Today, let’s start with a heavy topic. According to Taiwan media outlet ETtoday News Cloud, on December 4, 2024, renowned author Chiung Yao was found to have taken her own life at her home in Tamsui, Taiwan, at the age of 86.
Chiung Yao, whose real name was Chen Zhe, adopted her pen name from the Book of Songs, specifically the phrase “投我以木桃，报之以琼瑶,” meaning “You give me a peach, I return you a precious jade.” The term “琼瑶” (precious jade) symbolizes beauty and perfection. Some say the name reflects her idealized vision of and dedication to celebrating love.
When we commemorate someone, we often say they “accompanied the youth of multiple generations.” While this phrase may sound cliché from overuse, it’s hard to find a more fitting description for Chiung Yao.
How influential was Chiung Yao on her readers and viewers? There’s a popular saying: “Wherever there are Chinese people, there is Chiung Yao.” Others claim that Chiung Yao was not merely a name but an entire industry. Over her lifetime, she wrote 65 novels, 15 movie scripts, and 25 TV screenplays. Films adapted from her novels totaled 50. In 1998, her drama Princess Returning Pearl (My Fair Princess) achieved an average viewership rating of 45%. To put this in perspective, it was a top-tier rating for the time, surpassed only by the CCTV Spring Festival Gala in the same year.
In the early 1980s, Huacheng Publishing secured exclusive rights to The Complete Works of Chiung Yao, introducing her books to mainland Chinese readers legally for the first time. Reportedly, at least 100,000 sets were sold, with pirated copies pushing the total print count to over 8 million. In 1985, Chiung Yao and her husband, Ping Xintao, founded Yiren Communications and produced her first television drama, Several Sunsets Ago. This marked another major leap in Chiung Yao’s influence.
When it comes to her reputation, Chiung Yao’s works were often polarizing, embodying what could be considered the prototype of “love-it-or-hate-it” pop culture. Her TV dramas frequently became instant hits but also drew mixed reviews. Some people mocked them, some adored them, and others critiqued them while still watching avidly. Love her or not, Chiung Yao was undeniably the pinnacle of popularity in her time.
Chiung Yao also launched the careers of numerous stars. Actors like Brigitte Lin, Liu Xuehua, Chin Han, Chen Derong, and Ruby Lin owe much of their success to her dramas. It’s often said that Chiung Yao helped industrialize romantic dramas, establishing standardized processes in storytelling, casting, and filming techniques.
In short, Chiung Yao was once the most widely influential, widely read, and commercially successful romance writer in the Chinese-speaking world.
Next, let’s revisit Chiung Yao’s works.
Some argue that Chiung Yao’s most representative story is not her debut novel Outside the Window, nor her final long-form work Plum Blossom Hero from 2019. Instead, her most representative story is her own life. Looking back at Chiung Yao’s personal experiences and her works, one can find a subtle and intriguing parallel between the two.
Psychologist Eric Berne proposed the concept of “life scripts,” suggesting that our subconscious minds chart the course of our lives. In other words, you subconsciously decide how you will live your life, even if you aren’t aware of it.
Author Wang Anyi once remarked that in Chiung Yao’s stories, characters are free from material concerns and entirely preoccupied with emotional entanglements. The key difference between Chiung Yao’s own life and this portrayal is that she not only grappled with emotional entanglements but also faced unrelenting challenges from reality.
Chiung Yao’s life can be summarized by two prominent threads: three brushes with death and two marriages.
Let’s start with the three near-death experiences.
Chiung Yao was born in Chengdu, Sichuan, in 1938. In 1942, Sichuan, a stronghold during the Second Sino-Japanese War, was seen as a safe haven, attracting an influx of people from other provinces. This led to shortages of goods and soaring prices. Consequently, Chiung Yao’s family decided to leave Sichuan and return to their ancestral home in Hunan.
At age six, Chiung Yao lost two younger brothers during an escape. The family’s belongings were also left behind. In their despair, Chiung Yao’s mother reportedly asked her, “Do you want to die with us?” Unaware of the gravity of life and death, Chiung Yao followed her parents in an attempted river suicide. However, as the water rose, Chiung Yao instinctively cried out. Her parents were startled and decided against the act. This was Chiung Yao’s first close encounter with death.
The second occurred during high school due to academic pressure. Once, after scoring only 20 points on an exam, Chiung Yao, already feeling inferior compared to her high-achieving sister, attempted to overdose on sleeping pills. She survived thanks to timely medical intervention.
The third instance was tied to her first love. While preparing for the college entrance exams, Chiung Yao began a relationship with her 25-years-older literature teacher, Jiang Ren, who had recently divorced. They made a four-year pact: if Chiung Yao graduated college without changing her mind, they would marry. After failing the exams, Chiung Yao’s mother, furious upon discovering the relationship, filed a legal complaint against Jiang for seducing a minor. Devastated, Chiung Yao attempted suicide again but was rescued.
Chiung Yao’s two marriages also reflect significant chapters of her life. Shortly after her failed college entrance attempt, she married Qingyun, a talented but impoverished literature student. Their marriage was financially strained and creatively imbalanced, with Qingyun failing to achieve literary success while Chiung Yao’s writing flourished. This disparity led to frequent arguments, and they divorced in 1964.
During her writing career, Chiung Yao met Ping Xintao, the publisher of Crown Magazine, who recognized her talent and became her second husband. Their marriage, however, began controversially, as Ping was married at the time. In 1979, Ping divorced his first wife and married Chiung Yao, stirring significant public debate.
In 2017, Ping suffered a severe stroke, leaving him with long-term health complications. Chiung Yao contemplated euthanasia for both of them, but Ping declined. That same year, Chiung Yao published Before the Snow Falls: My Last Lesson in Life, where she shared her views on life, death, and her end-of-life preferences, including a refusal of medical interventions such as tubes or resuscitation.
You can see all of this as Qiong Yao’s way of grappling with the inertia of life. Of course, this is her choice, and we’re just relaying it, without judgment.
In 2019, Ping Xintao passed away. It is said that there was significant dispute between him and Qiong Yao’s children regarding the use of a life-support tube during the rescue efforts, which became a trending topic at the time.
After that, Qiong Yao reappeared in the public eye just yesterday, with news of her passing.
On the same day, her will was also made public. At the end of the will, Qiong Yao wrote:
“Young people, never give up on life easily. Temporary setbacks may be a test in the beautiful journey of life. I hope you can endure the trials, like I did, and live to be 86 or 87 years old, before deciding how to face death when physical strength is no longer enough.”
At the beginning of the will, she wrote:
“Do not cry, do not be sad, do not grieve for me. I have quietly left. ‘Quietly’ is one of my favorite words, symbolizing autonomy, freedom, and graceful flight. I have freed myself from the body that gradually brought me pain and quietly transformed into a snowflake, flying away.”
This can be considered Qiong Yao’s last words, though in fact, she had written them a long time ago: “May my life be like a spark, and my death like a snowflake.”
Doesn’t this seem like a delicate self-consistency? Qiong Yao wrote her works in her own way, and she also wrote her life script. As for why she wrote it this way, outsiders may never truly understand. Just like what she wrote in A Curtain of Dream, “I have a curtain of dreams, unsure with whom to share them. How many secrets lie within, and I long to speak, yet no one understands.”
