"Yuan Qiongqiong and the Rage for Eileen Zhang Among Taiwan's Feminine Writers: The Eileen Zhang Phenomenon," in Modern Chinese Literature, Vol. 4, Nos. 1 and 2, Spring/Fall, 1988, pp. 201-23.

In the following excerpt, Sung-sheng points out those characteristics of Chang's fiction, especially in Chuanqi (Romances), which have inspired a new generation of women writers.

The growing popularity of Eileen Zhang's fiction in Taiwan between the mid-1970s and mid-1980s is easily explained with reference to social development. As the urban milieu of Taiwan's big cities became increasingly metropolitan, the characteristic sophistication and cynicism of Zhang's love stories, set in Hong Kong and Shanghai before the Communist Revolution, catered to the taste of educated young people studying or working in the cities who formed the main body of readers and constituted the pool of potential writers. . . .

Eileen Zhang, whose first short story collection bears the title Chuanqi [Romances], has offered...