Career

Yuan wrote poetry, fiction, essays, screenplays and television scripts during the Boudoir literature period for women. Boudoir literature is a form of writing that focuses on issues of women. Some of the issues that Yuan focused on are: women"s role in family and the workplace, and their anxieties, romantic relationships and aspirations.

Yuan was inspired by the writings of an influential Chinese writer named Eileen Chang, who was seen as the leader of the liberation for female Taiwanese writers.

Both Yuan and her predecessor Chang wrote love stories that battled stereotypes of women.

Achievements

• As Yuan exposed the role of women in their families, workplace, and other aspects of life, the women in her stories typically accomplished a financial feat. Either they achieved financial independence, or she showed the financial prosperity of the flourishing middle-class. In contrast to Eileen Chang, who depicted the differences between social classes in China in a negative light, Yuan was raised in a middle-class family and did not show any animosity towards the economical differences in society, especially since the majority of the Taiwanese people have achieve middle-class status in post-war years.