Tie Ning

b. 1957, Beijing

Writer

The vice president of the Chinese Writers’ Association since 1996, Tie Ning represents an important strand of post-Mao era writing by women writers. Tie experienced the ‘Rustification Movement’ during the Cultural Revolution and did editorial work for a literary magazine before becoming a professional writer. She first published in 1975 and won fame for ‘Ah, Fragrant Snow’ (0, Xiangxue), which was awarded ‘Best Short Story’ in 1982, and for the film adaptation of her novel A Red Pullover (Meiyou niukou de hongchenshan, 1983). Tie positions her own literature as an alternative to the highly political literature of the 1980s. She emphasizes the unique perspective of her teenage female protagonists. The standpoint of the socially inexperienced is employed as a critique of cultural, moral and, in her later work, political observations.

Rose Gate (Meigui men, 1989) marks a transition to a more explicit treatment of sexuality. Based on the experience of three generations of women during the Cultural Revolution, the novel both questions female identity as a collective attribute in a broad social and political context and reveals hidden connections among these women.

Though the perspective is still that of a young woman, the novel presents a picture of an adult world of violence, turbulence and power struggles. Tie’s exploration of female sexuality strikes a more mellow note in the late 1990s. Big Bathers (Da yunü,1999; a.k.a.Woman Showering) was written for the Cloth Tiger Series (Bulaohu congshu), a project designed by the Laoning Literature and Arts Press to promote reader-friendly, optimistic and entertaining fiction for an emerging middle-class readership.

Further reading

Chen, Xiaoming (2002). ‘The Extrication of Memory in Tie Ning’s Woman Showering: Privacy and the Trap of History’. In Bonnie McDougall and Anders Hansson (eds), Chinese Concepts of Privacy. Leiden: Brill.

Tie, Ning (1999). ‘Ah, Fragrant Snow’. Trans. Zha Jianya. In Tam Kwok-kan et al. (eds), A Place of One’s Own: Stories of Self in China, Hong Kong, and Singapore. New York: Oxford University Press, 311–22.

HE DONGHUI