One day in 1940, 20-year-old Zhang Ailing was taking a bath in the bathroom, and suddenly her mother broke in, crazy inch by inch to check her body, but did not expect Zhang Ailing hysterically shouted: "What are you doing?" Get out! ”
In 1920, Zhang Ailing was born in a famous family in Shanghai, her grandmother was Li Hongzhang's daughter, her grandfather was a minister in the late Qing Dynasty, and her father was Zhang Zhiyi, a "second generation official" who fell between the old and new societies.


He had no skills, smoked a lot, visited brothels, married his aunt, and left nothing behind, relying only on the family business left by his ancestors.
Zhang Ailing's mother, Huang Yifan, is a very thoughtful new woman, who can't stand her husband Zhang Zhiyi, an old-time husband, who can't stay in this kind of family.
At the age of 40, Huang Yifan left her 4-year-old daughter Zhang Ailing and her three-year-old son Zhang Zijing, divorced her husband, and followed her sister-in-law to study in Japan.
Japan opened her eyes, pursued freedom and love, let go of herself, kept falling in love and changing jobs, because of her excellent appearance, elegant dress, and popularity in the upper class.
When Zhang Ailing was 13 years old, her father married a famous grandson Yongfan.
Huang Yifan was abroad, continued to be a boyfriend, she sold the inheritance left by the Huang family to make a living, and after a few years of such a depraved life, she chose to return to China again.
Once Zhang Ailing stayed with her mother Huang Yifan for a few days, did not greet her stepmother in advance, which made her stepmother particularly angry, for which she had a dispute with Zhang Ailing, and the stepmother was angry and slapped Zhang Ailing, Zhang Ailing instinctively wanted to fight back, but was framed by her stepmother and complained to Zhang Ailing's father: "She hit me."
In a fit of anger, his father beat Zhang Ailing and locked her up.
When Zhang Ailing was 16 years old, Zhang Ailing's father and stepmother had a bad relationship and could not get along, she decided to defect to her mother, which affected her mother's dashing happiness, and she was not very welcome to the arrival of her daughter.

A neurotic, emotional mother brings not normal maternal love to her adolescent daughter, but mental bullying.
The teenager Zhang Ailing, how sensitive, often hid on the top floor of the apartment in order to avoid the man brought home by her mother, where she spun around like a fly, wanting to jump down and let the earth slap her in the face.
Really, this kind of "it's all because of you, hurt me...", can't tell the child, which makes the children who are not yet able to control their own destiny give birth to a great sense of guilt and powerlessness.
The behavior of her birth mother alienates Zhang Ailing's heart every day, and she begins to become scathing, hating her mother's bullying of her adolescence, but gradually becoming a hard-hearted person like her mother. In those years, Zhang Ailing ran to the rooftop countless times to avoid her mother's boyfriend who brought home, and sometimes she really wanted to die, after all, all the pain was over.
Contradictions accumulate day by day, Zhang Ailing has the ability to rebel while studying hard, hoping to escape from her mother. In 1940, when Zhang Ailing was just 20 years old, she gave her mother an 800-yuan scholarship to the University of Hong Kong, but Huang Yifan turned around and squandered the money at the card table.
When Zhang Ailing went to the bathroom, she thought that her daughter had an abnormal relationship with the teacher, so she would get a few hundred yuan in compensation.
So, Huang Yifan pushed open the bathroom door and wanted to examine Zhang Ailing.

Since then, the mother and daughter have become increasingly estranged, and the flesh and blood love is difficult to find.
In August 1957, Huang Yifan became seriously ill and wanted to see his daughter. At this time, Zhang Ailing was too busy to take care of herself, and she didn't even have the money to buy a ticket to Europe, so she didn't visit, and only mailed $100 to her mother.

Soon after, Huang Yifan died of illness. Zhang Ailing received her mother's will, and her mother left her a box full of antiques and some old furniture, which supported Zhang Ailing for a while and helped her through a difficult time. Perhaps Huang Yifan still loves his daughter in his heart, but I am afraid that the shadow she caused to her daughter in her early years is simply irreparable by these legacies.
Childhood has a great influence on a person. Even great writers like Eileen Chang have not escaped the shadow of childhood. And her childhood also made her feel landless.

Unfortunately, Eileen Zhang never got out of the pain that her family brought her.
In fact, there are nine out of ten unsatisfactory things in life, and many times we are powerless to change the status quo, only to be frank and look down on it can we get by.