Chinese Literature - Li-hua Ying 2010

WANG HAILING (1952— )
The Dictionary

WANG HAILING (1952— ). Novelist. Born in Shandong, Wang Hailing joined the military at the age of 16 and spent 14 years stationed on a tiny island. To help pass the time, she took up writing. Her breakthrough came in the 1990s with the family drama Qian shou (Holding Your Hands), which was made into a television series, earning Wang national fame. She followed it with two more best sellers, Zhongguo shi lihun (Divorce: Chinese Style), a novel about marital problems encountered by three couples, which was also turned into a popular television series, and Xin jiehun shidai (The Era of New Marriage), which centers on the members of an intellectual family and their unconventional romantic relationships, such as the widowed father with a young, uneducated maid from the countryside and the son with an older woman. Wang writes in a realist style and deals with love and conflict in contemporary Chinese families. With a unique understanding of interpersonal and familial relationships in Chinese society, she has become a popular writer widely considered “the number one interpreter of Chinese marriage.” See also WOMEN.