The Abnormal Description And Analysis Of Zhang Ailing's Works

Zhang Ailing is one of the representatives of Chinese women writers in 1940s. She reveals the darkness and gloominess of China urban life at that time by using a nearly cruel writing technique, which aims at exposing the selfishness, hypocrisy, greediness, indulgence and the like that are of wickedness in humanity. It is very hard to find the light-hearted side in her works. What can be found in them are only the endless spiritual trauma and the emptiness. She deeply anatomizes the desolation of the humanity through describing the abnormality of the characters. Zhang Ailing's description about the abnormality originated from her tragical reorganization of the era, society and human life, which presents the typical cultural characteristics. She is good at collecting modern society's anecdotes and conventional customs and the eastern and western culture, especially those suitable components of Chinese traditional culture. She makes up all these materials into a miracle and peculiar novel world. The appetite of the characters in her works is abnormal, irrational and contradictory. The heroes in her works are usually the admixture of various desires, the desire for living, the appetite for materials, the lust for sex, which can not be obtained simultaneously but cause a desperately pursuit, performing a series of pathetic and gloomy life dramas.Basically speaking, Zhang Ailing is a writer who possesses typical traditional culture and profound cultural implication. She depicts a desolating nightmare performed by a group of helpless old men and pitiful orphans in a renovated modern city. Therefore, she opens a delicate window that reflects the ways of the world both of Shanghai and Hong Kong. She presents for the readers a crumpling age, the deterioration of an old family, the submerging of the prosperity, the uncertainty of life, the wickedness of humanity and the madness of appetite, which compose the permanent legend of the old Shanghai.