Chiung Yao: The queen of bad romance?

The Chinese world's most famous romance novelist might have attracted controversy for her love-above-all stories, but she also sparked a love for the Chinese language.

- Ho Ai Li

At a friend's home many summers ago, a few of us children spent the afternoon building a little Lego house surrounded by plastic trees and flowers.

We called it Han Yan Villa.

Our imaginations were haunted by the Taiwanese drama Deep Garden (1987), which was adapted from a romance novel by Taiwanese writer Chiung Yao and had actress Liu Hsueh-hua playing a mysterious woman named Han Yan.

News of Chiung Yao's death on Dec 4 at the age of 86 brought back memories of this humble villa, as well as images of men and women shouting and weeping in the rain.

The passing of the Chinese world's most famous romance novelist has made me think about her appeal and influence.

Yes, I was a fan, not so much of her books but the TV adaptations shown on Channel 8 in the 1980s and 1990s.

In my adolescence, I saw her dramas, especially those set in the liberalising milieu of China's late Qing to early Republic period, like Three Flowers (1990), as empowering narratives about women fighting to overcome patriarchy in their quest for self-actualisation through love.

Chiung Yao was not just a novelist but also a scriptwriter, film producer and star maker.

Some obituaries in the Chinese media spoke admiringly of the publishing and film empire created by her and her late husband Ping Hsin-tao, founder of Crown Publishing.

More than 60 of her novels and short-story collections were published, many of them turned into movies or dramas that made household names out of actors like Vicki Zhao, Alec Su and Fan Bingbing.

She and famed martial arts novelist Louis Cha ignited interest in Chinese history and culture across Chinese-speaking communities.

Together, they led me and many of my peers in Singapore to venture into reading Chinese books and even to acquire a love for the Chinese language.

Like Cha, Chiung Yao's appeal cuts across generations.