Self-translation/rewriting: the female body in Eileen Chang’s “Jinsuo ji”, the Rouge of the North, Yuannü and “the Golden Cangue”

摘要

This paper studies the legendary modern Chinese writer Eileen Chang’s (1920–1995) “Jinsuo ji” (1943) and her three rewritings/translations of it into The Rouge of the North (1967), Yuannü (1966), and “The Golden Cangue” (1971). I argue that “Jinsuo ji” and its revisions/translations exemplify a state of in-betweenness, wherein Chang both elaborates upon and even undermines the representations of the female body depicted in earlier versions. The female body, as constructed in these four versions of the story, illustrates at once an imprisonment by and a resistance to Chinese and Western aesthetic ideals. In what follows, I will investigate the multiple revisions and translations of this tale, the changes of title and focus, the beginnings and the endings, and the revisions of the representations of the female body, as well as offering possible reasons for their transformation and the significance of them.