Ying Chen is a Chinese-born Canadian translator and author. She has written and edited a number of both fiction and nonfiction Chinese-language volumes, as well as a great number of books in French. Her most famous works are "The Memory of Water", "English Grammar Made Easy" (Ying wen wen fa jing jie) and "Ingratitude" (L'ingratitude).
Background
Ying Chen was born on the 20th of February, 1961 in Shanghai where she grew up in the former French concession, her mother’s last child, her father’s first. Her mother’s first husband, an anti-Revolutionary, had died in prison. Her father was an engineer and administrator.
Education
Ying Chen graduated in French language and literature from Shanghai University in 1983. In 1989, she settled in Montréal to pursue a graduate degree in creative writing at McGill University in 1991.
In Spring 2009, she was Shadbolt Fellow in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, French Department, Simon Fraser University.
Career
At the beginning of her career, Chen worked as a commercial and technical translator at the Institute of Astronautical Research in Shanghai from 1983 to 1998 using Mandarin, Italian, English and French.
Chen left China and emigrated to Montreal in 1989, aged 28, to pursue her goal to become a writer, a voyage that entailed a self-imposed exile from her parents, family, culture and language. Ying’s first novel “La Mémoire de l'eau” was published by Leméac in 1992. Then came “Les Lettres chinoises” (Lemeac, 1993), an epistolary novel essentially made up of the exchanges between two Chinese lovers, one of whom emigrated to Québec. The novel offers a new and touching look at life in Québec amid considerations of political and sexual freedom.
Ying Chen wrote “Immobile” in1998, throughout this story, deeply anchored in a temporal element, the author delivers her concept of nothingness. Torn between her current life and memories of her former one, the heroine feels reality slipping away.
In 2003, Ying moved to Vancouver, British Columbia. Chen has also published poems, including a bilingual poetry collection in French and Mandarin, short stories and essays, including Quatre mille marches, a collection of essays. She wrote in 2014 “Le Plus Grand Obstacle”, which takes the form of a long letter to her son Lee. Chen now lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Connections
Ying Chen has husband and two children, Yuan and Lee.