MIU MIU LITERARY CLUB
Shanghai, November 21, 2025

A Woman’s Education

On 21st November, Miu Miu introduces Literary Club Shanghai – ‘A Woman’s Education’, exploring the work of three female literary masters: French Existentialist, Simone de Beauvoir; Fumiko Enchi, the pen-name for Fumi Ueda, among the most prominent female authors of the Shöwa era in Japan; and Eileen Chang, widely considered one of the most important voices in contemporary Chinese literature. Inspired by Europe’s rich heritage of literary salons and artists collectives, Miu Miu Literary Club was launched in 2024 in Milan and is a reflection of the lives of women past and present through the written word. Literary Club 2025, Shanghai, continues Miu Miu’s ongoing commitment to advancing contemporary thought and culture.

Located at the iconic West Wing, Shanghai Exhibition Centre, a major venue for events and exhibitions, and reflecting the city’s rich history, Miu Miu Literary Club Shanghai hosted a series of conversations exploring the subjects of girlhood, love and education, all springing from the work of these three great writers, challenge the rules taught to women for centuries. Alongside the program, readings of poetry and prose and live musical performances will unite an inspired community of talents, opening up new light of these long-revered figures.

The first conversation, “Simone de Beauvoir: The Power of Self-Awareness”, brought together Cao Dongxue, a literary scholar and translator of The Inseparables, Yuan Xiaoyi, director of the Institute of Literature in Shanghai and professor at Normal University and Zhang Pingjin, whose research focuses on 20th-century Chinese literature and culture in Shanghai, to explore de Beauvoir’s The Inseparables. Written in 1954 but, deemed too intimate to publish in her lifetime, only published in 2020, the novella sparks renewed interest in a great feminist thinker. In this work, the writer of The Second Sex (1949) and Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter (1958) charts the journey of a young girl into womanhood and the importance of female friendship in the process of self-determination.

The next discussion, “Fumiko Enchi: Love and Resistance” led by Japanese writer and translator, Yoshii Shinobu, novelist, essayist, translator and deputy editor-in-chief, Shanghai Translation Publishing House, Huang Yuning and Ye Zi, associate professor, School of Chinese Language and Literature, Nanjing University and PhD in Literature, Fudan University, focuses on Enchi’s The Waiting Years (1956). A subtle critique of patriarchal society, the novel tells the story of Tomo, a woman married to a high-ranking politician, who is tasked with finding a concubine for her husband, thereby sacrificing her needs to a male authority figure.

The final panel, “Eileen Chang: Growth and Runaway”, featured Malaysian Chinese writer and journalist, Li Zishu, Chinese writer, editor and expert in Eileen Chang studies, Zhang Xi, and contemporary novelist, Di An, unpack Chang’s The Fall of the Pagoda. Born in Shanghai, Chang studied in both China and the west, before publishing acclaimed titles such as Love in a Fallen City (1943), The Golden Cangue (1943) and Red Rose, White Rose (1944). Her influence on Chinese-language female writers is second to none. Semi-autobiographical and originally written in English in 1963, The Fall of the Pagoda was published posthumously in 2010, and tells the story of Shen Pipa, whose love of literature and art eventually lead her away from her once prominent, now declining family to pursue higher education overseas, marking emancipation and a break from a traditional and repressive structure.

To accompany the conversations, leading Chinese actresses — and longtime Miu Miu collaborators — Miu Miu brand ambassadors Li Gengxi, Liu Haocun and Zhao Jinmai, gave a series of evocative readings. Live music was performed by singer-songwriter and Miu Miu brand ambassador Lexie Liu and Hiperson’s lead vocalist Chen Sijiang.

Over 600 audiences from fields of culture, literary, art, and fashion were invited to Miu Miu Literary Club in Shanghai, to witness the ongoing dissemination and inheritance of art and culture.

Simone de Beauvoir

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) was a writer, social theorist and activist whose works revolutionized feminist thought. Born in Paris to a bourgeois Catholic family, De Beauvoir was a gifted student who studied philosophy at the Sorbonne and passed the agrégation exam in 1929 as its youngest candidate. That year, she met Jean-Paul Sartre, with whom she formed a lifelong, non-monogamous intellectual partnership. Her close friendship with Zaza Mabille, who passed away in 1929, deeply affected her and inspired De Beauvoir’s posthumously published novel The Inseparables (2020). De Beauvoir taught philosophy throughout the 1930s but was dismissed from her post in 1941 under Nazi occupation. De Beauvoir died on April 14, 1986, and was buried alongside Sartre in Montparnasse Cemetery. Her book The Second Sex (1949) was a foundational work of feminist philosophy. Notable novels include The Blood of Others (1945), All Men Are Mortal (1946), and The Mandarins (1954), which won the Prix Goncourt.

Fumiko Enchi

Fumiko Enchi (1905–1986) was a Japanese writer and playwright known for her profound exploration of gender, sexuality, and the oppression of women in patriarchal society. Born in Tokyo as Fumi Ueda, she was heavily influenced by her father, a linguist, and her grandmother's storytelling. Despite health struggles and being denied formal higher education, she pursued extensive private studies. Enchi began her career in theater but later transitioned to prose, gaining recognition in the 1950s. Her notable works, such as The Waiting Years (1957) and Masks (1958), often reinterpreted classical Japanese literature, particularly Lady Murasaki Shikibu's eleventh-century narrative work The Tale of Genji, which she translated into modern Japanese. A pioneer in addressing female aging and sexuality, Enchi blended modern psychological insight and traditional cultural elements, such as the complex range of female masks used in Noh dramas to portray unhappy women. Her contributions earned her Japan's highest cultural honor, the Order of Culture, in 1985, as well as prestigious awards such as the Noma Literary Prize and the Women's Literature Prize. Enchi remains a seminal feminist voice in Japanese literature today.

Eileen Chang

Eileen Chang (1920-1995) was a preeminent modern Chinese writer. She was born in Shanghai into a prominent family: her grandfather Zhang Peilun was a renowned late-Qing official, and her grandmother Li Ju’ou was the daughter of Li Hongzhang, a prominent late-Qing statesman. She received an education blending Chinese and Western influences in her early years, and was accepted to the University of London on a full scholarship, but was unable to attend due to the war. She remained in Hong Kong, where she studied at the University of Hong Kong before returning to Shanghai. In the 1940s, she rose to literary fame with works such as Love in a Fallen City (1943), The Golden Cangue (1943), and Red Rose, White Rose (1944). She released her most celebrated and widely circulated collection of short stories, Romances (1944), alongside the essay collection Written on Water (1945). Her works are celebrated for her unsparing portrayal of love and marriage among the urban bourgeoisie, her sharp psychological insight, and her dazzling use of metaphor. After the war, Chang increasingly ventured into screenwriting, penning scripts such as Long Live the Missus! (1947) and Unending Love (1947). She emigrated to the United States in the 1950s, where she continued to write, often revisiting and reimagining her early Shanghai years. A recluse in later life, Chang passed away in Los Angeles in 1995. Today, Eileen Chang is celebrated as one of the most iconic figures in modern Chinese literature, enjoying widespread readership and scholarly study, and fostering a large community of admirers both domestically and internationally. Her writing has exerted a lasting influence on subsequent generations of Chinese-language female authors, earning her the reverential title “matriarch of inspiration.”