Ping Lu


Lu Ping, born in Kaohsiung in 1953, is a Taiwanese writer who writes under the pen name “Ping Lu”. Her writing encompasses a broad range of genres, including novels, essays, poems, commentary, and theater plays. She is also known in the Chinese-language world for her critique of social phenomenon, ranging from cultural development to gender issues and human rights. Over the past two decades, Ms. Lu has successfully established herself as a prominent novelist, columnist, and commentator in Taiwan.

Background

Ms. Lu graduated from the Department of Psychology, National Taiwan University, and gained a master's degree from the University of Iowa. While working as a statistician in the United States, she won first prize with her short story "Death in a Cornfield" in the 1983 United Daily News fiction competition. Her other works also won her many prizes, including a prize in prose and a prize in dramatic composition. In 2002, she published a novel about the death of a famous Taiwanese singer Teresa Teng entitled "When Will You Come Again?".

Literary works

Of her literary works, "Love and Revolution" attracted the most attention. Ms. Lu re-imagines the lives of Sun Yat-sen and Soong Ching-ling, a legendary couple in modern China. She not only explores their marital relations, including their failings and desires, but also mentions Sun Yat-sen's political career and Soong Ching-ling's feelings of isolation and loneliness after her husband died. As Perry Link pointed out in his article entitled "Chinese Shadows", Ms. Lu also tries to find in Soong Ching-ling "the person buried under all the layers of image-making" and to "reconstruct a credible portrait" of the famous woman. He also said Ms. Lu "succeeds in showing the ordinary and sometimes repugnant details of Qingling's life," and that she "may or may not be accurate about Qingling's inner life, but she certainly writes with honesty and with penetration."
Her more recent works includes fiction "The River Darkens" and autobiographical essays collection "Heart Mandala".

Ambassador at Large

Prior to becoming the director of Kwang Hwa Information and Cultural Center in January 2003, Ms. Lu had worked as an editorial writer for The China Times, spent many years lecturing on such subjects as feminism, cultural criticism, and news commentary at National Taiwan University and Taipei National University of the Arts, and served as ambassador-at-large for Taiwan for a few years.
Ms. Lu left her post in Kwang Hwa Information and Cultural Center in December 2009, but is continuously promoting cultural and economical exchanges between Taiwan and Hong Kong.
She is currently the chairman of Radio Taiwan International.