Lilian Lee

Despite her popularity in the Chinese-speaking world, relatively little is known about the life of Lilian Lee elsewhere. She was born in 1958 or 1959 in the city of Taishan and was raised in a wealthy and prominent family in Hong Kong. Her father inherited his father’s traditional Chinese medicine practice. Lee has been fond of literature since childhood and even contributed to her middle school’s weekly student publication. She has worked in a few different fields, including education, professional dance, and film and television. Lee is a prolific writer who has published more than 100 novels and written several dozen screenplays for movies and television shows. While only two of Lee’s works have been translated to English (Farewell My Concubine [1992] and The Last Princess of Manchuria [1995] about Yoshiko Kawashima), many others have been adapted to film. The most celebrated of these include Rouge (1985), Fight and Love with a Terracotta Warrior (1989), Kawashima Yoshiko (1990), Farewell My Concubine (1993), and Green Snake (1993). The film adaptation of Farewell My Concubine won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Lee’s writing has been published in newspapers and magazines in Singapore, Malaysia, and Hong Kong, where she currently resides.