The press conference launch on February 26 of the late Eileen Chang's autobiographical novel Little Reunion at the University of Hong Kong. [CNS photo]

Roland Soong, executor of Ms. Chang's estate, with a copy of Little Reunion at the book launch, where he announced his one million dollar donation to the Eileen Chang Memorial Scholarship. [CNS photo]

The press conference launch of Little Reunion, the autobiographical novel by the late Eileen Chang, was held on February 26 at the University of Hong Kong. Roland Soong, executor of Ms. Chang's estate, was present, and announced his one million dollar donation to the Eileen Chang Memorial Scholarship for Hong Kong University students.

Noted Chinese writer Eileen Chang died in 1995. She was also author of the short story Lust, Caution which director Ang Lee adapted into the award-winning movie of the same name. Ms Chang is generally considered in literary circles as one of the best Chinese writers of her era.  

Chang's works describe 1940s Shanghai and occupied Hong Kong. Often focusing on the dynamic between men and women illicitly in love, her books are distinct among those of the period for the absence of any political subtext in their portrayals of 1940s everyday life.

Stephen Soong, father of Roland, and a friend of Eileen Chang, took the manuscript of Little Reunion which Chang at one time considered destroying, to Taiwan..

Chang had discussed in private letters to Stephen Soong whether or not to burn the Little Reunion manuscript, Roland said, and there is no mention of it in her will. Roland Soong inherited Chang's work after his parents passed away. He sifted correspondence concerning the book out of the 600 letters Chang and his parents exchanged over a 40-year period.

Stephen Soong had two main reservations about publishing Little Reunion. One was that the political situation in Taiwan could complicate matters; the other that the story was clearly an actual account of Chang's love life, and at that time Chang's ex-husband, Hu Lancheng, was still alive and living in Taiwan. As all concerned have since died, however, there was no reason to delay publishing the book.

Stephen Soong believed that none of Chang's other works compared to Little Reunion, and that it would be a literary crime to destroy the manuscript.

His son, Roland Soong, contributed the initial one million dollars towards setting up the Eileen Chang Memorial Scholarship, offered in the author's name to mainland and Taiwanese female students of Liberal Arts. His inspiration came from the main character, Jiu Li(plz check the name again), in Little Reunion who left Hong Kong to take up a scholarship in Shanghai,, Soong said.

Little Reunion, written in 1976, is the love story of a traditional Chinese girl and a married national traitor. It greatly resembles that of Eileen Chang and her first husband Hu Lancheng.

Chang and Hu Lancheng met in the winter of 1943 and married in a secret ceremony the following year. At the time of their affair Hu Lancheng was still married to his third wife and generally regarded as a traitor for collaborating with the Japanese. Chang loved him passionately nonetheless.

After they married, Hu Lancheng went to work on a newspaper in Wuhan. During a stay in hospital there he seduced a 17-year-old nurse who soon moved in with him. When Japan was defeated in 1945, Hu went into hiding in Wenzhou under an assumed name and fell in love with yet another woman from the countryside. When Chang finally tracked him down she realized there was no hope of salvaging the marriage. They divorced in 1947.

Crown Press (HK) donated a transcript of the Little Reunion manuscript to Hong Kong University library. Little Reunion is published in Chinese by Crown Press (HK), who co-hosted the launch with the HKU Journalism and Media Studies Center Project for Public Culture. 

(Source: chinanews.com.cn/Translated by womenofchina.cn)