Ding Ling

Ding Ling (October 12, 1904 – March 4, 1986), formerly romanized as Ting Ling, was the pen name of Jiang Bingzhi, also known as Bin Zhi (彬芷 Bīn Zhǐ), one of the most celebrated 20th-century Chinese women authors. She is known for her feminist and socialist realist literature.

Ding was active in leftist literary circles connected to the Chinese Communist Party and was imprisoned by the Chinese Nationalist Party for her politics.

She later became a leader in the literary community in the Communist base of Yan'an, and held high literature and culture positions in the early government of the People's Republic of China.

In 1919, Ding Ling graduated from primary school and was admitted to the preparatory course at the Hunan Second Normal School for Girls in Taoyuan County, where she came in contact with the May 4th student movement.

In 1920, she was transferred to Changsha Zhounan Girls High School, but the school became very conservative and Ding dropped out after one year of study.

Miss Sophia's Diary highlights Ding Ling's close association and belief in the New Woman movement which was occurring in China during the 1920s.

At this time, Ding Ling and Hu Yepin frequently traveled from Beijing to Shanghai.

They lived briefly in Hangzhou from March to July of the same year, and then returned to Shanghai.

Around this time Ding Ling met the Communist Party member, writer, and activist Feng Xuefeng, who unlike Hu Yepin was active in politics.

Ding Ling fell in love with Feng, and at the end of February, the three had a long talk in Hangzhou, after which Feng Xuefeng backed out and Ding Ling and Hu Yebin got married and lived in Shanghai.

Ding Ling later recalled: "I had lived with Hu Yepin for two and a half years, and I'd never said that I would agree to marry them, but I also did not reject his feelings for me. He gave me many things; I did not reject them. Although the two of us had an arrangement, we could have broken it off at any time. We were not husband and wife, but other people saw us as husband and wife. When I talked about these feelings, and about reason, all I could do was lose Xuefeng.”

In 1921, Ding transferred to Yueyun Middle School and was a classmate with Yang Kaihui, Mao Zedong's second wife.

In the summer of 1922, Ding's friend Wang Jianhong returned home from Shanghai and took Ding to Shanghai, where she entered the CCP-run People's Girls' School.

During this time she took up the pen name Ding Ling.

In 1923, she and Wang Jianhong attended the Chinese Department of Shanghai University.

In 1924, Wang and her teacher, famed CCP literary figure Qu Qiubai fell in love and started living together.

Ding Ling went to Beijing alone in the summer to study at Peking University, but to no avail.

Through her roommate Cao Mengjun's boyfriend Zuo Gong, Ding Ling met her future husband Hu Yepin, then editor of the supplement of the Beijing News.

When Ding Ling returned to her hometown during summer vacation, Hu Yepin rushed to Hunan.

Ding Ling recalled, "Our thoughts, characters, and feelings are different, but his bravery, enthusiasm, stubbornness, optimism and poverty all surprised me... The smooth sintered glass beads had gone up somewhere. So we had a deep friendship right away.” In 1925, Ding Ling and Hu Yepin lived together in Beijing, but as she said, "but we had no husband and wife relationship", because "I, Ding Ling, did not want to use love or marriage to fetter me; I am a person who wants to be free".

In December 1927, Ding Ling wrote and published her first novel "Meng Ke" in Beijing, which was published in the magazine "Fiction Monthly", describing the struggle of a young woman born in a declining bureaucratic family in Shanghai.

The initial concern for women's issues was appreciated by editor-in-chief of Ye Shengtao.

In February 1928, Ding Ling published Miss Sophia's Diary in the Fiction Monthly.

The book, in which a young woman describes her unhappiness with her life and confused romantic and sexual feelings, caused a sensation in the literary world.

In the summer of 1928, Ding Ling and Hu Yepin as a couple moved from Beijing to Shanghai via Hangzhou, and lived in the Shanghai French Concession.

There they founded a publishing house to publish a magazine "Red and Black" together with Shen Congwen.

In early 1929, Ding Ling started editing and publishing the "Renjian (Humanity)" magazine, but both magazines ceased publication soon afterward.

Ding and Hu were finally broke and lived on the rent sent by Ding Ling's mother.

In the winter of 1929, Ding Ling completed the novel "Wei Hu (Protection)", which was based on the love story between Ding Ling's friend Wang Jianhong and Communist Party member Qu Qiubai.

In February 1930, Hu Yepin went to Jinan to teach at the Shandong Provincial Senior High School, and Ding Ling joined him soon after.

She was awarded the Soviet Union's Stalin second prize for Literature in 1951 for her socialist-realist work The Sun Shines Over Sanggan River.

After the Anti-Rightist Campaign in 1958, Ding was denounced and purged and was sent to exile in Manchuria, to be rehabilitated only in 1979.

She died in Beijing in 1986.

Ding Ling was born as Jiang Bingzhi into a gentry family in Linli, Hunan province.

Her father, Jiang Baoqian, was a scholar in the late Qing Dynasty and died when Ding Ling was 3 years old.

Ding Ling's mother, Yu Manzhen, studied at the Hunan Provincial No. 1 Normal School for Girls where she was a classmate of Xiang Jingyu, an early pioneer in Chinese feminism.

She later became an elementary school educator who raised her children as a single mother.

Ding Ling's mother was Ding's role model, and she would later write an unfinished novel, titled Mother, describing her mother's experiences.

Following her mother's example, Ding Ling became an activist at an early age.

Ding Ling had her formative education in progressive girls' schools, first in Hunan and later in Shanghai.