30-second overview: San Mao (1943–1991), born Chen Ping, was born in Chongqing and moved to Taiwan in 1948. She dropped out of junior high after being publicly humiliated by a math teacher, spent seven years in seclusion, and resumed writing under the guidance of painter Gu Fusheng, publishing her debut in "Modern Literature" in 1962. In 1967 she went to Spain to study, where she met José, eight years her junior. In 1973 they married in Spanish Sahara; San Mao wrote about desert life and became the window through which Taiwanese people under martial law imagined the outside world. In 1979 José died in a diving accident on La Palma in the Canary Islands. Her only screenplay, "Red on the Rolling River," won eight Golden Horse Awards in 1990. She died by suicide at Taipei Veterans General Hospital on January 4, 1991, at age 47. Her works sold over 15 million copies; the first English translation was published by Bloomsbury in 2019 and was nominated for the National Translation Award.
A Single Stroke of Ink
Around 1955, in a classroom at Taipei First Girls' High School, a second-year female student scored zero on a math test.
Before that, she had done something: she discovered that the teacher always assigned exercises from the back of the textbook, so she memorized all the answers and got full marks six times in a row. The teacher suspected cheating and gave a different test. The result was zero. Then the teacher took up a brush and, in front of the entire class, drew two large circles around her eyes representing "zero."
The next day she fainted in the classroom. After that she stopped going to school. In 1956 she tried to resume her studies, but couldn't enter the classroom: every day she ran to the library to hide, and eventually officially dropped out.
For the next seven years, the place she visited most was the three-row graveyard, sitting among tombstones reading novels. She saw a psychiatrist once a week, which didn't help. She cut her wrists.
The person who pulled her out was painter Gu Fusheng. San Mao took the initiative to become his apprentice and learn painting, going out twice a week, with her only destination being Gu Fusheng's studio at No. 2, Lane 2, Taian Street. Gu Fusheng taught her for ten months. But two months into learning painting, he realized her talent wasn't on canvas: he handed her several copies of "Modern Literature" and recommended her to Bai Xianyong. In December 1962, nineteen-year-old Chen Ping published her novella "Lost" in the 15th issue of "Modern Literature."
Her real name was actually Chen Maoping. The character "mao" in her name had too many strokes, and as a child she always skipped the middle character when writing her name. Her family eventually gave in and changed her name to Chen Ping. Her English name Echo was also self-chosen. Later she gave herself the pen name "San Mao." One story says it was because at age three she read Zhang Leping's comic "San Mao the Vagrant"; another says it was self-mockery for being "only worth three cents." Both stories point to the same thing: wandering.
Window in the Desert
In 1964, without a high school education, San Mao was specially permitted to audit classes in the Philosophy Department of Chinese Culture University, where she met a German teacher. After a year of dating they got engaged. They went together to order wedding invitations. That night the German teacher died suddenly of a heart attack. San Mao took sleeping pills and was saved by her family. She later said: "That box of invitations I still haven't dared to pick up to this day."
In 1967 she flew to Spain and studied at Complutense University of Madrid. There she met José (José María Quero y Ruiz), a young man from Andalusia. She was 24; he was 16. José proposed to her. She said to wait six years: until he finished his studies and military service. During those six years San Mao didn't idle away her time: she went to Germany to intensely study German, reading sixteen hours a day and getting a teaching certificate after nine months. She also learned pottery. After going around, she returned to Madrid, where José was waiting for her.
Six years passed. In 1973, the two got married in the capital of Spanish Sahara, Laayoune. San Mao was 30; José was 22: his profession was a diving engineer. The wedding was extremely simple: wearing casual clothes, walking across the desert to the registrar's office to register.
After that, San Mao began writing about the desert for Taiwan. Invited by the editor-in-chief of the United Daily News Sunday edition, her first piece "Chinese Restaurant" was published in October 1974. Using the name "San Mao," she sent article after article about the Sahara back to the island. In 1976, "The Story of the Sahara" was published by Crown Publishing House, sparking a reading craze across both sides of the Taiwan Strait. In an era when people couldn't freely travel abroad, her writing was a window for an entire generation of young Taiwanese to imagine the outside world. Bai Xianyong later said that San Mao "created a magnificent romantic world full of legendary charm... the life experiences that ordinary people cannot reach made her the youth idol on both sides of the strait."
What San Mao wrote was not foreign adventure. She wrote about the daily necessities of life in the desert: how to make a table of Chinese food with limited ingredients, how to deal with Sahrawi neighbors who kept "borrowing" things, how to maintain a home without running water or a proper supermarket. Her tone was always like talking to a friend: "Let me tell you something interesting" — even when what she was talking about was actually dangerous or hard. She made hard times interesting and made distant places feel like next door. Readers weren't reading travel essays; they were reading letter after letter from the Sahara to Taiwan.
But how real was San Mao's Sahara? This question has never stopped since publication. San Mao insisted that everything was real experience. In 2019, the English translator Mike Fu positioned her works as "semi-autobiographical," not guaranteeing the truthfulness of every detail. A paper at the University of Pittsburgh directly used the title "San Mao: Oasis or Mirage?" to explore the boundary between her fact and fiction. Travel writer Ma Zhongxin published "The Truth About San Mao" in 1996, spending five years tracking San Mao's footprints and visiting relatives and friends, concluding that she "fabricated stories and invented a beautiful love." But critics also questioned whether Ma Zhongxin had been biased from the start.
The truth may be more complex than either side says: she wasn't fabricating, but she wasn't writing news reports either. She was using literature to reconstruct a world she needed.
This debate later gained another dimension. San Mao's writing took place at the end of the Spanish colonial period. She was a foreign spouse on the colonizer's side, and her neighbors were the colonized Sahrawi people. She wrote about these neighbors with goodwill and curiosity, but goodwill doesn't equal equality. In the preface to the English translation, Mike Fu admitted that, viewed by today's standards, some passages "may carry a condescending tone toward Sahrawi neighbors." San Mao wasn't aware of this: few people were in the 1970s. But rereading her today, this dimension cannot be avoided.
Her influence went beyond Taiwan. In the 1980s her works entered mainland China during the early days of reform and opening-up. To readers who had just come out of the Cultural Revolution, San Mao's Sahara was not a tourist attraction, but evidence: proof that daily life could take on another form, that a person could choose where they wanted to go. Her wandering writing became a unique cultural bridge between the two sides of the strait: a desert story written by a Taiwanese woman made mainland readers feel for the first time that "the outside world" was not just a slogan, but a tangible temperature. In 2009, she ranked 10th in the literary category and 35th overall in the "Most Influential Cultural Figures in New China" online poll, and was also selected as one of the "60 Most Influential Women in New China." The National Taiwan Museum of Literature commented: San Mao "may be the most popular and influential literary figure in Taiwan." By the time she died, she had published 15 literary works, 5 translations, 3 audiobooks, and 1 screenplay: a total of 24 books, with over 2.5 million characters, translated into 15 languages.
But the "freedom" readers saw and what she actually experienced were not entirely the same. Critic Yang Zhao wrote: San Mao created a real dream of happiness for her readers, overcoming not only personal pain but also soothing the oppression of the entire Taiwan. Yet behind the text, the pessimistic and melancholic self was never liberated.
The best illustration of this gap is the song "Olive Tree." San Mao wrote the lyrics for composer Li Taiqian, the original lyrics being about: for little donkey, for the big eyes of a Spanish girl, wandering far away. Li Taiqian felt the original lyrics were hard to set to music and put them aside. Folk singer Yang Zujun saw them later and rewrote them as: birds flying in the sky, streams in the mountains, vast grasslands. The 1979 version sung by Qi Yu was included in her debut album "Olive Tree," and was also the theme song of the film "Happy." Li Taiqian asked Qi Yu to "sing very broadly, no falsetto" — he believed falsetto was vulgar music. The song spread throughout the Chinese-speaking world. The Taiwan Broadcasting and Television Bureau banned the song: the lyrics "don't ask me where I came from" and "the distant place" were considered potentially triggering cross-strait sensitivities, and the romanticized wandering was also feared to encourage young people to leave home. The ban only made the song more popular.
San Mao was never satisfied with the revised lyrics. She once said: "I won't sing this song. If wandering is only for looking at flying birds and vast grasslands, then there's no need to wander at all."
She wrote about a real donkey and a real girl. Others turned it into abstract birds and grasslands. Even her own wandering was romanticized.
People Who Couldn't Be Kept
In 1975, Spain withdrew from the Sahara, and San Mao and José moved to the Canary Islands, first living at No. 3 Calle Lope de Vega, Telde District, Gran Canaria, and later also living on La Palma.
In September 1979, San Mao's parents flew from Taiwan to Europe to visit their daughter and son-in-law. After six years of marriage, this was their first time meeting José. San Mao accompanied her parents to London for travel. At the airport farewell, José and his mother-in-law agreed: "Come to Taiwan next year."
There was no next year.
On September 30, José drowned while fishing underwater off Barlovento, La Palma. He was 27. His body was retrieved the next day. That day was the Mid-Autumn Festival.
After sending her parents to the London airport, San Mao returned to the hotel. At around 1 a.m., someone knocked on the door. After hearing the news, she flew back to La Palma and personally dug José's grave in the mud. Her sister Chen Tianshin later recalled: "If her parents weren't there, she would definitely have followed José. It must have been God who let her parents suddenly leave at that time."
That autumn, her parents brought her back to Taiwan.
After José's death she wrote the prose collection "Flowers Falling in Dreams," recording the days after losing him. After that she never stopped traveling. In 1981 she was commissioned by a publisher to travel to Central and South America, returning to write "Crossing Mountains and Rivers." That same year she started teaching at Chinese Culture University, until 1984. She also translated the Argentine comic "Mafalda" from Spanish into Chinese. She traveled through 54 countries in her lifetime.
But no matter how far she traveled, the San Mao people remembered was always the one in the Sahara — long hair, long skirt, big earrings, with silent José beside her. After returning to Taiwan, San Mao wasn't that romantic. She kept departing — Central and South America, the mainland, Xinjiang — as if stopping would let something catch up to her. One of her closest friends, Ni Kuang, later reflected: "San Mao always had suicidal tendencies. She was a very dramatic and tragic person, leaving the world because of losing the power of being loved and loving."
In April 1989, San Mao set foot on the Chinese mainland for the first time. First she went to Zhoushan, Zhejiang — the homeland of the Chen family — searching for ancestors she had never seen. Then she went to Shanghai to visit 80-year-old cartoonist Zhang Leping, saying to him upon meeting: "Dad." Zhang Leping later said he didn't expect to "draw out a real daughter." The "San Mao the Vagrant" comic that San Mao read at age three in Chongqing finally truly connected her with the author — a vagrant orphan drawn to life, prophesying a real wanderer. This friendship lasted until her death.
In August 1990 she flew to Urumqi to visit 77-year-old "Western Song King" Wang Luobin, staying at his home for nearly a month. There was a 30-year age gap between them. Wang Luobin always kept his distance. When leaving, San Mao cried and hugged him. Wang Luobin later heard about her death on the radio and wrote his final love song "Waiting — A Love Song for the Deceased."
121 days after leaving Xinjiang, she died.
The Last 25 Days
In 1990, director Yan Hao asked San Mao to co-write a film script. The two spent about 40 nights in intensive interviews, completing "Red on the Rolling River." This was San Mao's only film screenplay: set in the 1940s during the Japanese occupation of China, it metaphorically depicted the entanglement of Zhang Ailing and Hu Lancheng, starring Lin Qingxia, Qin Han, and Zhang Manyu, with music by Luo Da You. The film premiered in Hong Kong in November and was released in Taiwan on December 8.
On December 10, the 27th Golden Horse Awards ceremony was held at the National Theater in Taipei. "Red on the Rolling River" won eight major awards: Best Feature Film, Best Director, Best Actress (Lin Qingxia), Best Supporting Actress (Zhang Manyu), Cinematography, Art Design, Costume Design, and Film Music. Lin Qingxia later said: "Without San Mao, I wouldn't have won this award." The two were close friends. They once made a pact when drinking: whoever leaves first should find a way to come back and tell the other about the feeling of dying.
San Mao was the sole screenwriter of this film. But the Best Original Screenplay nomination went to someone else, and she didn't win.
Twenty-five days later.
On January 2, 1991, San Mao was admitted to Taipei Veterans General Hospital for surgery for endometrial hyperplasia. The surgery was successful, there was no cancer, and the hospital arranged for her to be discharged on January 5. The day before admission, she solemnly gave her mother a jade carving and a birthday card. The night before she instructed the nurse: don't disturb at night.
On the morning of January 4, the cleaning staff found her hanging from the infusion stand hook with her stockings in the bathroom of her ward.
She was 47.
The police concluded it was "death from illness and world-weariness." Her mother, Mu Jinxian, disagreed, believing it was an accident from losing consciousness due to sleeping pills. The attending physician, Zhao Guanzhong, also disagreed: endometrial hyperplasia was just a minor surgery, and he speculated it was an emotional problem. Thirty-five years later, these explanations have not reached a consensus. She was buried at Jinbaoshan Cemetery in Taipei.
The literary world has never reached a consensus on how to position her. San Mao herself knew this — she once told Jia Pingjun: "My books are written for ordinary people to read... they don't belong on your bookshelf, unless it's friendship rather than literature." Scholars noted that she was "more popular than Zhang Ailing" and also "lacked a master like Xia Zhiqing to canonize her in literary history." But the world outside the canon is bigger — her books sold over 15 million copies. In 2019, "The New York Times" commemorated her in the "Overlooked" series, calling her "a wandering writer who found her voice in the desert." That same year, the first English translation "Stories of the Sahara" was published by Bloomsbury. Translator Mike Fu specially went to Spain to visit José's niece and visited San Mao's former residence in the Canary Islands. This book was nominated for the National Translation Award. On March 26, 2019, the 76th anniversary of her death, Google launched a commemorative Doodle in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore. In 2020, Spain produced a documentary "San Mao: The Bride of the Desert." In 2022, Spain published her biography "A Journey to the Heart of San Mao." In March 2025, the Oxford University academic journal "Adaptation" published a paper analyzing San Mao's role as "cultural diplomacy" in Spanish-language biographical adaptations. A Taiwanese writer, more than 30 years after her death, is still being discussed and reinterpreted on another continent.
She and Sima Zhongyuan were well-known literary friends, and the two made a "pact of life and death": whoever leaves first should find a way to come back and tell the other about the feeling of dying. On January 4, 2024, Sima Zhongyuan passed away. Exactly 33 years to the day from when San Mao died — as if finally fulfilling that appointment.
For more than 30 years since San Mao's death, her works have never been out of print, with new editions still being published every year. On social media platforms in mainland China, quote accounts under the name "San Mao" still have over a million followers — even though she never lived in the era of social media. Her name has become a cultural symbol, representing not just literature, but an entire set of values about freedom, wandering, and authenticity.
In 1992, the year after San Mao's death, Taiwan established the San Mao Literary Award. Her English name Echo also became the name of a generation of Chinese female youth: mothers who grew up reading San Mao's prose named their daughters Echo.
Today's young people in Taiwan may not have read San Mao's books, but the tradition she opened has not disappeared. Before San Mao, Taiwanese people felt that "writing about one's own life" was not literature. San Mao proved that the daily experiences of ordinary people — daily necessities, foreign predicaments, loss and loneliness — if written honestly and concretely enough, are literature. This path was later extended to blogs and social media. Every Taiwanese person writing a diary abroad stands in front of the window that San Mao first opened in 1974 when she sent her first article back from the Sahara.
She Became a Road
Today, the Canary Islands have two tourist routes named after San Mao.
One on Gran Canaria passes through her former residence at No. 3 Calle Lope de Vega, Telde District, where she and José once lived, passing an olive tree installation and a book-shaped bench sculpture. The route on La Palma was launched in 2018, passing through José's grave in Barlovento.
There is a visitor's book at José's grave. Flipping through it, over 60% are in simplified Chinese, 10% in traditional Chinese, and 20% in Spanish. Most visitors are young women in their twenties.
A person who spent her life running away ultimately became a route for others. She taught an entire generation to imagine the distant. And in the end, the distant even set up a road sign for her.
Extended Reading
- Bai Xianyong: The person who pushed San Mao's debut to "Modern Literature"
- Lin Qingxia: "Red on the Rolling River" made her a queen, but also cost her a friend
- Taiwanese Folk Song Movement: The soil where "Olive Tree" was born
- Taiwanese Prose: The genre territory San Mao occupied
- Xi Murong: Another female writer of the same era who wrote foreign places into Taiwanese hearts