Yan Geling’s early work Female Grassland雌性的草地 (Yan, 1989) is a novel published in 1989, while Celestial Bath 天浴 (Yan, 2008) is a short story published in 1996. Both of Yan Geling’s works focus on female sent-down youth, with stories set in the grasslands of the Tibetan pastoral countryside during the mid-1970s, in the waning years of the Cultural Revolution 文化大革命 (1966-1976). This paper discusses women’s fragmentation to analyze the obstacles to women’s liberation during the sent-down youth movement, illustrating how female sent-down youth’ tragic experiences resulted because of political power.

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This paper examines Chinese women’s love and marriage during a political and cultural revolution, and the impact on women’s livelihood. This paper discusses how changing in political ideology and culture is affecting love and marriage for a female figure. The paper takes the respect, responsibility, care knowledge (RRCK) model of love to exam the female’s one-sided love from a lens of Fromm’s theory of the four elements of true love to shed the light on the dysfunctional relationships among in China that results in gender violence and as demonstrated in the novel The Epic of a Woman. This paper sets forth options for love and marriage in the mid-20th century Chinese literary and to re-examine gender violence against women. The Epic of a Woman (Yige nüren de shishi), by Chinese American woman writer Yan Geling (b. 1958), narrates the experiences of female protagonist Tian Sufei and her relentless pursuit of love throughout her life. The female protagonist in this novel is a reflection of Yan Geling’s mother's personal experiences. Yan’s mother was a popular dancer in an art troupe in the revolutionary army when she was young. The novel is set in the period from the 1940s to the 1970s, with her husband being sent to a labor camp during the Cultural Revolution.

Yan Geling, a feminist of Chinese origin, is a gifted and successful storyteller and creator of characters. However, despite a widespread contribution, Yan Geling’s writings are not popular in the West and remain in a marginalised position. A qualitative case study of Yan Geling’s writings will fill in the literature gap to understand those marginalised Chinese women’s voices. This study examines the work of Yan Geling by applying various observations and data sources. It concentrates on her depiction of her homeland: her fiction takes place in realistic settings during the turbulent years of the 20th Century. Nevertheless, Yan Geling’s works,  particularly her writings on women’s situations using a feminist lens, have rapidly increased in recent years. This perspective is an attempt to reflect on Yan Geling’s novel, the analysis of which are more likely to contribute to future Chinese feminist studies.