Quote by Zhang Ailing: “Life is a gorgeous gown, but it is covered with lice.”

This vivid metaphor suggests that even the most outwardly beautiful and glamorous lives hide unpleasant, persistent problems or imperfections beneath the surface. Appearances can be deceiving, revealing hidden struggles.

Written during wartime Shanghai, this quote reflects the disillusionment and harsh realities underlying the superficial glamour of city life, a common theme in her work.

Chinese writer and novelist of the mid-twentieth century, considered one of the greatest writers in modern Chinese literature. Born in Shanghai in 1920 to a once-wealthy family in decline, her fiction captured the texture of urban Chinese life under colonial and wartime conditions with psychological precision. Her novella Love in a Fallen City and the novel The Rice-Sprout Song are among her most celebrated works.