Yingying's Biography

The Biography of Ying-ying (traditional Chinese: 鶯鶯傳; simplified Chinese: 莺莺传; pinyin: Yīngyīng zhuàn; Wade–Giles: Ying-ying chuan), also translated as the Story of Yingying, by Yuan Zhen, is Tang dynasty chuanqi story. It tells the story of a relationship conflicted between love and duty between a 16-year-old girl and a 21-year-old student. It is considered to be one of the first works of fiction in Chinese literature.

Yuan Zhen pioneered psychological exploration and possibilities of plot development. His tale mixed narration, poetry and letters from one character to another to demonstrate emotion rather than describe it, making it in one sense an epistolary novel. The work was also innovative because its characters, in the terms suggested by E.M. Forster, are “round” rather than “flat,” that is, unlike the characters in the earlier zhiguai or zhiren tales, are not built around a single idea or quality, but have the power to surprise readers. Recent critic Gu Mingdong suggests that with this tale, Chinese fiction “came of age,” and the story provided themes for later plays, stories, and novels.

Yingying's Biography was one of three Tang Dynasty works particularly influential in the development of the caizi-jiaren (scholar and beauty story).

Among other works which it inspired was the Story of the Western Wing

The young man, known only as "the student Zhang" was living in a rented dwelling in a Buddhist compound in the countryside some distance from a small city when a recently widowed woman, her daughter and son, and an entourage befitting their wealth moved into another rented dwelling in that compound. The father of the family had died while stationed in some remote part of China, so the widow Cui (pronounced "tswei") was returning the family to Chang-an. They paused in their journey to recuperate from their long trek. Troops in the nearby city mutinied, so the student Zhang used his friendly connections with influential men in that city to get a guard posted over the compound. The widow Cui and her group were made much more secure as a result of the student Zhang's pulling of strings. She gave a banquet to express her gratitude for Zhang's actions.

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