Chencha Zhangling

Zhang Ling's published works and works published in journals.

The first issue of Jiangnan magazine this year put 1, copies in the newsstand in Hangzhou and sold out in two days. Readers who like periodicals find that Jiangnan has been revised, with a new look, trying to create "Great Jiangnan". The first issue has a dignified and meaningful ink artistic conception on the cover, while a number of heavyweight works have been launched on the inside pages. Among them, the short story column is led by Zhang Ling, a Wen-born overseas female writer, who now lives in Canada.

The column published Zhang Ling's three novels, Mother, Meeting Samina and Sinking Tea, and a review of her novels, Daughter Made of Water. "Mother" tells the story of two generations when Chinese mothers came to visit their sons in Toronto, Canada. Meeting Samina is about an overseas Chinese doctor "I" meeting his ex-wife's female roommate Samina. Samina, a naughty Indian woman, is wrapped in a transparent sari, showing the elegance and care in her life. "Sinking Tea" tells the story of a teahouse owner who learned about a hot love experience with a male tea drinker in a chat.

The first time I met Zhang Ling was on a green hillside on the edge of Toronto. Zhang Ling came out of her clinic like the wind, wearing a long blue dress, and I suddenly thought of water. When I saw her several times later, the color of her body was always bright and simple, and the refreshing room was filled with the softness of water. I think she belongs to love the water, and sure enough, the book can't live without water. Except for my mother's frequent longing by the river in her early years, even when I went to the overseas buildings and castles, I still dipped in some water vapor, that is, I wrote people, regardless of meticulous brushwork or freehand brushwork, which always made me feel somewhat moist. It is said that "the daughter is made of water". Zhang Ling, a native of Wenzhou, jumped out of the cold window of the Department of Foreign Languages of Fudan University in Shanghai. In addition to the water vapor, there is a natural Shu Qi in her bones, and the water is smart and gentle, and the book is bright and beautiful. It is really elegant for women to fall in love with.

Canada, a fertile land for China's new immigrants, trudged through Zhang Ling, Qian Shan, and found her own coast like a fairy who refused to follow the customs. At this time, she found that she could finally look back on the smoky past and kiss the grass and trees in her hometown calmly. All the boundless fantasies in her life have now turned into the passion of words, and she realized that the transplantation of fate was to complete the mission of this fantasy.

Zhang Ling along the way, lonely and firm, lonely but happy, listened to applause from afar as she walked silently. She went to Canada to study in 1986, received a master's degree in English literature from Calgary University in Canada in 1988, and a master's degree in hearing rehabilitation from Cincinnati University in the United States in 1993, and later became a doctor in a hearing clinic in Toronto. During this period, immigrants have experienced vicissitudes for more than ten years, and only she knows the joys and sorrows. Zhang Ling began to write novels in the 198s, and her first novel "Looking at the Moon" was very successful, which made her famous overseas. Later, there were novellas such as Jiangnan, Xunzi, Lilac Street, Flowers, and I didn't know I was a guest in my dream. Short stories include Detective Richardson, Reunion, Blind Appointment, Woman Forty, Bottle and so on. "The Cross-shore" is her second full-length novel, which can be described as another milestone that the literary world pays attention to. In 23, Zhang Ling published her third novel, Mail-order Bride, which established her overseas status as a powerful first-line novelist.

Look at Zhang Ling, a mysterious and transparent woman. Mystery is her writing and transparency is her life. The beautiful and dignified appearance hides the endless sadness in her soul. The sentimental heart made her appreciate the joys and sorrows endowed by emotional life, and the thousand longings interwoven with body and mind became the comfort and catharsis of words. The physical and mental disasters in her life made her trudge in the words at an accelerated pace after her rebirth. There is obviously unspeakable pain in her heart. She compares "writing" to "flying". She says that "flying is a kind of pain, and landing is also a kind of pain", but she is grateful for this "pain" because "pain gives us the feeling of being alive", thus, she transforms people's limited life attempt into an infinite experience of creation.

In the literary world of new immigrants in North America, history has changed and time and space have changed. In the past twenty years, mottled foreign land stories have mushroomed. However, emotional anxiety is always revealed in the rough and urgent words, and works with real and steady style are rare. However, reading Zhang Ling's novels is confronted with a distant coolness and a cool sense of distance, like a person outside the dust telling a story inside the dust. From "Full Moon" in Shanghai, Miss Jin Jia walked into the greasy Chinese restaurant in Toronto, to "The Cross-shore", which originated from the unspeakable love and hate in Wenzhou, and then to the symphony of "Gone with the Wind" in "Mail-order Bride", in which the origin of the interludes disappeared and the affection was perfect, and Zhang Ling deliberately spread the paper, raised the pen and then melted into it.

China's novelists are good at writing history, suffering and satirizing the world, especially the men among contemporary writers are generous and sad. However, Zhang Ling, a daughter's family, wrote the Spring and Autumn Period with a gentle melody: the Jin Sanyuan Silk Fabric Village in the south of the Yangtze River, which was a great shock, continued the incense under the wisdom of my little girl A Jiu. However, this little woman who resisted the storm of history was no longer able to save the fate of her "children". The wheel of history not only crushed A Jiu, but also ran over her "flying clouds" and even crushed the heart of the next generation of "Huining". There are too many sad stories, and human nature is stripped to pieces, but who can resist fate? This fate is history. People are so small, crushed in the dust, and Zhang Ling just carefully peeled off a few petals of fragrance covered in the soil for us. When Zhang Ling writes history, there is always something unusual and calm. She never complains, let alone criticizes. At most, she is pity and a little helpless. When she writes with a light pen, it is a bit shocking. She puts the "Fengyunlu" of an era on the embroidered pillow, which looks exquisite, but it is stormy in her pocket, which is worthy of the strange rhyme of the female writer's Spring and Autumn Historiography.

At first glance, the popular title of Mail-order Bride seems to tell an entertaining love story. However, Zhang Ling's means is to let the reader step into the relaxed suspense and fall into the maze of her life in the irresistible temptation. A "bride" born in the mail order has drawn thousands of kinds of dust and customs inside and outside the world of mortals, but thrilling "accidents" happened in casual "inevitability" and dispersed lightly in blurred sadness. Hidden in downtown Toronto, a cafe named "Sifan" hides an unknown story of a man named Lin Yiming. The accident of the world of mortals made him end his marriage that he had not shown warmth, and thus began the long journey of "mail order bride". Then, in the far south of China, a woman named "Jiang Juanjuan" appeared. In this ordinary and unusual woman, in addition to her own story of wanting to say goodbye, this leads to her mother's stormy love course, and more importantly, her mother, a famous Yue Opera actress, has a sad life. However, in the world of mortals, the meeting between Jiang Juanjuan and Lin Yiming was not a real fate. Jiang Juanjuan, who was depressed and struggling, approached Pastor Wilson, where a story about two generations of western missionaries began to be interpreted. Sadly, the protagonist returned home in a hopeless ending, but failed to expect it, and another unexpected love affair really began.

As a senior writer with more than one million words in North American literary circles, Zhang Ling's eyes have never drifted away from the "native land", but she is by no means a "native land writer" in the pure sense. Her spiritual marrow contains Zhang Ailing's impermanence of life and the desolation of the world, her words contain the calmness of A Dream of Red Mansions, and her rich aesthetic taste is full of the accumulated connotation of "Shanghai culture", and the final strength of personality is the stubborn pride of Wenzhou people. The "Shanghai School" in China's literary world, after more than half a century, has honed generations of delicate and graceful writers, just like the wheat that fell one after another. Zhang Ling's value lies in her efforts to construct a feminine and graceful female narrative style, but she has always retained the inherent simplicity of a small town and her deep concern for the world, and this power of "love" has strictly distinguished her from Zhang Ailing's "cold eyes".

It is said that there are clouds and rains in Wushan, and Zhang Ling is the writer who looks forward to the waters of the sea. (The writer is an overseas Chinese critic, and the full text is abridged.)