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.

This paper was drafted by Achilles Fang (1910–1995) who was a senior lecturer of the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations of Harvard University. The paper is kept in Harvard University Archives. According to Achilles Fang’s description in the first edition, “The first draft of this iconoclastic paper was drafted in the early 1960’s and, after lying in dust for more than a decade was edited by the late John Lyman Bishop for Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies. I have, however, held it back all this while not out of timidity. But I have found it futile to complete the demolition of the rest of the 24 poems as thoroughly I made with half of them. But those who are unabashed in their schwarmerei for this patently forged document (forged was it in spite of endorsement meted out in the Ssu-k’u Catalogue (195) and silence of Yu Chia-hsi in his Ssu-k’u t’i-yao pien-cheng, and Chang Hsin-ch’eng in Wei-shu t’ung-k’ao, will understand why I broke down my long-lasting reticence about their sacred cow: I am paying a fitting tribute to the memory of the man whom I miss as Chuang Chou missed Hui Shih. Fitting it should be, for my demolition finds its justification in the cope-stone unearthed by Bishop about 1945 somewhere in China: I am grateful to him for presenting me with his copy of a rubbing of three (Nos. 1, 6, 7) of the Shih-p’in poems attributed to Ssu-k’ung T’u (837–908) supposedly in the holograph of Yen Chen-ch’ing (709–785).” In a word, Achilles Fang found that Erh-shih-ssu Shih-p’in was a forgery and Ssu-k’ung T’u was not the original author of it.

This paper studies several travel accounts featuring transcultural and transnational experiences in the Yunnan-Burma borderlands where the British, Chinese, French and various indigenous peoples encountered each other, including Yangwentun xiaoyin, an anonymous “ballad” circulated in late Qing and Republican Yunnan, Ai Wu’s (1904–92) early fiction based upon his wanderings in Yunnan and Burma from 1925 to 1931, and Xiao Qian’s (1910–99) utopian “travelogue” featuring a European couple’s futuristic travel to the area. These writings illustrate the intersection of issues of nation, ethnicity, and gender, which are intertwined with the discourse of barbarism: On the one hand, their authors often express anxiety over threats to China’s dominance in this area; on the other, frequently resorting to the discourse of barbarism, these accounts, tinged with Sino-centrism, often exoticize and barbarize other cultures, particularly indigenous groups. The eroticized and racialized female body constitutes a privileged site of representation in these writings: On the one hand, travel writings often make a distinction between Han Chinese women and indigenous women, treating the latter as exotic, seductive, dangerous, and/or primitive; on the other hand, as the need to build a strong, modernized multi-ethnic nation became increasingly urgent, Republican authors began to “universalize” the female body, Chinese or indigenous, treating both as threatened and exploited by the Western “newcomer,” and thus are (potential) allies sharing a nationalist, anti-imperialist cause.

This article seeks to reinterpret Wang Zengqi’s (汪曾祺, 1920-97) novels written in the early and mid‐1980s. Through a historical lens, the author examines the era immediately following China’s reform and opening‐up when the political ideal of “distribution according to work” (anlao fenpei) had met with social realities at that time. Departing from the mainstream approach to Wang Zengqi, which oversimplifies China’s process of reforms and opening and consequently reduces Wang Zengqi’s literature to a “pure literature” devoid of social implications, a lyricism of individuals, and a depiction of depoliticized everyday life, this article lays emphasis on the interconnection between Wang Zengqi’s time and his writings. By analyzing the forms and styles of Wang’s novels, the author endeavors to place his writings back in their historical context as a means of rediscovering their underlying meanings and politics hitherto neglected by the scholarship on Chinese literature from the 1980s. Therefore, this article refutes the misconception of Wang Zengqi being a “small writer” and acknowledges the writer’s “bigness” in his writing. In fact, big writers like Wang Zengqi are indispensable in the conception of new political worlds under any historical condition.

This article makes a reinterpretation of Lu Xun’s acclaimed prose poetry collection Yecao (Wild grass), written between 1924-27, by reading it in conjunction with a rediscovered prototype consisting of seven pieces published in Guomin gongbao (The citizen’s gazette) between August and September 1919 under the title Ziyan ziyu (Talking to oneself). Lu Xun’s baihua prose style had advanced considerably in the interim, but the author discerns a degree of thematic overlap between the two collections, on the basis of which he proposes answers to key questions that have been asked about Yecao since its first publication, concluding that it is still as fresh and avant-garde a collection to readers today as it was nearly one hundred years ago.

Going through the evolution of the body of stories about Lü Dongbin’s slaying the Yellow Dragon with a flying sword from a perspective combining the history of religion and the history of literature, this paper suggests that those stories are religious myths constructed during the prolonged rivalry between Buddhism and Taoism, and that they reflect not only the inherent conflict between the Zen theory of mind and spiritual nature (xinxing) and the theory of the integrated cultivation of spiritual nature and bodily life (xingming shuangxiu) of the interior elixir  (neidan) school of Taoism, but also the changes in Taoist theory of alchemy and in the discourse of Buddhism and Taoism. For Taoism, the meaning of the story eventually changed from cultivation in seclusion (qingxiu) to cooperative cultivation between men and women with sexual intercourse (nannü shuangxiu), and the meaning was gradually secularized as the religious backdrop of the story faded. Meanwhile, such conflict and changes not only furnished basic themes and materials for literature, but, more importantly, provided literature with means of expression, figures of speech, and power of literary construction.

This paper offers a new interpretation of Zhao Shuli’s (1906–70) stories by examining how his efforts were coinciding, or sometimes perhaps in conflict, with the Communist Party of China’s mandate of creating a “new direction” for society. The discussions of his stories reveal the general historical experience of a rural society in transition in the “liberated area.” There are two major themes: social improvement under the intervention of the new government, and the “standing up” of the subaltern peasant class. These motifs often overlap to various degrees, and sometimes there is a hybrid narrative which combines the two. The last section of this paper briefly explores the supposed paradox of Zhao Shuli’s “direction,” its contributions to representing and educating the masses, and its limitations in fulfilling the party’s long-term ideological goal of reforming the peasants’ ethical-moral world.

Through reading two creatively translated stories by the Zhou brothers, Lu Xun’s (Zhou Shuren) “The Soul of Sparta” (Sibada zhi hun, 1903) and Zhou Zuoren’s “The Chivalrous Slave Girl” (Xia nünu, 1904), this paper takes a close look at the intellectual trend in the first decade of the twentieth-century China of constructing strong and heroic women as the emblem of national power while rendering men as powerless. By focusing on a foreign heroine with traditional Chinese virtues, both translations creatively Sinicized and feminized the foreign power in the original tales. At the same time, male characters, prospective readers of the stories, and even authors themselves were marginalized, diminished, and ridiculed vis-à-vis the newly constructed feminine authority. Comparing this form of cultural masochism to other literary masochisms in modern China analyzed by Rey Chow and Jing Tsu respectively, this paper endeavors to excavate a hybrid model of nationalist agency grounded in the intertwined relationship of race, gender and nation. In my analysis, Gilles Deleuze’s discussion on masochism is utilized as a heuristic tool to shed light on the revolutionary potential embedded in the “strong women, weak men” complex in the 1910s. I argue that the cultural masochism in late Qing represents one of the earliest attempts of the Chinese intellectuals to creatively use Chinese traditional gender cosmology to absorb the threat of Western imperialism and put forward a hybrid model of nationalist agency.

The description concerning the foreign affairs and exotic imagination in the vernacular fiction of the Ming and Qing dynasties, in a way, reveal the Chinese people’s vision of the world, which does not only lend a vivid note on the contemporaneous Sino-foreign relationship and its challenge to the traditional society, but also provides an interesting proof for attesting the “others’ perspective” found at the core of contemporary culture theory. This text expounds the historical and cultural contexts of such description and imagination, especially those of Korea, Japan, Vietnam and Thailand. It makes clear that the exotic areas described in fiction do not necessarily equal to those of real countries existing now. Only after the Qing dynasty, did Chinese fiction begin to give clear features of foreign countries and fully exhibit their literary values. So the change of exotic imagination is the landmark between ancient and modern fictions.

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.

The short stories written by Chi Zijian always breathe life into the daily trifles of ordinary people with hope and compassion, exploring a spiritual power that overcomes suffering and universal love beyond life and death. Through the mysterious connection between humanity and nature, her stories attempt to paint a landscape of the real world of interconnection and inter-transformation. It is essentially a form of fairy tale narrative. Consequently, the essence of “poetry” is achieved in the dialectical unity between childhood and maturity, lightness and weight, constituting a foundational dimension of the artistic spirit.

This essay studies a tanci work, A Histoire of Heroic Women and Men (1905), as a case which reflects the intersecting themes of crossdressing, gender representation and the literary form of tanci. Written tanci, appropriated and redeveloped by educated women to tell stories of female crossdressers, scholars, and military leaders, offers a meaningful intervention in the dominant social and cultural discourses of womanhood in late imperial China. In the fictional realm, women’s acts of crossdressing transcend the Confucian ideological prescriptions of feminine identity, displaying their heroic efforts to pursue autonomy in a patriarchal culture. This essay will analyze how these examples of crossdressing interact with and modify current critical accounts of gender and sexuality. A Histoire, in particular, holds a place of prominence in late imperial Chinese literature because of its revelation of the troubled relationship between gender construction, narrative agency, and women’s identity. The text manifestly destabilizes conventional attitudes toward gendered identity, yet simultaneously exposes the social and practical challenges of such temporary and often imagined transgressions, which are exercised by incarcerating the feminine and borrowing the male subjective position through transvestite performance.

The development of Chinese literary genres is largely a history of dissociation and integration. Ci and shi are closely associated at all times, separated at one time, and fused with each other at others. A brief survey of dissociation and integration of ci and shi falls into four periods: 1) starting from the early to the mid-late Tang Dynasty (Tang Chao Ug CE 618–907), when ci was derived from shi and no distinction existed between the two; 2) the late Tang Dynasty and the following Five Dynasties (Wu Dai N擭? CE 907–960), during which ci was separated and known from shi; 3) the Northern Song Dynasty (Bei Song S[? CE 960–1127), when ci developed and experienced a transform and took an initial inosculation into shi; and 4) the Southern Song Dynasty (Nan Song SW[? CE 1127–1279), when ci was shifted completely to shi (poetry) and the two were thoroughly merged.

Erotic fiction produced during the 16th and the early 17th centuries used different strategies to create settings for subversive sexual desires. This article examines one of these strategies: Authors of Ming erotic stories often associated the sexual expressions that challenged the existing social order with portrayals of the foreign. This article demonstrates that historical accounts and literary traditions informed the representations of the foreign in Ming erotic stories produced during the mid- and late Ming period through the examination of Ruyijun zhuan and “Jinhailing zongyu wangshen.” I argue that both narratives exoticized the erotic in order to exclude unsettling elements of sexual desire from China. However, due to their different views of sexual desire, they depicted the foreign differently. This paper concludes that the different strategies for appropriating sexual desire into foreign settings may be related to the historical contexts within which the two works of fiction were created.

Of the many forms of literary experimentation that arose in China during the 1980s, Can Xue’s writing stands out as some of the strangest and most enigmatic. This article intends to examine her most significant work from that period, Five Spice Street (Wuxiang jie; first published under the title Breakthrough Performance [Tuwei biaoyan]), in light of one of the major intellectual concerns in literature at the time: the question of the human. Through a close reading of the novel, I investigate the ways in which Can Xue interrogates and destabilizes the notion of the human with regard to the relationship between subject and object, corporeality, animality, sexuality, language, and time. Overall, I suggest that while Can Xue succeeds in offering a unique and provocative conceptualization of the human in Five Spice Street, she also refrains from “breaking through” the general realm of humanist discourse current at the time.

This paper examines the layered nostalgia embodied by one specific spatiotemporal site, the war‐torn Republican capital of Nanjing, in Bai Xianyong’s 1971 collection of short stories Taipei People and in Ye Zhaoyan’s 1996 novel Nanjing 1937: A Love Story. Both Nanjing’s historical reputation as an ancient capital for several short‐lived dynasties and its special role in narrating Chinese identity and cultural traditions across the 1949 divide contribute to the city’s symbolic significance in the literary tradition of ruin gazing. In the two texts under discussion, the layered ruins of Republican Nanjing—reminiscent of the decadent Six Dynasties (220–589) and witnessing the historical violence and physical as well as metaphorical dislocation resulting from World War II and the Chinese Civil War—constitute an ideal site for reflecting upon not only personal and national traumas but also traditional‐modern tensions from diversified stances and angles. The related but divergent trajectories taken by Bai’s and Ye’s nostalgic gaze—one projected from the United States in the 1960s by way of post‐1949 Taipei and the other geographically located in contemporary Nanjing but culturally distanced from it—form an interesting dialogue, which may shed light on the fluidity of ruin gazing at a nexus of identity questions with reference to the embrace of modernity.

The paper discusses the 1957 Hong Kong film The True Story of Ah Q. As a Hong Kong leftist film, its plot and production process are relevant to understanding the political and cultural life of New China. However, Hong Kong leftist cinema played an important role in the reception of New China cinema overseas; it can only be understood within the context of political and cultural life in New China. This paper explores the complicated relations between Hong Kong leftist cinema, domestic socialist cinema, and Shanghai left-wing cinema in the 1930s. In addition, it discusses The True Story of Ah Q as a film with features that identify it with both Hong Kong leftist cinema and New China cinema. Thus, the film’s acceptibility is determined by the tensions between these two identifications.

Compared with pure literature, Liu Cixin’s science fiction novels show a high degree of novelty. Due to his creative accommodation of third world experience and the Chinese cultural spirit of the 1950–70s, he is able to challenge the universal hegemony of the Enlightenment. The deep feelings of Liu Cixin’s novels come from the “guerrilla” character of third world intellectuals who resisted colonization and guarded the country, a resistance derived from China’s vanguard position in the third world independence movement. Liu Cixin’s continuous writing of the story of weakness over power is not only a response to China’s modern and contemporary situation, but also a borrowing from the revolutionary experience to imagine the possibility of another world for readers of the post-revolutionary era.

The source, evolution, application and characteristics of the Chinese concept “zhishi fenzi” 知识分子 are well worth further exploration. Meanwhile, the development and meaning of the Western concept “intellectual” throughout the history are discussed in the article to provide better understanding of its historical evolution and theoretical researches, and to reveal misunderstanding and mistaken views about this concept in China’s academic circles. The disparity between the concept of “zhishi fenzi” in China and in the West lies in not only the history of concept but also that of thought whereas the translation of “intellectual” into “zhishi fenzi” is the problem of understanding. The concept history of “zhishi fenzi” clearly shows that it is a self-contained notion that can stand alone with its Chinese source and characteristics.

This article studies various means by which female characters determine their own marriages in the tanci 彈詞, Feng shuang fei 鳳雙飛, authored by a female writer, Cheng Huiying 程蕙英. It centers on case studies of the concubines in the Guo and Zhang families. Zhen Daya, who marries Guo Lingyun, builds an individual identity as a chaste, talented and determined “career woman” through her pursuit of a self-determined marriage. Zhen Xiaoya, Zhang Yishao’s concubine, establishes her subjectivity by following the cult of chastity. By creating such a character, the female writer mocks the conventions of scholar-beauty romances and rethinks the contemporary tradition of romance and marriage. The last case is the author’s strikingly sympathetic treatment of an unchaste girl, Bao Xiang’er. Although the multiple layers of voices all agree that Xiang’er is totally inappropriate and immoral according to traditional Confucian values, she, instead of being punished, still ends up being incorporated into Yishao’s family and is granted a son. These cases allow us to reevaluate Cheng Huiying, a female writer, and her views of women’s autonomy in determining their own marriages. They anticipate, either through fantasy or some level of reality, the concept of “free love” (ziyou lian’ai) so central to the May Fourth conceptions of modern women.

Although among the modern Chinese intellectuals endeavoring for the enlightenment of the people, Lu Xun is the most rebellious and resolute, his rebelliousness against tradition does not mean that he has nothing to do with tradition itself. On the contrary, in order to fight against a tradition, as a precondition he must have a deep understanding and cognition toward that tradition. The emergence of Lu Xun’s philosophical proposition, “everything is an intermediate object” (yiqie doushi zhongjianwu ), occurs exactly in this way. With the evocation of this philosophical thought, the “intermediate object” (zhongjianwu ), we see the inseparable indigenous tie predestined between Lu Xun and Chinese traditional culture, even while he fiercely fights it. Lu Xun’s innovative idea was produced in the process of deducing and developing the excellent and discarding the worthless in Chinese traditional culture, while absorbing and learning from the advanced thought of the West. Furthermore, his philosophy of the “intermediate object” forms the basis of his study and practice in translation. His purpose in translation is to bravely step out of the circle of inherent traditional culture, to come to the advanced “middle zone” where Chinese and Western cultures collide, and to probe into the new cultural factors from the West. In doing so he seeks to reform and improve Chinese traditional culture, and thus meet “the third era which China has never experienced before.” However, Lu Xun’s idea of “intermediate objects” is neither the traditional idea of the “golden mean” (zhongyong zhidao ) nor that of “hypocrisy” (xiangyuan 乡愿). Unfortunately they are often mixed together into chaos by many people. So it is necessary to have further discussion about these terms and distinguish them separately.

Takeuchi Yoshimi is one of the very few postwar Japanese intellectuals to openly engage in discussions on Asia intricacy and to deal with the most complicated component of the Japan–Asia relationship: problems of emotion. One key feature of Takeuchi’s approach lies in the fact that he is not only a profound thinker but also a sensitive litterateur. For this reason, in addition to the fact that it is already very difficult to form an objective and widely agreed view on Takeuchi and his approach, it is hard to avoid the emotional aspect when evaluating his thoughts. This essay does not aim to discuss his rights and wrongs; rather, it is an attempt to analyze the inner logic of Takeuchi’s thoughts, to understand and grasp the intensity and structure of his thoughts and emotions, and to demonstrate where his sense of urgency lies, thereby allowing to view the examination of the diverse and complex nature of discourses on Asianism in Japan in a new light.

Chi Zijian's novel The Last Quarter of the Moon (E'erguna He You'an) is an excellent historical novel themed around the life of the Evenki people. It depicts the important theme of “looking back at home” and reveals a yearning for “poetic dwelling” shared by many contemporary people who feel lost. The novel’s unique perspective explores the “origin” of home and shows the close relationship between the lives of the Evenki people, the landscape, and their fate on the right bank of the Argun River. The unique grounds on which the novel stands can be found in its inquiry into the “uniqueness” of home, vividly describing the Evenki people’s special living “place” and their unique approaches to birth, death, marriage, and funeral. In this recollection, the novel shows us the unique ecological beauty of Evenki homeland, including the feminine beauty of harmonious well-being found between people and nature, as well as the masculine beauty of the struggle that exists between humans and nature, which are both reflected in the “ecological sublimity” of the primitive religious ceremonies carried out by two generations of shamans for tribal benefits.

Bibliography

A certain dispute that arose during the early Jin dynasty regarding Bai Juyi that seemed to be a coincidental occurrence was to some extent inevitable. On one hand, it foreshadowed the opposition that would later arise between followers of the Tang and Song stylistic schools; on the other, it represented both the Tang school poets’ disdain for the “ornamental avant-garde” poetry that was fashionable at the time as well as their own search for a new creative direction. The re-evaluation of Bai Juyi that occurred during that period, particularly the frequent comparison of Bai to Tao Yuanming, indicates that Bai Juyi’s poetry was widely accepted at the time, which itself represented not only a challenge to traditional perspectives, but also a historical landmark in Bai Juyi’s history of acceptance. Jin dynasty poets’ creative imitation of Bai Juyi’s carefree as well as his satirical poems spurred a maturation of Bai’s spirit of concern for self and reality, which later incorporated itself into the spirit of Chinese literati in general.

The spread of poetry by way of ancient postal service in Tang dynasty is an important subject in studying the development of Tang poetry. The ancient postal system in Tang dynasty included both water route and land route which covered every corner of the country, formed a highly developed and strict system. Besides transmitting government decrees and transporting officials and goods, the ancient postal service also helped the development of Tang poetry. Many historical documents proved that ancient postal service in Tang dynasty ensured an immediate transportation between poets and contributed to the wide-spread of the poetry, and it also served as a bridge between the poets who were in great distance and then helped to form different poetry schools and fashion.

The complex space of cities exerted a profound and far-reaching influence on traditional Chinese fiction writing. Starting from the description of city spaces, particularly urban landmarks, as the backdrop for stories and ranging through the urban political culture of political struggles, power symbols, the selection of talent, and festivals and carnivals to the daily life of city dwellers with their dreams of prosperity, legendary love stories and inner yearning for justice , the cities of traditional Chinese fiction offer us a picture that goes far beyond the merely geographic to show political and cultural indicators and the content s of daily life. Such descriptions created vivid and distinct city images that in turn became the common life experience and cultural imagination of urban dwellers and offered a common cultural identity and standpoint for those living in the same city.

The May Fourth new literature  appeared in the early twentieth century China while the avant-garde was sweeping over the West. Both could be defined as radical literary movements by such characteristics as storming criticism of politics, subversive standpoints on traditional culture, language experiments for thoroughly novel forms and criticism with the aestheticism for l art pour l  (art art for art s sake). The avant-garde elements in the new literature, by contrast, are believed able to help us see two kinds of shifts in the course of twentieth-century literature, that is, to see how it shifted from classical to modern literature in the last century: one change was the natural flow of the mainstream literature, subject to the social development and changes, and the other is an avant-garde movement that took a radical stance against the status quo, and was led by ideals of social reforms aiming to realize beyond the generation.

Some famous Tang Dynasty poems were once abridged by later generations. The earliest abridgements occurred in the Tang Dynasty because the music officials in charge of music intended to make the poems suitable for singing. However, the success of some abridgements was attributed to literary creation. Among the various abridgements of the famous Tang poems, the most successful instances formed a truncated verse by segmenting four lines from the original works. The author holds that this phenomenon in literary history indicated the pursuit of terseness, which was a popular feature of ancient Chinese poetic creation. Moreover, it also reflected the later poets’ criticism and amended the artistic criterion of the Tang poetry.