ABSTRACT
Ding Ling (1904–1986) was a literary pioneer, revolutionary, champion of women’s rights and one of modern China’s most important women writers. Born as Jiang Bingzhi in Linli, Hunan province, she is the author of nearly three hundred literary works including novels, plays, short stories and essays, which are celebrated today as foundational texts of the May Fourth New Culture Movement and included in the modern Chinese literary canon. Her life, spanning the bulk of the twentieth century, witnessed violence, upheavals and vicissitudes in the modern era of China. She personally endured several long spells of exile and imprisonment, but she never wavered in her conviction of the power of literature for social change.
