Stories for women, by women

In a dialogue between Zhang and He Guimei, a Chinese literature professor with Peking University, in March last year, the two female scholars gave their own definition of new women's writing, which is also the theme for The Beautiful Changes.

"It emphasizes the writers' social gender, putting women and femininity in social relations to observe and understand, rather than extracting them from context," writes Zhang in the preface of The Beautiful Changes. "It realizes that the discrepancies between the stance of the two genders are actually decided by differences in ethnicity, classes, economy and culture. It is also concerned with the differences in the stance among women that are a result of the differences in classes and nationalities."

Zhang writes that new women's writing emphasizes on the quality of being artistic and avant-garde, keeping away from histrionic, accusatory and victim mentality.

"This is an ideal women's writing-rich and prolific, rather than fixed and monotonous. Like crisscross nerves, it connects not only women and men, and women and women, but also human beings with reality, and human beings with nature," she writes.

If women are depicted as victims in fictional works, they might attract much attention. And in the long run, they cannot be real artistic pieces. So ideally, Zhang says women's works should reflect the complex reality, rather than simply portraying women as victims of the patriarchal society.

Literary critic Rao Xiang says topics on gender have not been talked about much, but Zhang has been trying to shift people's attention back to it in the last two years.

Zhang says works from the collections faithfully represent the modern women in China from certain perspectives, in a complicated way that is not aimed to please the mass readers.

"The lives of Chinese women are worth writing about. If you look at the present Chinese society, you will see it is more proper to write about it from the perspective of women because women's lives and temperaments have changed much faster than those of men," Zhang says. "The changes of our time can all be reflected in women. However, Chinese writers in general are not sensitive enough to such changes, which is a great pity."

Just like the 2019 edition, An Anthology of Short Stories by Chinese Women in 2020 also contains 20 short stories divided into three themes-love, secret and beyond.