Sanmao (author)

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Sanmao (三毛) (March 26, 1943 - January 4, 1991), literally "thirty cents", was the penname of the popular Taiwanese author Chen Ping (陳平). She claimed that "thirty cents" was the value of her work, which is why she used this penname. In English she was also known as Echo, her English first name, or Echo Chan.

Sanmao was born in China, and the whole family moved to Taiwan later. She was said to have read the Dream of the Red Chamber, a famous Chinese classic, since she was aged five and a half years old. In her elementary school period, she had read a lot of literature. In her second year of high school, because of an incident, she shut herself up, and refused to go to school. Her father bought her lots of books for her to read at home, let her take piano lessons, and learnt painting.

From 1965 to 1969, she was allowed to be a philosophy student, and it was during this period that she experienced her first love, but thing didn't work out. So she wanted to go away as far as possible. Spain was her choice.

Between 1967 and 1970 she studied respectively in Spain, Germany and she worked in a law library in Illinois, the United States of America. Then she went back to Taiwan and taught. It was after her fiance's death during this time, that she left Taiwan and went back to Spain again in 1973. In 1974 she went to the Sahara desert (in what is now Western Sahara) and married Jose, whom she met in Spain 7 years ago when she was a student. In 1976 she published her first work, named The Stories of the Sahara, with its immense success, her early writings were collected in a second book published under the title Gone was the rainy season. And from then on, she continued her writing, and her experiences in Sahara and the Canary Islands were published in several more books.

In 1979 her husband was drowned while diving (there is still speculation that her husband did not die). In 1980 she went back to Taiwan and in November of the same year, she traveled to Central and South America, her experiences were written in a book. From 1981 to 1984, she taught in a Taiwan university. Then she started to focus on writing. In 1991 she died in a hospital in Taipei at age 48. Most people believe that it was a suicide, though some, most notably Zhang Jingran, claimed it was a murder.

Sanmao's books mainly deal with her own experiences studying and living abroad. They were immensely popular in both Republic of China and Mainland China, and her supposed suicide in a hospital came as a shock to many of her readers. From 1976 to the time of her death, Sanmao published more than 20 books.

She has also translated the comic Mafalda from Spanish to Chinese.