About he Writer: 茹志鹃/Ru Zhijuan资料文件与下载

                       About he Writer: Ru Zhijuan

Ru Zhijuan (September 13, 1925 October 7, 1998) was born in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province. She is a famous contemporary Chinese female writer, and the wife of the famous director Wang Xiaoping, and the mother of Wang Anyi.

She is an expert in writing short stories. The style is fresh and elegant, the plot is simple and lively, and the details are rich and vivid. She is good at reflecting the essence of the era from smaller perspectives. She has used the pseudonym of A Ru and Chu Xu. Her ancestral home is Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, but she was born in Shanghai in September 1925. She lived in a very poor family as losing her parents at very young age. She was raised by her grandmother who made a living from some handwork. After the age of 11, she got some intermittent education in church school and cram school. She graduated from Wukang middle school, Wukang County, Zhejiang Province. In 1943, she joined the New Fourth Army with his brother. She once studied at Suzhong public school, and then worked in the army literary troupe. She served as an actor, a group leader, a sub group leader, and a creation group leader. She joined the Communist Party of China in 1947. In 1955, she transferred from Nanjing Military Region to Shanghai and worked as an editor in the Literary Monthly. Died on 7 October 1998. Her representative work is Lily.

Relevant information:

The Creation Background of Lily

The characters and events in Lily are not real, but the battles and their time and locale described in the novel are real.On the Mid Autumn Festival in 1946, the battle for coast began. Ru Zhijuan served the combat service in the front line of the general attack group. Her first job at the dressing house was to borrow quilts. At the beginning of the battle, she was responsible for recording the names and units of the soldiers who died. In the process, she could not help but imagine their family members, friends, their wishes and secrets. She could not forget the scene and thoughts at that time.

Around 1957, Wang Xiaoping, Ru's husband, was wrongly classified as a "rightist". When her husband was in danger, Ru Zhijuan could not save him. Because she had often reached agreement on the work issues with her husband, she had to review what she has done and thought over and over again. Under the invisible pressure of political atmosphere and tense interpersonal relationship, she recalled the comradeship in the war years, the mid autumn night in 1946 and all kinds of people and things she met in the war of liberation. In the battle of Laiwu, she went to the front following a correspondent.On the way, the enemy's shells never stopped. The correspondent deliberately kept a distance to reduce casualties, but she was so nervous that she could not help but lean close to him. Therefore, the correspondent had to step forward immediately as her approaching. In a battle, she and Wang Suihan heard about the story of a platoon leader in a class meeting. The young platoon leader was a war hero, but he was very shy. He always blushed when he spoke, and he liked to do some casual chatting. This contrast left a deep impression on her. Recalling the past, Ru Zhijuan feels that war makes people unable to have a long chat but makes people intimate. Sometimes, due to the relationship of just a few minutes or even just a glance, people will treat each other with all sincerity, even go through thick and thin together.

Therefore, Ru Zhijuan decided to write a story about an ordinary soldier, a young correspondent. The first point she set was his character: simple and shy.As for the theme of the novel, she had not thought about it. It took her about a week to write the novel. However, the novel was rejected shortly after it was posted on the grounds that “too gloomy to be published”. After some work and negotiation, the novel Lily was finally published in the third issue of Yanhe magazine in 1958.