BING XIN

born Oct. 5, 1900, Min-hou, Fukien Province, China WadeGiles romanization Ping Hsin (Chinese: Pure in Heart), pseudonym of Hsieh Wan-ying Chinese writer of sentimental stories and poems that enjoyed great popularity in the early 1920s. Bing Xin studied the Chinese Classics and began writing traditional Chinese stories as a child, but her conversion to Christianity and her attendance at an American school in Peking soon were reflected in a didactic and Western influence in her writing. The short stories and poems that Bing Xin published during her college years at Yen-ching Universitylyrical pieces about childhood and naturewon her instant fame and a grant to study at Wellesley College in the United States, where she received an M.A. degree in 1926. After she returned to China, Bing Xin married Wu Wen-tsao, whom she had met in the United States. She continued to write throughout the 1940s and 1950s, producing such works as Hs chi hsiao-tu-che (More Letters to Young Readers), Kuan-y n-jen (1943; About Women), T'ao Ch'i te shu-ch'i jih-ch'i (T'ao Ch'i's Summer Schedule), and Shih-sui hsiao-ch'a (Miscellaneous Essays), a volume of essays written between 1959 and 1964. Bing Xin wrote little after the early 1960s, but she became very active in cultural affairs under the Communist government, especially in children's literature.