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Miss Sophie's Diary and Other Stories
Miss Sophie's Diary, by one of China's best-known writers, created a sensation when first published in 1928 for the frank portrayal of a young woman's ideals and emotions in conflict. Other stories in this book by the same author deal with Shanghai in the 1930s and the harsh realities of rural life then and in the base areas during the war against Japan.
271 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published December 1, 1985
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About the author
Ding Ling
60 books30 followersDing Ling (Chinese: 丁玲; pinyin: Dīng Líng), formerly romanized as Ting Ling, was the pen name of Jiang Bingzhi (simplified Chinese: 蒋冰之; traditional Chinese: 蔣冰之; pinyin: Jiǎng Bīngzhī), also known as Bin Zhi (彬芷 Bīn Zhǐ), one of the most celebrated 20th-century Chinese authors. She was awarded the Soviet Union's Stalin second prize for Literature in 1951.
Active in the Communist revolutionary cause, she was placed under house arrest in Shanghai by the Guomindang for a three-year period from 1933 to 1936. She escaped, and made her way to the Communist base of Yan'an. There she became one of the most influential figures in Yan'an cultural circles, serving as director of the Chinese Literature and Arts Association and editing a newspaper literary supplement.
Ding Ling struggled with the idea that revolutionary needs, defined by the party, should come before art. She objected to the gender standards at work in Yan'an. In 1942 she wrote an article in a party newspaper questioning the party's commitment to change popular attitudes towards women. She satirized male double standards concerning women, saying they were ridiculed if they focused on household duties, but also became the target of gossip and rumors if they remained unmarried and worked in the public sphere. She also criticized male cadres use of divorce provisions to rid themselves of unwanted wives. Her article was condemned by Mao Zedong and the party leadership, and she was forced to retract her views and undergo a public self-confession.
Her main work in these years was the novel The Sun Shines Over Sanggan River, which she completed in 1948. It followed the complex results of land reform on a rural village. It was awarded the Stalin prize for Literature in 1951, and is considered one of the best examples of socialist-realist fiction. It did not, however, address gender issues.
Always a political activist, in 1957 she was denounced as a "rightist", purged from the party, and her fiction and essays were banned. She spent five years in jail during the Cultural Revolution and was sentenced to do manual labor on a farm for twelve years before being "rehabilitated" in 1978.
A few years before her death, she was allowed to travel to the United States where she was a guest at the University of Iowa's International Writing Program. She died in Beijing in 1986.
She authored more than three hundred works. After her "rehabilitation" many of her previously banned books such as her novel The Sun Shines Over The Sanggan River were republished and translated into numerous languages. Some of her short works, spanning a fifty-year period, are collected in I Myself Am A Woman: Selected Writings Of Ding Ling.
(from Wikipedia)
Active in the Communist revolutionary cause, she was placed under house arrest in Shanghai by the Guomindang for a three-year period from 1933 to 1936. She escaped, and made her way to the Communist base of Yan'an. There she became one of the most influential figures in Yan'an cultural circles, serving as director of the Chinese Literature and Arts Association and editing a newspaper literary supplement.
Ding Ling struggled with the idea that revolutionary needs, defined by the party, should come before art. She objected to the gender standards at work in Yan'an. In 1942 she wrote an article in a party newspaper questioning the party's commitment to change popular attitudes towards women. She satirized male double standards concerning women, saying they were ridiculed if they focused on household duties, but also became the target of gossip and rumors if they remained unmarried and worked in the public sphere. She also criticized male cadres use of divorce provisions to rid themselves of unwanted wives. Her article was condemned by Mao Zedong and the party leadership, and she was forced to retract her views and undergo a public self-confession.
Her main work in these years was the novel The Sun Shines Over Sanggan River, which she completed in 1948. It followed the complex results of land reform on a rural village. It was awarded the Stalin prize for Literature in 1951, and is considered one of the best examples of socialist-realist fiction. It did not, however, address gender issues.
Always a political activist, in 1957 she was denounced as a "rightist", purged from the party, and her fiction and essays were banned. She spent five years in jail during the Cultural Revolution and was sentenced to do manual labor on a farm for twelve years before being "rehabilitated" in 1978.
A few years before her death, she was allowed to travel to the United States where she was a guest at the University of Iowa's International Writing Program. She died in Beijing in 1986.
She authored more than three hundred works. After her "rehabilitation" many of her previously banned books such as her novel The Sun Shines Over The Sanggan River were republished and translated into numerous languages. Some of her short works, spanning a fifty-year period, are collected in I Myself Am A Woman: Selected Writings Of Ding Ling.
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
July 2, 2014
Holding the out-of-print book in my hands, it falling to sticky-taped pieces, I felt as if this object was something powerfully lost. Of course, lost is perhaps the wrong word to use. The collection of fictions did find a home in our university's library, and Ding Ling's reputation certainly is not lost in China, but there is something irrevocably sad in handling and reading a book that has turned out of print. Some previous students must have written about the famous title story for their dissertations judging from the Chinese characters faded in the margin, as well as the underlining of almost every second line, one in a blue biro and another in grey pencil. Other than these dedicated readers, I find no trace of Ding Ling anywhere: just eighteen ratings on Goodreads says it all really. Nevertheless, Ding Ling's reputation precedes her. She is one of the most famous names in Chinese literature and certainly its leading heroine; her biography itself would make for a gripping novel, but at every turn - every intersection of life and writing - her work focuses on the role of feminism and ideology, a tension which Ding Ling highlights explicitly in the revolutionary tale 'Miss Sophie's Diary', a short story published in 1928 which catapulted the author to fame for its frank, at the time, depictions of female sexuality.
However iconoclastic the story was then, its sharp pressure on the norms of the time is also its undoing, causing the story to age badly. Ding Ling's epistolary story must be compared to the diary tradition set out by Lu Xun's Diary of a Madman, where Sophie equally finds danger in the traditional Confucian principles of an oppressive environment that aims to silence her. Just as Ding Ling herself refused to marry her cousin, thus flouting the traditional patriarchal family, fleeing to Shanghai instead to become an activist, does Sophie refuse to be drawn into a corner of passive sexuality. Perhaps a perfect counterpart would be The Yellow Wallpaper, however here, it is the lack of marriage which ostracises and essentially cannibalises Sophie, reducing her sexual awakening and psychological penetration to the point of severe breakdown. It is Sophie's unhappiness which seems so jarring nowadays, and whilst the plot of the story - at its most basic - involves Sophie navigating the spider-web of her Beijing, upper-class social life and lovers, the story seems jaded when read through contemporary eyes. Sophie has not aged well: Ding Ling's style is often dry, abstract and seemingly located in Sophie's frivolity so that it is often hard to latch onto a scene. The sentence structure, though readable, is never truly inviting and there always seems to be something left out in the periphery with regards to Sophie's character. Undoubtedly important as a work of feminist fiction, and by all means that is more than enough, the story's nuance is lost within the awkward folds of the diary format.
By far the stronger story is the second one in the collection. 'Shanghai in the Spring of 1930 (2)' is a shrewd and complex analysis of a relationship, which arguably could be construed as the imagined one Sophie might have once dreamed about having. This time, it is Mary who works against the traditional roles that Wangwei, her on-and-off lover, tries to force upon her. Mary 'loved nobody other than herself ... She wanted to stay on her throne forever, and was not going to let anyone snatch it away from her. From all the novels she had read and films she had seen she knew that once a woman married her life was over.' Mary's shallow and selfish ideals, whilst mildly irksome, occupy an important role in the story about female desire; Mary comes from a wealthy family and devotes her life to 'extreme hedonism', whereas Wangwei comes from a simpler background of poverty. His unadulterated allegiance to the Communist cause highlights the blurred distinction between desire and political ideology, wherein he dreams of overthrowing the capitalist classes - which Mary, purveyor of expensive luxuries, must belong to - but equally wants to ideologically stifle Mary through marriage and indoctrination. He is not only happy to possess her, turning her into a kept woman, but he wants to 'confiscate the whole lot' and idealises a fantasy where Mary gives herself up, falling from grace towards his lower class strata, and becomes the propaganda image of the countrywoman housewife, or woman factory worker; it is this double-standard of gender roles - where women should never be truly housewives nor unmarried - which Ding Ling, during her time as the director for the Chinese Literature and Arts Association, sought to ridicule and eventually was denounced for. Although the couple are never married, Ding Ling makes reference to their relationship by commodifying their actions. Mary's return to Wangwei in Shanghai marks the 'first night of [their] happiness', and their eventual troubles Wangwei describes as a 'crisis facing them like the crisis of the world economy.' He dreams of capitalising on her beauty, in order to devalue it, finding worth in turning diamonds back into coal, whilst she, who commodifies him as poor, dreams of transforming him through presents, gifts and clothes.
If anything, 'Shanghai in the Spring of 1930 (2)' is such an adroitly painted, layered sketch of various desires. The metaphysical connections between Wangwei and Mary run deeper than simple attraction, igniting a political tone in Ding Ling's story which firmly places her role as an activist through her writing. Ding Ling asks us to consider what is the ideal woman, and how women, and their roles, are viewed and fantasised in society at the time. Mary, Wangwei and Sophie begin to casually talk about themselves in third person, and it is in this easily missed dissociation of the self between the written self, the projected self and the real self that Ding Ling captures perfectly. Within the breakdown of the barriers between narrators and readers, through her use of letters and diary, she inscribes a thoroughly Chinese version of écriture féminine, something which she shows in I Myself am a Woman: Selected Writings, a collection of her work over a fifty year period. The ideal dream of finding an acceptable identity reveals itself in a few of her other stories too: 'Rushing' depicts the plight of farmers who struggle towards Shanghai, dreaming of survival and a new hope but instead find it as desolate as their failed crops; 'The Reunion' criticises the picture of the ideal Confucian family and, whilst 'A Certain Night' is a brutal fictional reconstruction of the last minutes of a group of Communists and Leftists as they are gunned down, drawing haunting parallels to the execution of her husband, the poet Hu Yepin. Whilst some of Ding Ling's story seem to just tread the waters of seriousness, others are unflinching in their depiction of the agony of the rural classes, perhaps as an unfortunate byproduct of her house-arrest and eventual detention when she spent five years in jail during the Cultural Revolution, and was later sentenced to manual labour for twelve years after her writings were found unacceptable by the CCP. One such story, 'When I was in Xia Village', focuses on the condemnation of a teenage girl by her village after she is raped by Japanese forces, and then forced to stay with them in order to gather information for the Communist order. Nothing is simple in Ding Ling's fictions, even if occasionally her stories get buried under the ordinariness of their narration. Her importance and vitality to the Chinese canon is unquestionable, but the outdated and old translation is begging for a new interpreter because I do believe her themes are as important now as they were in her time. As a character exclaims, rather tragicomically, in 'When I was in Xia Village', 'being a woman is a disaster'.
However iconoclastic the story was then, its sharp pressure on the norms of the time is also its undoing, causing the story to age badly. Ding Ling's epistolary story must be compared to the diary tradition set out by Lu Xun's Diary of a Madman, where Sophie equally finds danger in the traditional Confucian principles of an oppressive environment that aims to silence her. Just as Ding Ling herself refused to marry her cousin, thus flouting the traditional patriarchal family, fleeing to Shanghai instead to become an activist, does Sophie refuse to be drawn into a corner of passive sexuality. Perhaps a perfect counterpart would be The Yellow Wallpaper, however here, it is the lack of marriage which ostracises and essentially cannibalises Sophie, reducing her sexual awakening and psychological penetration to the point of severe breakdown. It is Sophie's unhappiness which seems so jarring nowadays, and whilst the plot of the story - at its most basic - involves Sophie navigating the spider-web of her Beijing, upper-class social life and lovers, the story seems jaded when read through contemporary eyes. Sophie has not aged well: Ding Ling's style is often dry, abstract and seemingly located in Sophie's frivolity so that it is often hard to latch onto a scene. The sentence structure, though readable, is never truly inviting and there always seems to be something left out in the periphery with regards to Sophie's character. Undoubtedly important as a work of feminist fiction, and by all means that is more than enough, the story's nuance is lost within the awkward folds of the diary format.
By far the stronger story is the second one in the collection. 'Shanghai in the Spring of 1930 (2)' is a shrewd and complex analysis of a relationship, which arguably could be construed as the imagined one Sophie might have once dreamed about having. This time, it is Mary who works against the traditional roles that Wangwei, her on-and-off lover, tries to force upon her. Mary 'loved nobody other than herself ... She wanted to stay on her throne forever, and was not going to let anyone snatch it away from her. From all the novels she had read and films she had seen she knew that once a woman married her life was over.' Mary's shallow and selfish ideals, whilst mildly irksome, occupy an important role in the story about female desire; Mary comes from a wealthy family and devotes her life to 'extreme hedonism', whereas Wangwei comes from a simpler background of poverty. His unadulterated allegiance to the Communist cause highlights the blurred distinction between desire and political ideology, wherein he dreams of overthrowing the capitalist classes - which Mary, purveyor of expensive luxuries, must belong to - but equally wants to ideologically stifle Mary through marriage and indoctrination. He is not only happy to possess her, turning her into a kept woman, but he wants to 'confiscate the whole lot' and idealises a fantasy where Mary gives herself up, falling from grace towards his lower class strata, and becomes the propaganda image of the countrywoman housewife, or woman factory worker; it is this double-standard of gender roles - where women should never be truly housewives nor unmarried - which Ding Ling, during her time as the director for the Chinese Literature and Arts Association, sought to ridicule and eventually was denounced for. Although the couple are never married, Ding Ling makes reference to their relationship by commodifying their actions. Mary's return to Wangwei in Shanghai marks the 'first night of [their] happiness', and their eventual troubles Wangwei describes as a 'crisis facing them like the crisis of the world economy.' He dreams of capitalising on her beauty, in order to devalue it, finding worth in turning diamonds back into coal, whilst she, who commodifies him as poor, dreams of transforming him through presents, gifts and clothes.
If anything, 'Shanghai in the Spring of 1930 (2)' is such an adroitly painted, layered sketch of various desires. The metaphysical connections between Wangwei and Mary run deeper than simple attraction, igniting a political tone in Ding Ling's story which firmly places her role as an activist through her writing. Ding Ling asks us to consider what is the ideal woman, and how women, and their roles, are viewed and fantasised in society at the time. Mary, Wangwei and Sophie begin to casually talk about themselves in third person, and it is in this easily missed dissociation of the self between the written self, the projected self and the real self that Ding Ling captures perfectly. Within the breakdown of the barriers between narrators and readers, through her use of letters and diary, she inscribes a thoroughly Chinese version of écriture féminine, something which she shows in I Myself am a Woman: Selected Writings, a collection of her work over a fifty year period. The ideal dream of finding an acceptable identity reveals itself in a few of her other stories too: 'Rushing' depicts the plight of farmers who struggle towards Shanghai, dreaming of survival and a new hope but instead find it as desolate as their failed crops; 'The Reunion' criticises the picture of the ideal Confucian family and, whilst 'A Certain Night' is a brutal fictional reconstruction of the last minutes of a group of Communists and Leftists as they are gunned down, drawing haunting parallels to the execution of her husband, the poet Hu Yepin. Whilst some of Ding Ling's story seem to just tread the waters of seriousness, others are unflinching in their depiction of the agony of the rural classes, perhaps as an unfortunate byproduct of her house-arrest and eventual detention when she spent five years in jail during the Cultural Revolution, and was later sentenced to manual labour for twelve years after her writings were found unacceptable by the CCP. One such story, 'When I was in Xia Village', focuses on the condemnation of a teenage girl by her village after she is raped by Japanese forces, and then forced to stay with them in order to gather information for the Communist order. Nothing is simple in Ding Ling's fictions, even if occasionally her stories get buried under the ordinariness of their narration. Her importance and vitality to the Chinese canon is unquestionable, but the outdated and old translation is begging for a new interpreter because I do believe her themes are as important now as they were in her time. As a character exclaims, rather tragicomically, in 'When I was in Xia Village', 'being a woman is a disaster'.
November 9, 2017
Miss Sophie was not having a good time
October 15, 2017
I know how hard it is to find nowadays so I have posted it on Scribd.
https://www.scribd.com/mobile/doc/232...
The other stories are not so good , I have only posted Miss Sophia...
https://www.scribd.com/mobile/doc/232...
The other stories are not so good , I have only posted Miss Sophia...
April 25, 2025
I am stunned that this was written by a woman in China in the 1920s and 30s. The writing is beautifully descriptive, emotional, and often hilarious. The commentary on women’s rights, poverty, patriarchy, war, and other serious topics is astute and still relevant. The portrayal of women’s inner lives is gorgeous and relatable. I’m giving it 4 stars instead of 5 because the first story (the titular Miss Sophie’s Diary) was so spectacular, and the other ones were good but never quite got me the way the first one did.
November 8, 2023
for my gender essay 👍
September 23, 2017
"As I thought about the Beijing friends I'm leaving behind, I started to cry. When it finally struck me that they had no intention of ever weeping over me, I brushed aside the tears running down my face. I'll leave this ancient city alone."
Hoe vernietigend is dat?
Miss Sophia's Diary was erg controversieel toen het werd gepubliceerd. Dit kwam voornamelijk door de expliciete verwijzingen naar vrouwelijke sexualiteit. Ding Ling wordt gezien als een van de belangrijkste feministische intellectuelen van China (samen met Qiu Jin en Wang Anshi).
Miss Sophie's Diary is voor de hedendaagse lezer is niet zo schokkend meer, het valt sowieso heel erg mee hoe expliciet het is. Wat echter een grote indruk op me maakte was de extreem persoonlijke natuur van het werk, dat op sommige punten beschamend herkenbaar was. De beschrijvingen van liefde en lust waren erg treffend. Sophia is een intrigerend vrouwelijk personage, omdat zij in de liefde zowel dominant is (ten opzichte van Weidi, en haar andere veroveringen), maar ook enorm kwetsbaar (ten opzichte van Ling Jishi). Hierdoor focust Ding Ling op de zwakheid van de vrouw, maar is hierin erg menselijk.
De constante zelfkritiek en zelfbewustzijn kwamen hard bij me aan. Het is een mengeling van arrogantie, machteloosheid en zelfhaat. Sophia heeft de banaliteit van haar acties en gevoelens door, maar kan er niets aan doen. Hierdoor ontstijgt het voor mij de banaliteit.
Dit korte verhaal is niet alleen een interessant feministisch werk (ik vind het wel grappig hoe de relatie die ze tussen man en vrouw schept nog steeds toepasselijk is), maar ook een eerlijke kijk in de menselijke psyche van een twijfelaar. Leuk om te zien hoe ze zelf kritiek geeft op het medium van haar dagboek, als ze het Ling Jishi laat lezen. Aan de ene kant voelt het extreem persoonlijk aan, maar nooit kan het de realiteit compleet reflecteren.
Hoe vernietigend is dat?
Miss Sophia's Diary was erg controversieel toen het werd gepubliceerd. Dit kwam voornamelijk door de expliciete verwijzingen naar vrouwelijke sexualiteit. Ding Ling wordt gezien als een van de belangrijkste feministische intellectuelen van China (samen met Qiu Jin en Wang Anshi).
Miss Sophie's Diary is voor de hedendaagse lezer is niet zo schokkend meer, het valt sowieso heel erg mee hoe expliciet het is. Wat echter een grote indruk op me maakte was de extreem persoonlijke natuur van het werk, dat op sommige punten beschamend herkenbaar was. De beschrijvingen van liefde en lust waren erg treffend. Sophia is een intrigerend vrouwelijk personage, omdat zij in de liefde zowel dominant is (ten opzichte van Weidi, en haar andere veroveringen), maar ook enorm kwetsbaar (ten opzichte van Ling Jishi). Hierdoor focust Ding Ling op de zwakheid van de vrouw, maar is hierin erg menselijk.
De constante zelfkritiek en zelfbewustzijn kwamen hard bij me aan. Het is een mengeling van arrogantie, machteloosheid en zelfhaat. Sophia heeft de banaliteit van haar acties en gevoelens door, maar kan er niets aan doen. Hierdoor ontstijgt het voor mij de banaliteit.
Dit korte verhaal is niet alleen een interessant feministisch werk (ik vind het wel grappig hoe de relatie die ze tussen man en vrouw schept nog steeds toepasselijk is), maar ook een eerlijke kijk in de menselijke psyche van een twijfelaar. Leuk om te zien hoe ze zelf kritiek geeft op het medium van haar dagboek, als ze het Ling Jishi laat lezen. Aan de ene kant voelt het extreem persoonlijk aan, maar nooit kan het de realiteit compleet reflecteren.
March 7, 2024
The translation feels a little dated but it's still a wonderful collection. Shanghai in the Spring of 1930 and A Certain Night were my faves. A Certain Night is just a few pages, I'm sure you can find it online to read it - do it! Also cool that Miss Sophie's Diary is set in Beijing and I know the places that she's knocking about in.
August 14, 2023
she was a bit too real at times 😬
February 17, 2011
Though the translation is rather dated, it is clear that Ding Ling's fiction is focusing on the modern Chinese woman, her sense of identity and perspectives on love. She is challenging how male writers, even during the May Fourth Movement, continued to use the image of femininity as something weak and vulnerable.
"The doctor says it would be better if I had plenty of sleep and plenty of food, didn't read and didn't think."
"When I've read the paper and can't think of anything else to do all that's left is to sit by the stove and get into a bad temper. I'm now used to getting upset day in and day out at the things that irritate me."
"I ate my evening meal alone too. I was thoroughly fed up."
"Happiness lies not so much in having a lover as in that the two of them have no greater wish. Quiet lives in which they can talk things over."
"As I'm ill she didn't want to waste my energy by making me talk too much. I was glad to use this as an excuse to think about other, trivial things."
"At the sight of his blazing eyes I imagined he was going to bite and thought, "Come here!" But he just bowed his head, started crying again, and lurched out, wiping his eyes."
"When people see me crying they think that it's because I'm homesick or worried about my illness. And when they see me smiling they think it's because I'm happy and enjoying the glow of returning health. Friends are all like that."
"Yes, I do seem to be having another moan. But this is just something hidden in my heart that I'm saying over and over to myself, which doesn't matter much."
"When brilliant women are feeling a bit miserable they can write lots of classical or modern poems about their 'grief and emotion' or the 'sorrows of the heart.' But I'm useless. I'm in this poetic situation but I can't make anything out of it."
"My heart feels as if it's being gnawed by hordes of mice, or as if a brazier were burning inside it. If only I could smash everything or rush wildly out into the night."
"Fortunately my life is mine alone in all the universe to play with. I've already wasted enough of it. It doesn't seem to be a matter of any importance that this experience has thrown me into the very depths of grief."
"His excited face kept rubbing against the cool breeze."
"From all the novels she had read and films she had seen she knew that once a woman married her life was over."
"He saw how solid and bright his future life was going to be, and he was keeping control over his happiness just like a helmsman keeping hold of a rudder."
"With you here I can gradually feed myself up again."
"Little sister lit another lamp and went out. The three brown dogs followed them to the cassia tree."
"Hey, this train, or whatever it's called, is quite something. Look at those hills and trees, turning around like ghosts, turning and vanishing."
"Only then did Long remember that a few years back he had fought with Uncle Zhao the Fourth over a basket of sweet potatoes and hurt Zhao's head badly."
"The stars flashed their gloomy eyes above their heads."
"They were only able to keep themselves going in a way that was quite simply shameful."
"She had also bought him a packet of Beijing dried cabbage, a packet of hot pickles, and two jars of monosodium glutamate. She understood his tastes."
"'I'm called Scarface Liu. If you look you can see my big scar.' He pointed at his forehead."
"Winter days are short but this one seemed to be longer that a summer one."
"Some of the women were especially bad: only she enabled them to respect themselves and brought out their chastity. They were proud of not having been raped."
"His nose looked very honest, but what use was that?"
"The doctor says it would be better if I had plenty of sleep and plenty of food, didn't read and didn't think."
"When I've read the paper and can't think of anything else to do all that's left is to sit by the stove and get into a bad temper. I'm now used to getting upset day in and day out at the things that irritate me."
"I ate my evening meal alone too. I was thoroughly fed up."
"Happiness lies not so much in having a lover as in that the two of them have no greater wish. Quiet lives in which they can talk things over."
"As I'm ill she didn't want to waste my energy by making me talk too much. I was glad to use this as an excuse to think about other, trivial things."
"At the sight of his blazing eyes I imagined he was going to bite and thought, "Come here!" But he just bowed his head, started crying again, and lurched out, wiping his eyes."
"When people see me crying they think that it's because I'm homesick or worried about my illness. And when they see me smiling they think it's because I'm happy and enjoying the glow of returning health. Friends are all like that."
"Yes, I do seem to be having another moan. But this is just something hidden in my heart that I'm saying over and over to myself, which doesn't matter much."
"When brilliant women are feeling a bit miserable they can write lots of classical or modern poems about their 'grief and emotion' or the 'sorrows of the heart.' But I'm useless. I'm in this poetic situation but I can't make anything out of it."
"My heart feels as if it's being gnawed by hordes of mice, or as if a brazier were burning inside it. If only I could smash everything or rush wildly out into the night."
"Fortunately my life is mine alone in all the universe to play with. I've already wasted enough of it. It doesn't seem to be a matter of any importance that this experience has thrown me into the very depths of grief."
"His excited face kept rubbing against the cool breeze."
"From all the novels she had read and films she had seen she knew that once a woman married her life was over."
"He saw how solid and bright his future life was going to be, and he was keeping control over his happiness just like a helmsman keeping hold of a rudder."
"With you here I can gradually feed myself up again."
"Little sister lit another lamp and went out. The three brown dogs followed them to the cassia tree."
"Hey, this train, or whatever it's called, is quite something. Look at those hills and trees, turning around like ghosts, turning and vanishing."
"Only then did Long remember that a few years back he had fought with Uncle Zhao the Fourth over a basket of sweet potatoes and hurt Zhao's head badly."
"The stars flashed their gloomy eyes above their heads."
"They were only able to keep themselves going in a way that was quite simply shameful."
"She had also bought him a packet of Beijing dried cabbage, a packet of hot pickles, and two jars of monosodium glutamate. She understood his tastes."
"'I'm called Scarface Liu. If you look you can see my big scar.' He pointed at his forehead."
"Winter days are short but this one seemed to be longer that a summer one."
"Some of the women were especially bad: only she enabled them to respect themselves and brought out their chastity. They were proud of not having been raped."
"His nose looked very honest, but what use was that?"
January 25, 2022
Although just a short story, this was horrendous to get through. Sophie has a horrible personality and probably some mental disorder, switching back and forth between being deliberately mean and feeling sorry for herself.
I cannot understand if the author, being a woman, truly felt that way, because the way this character is built makes absolutely no sense and would be more of an obnoxious brat than a woman in her 20s.
I cannot understand if the author, being a woman, truly felt that way, because the way this character is built makes absolutely no sense and would be more of an obnoxious brat than a woman in her 20s.
December 16, 2018
Miss Sophie's Diary published in 1928, the content is very rare at that time and even in nowadays. Because in this diary, men are viewed as sexual objects and shows the sexual desire from a female perspective. Interesting, but personally I don't like the way Ding Ling narrates.
November 15, 2023
TRA GE DIA
February 12, 2024
3,5. read for my class, 'Gender, Revolution, Livelihood: Modern Chinese Women Writers'
Want to read
March 23, 2012Recommended by Meghan Ghent.
May 26, 2017
more people should know about Ding Ling.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews