| Chiung Yao | |
|---|---|
| Born | April 20, 1938 |
Chiung Yao (simplified Chinese: 琼瑶; traditional Chinese: 瓊瑤; pinyin: Qióngyáo; Wade–Giles: Chiung Yao; born 陳喆 on April 20, 1938 in Sichuan, China) is the penname of a popular Taiwan romance novelist. Many of her works have been made and remade into movies and TV series. Films based on her books have been made in the Republic of China (Taiwan) since the 1970s, and were very popular during their time. They often featured Brigitte Lin, Lin Feng-jiao, Charlie Chin and/or Chin Han, who were then collectively known as the "Two Lins and Two Chins".
In the 1990s, TV series adapted from her works continued to be watched in Taiwan and sometimes, in Mainland China. Huan Zhu Ge Ge, or Princess Pearl in English, is the best-known and popular of her recent novels, owing to the popularity of the 1997, 1999 and 2003 TV series.
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Both her father (陳致平) and mother (袁行恕) received a good education. She was born in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province. In 1949, along with her family, she moved to Taiwan, where she attended 臺北師範附小 and Taipei Municipal Zhong Shan Girls High School (臺北市立中山女子高級中學). At the age of 16, she published her first novel. During high school she had published over 200 articles. After graduation from high school and failure to enter college, she got married and became a housewife, and at the same time started her writing career. Her first novel, still often read today, is Chuangwai ("Outside the Window").
Chiung Yao's romance novels were very well received in Taiwan when they were first published, and by the 1990s she was also one of the best-selling authors on the mainland.[1] Her novels feature women who would go through years of intense psychological suffering for the sake of love, with male leads who are often weaker than the female protagonists. Oftentimes the novels are set in the early Republican era, when family dictums were feudalistic and chauvinistic. Princess Pearl is the first of her many novels which ended happily for her female protagonists.
However her romance novels have also been criticized for their melodramatic plotlines and extremely longwinded dialogues .