Chang Ying-Tai (Chinese: 張瀛太; pinyin: Zhāng Yíngtài), born in 1965, is an award-winning novelist and a professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology (NTUST; Chinese: 臺灣科技大學). She devoted significant effort to pursuing her career as a writer and worked diligently on literature. During her early life, she had to overcome family upheavals and financial challenges resulting from unemployment after completing graduate school degrees. These experiences and life struggles have significantly influenced her diverse writing styles and contributed to her current achievements.
As a writer, Chang Ying-Tai's work has received numerous prestigious awards. Her writing style is versatile, encompassing genres from romance to thrillers, historical fiction to fantasy, and humor to irony. In addition, Chang addresses a variety of concerns in her writings, including topics related to the environment, adolescence, and issues related to identity recognition.
Chang Ying-Tai, a Chinese professor, was greatly inspired by engineering students and chose to pursue her career at the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology. She is known for her humorous teaching style in class, which is exemplified in an anecdote involving a student who used Classical Chinese to write a leave of absence request. She has published works such as Hunting the Oroqen (Chinese: 鄂倫春之獵), a short story about a researcher of Oroqen culture, and the short story collection Tibetan Lover (Chinese: 西藏愛人). In 2015, she received the Lennox Robinson Literary Award in Ireland.
Chang Ying-Tai's publications encompass a wide range of genres, including novels, plays, essays, and newspaper columns. Her autobiographical campus novel, "To All the Boys We Loved Before" (Chinese: 花笠道中), explores the friendship between two girls and the love triangle involving two girls and one boy, along with the stories of other characters. Chang, Ying-Tai also created a micro-movie adaptation of this novel, which she uploaded to her YouTube channel in 2012.
Chang Ying-Tai has actively participated in numerous national and local literary competitions. One of her novels, The Bear Whispers to Me (Chinese: 熊兒悄聲對我說), received the first Taipei International Book Fair Award and the Irish Lennox Robinson Literary Award..
Early life and education
Early life
Chang Ying-Tai was born in 1965. In her early years, she aspired to emulate the qualities of Guanyin Bodhisattva. However, during her adolescence, she shifted her ambition toward becoming an artist. Despite her aspirations, her father did not support her personal pursuit, as he believed it might not be a wise choice for her future career. Following the completion of her master's degree, she encountered unemployment and had to rely on scholarships to pursue her career as a writer.
Education
1995-2001
Chang Ying-Tai earned her Ph.D. in Chinese literature from National Taiwan University. Her areas of study encompass aesthetics, prose, scripts, modern literature, modern poetry, and Western novels. For instance, her master's thesis titled "The Aesthetics of Painting and Significance of Kuo Hsi's 'The Lofty Message of Nature' and Han Cho's 'Complete and Pure Theories of Landscape Painting'" was published in 1993. She also published her doctoral thesis, "The Study of Chu Si-Ning's Novels," in 2001. Additionally, she made substantial contributions to the Journal of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences at the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology.
Career: Author
Notable work and awards
Chang Ying-Tai is known for her notable works, which include novels such as To All the Boys We Loved Before, The Rose with A Thousand Faces, The Zither Player of Lost Kingdom, and The Bear Whispers to Me. She has also authored collections of short novels, including The Unstoppable Spring and My Tibetan Lover. In addition to her literary work, Chang Ying-Tai has ventured into the realm of film scripts, contributing to projects like The Big Shot and Méng (also known as Our Commitment). Chang Ying-Tai's work has received numerous prestigious awards, including the Lennox Robinson Literary Award in 2015, making her the first Taiwanese writer to win a literary prize in Ireland. Her literary prowess, imagination, and talent left a lasting impression on the judges and were seen as a reflection of the spirit of the late Lennox Robinson. Additionally, her writing consistently earns recognition, with frequent appearances on the shortlist of the Frankfurt Book Fair and acknowledgment as the Best Taiwanese Fiction.