Chen Ran studied Chinese language and literature in Beijing Normal University from 1982 to 1986 and graduated when she was 23.
Chen Ran's stories received great attention from feminine critics as well as general publishers in the cultural market during the 1990s.
[2] Chinese feminist critics praise the gender consciousness of her work and the introduction into literature of the private female experience, including lesbian love (or affection, as Ran prefers to call it),[3] the Electra complex, and the mother-daughter relationship.
The film Yesterday's Wine, based on her short story of the same name, was chosen for showing at the Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing in 1995.
[4] Even though the government has never banned her books, a thinly veiled moralism pervades the literary critical approach to her work.