Xiao Hong

Who was Xiao Hong?

Xiao Hong, also spelled Hsiao Hung, was a Chinese writer. Her real name was Zhang Naiying; she also used the pen name Qiao Yin.

Xiao Hong was born in Hulan county, Heilongjiang Province, on the day of the Dragon Boat Festival to a landowning family. Her mother died when Xiao Hong was young, and she had a difficult relationship with her conservative father growing up. The only family member she was close to was her grandfather, who was a humane and kind man. Otherwise she had a generally unhappy and lonely childhood. She attended a girls school in Harbin in 1927, where she encountered the progressive ideas of the May Fourth movement as well as Chinese and foreign literature. The literature of Lu Xun, Mao Dun, and Upton Sinclair had a particular impact on her. In 1930 she ran away to Beijing to avoid a planned marriage, though was eventually followed by her fiance Wang Dianjia. In 1932, after she became pregnant her fiance abandoned her at a hotel in Harbin. She narrowly avoided being sold to a brothel by the hotel’s owner by scraping together over six hundred yuan in room and board expenses.