Zhang Tianyi

Name in Chinese
張天翼
Name in Wade-Giles
Chang T'ien-yi
Related People

Biography in English

Chang T'ien-yi (1907-) was known in the 1930's for his short stories of the new realist school. After 1949 he edited the Communist literary magazine Jen-min wen-hsueh [people's literature] and wrote stories and plays for children. The younger brother of Chang Mo-chun (q.v.), Chang T'ien-yi was born at Nanking, the fifteenth and youngest child of the family. His grandfather, a native of Hsianghsiang, Hunan, had served under Tseng Kuo-fan (ECCP, II, 751-56) during the period of the Taiping Rebellion and had established himself as a prominent member of the landowning gentry in the province. Chang's father, Chang Po-ch'un, was one of five brothers, all of whom held the rank of chü-jen and were scholarofficials in the late Ch'ing period. Chang Poch'un served as education commissioner at Nanking under Tuan-fang. His wife, Ho I-hsiao was a poet whose work was highly esteemed by the prominent Hunan scholar and statesman T'an Yen-k'ai (q.v.).

Chang T'ien-yi's early life was influenced by the fact that the family's fortunes had declined greatly. After the Wuchang revolt of 191 1, the boy led an unsettled existence because of his family's movements during the early years of the republican period. He was exposed to people of many social backgrounds, speaking a variety of dialects, with whom his father associated for either business or pleasure. During his school days, Chang T'ien-yi was also influenced by the literary proclivities of his family. After graduation in 1924 from the middle school at Hangchow, Chang T'ien-yi moved to Peking. There, though he did not engage in formal study, he quickly absorbed some of the new ideas of the younger Chinese intellectuals and began to write. In 1 925 a Peking newspaper published an article he wrote imitating the fashionable symbolist manner. In 1928 he dropped these affectations in favor of a realistic style, exemplified in his first short story, "Sanjih-pan chih meng" [a dream of three-and-ahalf days], which was published in the magazine Pen-liu [the rising torrent], which was edited by Lu Hsün (Chou Shu-jen, q.v.). Greatly encouraged by his success, Chang continued to write in the same vein, and his stories began to appear in the magazines Wen-hsueh yueh-pao [literary monthly], Hsien-tai [the present age], and Wen-hsueh [literature].

His first collection of short stories was published in 1931 under the title Mi-Feng [the honey bee]. By 1937 he had published four novels and a half-dozen volumes of short stories, as well as a children's tale entitled "A Strange Place." Chang T'ien-yi's keen ear and his comic exuberance attracted much favorable attention. With a minimum of description and exposition, he caught his characters in action with a touch that was sure and light . He was especially known for his ability to render precisely the speech patterns of various social classes. During his productive years as a writer he worked at many jobs to support himself. He was at various times a school teacher, a journalist, and a minor official. Before the Sino-Japanese war, he lectured on contemporary Chinese literature at Chinan University in Shanghai and also taught at Kuo-min University.

After the outbreak of war Chang moved westward, first to his native Hunan, where he taught briefly at Changsha, and then to Szechwan, where he spent the remaining war years. In 1943 he published Three Sketches, a satiric study of undesirable types of intellectuals who thrived on the chaotic wartime conditions. One of these stories, "Hua-wei hsien-sheng" [Mr. Hua Wei], was popular among Chinese students of that period. Three Sketches proved to be Chang T'ien-yi's last significant contribution to fiction; soon after its publication he learned that he had tuberculosis, and he was forced to go into retirement at Chengtu to recuperate. After the establishment of the new government at Peking in 1949, Chang T'ien-yi's name again began to appear, now in the Communist literary journals such as the Jen-min wen-hsueh (People's Literature) . He wrote tales and one-act plays about children for children, indicating that the Communists assigned him to write in that field. In view of the importance that Peking attaches to the indoctrination of the young, the significance of Chang's assignment was clear. He also served as deputy director of the Central Literary Research Institute and as editor of People's Literature, and was a delegate to the National People's Congress.

Chang T'ien-yi's place in recent Chinese literary history rests largely on his brilliant short stories of the 1930's. His sympathies were consistently with the underdog, and his stories were often directed against landlords and wealthy exploiters. Yet he remained free of the overt propaganda tendencies shown by the more extreme leftist writers.

Essentially, Chang T'ien-yi was concerned with the artistic development of his themes. He acknowledged his debt to such authors as Maupassant, Dickens, and Zola, and he was increasingly influenced by Chekov, Gorky, and by the more recent authors of the Soviet period. It is said that he had no political ambitions but that, like many of his contemporaries, he gave his allegiance to the Communist cause because of his disillusionment with the social decadence and irresponsibility of the pre- 1949 period in China.

Biography in Chinese

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