosperous family in Foochow. Her father, Hsieh Pao-chang, was an officer in the Chinese naval service. When Hsieh Wanying was only a few months old, her mother took her to Shanghai, where her father was serving. In 1903 the family moved to Yent'ai (Chefoo), Shantung, where Hsieh Pao-chang was assigned to head a naval training school.

Hsieh W'an-ying spent her childhood on the Shantung coast, where she received her early education and her first impressions of natural beauty. A solitary child, she spent much of her time at home. Adult relatives told her stories, taught her to read, and developed in her an enthusiasm for traditional Chinese literature. When she was ten, her mother's cousin became her tutor. Hsieh read Chinese literature and classical texts, and she was permitted to attend meetings of a Chinese poetry club to which her father and his friends belonged. At an early age, she began to write stories and verses. At the time of the 1911 revolution, she and her family went to the home of her paternal grandfather in Fukien. For several months, Hsieh attended the Foochow Normal School for Girls. She also spent much time reading in her grandfather's home library.

In 1913 Hsieh Pao-chang took his family to Peking. Hsieh Wan-ying did not attend a school that year. She continued to read at home and enjoyed such magazines as the Fu-nü tsa-chih [women's magazine] and the Hsiao-shuo yuehpao [short story magazine], which her mother read regularly. Her interest in poetry was broadened through exposure to the tz'u form, which she learned of from the literary columns of contemporary magazines. She drew on her reading to tell stories to her three younger brothers when they returned home from school. She also wrote a few short stories in the traditional Chinese style, but left them unfinished. In the autumn of 1914, Hsieh Wan-ying entered the girl's school of the Bridgman Academy, a middle school run by American Congregational missionaries in Peking. Later, both she and her mother became Christians. Because standards in the school were high and competition was keen, she had little time to read Chinese literature during her years at Bridgman.

After graduation in 1918, Hsieh Wan-ying entered Peking Union College for Women, which later was incorporated into Yenching University. Despite her retiring nature, she was drawn into the student activities associated with the May Fourth Movement of 1919. She was called on to serve as secretary of the student association at the Women's College and was also chosen to head the propaganda section of the students' union in Peking. Hsieh Wanying's cousin Liu Fang-yuan was editing the literary supplement of the Peking newspaper Ch'eji Pao [morning post]. Hsieh made her first serious attempt at writing in the vernacular style and succeeded in having an article published in the supplement. Her cousin encouraged her and sent her copies of new Chinese magazines, including Hsin ch'ing-nien [new youth], Hsin-ch'ao [renaissance], and Kai-tsao [reconstruction]. In these and other journals of the period, Hsieh read Chinese translations of some of the writings of Leo Tolstoy, Rabindranath Tagore, Bertrand Russell, John Dewey, and other non-Chinese authors. Her discovery that it was possible to blend serious philosophy with fiction led her to begin writing stories again.

Soon, Hsieh's short story Liang-ke chia-Ving [two families] was published in the Ch'en Pao literary supplement under the pen name Ping Hsin, meaning pure in heart. Encouraged by this success, she began writing poems and essays as well as short stories. Many of these appeared in the Ch'en Pao supplement. Hsieh joined the Literary Research Society [see Cheng Chen-to) when it was formed in Peking in 1921 and published some of her early work in its Short Story Magazine. By the early 1920s, though still a college student at Yenching, Hsieh had established herself as a pioneer among modern Chinese women writers. Two collections of poetry, Fan-hsing [myriad stars] and Ch'un-shui [spring water] appeared in 1923. The verses—lyrical, unrhymed, and exquisite in diction—created a vogue for the short verse. Ch'un-shui later was translated into English by Hsieh's friend Grace M. Boynton of the Yenching English department and was published at Peiping in 1929. Fan-hsing was written in imitation of Tagore's 'Tlying Birds." In 1923 Hsieh published a collection of short stories entitled Ch'ao-jen [superman], which marked the high point of her youthful writing career. In a lucid and distinctive style, she depicted with tenderness and sympathy the loneliness of childhood and the melancholy of youth in China. Hsieh soon began to receive quantities of mail from impressionable and admiring contemporaries. Her fluency in English attracted the attention of an American visitor to Peking, Candace Stimson, sister of Henry L. Stimson, who was looking for a talented Chinese girl to send to Wellesley for graduate work. Hsieh received her B.A. degree at Yenching in the summer of 1923. In August, she sailed from Shanghai on the President Jackson for the United States. She entered Wellesley but became ill with tuberculosis and was forced to spend six months in a Massachusetts sanitorium. At this time, she composed some of her Chi hsiao-tu-che [letters to young readers], which were published serially in the literary supplement of the Ch'en Pao. They were collected and published in book form in 1926. In these letters, Hsieh demonstrated a talent for writing for children and a notable capacity for describing scenery. She later returned to Wellesley and received the M.A. degree in 1926.

After returning to China in the summer of 1926, Hsieh joined the faculty of Yenching University and taught literature there. She journeyed frequently to Shanghai, where her family was living. In June 1929 at Peiping, Hsieh married Wu Wen-tsao, whom she had met in the United States. Wu received his Ph.D. in sociology at Columbia University. Shortly after their marriage, Hsieh's mother, who had been an invalid for some years, died. After her trip to Shanghai to settle family affairs, Hsieh wrote an essay, Nan-kuei [returning south], to commemorate her mother.

Hsieh continued to teach at Yenching. Because she was busy with domestic affairs, she produced only a Chinese translation of Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet, published in 1931 as Hsien-chih, and a few short stories in which she attempted, with limited success, to write of adult life. In 1933 Wu Wen-tsao became chairman of the sociology department at Yenching. In 1936 Hsieh accompanied her husband to the United States, where he represented Yenching University at Harvard's tercentenary celebrations. They then visited Europe and returned to the Far East by way of the Soviet Union, arriving at Peiping only a week before the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war in July 1937. After the hostilities began, they went to western China, arriving at Kunming in August 1938. Wu Wen-tsao organized a sociology department for Yunnan University. They went to Chungking in 1940, and Wu served on the Supreme National Defense Council. Hsieh continued to write intermittently and produced Hsü chi hsiao-tu-che [more letters to young readers]. In 1943, writing under a new pen name, Nan-shih, she published a book of essays entitled Kuan-yü nü-jen [about women]. These essays were brief portraits of prominent Chinese women, written in an informal style. During the war years, Hsieh served as a member of the People's Political Council and had considerable contact with Wellesley alumna Soong Mei-ling. Hsieh returned briefly to Peiping in the spring of 1946 and then went on to Tokyo, where Wu Wen-tsao had been appointed an adviser on the staff of the Chinese Mission in Japan. She gave weekly lectures on modern Chinese literature at Tokyo University, did some writing, and was active in the Wellesley alumnae group in Tokyo.

Late in 1951 Hsieh and her husband returned to China. Many of their friends were unaware of their decision until after they had arrived in Peking. Hsieh became a member of the national committee of the All-China Federation of Literary and Arts Circles and a council member of the Union of Chinese Writers. She was named to membership on the executive committees of the Chinese People's Association for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries and of the China Women's Federation and was elected a deputy from Fukien to the National People's Congress in 1954 and 1959. In the winter of 1953, Hsieh was a member of a Chinese friendship delegation to India which was led by Ting Hsi-lin (q.v.). In the next few years, she represented the People's Republic of China at meetings held in New Delhi, Lausanne, Tokyo, Cairo, Tashkent, and Moscow. In the spring of 1958, she was a member of the delegation led by Hsü Ti-hsin that visited Italy and England. Her activities left little time for creative writing. However, in the 1950s two volumes of stories for children, Tao Ch'i te shu-ch'ijih-ch'i [T'ao Ch'i's summer schedule] and Yin-tu t'ung-hua chi [Indian fairy tales] appeared, and in 1964 a volume of essays written between 1959 and 1963 was published at Peking under the title Shih-sui hsiao-ch'a [miscellaneous essays].

Hsieh Wan-ying enjoyed great popularity in China in the early 1920s. Her forte was the ability to write movingly about such subjects and emotions as mother love, the joys and sorrows of childhood and adolescence, and the beauties of nature. Her later writing was influenced by Western literature and by Christianity, which contributed a certain didacticism and pseudo mysticism to her literary efforts. Because of these limitations, Hsieh's work had come to be regarded as escapist and outdated by the 1930's. A three-volume collection of her best writings, Ping Hsin ck'Han-chi, was published by the Pei-hsin Book Company in 1932-33. A revised edition of her works, with some additions, was edited by Pa Chin (Li Fei-kan, q.v.) and was published in 1943 by the K'ai-ming Book Company at Kweilin. It was reprinted in 1947. A volume of essays about her work, Lun Ping Hsin, edited by Li Hsi-t'ung, was published by the Pei-hsin Book Company in 1932.

Hsieh Wan-ying had three children. Her two daughters were born in 1935 and 1 938. Her son, Wu Tsung-sheng, born in February 1931, was graduated from the department of architecture of Tsinghua University in 1952.