Chinese Literature - Li-hua Ying 2010

LI BIHUA, A.K.A. LEE BIK-WA, LILIAN LEE (1959— )
The Dictionary

LI BIHUA, A.K.A. LEE BIK-WA, LILIAN LEE (1959— ). Fiction and film script writer and essayist. Born to a big, well-established family, Li Bihua showed literary talents at an early age. She is a prolific writer, having published many collections of essays, including Hong chen (Red Dust), Jing hua (Flower in the Mirror), and dozens of fictional works, several of which have been adapted into films, including the internationally renowned Bawang bie ji (Farewell My Concubine), which won an award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1993. A major theme in her work is romantic love, and in her more recent stories she turns her attention to portraying men’s betrayal of love, a move influenced by feminism. No other story more clearly expresses this feminist stance than Yanzhi kou (Rouge), in which a ghost, a former sing-song girl, haunts the streets of Hong Kong in search of her lover, heir to a grocery fortune, who is supposed to have died with her in a double suicide. Other stories that treat the same theme include Pan Jinlian zhi qianshi jinsheng (The Past and Present Lives of a Seductress), Chuandao Fangzi (The Last Manchu Princess), Qing she (Green Snake), and finally Bawang bie ji, her most famous work. Li currently lives in Canada. See also WOMEN.