Ding Ling (Chinese: 丁玲; pinyin: Dīng Líng; 12 October 1904 – 4 March 1986), formerly romanized as Ting Ling, was the pen name of Jiang Bingzhi (simplified Chinese: 蒋冰之; traditional Chinese: 蔣冰之; pinyin: Jiǎng Bīngzhī), also known as Bin Zhi (彬芷 Bīn Zhǐ), known for her feminist and socialist realist literature.
Ding was active in leftist literary circles connected to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and was imprisoned by the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang or "KMT") for her politics. She later became a leader in the literary community in the CCP revolutionary base area of Yan'an, and held positions in the early government of the People's Republic of China. She was awarded the Soviet Union's Stalin second prize for Literature in 1951 for her The Sun Shines Over Sanggan River.
Ding's political loyalties were questioned over time because of a note she had written while being held captive by the KMT and because of her relationship with Feng Da, who had betrayed her to the KMT. After the Anti-Rightist Campaign in 1958, Ding was denounced, expelled from the CCP, and exiled to Manchuria. She was rehabilitated in 1979 and a 1984 CCP resolution formally affirmed that the initial 1940 investigation concluding that she had remained loyal to the party while in KMT custody was correct. Ding died in Beijing in 1986.
Ding Ling was born as Jiang Bingzhi into a gentry family in Linli, Hunan province. Her father, Jiang Baoqian, was a scholar in the late Qing Dynasty and died when Ding Ling was 3 years old.
Ding Ling's mother, Yu Manzhen, studied at the Hunan Provincial No. 1 Normal School for Girls where she was a classmate of Xiang Jingyu, an early pioneer in Chinese feminism. She later became an elementary school educator who raised her children as a single mother. Ding Ling's mother was Ding's role model, and she would later write an unfinished novel, titled Mother, describing her mother's experiences. After the death of Ding's father, Ding's mother became a revolutionary. She often told Ding stories of martyrs, particularly Qiu Jin. Following her mother's example, Ding Ling became an activist at an early age.
During the 1911 Revolution, Ding's uncle was executed by Qing soldiers because he was a revolutionary.
Through her roommate Cao Mengjun's boyfriend Zuo Gong, Ding Ling met her future husband Hu Yepin, then editor of the supplement of the Beijing News. When Ding Ling returned to her hometown during summer vacation, Hu Yepin rushed to Hunan. Ding Ling recalled, "Our thoughts, characters, and feelings are different, but his bravery, enthusiasm, stubbornness, optimism and poverty all surprised me... The smooth sintered glass beads had gone up somewhere. So we had a deep friendship right away." In 1925, Ding Ling and Hu Yepin lived together in Beijing, but as she said, "but we had no husband and wife relationship", because "I, Ding Ling, did not want to use love or marriage to fetter me; I am a person who wants to be free".
In December 1927, Ding Ling wrote and published her first novel Meng Ke in Beijing, which was published in the magazine Fiction Monthly, describing the struggle of a young woman born in a declining bureaucratic family in Shanghai. The initial concern for women's issues was appreciated by editor-in-chief of Ye Shengtao.
In February 1928, Ding Ling published Miss Sophia's Diary in the Fiction Monthly. The book, in which a young woman describes her unhappiness with her life and confused romantic and sexual feelings, caused a sensation in the literary world. Miss Sophia's Diary highlights Ding Ling's close association and belief in the New Woman movement which was occurring in China during the 1920s. At this time, Ding Ling and Hu Yepin frequently traveled from Beijing to Shanghai. They lived briefly in Hangzhou from March to July of the same year, and then returned to Shanghai.
Around this time Ding Ling met the CCP member, writer, and activist Feng Xuefeng, who unlike Hu Yepin was active in politics. Ding Ling fell in love with Feng, and at the end of February, the three had a long talk in Hangzhou, after which Feng Xuefeng backed out and Ding Ling and Hu Yebin got married and lived in Shanghai. Ding Ling later recalled: "I had lived with Hu Yepin for two and a half years, and I'd never said that I would agree to marry them, but I also did not reject his feelings for me. He gave me many things; I did not reject them. Although the two of us had an arrangement, we could have broken it off at any time. We were not husband and wife, but other people saw us as husband and wife. When I talked about these feelings, and about reason, all I could do was lose Xuefeng."
In 1927, the Kuomintang began a purge of Communists and their supporters, which was known as the White Terror. The KMT executed Xiang Jingyu during the White Terror. Xiang's execution deeply affected Ding and increased her political leanings toward Communism.
In the summer of 1928, Ding Ling and Hu Yepin as a couple moved from Beijing to Shanghai via Hangzhou, and lived in the Shanghai French Concession. There they founded a publishing house to publish a magazine "Red and Black" together with Shen Congwen. In early 1929, Ding Ling started editing and publishing the "Renjian (Humanity)" magazine, but both magazines ceased publication soon afterward. Ding and Hu were finally broke and lived on the rent sent by Ding Ling's mother. In the winter of 1929, Ding Ling completed the novel "Wei Hu (Protection)", which was based on the love story between Ding Ling's friend Wang Jianhong and CCP member Qu Qiubai.
In February 1930, Hu Yepin went to Jinan to teach at the Shandong Provincial Senior High School, and Ding Ling joined him soon after. In Jinan, Hu Yepin accepted and began to actively promote Marxism–Leninism, which attracted the attention of the Kuomintang (KMT). In May 1930, Ding and Hu joined the League of Left-Wing Writers. In November 1930, Ding's and Hu Yepin's son Jiang Zulin born. In March 1931, Ding placed her son in the care of her mother and returned to Hunan, accompanied by Shen Congwen.
In 1931, Hu was arrested and executed by the KMT. In grief, Ding Ling sent her son who was less than 100 days old back to Hunan to be taken care of by her mother. In May, Ding Ling published her and Hu Yepin's joint collection "The Birth of a Man" to commemorate Hu Yepin's death. The CCP invited Ding to become the editor-in-chief of the Beidou, a new left-wing magazine, and she accepted.
Ding lived alone in Shanghai after Hu's death. She wrote love letters to Feng Xuefeng, who was married. Feng Xuefang responded with friendship. He introduced Ding to Feng Da, who was working as the secretary to Agnes Smedley. Ding moved in with Feng Da in late 1931.
In March 1932, Ding joined the CCP and succeeded Qian Xingcun as the party committee secretary of the League of Left-Wing Writers.
Political imprisonment in Nanjing
On 14 May 1933, Ding was kidnapped from her residence in the Shanghai international settlement along with Pan Zinian, a leftist intellectual who was visiting Ding. Leftist poet Ying Xiuren was also ambushed by the KMT at Ding's apartment and jumped out a window, killing himself to avoid capture.