The birth of an outstanding literature is closely related to a writer's creation motive, thought and expression. Lu Yao's masterpiece Ordinary World (Pingfan de Shijie) spans a period of ten years and reflects panoramically the myriad of social formations, lifestyles and patterns of thought during China's social transformations between 1975 and 1985. Via an analysis of first-hand materials such as the memoirs and correspondences of Lu Yao, his relatives and editors, this essay systematically unravels the writer's main motive for composing the novel Ordinary World, in a renewed effort to unravel the mystery behind the creation of this literary classic.

Realist literature and art is a prominent example of a path of literature and art that combines Marxism and Chinese cultural traditions. Marxist literary realism values the role of literature and art in vividly reproducing human social activities. In China, realism has evolved into local forms such as enlightenment realism, revolutionary realism, “scar realism,” and “new realism.” The latter two have been influenced by literary trends such as modernism, as well as the classical Chinese tradition of mind-nature wisdom. A Lifelong Journey represents the maturation of the Chinese mind-nature realism paradigm. Mind-nature realism is a new Chinese aesthetic paradigm originating from the combination of Chinese mind-nature wisdom and the principles of Marxist realist aesthetics. The field of contemporary Chinese literature and art contains literary and artistic production mechanisms and aesthetic power structures that allowed A Lifelong Journey to exert an effect: national orientation, prioritized industry investment, lived experience, the desire of the audience, artistic creativity, and omnimedia support. A Lifelong Journey presents several aspects of the aesthetic paradigm of Chinese mind nature realism: the blending of truth and goodness, evocative archetypes, formation of personality through geography and contemporary trends, simultaneous praise and criticism, and a “flow-back” style. It serves as a model for current and future literary narratives in various genres.

Though Lu Yao's Ordinary World (Pingfan de Shijie) has enjoyed considerable sales volume and reading quantity similar to his other novel Life (Rensheng), it is not accepted by the literary circle as Life and failed to spark the kind of nationwide discussion once created by Life. One explanation for this is the sweeping desire for innovation that was present in literary circles in the 1980s, but the creation method of the Ordinary World was too conservative to stimulate the interpretive impulse of the new critics; another reason is that the incredible length and sheer complexity of Ordinary World prevented scholars from recognizing how difficult it was conceived and what innovation it made. This paper embarks on an intensive reading of Ordinary World in terms of its characterization, the character groups of urban and rural youths, senior cadres, and rural grassroots cadres, and a re-elucidation of its "overlapping areas," in an attempt to extensively analyze the content of the panoramic chronicle of Chinese society at the beginning of reform and opening up, and the writer's profound thinking and artistic innovation in his description, trying to clarify the many vague understandings of this masterpiece in the literary circle.

Ouyang Qiansen is a writer from Guizhou who is quite influential in the Chinese literary circles of the new century. He has worked hard to rejuvenate the Chinese nation’s literary tradition with modern thinking. This is reflected in the fact that he includes modern geological expertise in his novels, portraying geographical scenery with poetic language, thereby forming a unique narrative style based on modern knowledge and renewing the “natural science” narrative tradition of China’s ancient novels. Moreover, he pays special attention to myriad unusual events and people throughout Guizhou’s history and in reality, and creates typical literary Guizhou characters of all types whereby he revives the “legend” narrative tradition based on historical records or biographies and is typical of ancient Chinese novels. Both the geography-based “natural science” narrative and the people-based “legend” narrative are merged into Ouyang’s local chroniclestyled novel pedigree of Guizhou. By creatively transforming the narrative tradition of local chronicles and local chronicle-style novels of ancient China, in his literary creations, Ouyang manages to revive and reconstruct the Guizhou spirit, which serves as the local expertise and culture.

This paper aims to interpret Liang Xiaosheng’s novel A Lifelong Journey. It argues that the novel reproduces life from the 1970s till now. The people from various social strata including workers, urban civilians, intellectuals, and officials who are nurtured on the soil of civilians constitute the current Chinese society. Liang Xiaosheng takes workers back to the center of social analysis by portraying the life and spirits of the working class. With “good people” as the keynote in characterization, Liang Xiaosheng, in the debate about goodness, reaffirms the value of goodness in the novel which shines with the radiance of idealism. The narration of epic nature evokes people’s memory of the socialist era, and also presents a historical picture of the world.

It is an important proposition of contemporary realist literature creation to be close to the mundane lifestyles in reality and write about the Chinese experience. From the far-reaching heroic narration of the early years, to the Chinese stories since the 21st century, the realist literature creation deals with the mundane daily life, showing a turn towards worldly feelings. Liang Xiaosheng’s novel A Lifelong Journey extends the perspective to the living space of ordinary people in the cities. Unlike the epic depiction of “regretless heroes” in the zhiqing novels from his earlier years, Liang makes a shift to the writing of worldly feelings about the warmth in reality. While writing about the hardships in reality, this novel continues to construct stories of good people and adheres to the ethical positioning of good people culture. The two generate a conflict with each other throughout the text, forming the narrative tension. However, governed by the emotional structure of the good people culture, the novel lacks the expression of complex human nature while putting a focus on the mundane existence.

A Lifelong Journey (Renshijian) is a novel about the fate of common people, especially of the workers, in China’s practice of changing reality from the 1950s to the present. It inherits the legacy of the realistic novels in the 19th century and endows them with contemporary features. In the humanitarian-based “stories of good men,” Liang Xiaosheng highlights the general thinking of the common people’s happy life as a goal, and gives expressive to the epic nature of contemporary novels.

Builders of a New Life (Chuangyeshi) is a novel that takes a deep dive into the essence of historical materialism and dialectical materialism. The novel creates a literary form of political metanarrative and presents the literary narrative of the rural cooperative movement in China within the framework of socialist revolution, through a plot with the connotation of documentary political economy. At the literary narrative level, Builders of a New Life develops the narrative through the subjective perspectives of numerous characters, which pushes the development of the plot forward and bridges the text world with external reality. The result is the creation of a world of general literature unifying thought, emotion and action, along with the development of a distinctive epic narrative form.

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Chen Yan’s novels are steeped in traditional Chinese culture. The Comedy and The Protagonist draw on and use traditional national art resources such as Chinese opera and drama to discover anew and create “tradition” from a modern perspective. Traditional Chinese opera and drama shape the narrative aesthetic nature of Chen Yan’s novels both explicitly and implicitly. The difference between opera and drama, lyrical and impressionistic style, and narrative and action also forms its diverse narrative aesthetic style. The origin and distinction of style and form between Chen Yan’s novels and traditional Chinese comedies and modern Chinese novels are profoundly influenced by time and history, which essentially determines the spiritual structure and narrative aesthetic of Chen Yan’s novels.

As one of the representative Chinese writers who was born in the 1970s, Qiao Ye’s writing exhibits considerable diversity and varied understandings of literature across genres. In her full-length novels, Qiao Ye is exceptionally innovative and exploratory, and each novel is distinct in subject matter and style. However, her medium-length and short stories tend to be more conservative, characterized by a simple and natural style, imbued with the charm of literary tradition. This artistic stance in writing style is different from other writers and unique to Qiao Ye, which is not only indicative of her vivid artistic individuality but also holds value for further research into creative writing and stylistics.

Baoshui Village, a full-length novel by Qiao Ye, presents to its readers an open, sensitive, holistic, and reflective experiential texture thanks to the writer’s years of preparation spent “going into” and “immersing herself in villages,” as well as her rural narrative focusing on the complexity, contemporaneity, and problem of rural revitalization. The novel employs dual-narrative technique of recounting emotional and village history to advance its plot, paints pictures of village life with polyphonous scenes of village gossip, and engages in participatory observation through the use of the narrator to construct an open subject consciousness that discovers blind spots, surprises, disparities, and paradoxes in the rural experience. By selectively reconstructing the experiences of three archetypal villages and creating the new literary image of a “rural construction expert,” the novel conveys a realistic attitude that values the subjectivity and endogenous power of the countryside. In doing so, this method takes the structure of reality as its core and calls for a pragmatic standpoint that suspends any judgment, so as to “read” the Chinese countryside through the texture of reality.

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Guan Renshan’s full-length novel Golden Valley and Silver Mountain focuses on the depiction of rural life in an era of profound transformation. Notably, the novel refers to Builders of a New Life, Liu Qing’s representative work five times. This indicates that the conception and writing of Guan Renshan’s Golden Valley and Silver Mountain are significantly influenced and guided by Liu Qing’s Builders of a New Life. This influence is manifested not only in the fact that Fan Shaoshan, the protagonist in Golden Valley and Silver Mountain, regards Builders of a New Life as a sacred existence, and the counterpart relationship between Fan Shaoshan and Liang Shengbao, the protagonist in Builders of a New Life, but also directly in the setting of characters relationships in the two novels.

The Protagonist is another fulllength masterpiece of realism by Chen Yan following his previous novel The Backstage Clan. His rich experience in drama creation enables Chen Yan to skillfully employ classical literature and traditional opera librettos, and be keener on entering a narrative where novel and opera communicate without any barriers, thereby forming his distinctive narrative aesthetic. In addition, Chen Yan has proficiently created in the abovementioned books typical characters such as Diao Shunzi and Yi Qin’e, creating a blueprint for how these two novels will be passed down to later generations. Unlike The Backstage Clan, which focuses on the extraordinary nature of ordinary people, The Protagonist presents the potential of the rise of ordinary people and a panorama of man and culture by portraying the legendary lives of the protagonist and the secondary protagonist.

Qiao Ye's literary creations are inextricably linked with Chinese literary tradition. In her novels, she transforms many traditional techniques found in traditional Chinese literature in a creative manner, and has gradually crafted her unique writing form of “new novel of society” in her two-decade writing career. Qiao Ye’s unique artistic exploration not only enables the stories in her works to reflect the social conditions, and human nature and human relationships in contemporary Chinese society, but also presents a new, more casual format that uses hybrid discourse and intersections of identity in its literary narrative, thus forming Qiao Ye’s personalized artistic style of analytic/reflective narrative. This should be regarded as Qiao Ye’s creative transformation to the traditional discourse found in Chinese story-telling novels or pan-story-telling novels.

In her novel Baoshui Village, Qiao Ye narrates from a keen female perspective about the awakening and transformation of contemporary rural women, portraying the great changes in rural China in the new era. The “Baoshui Village” in the novel is not only a rural space as the object of writing, but also provides a significant background against which the great changes in rural China are depicted. It also serves as an important means to advance the plot of the novel and provides a way to organize the time of the novel. In the novel, Qiao Ye connects the village and the world outside the village from the dual perspectives of the heroine Di Qingping, to create a new relationship between people and countryside, and between rural areas and cities from a perspective of totality to paint a new picture of rural China.

Novel writings in China in 2023 display a tendency toward locality which exhibits two characteristics: One is the “sense of hometown,” and the other is the “integration of locality with modernity.” Qiao Ye’s novel Baoshui Village is a representative work that achieves “modernity” through “locality.” How contemporary novels portray the changing countryside, and how they handle and grasp the relationship and proportion between change and constancy; how to find the right way to integrate the geographical, ethnic, and modern aspects of a novel; how locality generates modernity; and how modernity can accommodate and activate locality are not only theoretical questions that need to be deeply explored but also issues of writing that need continuous exploration in practice. In this sense, Baoshui Village is worth cherishing.

Telling Chinese stories and Chinese experience is an important theme of realist literature in the new era. Chinese writers in the new era face the significant challenge of how to understand the “totality of China” and how to construct the totality spirit and aesthetic character of the “Chinese” narrative. Above Baiyangdian Lake by Guan Renshan takes the historical changes that occurred in the typical environment of Baiyangdian New Area as the content of narration, revealing the growth of people and history and its “Chinese” connotation through the story of the growth of “new character” in the new era. The novel depicts the “rediscovery” and rebirth of history and traditions of China in the new era by “telling stories,” and puts them under a profound context of the past and present and in a broad vision of China and foreign countries, thus constructing the overall aesthetics of realism in contemporary China with an epic grand narrative. The novel artistically shows the building and growth process of China in the new era, and demonstrates its leveraging of resources and unique connotation. It is a typical text for understanding the relationship between the image shaping of China in the new era and Chinese realism literature, as well as the connotation, function and form of Chinese realism.