1961年秋,张爱玲先到台湾,再访香港。这段游记张爱玲于1963年写成英文本A Return To The Frontier,80年代又以中文重写出《重访边城》,是张爱玲生平唯一描写台湾的文章。台湾和香港,在张爱玲眼中皆属悬在大陆边上的“边城”,而与中国大陆一水之隔的台湾又和同内地接壤的香港风格完全不同。透过她的犀利之笔,我们看到了现今台湾早已忘却的文化特质,以及旧时香港色香味俱全的市民生活。
Eileen Chang is the English name for Chinese author 張愛玲, who was born to a prominent family in Shanghai (one of her great-grandfathers was Li Hongzhang) in 1920.
She went to a prestigious girls' school in Shanghai, where she changed her name from Chang Ying to Chang Ai-ling to match her English name, Eileen. Afterwards, she attended the University of Hong Kong, but had to go back to Shanghai when Hong Kong fell to Japan during WWII. While in Shanghai, she was briefly married to Hu Lancheng, the notorious Japanese collaborator, but later got a divorce.
After WWII ended, she returned to Hong Kong and later immigrated to the United States in 1955. She married a scriptwriter in 1956 and worked as a screenwriter herself for a Hong Kong film studio for a number of years, before her husband's death in 1967. She moved from New York to Los Angeles in 1972 and became a hermit of sorts during her last years. She passed away alone in her apartment in 1995.