Abstract: I am a native of Nanjing and familiar with the Republican relics. My job enables me to have some ties with many former literary figures and be informed of their stories. This turns me into a Republican history "fancier". With the Republican celebrities who moved to Hong Kong, Taiwan or foreign countries after 1949 as my focus, I have kept writing about them for more than a decade. They are sketches rather than “brief lives.” In this process, I attach great importance to collecting and compiling raw materials, but take precautions against general and grand narrations. The subject’s personal integrity and moral fortitude are my top priority, from which I bring out pictures of those men and women with polished details. Their "air of the Republican age" is for the readers to sense and taste.

Key words: Republican period; celebrities; sketches; the subject’s personal integrity

Zhang Changhua is a member of the Chinese Association of Writers. He served as the former Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Jiangsu Literature and Art Publishing House and is dedicated to writing (short) lives of celebrities. He published works such as Reminiscent Elegance, the Republican Landscape, Illustrations of an Old Acquaintance, The Style of a Century, and Calligraphies and Letters of Famous Writers, etc. His works were awarded as best biographies in the Third and the Fourth National Awards for Biography in Chinese.