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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2009
Though it would be almost impossible to trace who first applied the term ‘Avant-Garde fiction’ (Xianfeng Xiaoshuo 
) to a recent trend in Chinese fiction since 1985, it is an appropriate name in many respects. All the previous schools of fiction in modern China—Wound fiction (Shangheng Xiaoshuo 
), Reform fiction (Gaige Xiaoshuo 
), Re-thinking fiction (Fansi Xiaowen 
), or Roots-Seeking fiction (Xungen Xiaoshuo 
)—received their names after their respective subject matters. The naming of Avant-Garde fiction itself seems to indicate that Chinese fiction has grown out of its thematic age to enter a new phase of life beyond themes.
The earliest authors of Chinese Avant-Garde fiction—Can Xue 
, Ma Yuan 
, Hong Feng 
, Zhaxi Dawa 
, Mo Yan 
and others—are all based in remote areas far from the centres of modern Chinese civilization. This led some critics to the conclusion that literary modernity was at odds with modern urbanized culture. Hardly had such an argument been put forward when, towards the end of 1987, there appeared a new group of Avant-Garde writers—Su Tong 
with The escape of 1934 (Yijiu sansi nian de taowang— 
:), Sun Ganlu 
with The letter from the postman (Xinshi zhi han
Ge Fei 
with The lost boat (Mizhou
) and Yu Hua 
with One kind of reality (Xianshi yizhong
)— all of them based in the Yangtze Delta, the most prosperous area of modern China. This would suggest, at least, that Chinese avant-gardism is not entirely dependent on economic-geographical conditions.
1 Liang, Wu
, ‘The modernistic tendencies of Chinese fiction in the countryside’, (Zhongguo xiangcun xiaoshuo li de ruogan xiandai zhuyi xianxiang 
), Wenyi Bao 
, 6 02, 1988, 2Google Scholar.
2 Shouhuo 
, no. 5, 1987, Su Tong's works are mostly collected in Yijiu sansi nian de taowang— 
(Shanghai: Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences Press, 1988)Google Scholar.
3 Shouhuo, no. 5, 1987.
4 Shouhuo, no. 6, 1987. Ge Fei's works are mostly collected in Mizhou, 
(Beijing: Zuojia Chubanshe, 1989)Google Scholar. The English translation of the short novel will appear as the title piece in the collection of Chinese New Wave fiction, The lost boat, edited by me and to be published by the Wellsweep, Press, LondonGoogle Scholar.
5 Beijing Wenxue 
1987. Most of Yu Hua's works are collected in Shiba sui chumen yuanxing, 
Beijing: Zuojia Chubanshe, 1989Google Scholar. The English translation of the short novel A kind of reality will be published in The lost boat anthology (see preceding note).
6 See Roman Jakobson's definition of ‘the metalingual function’ of speech; ‘Whenever the addresser and/or the addressee need to check up whether they use the same code, speech is focused on the code: it performs a metalingual (i.e. glossing) function’ (‘Closing statement: linguistics and poetics’, in Thomas, Sebeok (ed.), Style in linguistics New York: MIT Press, 1960, 356)Google Scholar.
7 Robert, Scholes, Fabulation and metafiction (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1979), 218Google Scholar.
8 The term metafiction was more or less established by around 1980. Imhof Rudiger says in ‘The author's note’ to his Contemporary metafiction: a poetological study of metafiction in English since 1939 (Heidelberg, 1986), in the early 1980s, the discussion ‘only attracted a small group of readers of awkwardly difficult narrative texts’, while by the end of the 1980s,‘Metafiction has now been firmly integrated into the canon of fashionable areas of research for aspiring critics and scholars’.Google Scholar
9 Roland Barthes insists that ‘discovering lost diaries, receiving letters, or finding manuscripts are efforts made by the bourgeois to naturalize narrative’ (Roland, Barthes, ‘Introduction to structural analysis of narrative’, in Image-music-text, New York: 1977, 187)Google Scholar.
10 Robert Alter in Partial magic, one of the earliest and most important works on the discussion of metafiction, holds that ‘the self-conscious novel’ is ‘the other’ tradition in relation to what Leavis, F. R. called x2018;the Great Tradition’, and the study of it ‘a balance’ to the scholarship of the ‘serious novel’. (Partial magic, Berkeley, 1975, 3.Google Scholar)
11 Wang Anyi's highly controversial short novel series Three loves (San lian
) have been collected in Huangshan zhi lian,
(Hong Kong: Nanyue Chubanshe, 1988Google Scholar), which includes Love in the Brocade Valley.
12 At the beginning the narrator steps forward to flaunt his (or perhaps we should say ‘her’, but we never know, as the narrator personality is never revealed throughout the novel) control of the narrative, ‘I want to tell a story, about a woman’. In the middle of the work, when the critical moment in the adulterous courtship is about to arrive, the narrator says, ‘Yes, I know something is going to happen. Among all these people on the tour, perhaps only I know it.’ But nothing real does happen in the adventurous relationship. And at the end, ‘beside all these, I can't think of anything else. I can't help but let her go, walking away from us, alone, without a story.’.
13 This is a term invented by Alan Wild (see Larry, McCafferey, The metafictional muse, Pittsburg, 1982, 263Google Scholar) to denote to fiction ‘that operates on a middle ground between realism and reflexity’. Such fiction is experimental to different degrees but does not primarily depend on the ‘reflexity method’.
14 Shouhuo, no. 6 1987. Ma Yuan's works before 1987 are collected in Gangdisi de youhuo 
(Beijing: Zhongguo Zuojia Chubanshe)Google Scholar. The English translation of the short novel Fabrication will be included in The lost boat (see n. 4 above).
15 Wang Gan 
‘The failure of counter-culture: a critique of the recent fiction of Mo Yan’ (Fan wenhua de shibai: Mo Yan jinqi xiaoshuo pipan 
. Dushu 
no 10, 1988Google Scholar.
16 Wang, Meng
and Wang, Gan, ‘The retrogression of literature: Counter-Culture, Anti-Civilization, Anti-Sublimity’ (‘Wenxue de ni xiang xing: Fan fVenhue, Fan Wenming, Fan Chongga’
Shanhai Wenxue, no. 5, 1989Google Scholar. This essay seems to represent the highest understanding the Mainland critics have reached on avant-gardism in contemporary Chinese literature. In the same issue of Shanghai Wenxue there is a discussion ‘Defend Avant-Garde fiction’ (‘Baowei Xianfeng Wenxue’ 
) chaired by the aesthetician Zhu Dake
, in which many extremist statements are made such a s ‘retreating from the space of civilization ahead of others’. There is an obvious want of theoretical support for these statements.
17 For instance in ch. iv of the novel, when Wukong enters the Million-Mirror Chamber of the King Xiaoyue, he sees his old friend Liu Boqin in the mirror. Wukong bows and asks,‘How come we are here together?’ Boqin says ‘How can you say we are together? You are in the world of others. I am in your world. We aren't together. We aren't together.’
18 Chinese critical circles have not been in agreement on the name for this trend. Some name it the Chinese ‘Beat Generation’ (Kuadiao Pai 
). Others call it Chinese ‘Fiction of Hippies’ (Xipi Shi 
.
19 Most of Liu Suola's works are collected in Ni bie wu xuanze 
(Beijing: Zuojia Chubanshe, 1986)Google Scholar.
20 Most of Xu Xing's works are collected in Wu zhuti bianzou 
(Beijing: Zuojia Chubanshe, 1989)Google Scholar.
21 Most of Hong Feng's works are collected in Han hai 
(Beijing: Zuojia Chubanshe, 1989)Google Scholar.
22 Most of Wu Bin's works are collected in Chengshi dubai 
(Beijing: Zuojia Chubanshe, 1989)Google Scholar.
23 Wang Shuo has been extremely productive, and most of his works have been selling well. Three films after his novels were produced in 1988. Wan de jiushi xintiao 
is, hitherto, his best work, and one of the most commercially successful Chinese novels in recent years.
24 Most of Li Rui's works are collected in Hong fangzi 
(Beijing: Renmin Wenxue Chubanshe, 1988)Google Scholar.
25 Mo, Yan has been extremely productive. His shorter works are collected in Touming de hong luobo 
(Beijing: Zuojia Chubanshe, 1986Google Scholar); Hong gaoliang xilie 
(Beijing: Renmin Wenxue Chubanshe, 1987Google Scholar), and Huanle shisan zhang 
(Beijing: Renmin Wenxue Chubanshe)Google Scholar. Some of his works will appear in English in a collection being prepared by Renditions in Hong Kong.
26 Cheng's, A short novel series San wang 
can be found in Qi wang 
(Beijing, Zuojia Chubanshe, 1986)Google Scholar. Its English translation Three Kings (tr. Bonnie, McDougall) was published by Collins, London, 1990Google Scholar.
27 Zheng, Wanlong
one of the most ardent Roots-Seeking writers, claimed that his purpose was ‘to use myth, legend and fantasy to build up a frame for fiction, in order to establish finally our own conceptions of ideals, of values, of morals, and of culture’ (‘Wo de gen’
. Shanghai Wenxue, no. 1, 1987, 45)Google Scholar.
28 This short novel was published in Renmin Wenxue, no. 6, 1985. Some of Han Shaogong's works will be published in English in a collection being prepared by Renditions in Hong Kong.
29 Jie, Li ‘On the New Wave Fiction of Contemporary China’ (‘Lun dangdai zhongguo xianfeng xiaoshuo’ 
.), Zhongshan 
, no. 5, 1988, 124Google Scholar.