Ru Zhijuan

Ru Zhijuan (Wade–Giles: Ju Chih-chüan, 30 October 1925 – 7 October 1998) was a Chinese writer best known for her short stories. Ru was one of the most important writers of her generation. Her second daughter Wang Anyi is also a famous writer.

Biography Ru Zhijuan, the youngest of 5 children, was born in Shanghai to migrants from Hangzhou. When she was 3, her mother died and her father left; she and a brother were raised by their grandmother. She did not begin primary school until age 10, and a year later moved to Hangzhou with her grandmother, who died shortly after. She was sent to an orphanage in Shanghai. After a year each at a women's vocational school, a Christian missionary boarding school for girls, and a county school, she graduated from secondary school with only four years of schooling. She taught school for a short time in 1943 before joining the propaganda division of the New Fourth Army. In 1944, she married Wang Xiaoping, who was born in Singapore but arrived in China to fight the Japanese during the Second Sino-Japanese War. In 1947, she joined the Chinese Communist Party.

In 1955, she became the editor of the Monthly for Literature and Art, Its setting in the maternity clinic of a people's commune was notable for being an uncommon site in other labor narratives of the period.

She served as Chinese Communist Party Committee Secretary for the Shanghai Writer's Association. She died in Shanghai at the age of 73.

Her daughter Wang Anyi also became a prominent writer.

Works translated into English YearChinese titleTranslated English titleTranslator(s)1958百合花"The Lilies on a Comforter" Kai-yu Hsu"Lilies"R. A. Roberts Robert E. Hegel 1959澄河边上"On the Banks of the Cheng"Gladys Yang 春暖时节"The Warmth of Spring" Sabina Knight 如愿"A Promise Is Kept" Yu Fanqin1960静静的产院"The Maternity Home" 1979剪辑错了的故事"A Story Out of Sequence" Tian Fan, John Minford"A Badly Edited Story" Ellen Klempner"My Son, My Son" Nancy Lee我写〈百合花〉的经过"How I Came to Write 'Lilies on a Comforter'" John Balcom

Filmography

Major awards 1980: 2nd National Short Story Prize, "A Story Out of Sequence" ("A Badly Edited Story")