Chang Hsiu-ya (
Congressman David Wu of Oregon commended Chang during a House of Representatives session for her contributions to literature and cultural interflows between the East and the West, and asked that a brief account of her life and the titles of her major books be included in congressional records.
Chang died in her residence in Orange County, California, on June 26. She was 83.
According to Wu, Chang became a publicly-known writer at the age of 16, when her first first book of poetry and prose was published, and she never stop-ped writing.
Chang graduated from the department of foreign languages of the Catholic Fujen University in Beijing before World War II. The war disrupted her graduate school education and led her to Chongqing City in Sichuan, where she worked as a newspaper editor.
Chang moved to Taiwan with the KMT government in 1949 and taught English at Providence University in Taichung.
She transferred to Taipei's Fujen University in 1965, teaching creative writing and translation for 25 years until her retirement.
In her 70-year writing career, Chang published 82 books and was a popular writer in Taiwan, Hong Kong, China and Chinese-language communities in South-east Asia.
Taipei's Fujen University is scheduled to host a mass on Thursday to commemorate Chang as an outstanding alumna.
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