Chen Xuezhao

Chen Xuezhao (Chinese: 陈学昭; Wade–Giles: Ch'en Hsueh-chao; April 17, 1906 – 1991) was a Chinese writer and journalist. She was earlier known as Chen Shuzhang or Chen Shuying. She used the pen names Ye Qu, Shi Wei, Xue Zhao and Hui. She was one of the most prolific Chinese women writers of the 20th century. Chen gave her support to Mao Zedong's policy on Art and Literature.

The daughter of parents from Henan province, she was born in Haining in Zhejiang province in 1906 and she was educated at the first Girls' Normal School in China which was in Nantong County. This school had been founded in 1902 by Zhang Jian. She then attended Shanghai Patriotic Girls' College. She joined the Qiancao literary society and published her first work Wo suo qiwang de xin funü (The new women of my ideal) in 1923. Chen taught school in Zhejiang and Beijing. In 1924, she published Juanlu (Weary travels). She helped establish the magazines Yusi and Xin nüxing. From 1927 to 1935, Chen studied western literature in Paris. From 1927 to 1931, she was a special correspondent for the Dàgōng bào newspaper. During this time, she married a Chinese medical student in France. After completing a PhD at the University of Clermont-Ferrand in 1935, she returned to China with her husband; the couple were divorced in 1941.

Mao Zedong and others at the Yan'an Forum on Literature and Art including Chen (5th from the left in the third row)

In 1940, she went to Yan'an and became editor of the fourth section of the Jiefang ribao newspaper and a literacy teacher at the Central Party School there. In 1942 she attended the Yan'an Forum with Mao Zedong where Chinese communist policy on the Arts was decided. Mao published a paper entitled "Talks at the Ya'nan Conference on Arts and Literature". This was an important document of national policy which Chen supported and this was the basis for a major cultural rectification programme.

Chen was assigned tasks to do and in 1945 she heard that she had been specifically praised by Mao Zedong. Later that year she joined the Communist Party of China and her application was swiftly approved with only a note to study more Lenin. The following year she became editor of the fourth section of the Dongbei ribao newspaper. In 1949, she became Communist Party secretary at Zhejiang University. In 1953 she was part of a Chinese delegation to the USSR. In 1957, she was labelled as a rightist and fell out of favour. During the Cultural Revolution, Chen stopped writing altogether. She resumed her writing in 1978.

Chen also translated some works by Balzac and Charles de Gaulle's L'Appel from French into Chinese. She died in 1991.

• Yi Bali (Memories of Paris), essays (1929)
• Ru meng (Like a dream), essays (1929)
• Nanfeng de meng (Dream of the south wind), novel (1929)
• Gongzuozhe shi meilide (To be working is beautiful), novel, largely autobiographical (1949)
• Tudi (The land), novel (1953)
• Chun cha (Spring tea), novel (1957)
• Fuchen zayi (Random Reflections of Life) (1981), translated into English as Surviving the storm : a memoir (1990)