Chen Ran

In thisChinese name,thefamily nameisChen.

Chen Ran(simplified Chinese:Trần nhiễm;traditional Chinese:Trần nhiễm;pinyin:Chén Rǎn;born 1962) is a Chinese avant-garde writer. Most of her works appeared in the 1990s and often deal with Chinesefeminism.

Chen Ran
Native name	Trần nhiễm
Born	April 1962 (age 62) Beijing,China
Occupation	Short storywriter, literary critic,essayist
Language	Chinese
Alma mater	Beijing Normal University
Period	1986–present
Notable works	Private Life

Biography

Chen Ran was born in Beijing in April, 1962. Her parents divorced when she was in high school and she since then lived with her mother. As a child she studied music, but when she was 18 her interests turned to literature.

Chen Ran studied Chinese language and literature inBeijing Normal Universityfrom 1982 to 1986 and graduated when she was 23. She remained with the university as a teacher after graduation for the next four and a half years. She also lectured as an exchange scholar at various foreign universities includingMelbourne Universityin Australia, theUniversity of Berlinin Germany, and London, Oxford, andEdinburghuniversities in the UK. Between 1987 and 1989, she published a series ofsurrealisticshort stories with strong philosophical undertones.

She now lives and writes in Beijing. She has published several short story collections and is a member of the Chinese Writers Association.She has won number of prizes, such as the first Contemporary China Female Writer's Award.

Work

Chen Ran's stories received great attention from feminine critics as well as general publishers in the cultural market during the 1990s.Chinese feminist critics praise the gender consciousness of her work and the introduction into literature of the private female experience, including lesbian love (or affection, as Ran prefers to call it),theElectra complex,and the mother-daughter relationship.

The publication of her first novel,Private Life,in 1996 caused heated debate in Chinese literary circles. As a result of her writing style, which is very personal and open, some critics have found her writing to be too exploitative of the new massconsumermarket.

The filmYesterday's Wine,based on her short story of the same name, was chosen for showing at the Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing in 1995.

Controversy

Chen Ran is the most-discussed figure in the recent critical debate in China over "female writing" and "individual writing".Even though the government has never banned her books, a thinly veiled moralism pervades the literary critical approach to her work. Critics writing in academic journals have accused her ofzilian(narcissism) andzibi(solipsism). For example, some critics write off her book,Private Life,as mere exhibitionism (i.e., the willing exposure of privacy) because Chen openly admits to writing from experience.

Publications

• Let's Pay the Piper for the Past( dữ vãng sự càn bôi; Yǔ wǎngshì gānbēi), 2001.
• Potential Anecdote(qianxing yishi)
• Standing up, Alone, Facing the Air Current(zhan zai wu ren de fengkou)
• The Witch and the Door of her Dreams(wu nü yu ta de meng zhong zhi men)
• Troglodyte House(kongdong zhi tuo)
• Nine Months without Going out for the Bald Woman(tutou nü zou bu chu lai de jiu yue)
• Birth of an Empty Man(kong xin ren de dansheng)
• Private Life( tư nhân sinh hoạt; Sīrén shēnghuó), 1996.

References

Sources

• Chen, Ran, and John Howard-Gibbon. A private life. Columbia Univ Pr, 2004. Print.[3]
• Xiao, Lily, and Clara Wing-chung.Biographical dictionary of Chinese women: Twentieth Century. 1912-2000.vol. 2. Routledge, 2002. Print.ISBN978-0765607980.