No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Social Harmony, Family and Women in Chinese Novels, 1948–58 *
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 February 2009
Extract
In the 1920s and 1930s intellectuals and writers led the attacks on the tyranny of the Chinese family and the power of patrilineal authority. Their essays and fictional works, particularly such novels as Ba Jin’s Family (Jia), were avidly read by a younger, radicalized and iconoclastic generation. By the late 1940s and after Liberation in 1949, however, mainland leftist and communist writers had retreated from attacks on the family, emphasizing instead its centrality in social life. Two major reasons may account for this. The Chinese Communist Party, needing the peasantry’s support in its climb to and final assumption of power, chose the road of reforming obvious abuses rather than assaulting family and patriarchal institutions. The second reason served to reinforce the Party’s concern. After decades of turmoil, conquest and war, writers envisaged peace as order and as a return to familiar ways of life. In their short stories and novels, socialist transformation, therefore, consisted not of the disruption of family life and patrilineal authority, but of the reconstitution of the family, now stripped of its abusive features.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The China Quarterly 1989
References
1. My reasons for choosing this particular set of novels is that they represent a variety of subjects without duplicating each other, and they appeared at more or less evenly spaced intervals over the 10-year period. For defining them as “best-sellers,” I have relied on periodically drawn up lists. See for example, Survey of China Mainland Press (SCMP), 1992 (14 April 1959), p. 31, which lists Morning in Shanghai, Sanliwan and Tempered into Steel among 12 best-selling novels. See also Paul Bady, “The modern Chinese writer: literary incomes and best-sellers,” The China Quarterly (CQ), No. 88 (December 1981), pp. 645–57. Incomes reflected circulation figures, and Bady's list of best-sellers, compiled during the Cultural Revolution, lists Ba Jin's income in first and Mao Dun's in second place. Zhou Erfu is in eighth and Zhou Libo in 13th place, p. 653.
2. See, e.g., Cyril Birch, “Chinese Communist literature: the persistence of traditional forms,” CQ, No. 13 (January-March 1963), pp. 74–91, who suggests authors used no more than the outward forms of traditional fiction, and Robert E. Hegel, “Making the past serve the present in fiction and drama: from the Yan’an Forum to the Cultural Revolution,” in Bonnie S. McDougall (ed.), Popular Chinese Literature and Performing Arts in the People's Republic of China 1949–1979 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), pp. 197–223, who notes direct influences from traditional adventure and swordsmen novels. See especially Joe C. Huang, Heroes and Villains in Communist China, the Contemporary Chinese Novel as a Reflection of Life (London: C. Hurst and Co., 1973), who repeatedly stresses the relationships between traditional and contemporary fiction.
3. The work by Plaks, Andrew H. which explores these issues in traditional novels is well known. See his Archetype and Allegory in the “Dream of the Red Chamber” (Princeton: Princeton Univerity Press, 1976)Google Scholar and “Towards a critical theory of Chinese narrative,” in Plaks, Andrew H. (ed.), Chinese Narrative, Critical and Theoretical Essays (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), pp. 309–352.Google Scholar Milena Doleželová-Velingerová's paper presented at the 1974 Social Science Research Council workshop, “Modern Chinese literature in the May Fourth era,” drew attention to patterns of contrast, juxtapositions and use of complementary pairs of opposites in Lu Xun's fiction. This was later published as “Lu Xun's medicine,” in Goldman, Merle (ed.), Modern Chinese Literature in the May Fourth Era (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977), pp. 221–31.Google ScholarBarlow, Tani E. has made a valuable contribution to this topic in her “The place of women in Ding Ling's world: feminism and the concept of gender in modern China,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Davis, 1985.Google Scholar
4. See Wagner, Rudolf G., “The cog and the scout, functional concepts of literature in socialist political culture: the Chinese debate in the mid fifties,” in Kubin, Wolfgang and Wagner, Rudolf G. (eds.), Essays in Modern Chinese Literature and Literary Criticism. (Bochum: Dr. Brockmeyer, 1982), pp. 334–400.Google Scholar
5. Bibliographical information on printings and reviews for Zhou Libo, Liu Qing, Zhao Shuli and Ai Wu are found in the series Zhongguo dangdai wenxue yanjiu ziliao (Research Materials on Contemporary Chinese Literature) (Various places of publication, 1979). For bibliographical information on printings and reviews for Sun Li see, Sun Li wenji (Collected Works of Sun Li) (Tianjin: Baihua wenji chubanshe, 1982), 5 Vols., Vol. 5, pp. 301–339.Google Scholar
6. In biographical sources the authors are listed with varying dates. According to the short biographies in Zhongguo dangdai wenxue, the dates are as follows: Ai Wu, 1904–; Zhao Shuli, 1906–1970; Zhou Libo, 1908–1979; Sun Li 1913–; and Liu Qing, 1916–78. Manshu, Lin, et al, Zhongguo dangdai wenxue shigao, 1949–1965 dalu bufen (Draft History of Contemporary Chinese Literature, 1949–65, the Mainland) (Paris: Centre de Publication Asie Orientale, n.d.), p. 390, gives Zhou Erfu's date as 1910—.Google Scholar
7. See, e.g. Shuli, Zhao, “Duanlian, duanlian” (“Practice, practice”), in Duanpian xiao shuo xuan, 1949–79 (Selection of Short Stories, 1949–79) (Beijing: Renmin wenxue, 1979), Vol. 3, pp. 451–72. The story is dated July 1958 and criticizes the fantastic grain targets (in the story it is cotton) set by the “Draft Programme for Agricultural Development in the People's Republic of China, 1956–1967,” which was launched in January 1956.Google Scholar
8. Bloom, Harold, A Map of Misreading (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975), p. 32.Google Scholar
9. Dazhong, Dong, Zhao Shuli nianpu (Chronological Biography of Zhao Shuli) (Taiyuan: Shanxi renmin chubanshe, 1982), pp. 12, 18;Google Scholar and Wu, Ai, Wo de qingnian shidai (My Youth) (Shanghai: Kaiming, 1949), pp. 50–51, 57–58.Google Scholar
10. For example, Quanguo zong shumu (Complete National Book Index) (Shanghai, 1935), pp. 441–50 lists translated works by such major Soviet writers as D. Furmanov, V. Katayev, F. Gladkov and, of course, especially numerous translations of Gorky's works.Google Scholar
11. In recent years the problem of audience and reception has also engaged the attention of western critics. Jauss, Hans R., “Literary history as a challenge to literary theory,” in Cohen, Ralph (ed.), New Directions in Literary History (Baltimore: the Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), pp. 11–41,Google Scholar argues for an “aesthetic of reception and impact.” Kermode, Frank, Essays on Fiction, 1971–82 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983), p. 123,Google Scholar calls for histories of reading. See also Bark, Joachim (ed.), Literatursoziologie (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1974), 2 Vols. Introduction, Vol I, p. 16; and Urs Jaeggi, “Lesen und Schreiben, Thesen zur Literatursoziologie,” in Bark (ed.), Litertursoziologie, pp. 69–84 who both stress the function of the reader.Google Scholar
12. McDougall, Bonnie S., Mao Zedong's “Talks at the Yan’an Conference on Literature and Art”: A Translation of the 1943 Text with Commentary (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1980), pp. 68–73. See also her essay, “Writers and performers, their works, and their audiences in the first three decades,” in Popular Chinese Literature and Performing Arts, p. 269, where she suggests that the 1949–79 cultural history can be defined as “… the attempted transformation … of an elitist, author-centred culture… into a mass, audience-centred culture…”CrossRefGoogle Scholar
13. Lee, Leo Ou-Fan and Nathan, Andrew J., “The beginnings of mass culture: journalism and fiction in the late Ch'ing and beyond,” in Johnson, Davidet al. (eds.), Popular Culture in Late Imperial China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), p. 395.Google Scholar
14. Michael Egan has called attention to the subtext in contemporary fiction in his “A notable sermon: the subtext of Hao Ran's fiction,” in Popular Chinese Literature and Performing Arts, pp. 224–43.
15. English translation by Xu Mengxiong, Peking Foreign Languages Press, 1955. I have used the Beijing: Renmin wenxue, 1977 edition.
16. The policy of rent and interest reduction was supplanted in 1946 by a policy of destroying existing patterns of land tenure. However, it was argued that middle peasants should also benefit from land reform. See Pepper, Suzanne, Civil War in China, The Political Struggle 1945–1949 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), pp.245–47.Google Scholar
17. English translation, Wall of Bronze, by Shapiro, Sidney, Beijing Foreign Languages Press, 1982. I have used the Beijing: Renmin wenxue, 1953 edit.Google Scholar
18. English translation, Stormy Years, by Yang, Gladys, Beijing Foreign Languages Press, 1982. I have used the Tianjin: Baihua wenyi chubanshe, 1982, Vol. 2 edit.Google Scholar
19. English translation by Gladys Yang, Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1964. I have used the Beijing: Renmin wenxue, 1980 edit.
20. I have used the Beijing: Zuojia, 1962 edit.
21. I have used the Beijing: Zuojia, 1958, Vol. 1, edit.
22. See “Political Report of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, delivered by Liu Shao-ch'i, September 15, 1956 to the Eighth Party Congress,” in Bowie, Robert R. and Fairbank, John K. (eds.), Communist China 1955–1959, Policy Documents with Analysis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962), pp. 164–203.Google Scholar
23. Andrew H. Plaks, “Towards a critical theory of Chinese narrative,” p. 333.
24. Li, Peter, Tseng P’u: the literary journey of a Chinese writer (1872–1935), Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1972, p. 146.Google Scholar Li borrowed the term from Walter Allen, The English Novel (New York: E.P. Dutton and Co., Inc., 1954), p. 54.Google Scholar
25. I am indebted to Tani E. Barlow, “The place of women in Ding Ling's world,” for these insights into the uses of complementary bipolarity.
26. Ortner, Sherry B. and Whitehead, Harriet, “Introduction: accounting for sexual meanings,” in Ortner, and Whitehead, (eds.), Sexual Meanings, the Cultural Construction of Gender and Sexuality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 1–2.Google Scholar
27. Liu Qing uses here a pattern similar to Zhao Shuli's in Changes in Li Village, first published in 1945.
28. Andrew Plaks describes this as “figural density.” See his “Shui-hu chuan and the sixteenth-century novel form: an interpretive analysis,” Chinese Literature, Essays and Reviews, Vol. 2, No. 1 (January 1980), p. 8.Google Scholar
29. See Perry, Elisabeth J., “Rural violence in socialist China,” CQ, No. 103 (September 1985), pp. 414–40, who points out that under socialism traditional communal groupings have, in fact, been replicated.Google Scholar
30. Schram, Stuart R., Mao Zedong, A Preliminary Reassessment (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 1983), p. 41; and Bowie and Fairbank, Communist China, pp. 164–203.Google Scholar
31. This is, no doubt, a fictional interpretation of the “Thursday Dinner Club,” referred to by Mao Zedong as a “secret organization of different groups of capitalists.” “On the struggle against the ‘three evils’ and the ‘five evils,’“ in Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung (Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1977), Vol. 5, pp. 64–70.Google Scholar
32. Martin K. Whyte has consistently argued for recognizing the complexity of China's social change, particularly in the countryside, where peasants continue to live in their ancestral villages and where the new men in power were patrilineally related males. See his, “Rural marriage customs,” Problems of Communism, Vol. 26, No. 4 (August 1977), pp. 41–55.Google Scholar
33. Birch, Cyril, “Change and continuity in Chinese fiction,” in Goldman, Merle (ed.), Modern Chinese Literature in the May Fourth Era (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977), p. 394, remarks that most conspicuous in post-1949 fiction is “the renewed sense of a social order.”Google Scholar
34. David Johnson, “Communication, class and consciousness in late imperial China,” in Johnson, Popular Culture, p. 37.
35. Holm, D. L., “Local color and popularization in the literature of the wartime border regions,” Modern Chinese Literature, Vol. 2, No. 1 (1986), pp. 7–20. Holm further points out that works like Zhou Libo's Hurricane may be considered direct ancestors of later regional schools of literature, p. 17.Google Scholar
36. Hamilton, Gary G. “Patriarchalism in imperial China and Western Europe: a revision of Weber's sociology of dominance,” Theory and Society, Vol. 13, No. 3 (May 1984), pp. 303–425. My thanks to Tani E. Barlow for bringing this article to my attention.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
37. Plaks, “Towards a critical theory of Chinese narrative,” p. 344, also notes the importance of roles in fictional narrative as does Tani E. Barlow in her “The place of women in Ding Ling's world.”
38. The classic love triangle is in the Dream of the Red Chamber, which may have bequeathed to these and other later authors the triangle technique.
39. The three couples' love affairs were taken seriously by Chinese critics. Some faulted Zhao for not presenting their courtship more realistically. See Lu Da, “Quefa aiqing de aiqing miaoxie, tan ‘Sanliwan’ zhong san dui qingnian de hunyin wenti” (“The lack of love in a portrayal of love, a discussion of the question of marriage of the three young couples in ‘Sanliwan’ “), Wenyibao (Literature Journal), No. 2 (13 January 1956), pp. 22–25. The love affairs also became the basis of a filmscript. See John Beyer, “Party novel, risqué film: Zhao Shuli's Sanliwan and the scenario Lovers Happy Ever After,” in Kubin and Wagner (eds.), Essays in Modern Chinese Literature and Literary Criticism, pp. 90–116.
40. Unfortunately, Chinese criticism has, on the whole, only considered Degui's heroic role in the novel. See Cheng Siwei, “Lun Qin Degui” (“On Qin Degui”), Donghai (East China Sea), No. 4 (1961), reprinted in Zhongguo dangdai wenxue yanjiu ziliao, Ai Wu zhuanji (Research Materials on Contemporary Chinese Literature, Ai Wu Special Edition) (Sichuan: Sichuan daxue zhongwen xibian, 1979), pp. 235–44. Cheng recognizes that the heroic struggle for production is interwoven with the love story, but he fails to see Degui in any other terms, except as “typical and representative.”Google Scholar
41. In the 1950s upper-echelon women in industry and commerce did not warrant much attention except as wives and helpmates to their businessmen husbands.
Although references to them grudgingly acknowledged that women can take up tasks in industry and commerce, their primary place, it was stated, is in the home and in neighbourhood activities. See, e.g., “Fully promote the positive role of business women in socialist transformation,” SCMP, 1276 (26 April 1956), pp. 2–4. Renmin ribao (People's Daily) editorial, 8 April 1956.
42. Chen Yong, review of Hurricane, in Wenyibao, Nos. 11–12 (1952). reprinted in Zhongguo dangdai wenxue yanjiu ziliao, Zhou Libo zhuanji {Research Materials on Contemporary Chinese Literature, Zhou Libo Special Edition) (Wuhan: Huazhong shifan xueyuan zhongwen xibian, 1979), p. 131.Google Scholar
43. Walder, Andrew G., “Organized dependency and cultures of authority in Chinese industry,” Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 43, No. 1 (November 1983), p. 52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
44. On this topic, see Stacey, Judith, Patriarchy and Socialist Revolution in China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), p. 5.Google Scholar
45. Fiedler, Leslie, in What Was Literature? Class, Culture and Mass Society (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982), pp. 41, 140–141, 145, persuasively argues for recognizing myths and communal dreams in popular literature, and for establishing different evaluative criteria for them.Google Scholar
46. Address by Milan Kundera at The Jerusalem International Book Fair, April 1985, mimeographed copy, p. 6. “Kitsch,” as a phenomenon of mass culture and as an ingredient in political ideologies, has received considerable attention from European writers and critics.
47. This was pointed out by Martin K. Whyte, “Rural marriage customs,” p. 55.