Background
Lin was born in Osaka, Japan, where her father (of Jiaoling, Guangdong origin) worked as a merchant.
林海音
Lin was born in Osaka, Japan, where her father (of Jiaoling, Guangdong origin) worked as a merchant.
In Beijing (later Beiping), Lin graduated from the News and Broadcast Institute and became a journalist for Shijie Ribao ("World News Daily").
She is best known for her 1960 book My Memories of Old Beijing (城南舊事), a novelistic tribute to her childhood reminiscences of Beijing. Lin"s parents moved first to Taiwan, before settling in Beijing when she was 5. She spent her next 25 years there.
She would reside in Taiwan for the rest of her life.
Her most famous book remains My Memories of Old Beijing (1960). In it, Lin records in lively, evocative, first-person prose her childhood memories, ending with the death of her father, from the eyes of a precocious, impressionable young girl.
In 1982, mainland Chinese director Wu Yigong made the film My Memories of Old Beijing based on her novel. In 1999, it was chosen as one of the 100 best 20th-century Chinese-language films by Asia Weekly.