✪ Dewei Wang
Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University
【Introduction】Recently, "The First Incense" and "Lyceum Grand Theatre", which are set in the pre-war British colonial period in Hong Kong and Shanghai, have been released one after another, and both dramas have attracted polarized evaluations: recommenders believe that the adapted plot is better in line with the original work and restores the charm of the Republic of China, while critics say that the "Republic of China style" has no form and does not have the thickness of the real era. In fact, in recent years, the creation of the Republic of China, or the broader "creation based on the culture of the Republic of China", has not only set off a boom in historical evidence, but also pushed overseas Chinese literature into the mainstream vision. As a senior scholar of modern and contemporary Chinese literature, the author of this article expands the boundaries of "Chinese literature" and asks the question: Must literary geography be attached to the geography of political history, forming a reciprocal or corresponding relationship?
Based on this, he introduced a new concept of "Chinese language literature". Different from the Japanese language literature produced during the English, French and even colonial Periods in Taiwan, the emergence of Chinese literature is not based on the colonial color of unequal power, but the local residents consciously or unconsciously continue the concept of Chinese cultural inheritance, extend the creation form of Chinese literary symbols, or show the "voice of China".
The Chinese language family is not only about literature, but also about overseas Chinese issues. For example, the concept of "cultural China" proposed by Professor Tu Weiming not only covers the Chinese society, but also covers all Chinese and foreign friends who are interested in Chinese culture. Taking Chen Yingzhen, a Taiwanese writer influenced by Lu Xun, and Li Tianbao, an imitator of "Zhang Ailing" in Malaysian Chinese literature, as examples, the author explores how the national imagination has blossomed and scattered from its literary narrative, and has endless potential for vertical and horizontal integration.
This article was originally published in the "Yangtze River Review", based on the author's speech in the Guanghua Lecture at Fudan University, and is an excerpt here, which only represents the author's own views. It is hereby compiled for your consideration.
Literary Geography and National Imagination: Lu Xun in Taiwan, Zhang Ailing in Nanyang
▍ Preface
In the history of literary development in the twentieth century, the word "China", as a coordinate of a geographical space, a political entity, and a realm of literary imagination, has brought us many expositions, dialectics and inspirations. In the twenty-first century, in the face of the new historical situation, when we discuss contemporary Chinese literature, what kind of interpretation should we make of the "China" in front of us? And how do these interpretations have a dialogue with the changing experience of reading and creation?
This is a huge topic. The motivation of this article is not to make a delicate theoretical comb, but to seek to further complicate the issue in the hope of broadening the scope of the discussion and provoking critical voices. At the same time, this article hopes to once again test whether the study of Modern and Contemporary Chinese Literature as a discipline still has unfinished business and needs to be further developed.
This article will be divided into three parts. The first statement is that since the end of the last century, the English-speaking world has developed different discourses on what is "China", what is "Chinese literature", and what is "Chinese literature studies"; these discourses often start from spatial positioning. The second section introduces the ins and outs of the "Mandarin language" discourse, and explores the latest overseas repercussions beyond our mainland-based "Chinese literature." The third part specifically puts forward the proposition of "Lu Xun in Taiwan and Zhang Ailing in Nanyang". Who is Lu Xun from Taiwan? Who is Zhang Ailing of Nanyang? In this way, it is hoped that not only the dynamics of literary history need to be constantly reorganized, but the boundaries of "literary geography" are actually constantly changing and need to be continuously defined. And because of this, we should use our imagination to constantly re-plan the temporal and spatial scope of the literary field.
The traditional study of modern Chinese literature, from Lu Guomao to Ba Lao Cao, masters, masterpieces, classics, and all kinds of things, seems to be inexhaustible and inexhaustible. When we are engaged in the study of contemporary literature, the first objects of study may be novelists such as Mo Yan, Su Tong, Yu Hua, and Wang Anyi; gu cheng, Haizi, Zhai Yongming, and Xichuan. But in the past six decades, there have been many literary creations outside the mainland, not only in Hong Kong and Taiwan, but also in the Chinese community in Southeast Asian countries such as Malaysia, as well as in Europe and the United States. These phenomena of Chinese creation in different regions, especially the vigorous development of the phenomenon, are called "overseas Chinese literature", "overseas Chinese literature" or "world Chinese literature".
In the twenty-first century, is this division still valid? When we talk about Chinese literature in a broad sense, how do we deal with these phenomena of "foreign" literary production and their results? Is it still necessary to use a series of terms such as "Chinese", "world", "overseas Chinese" in the past to define these writers and works, and their relationship with Chinese mainland literature? These relationships are often defined on the basis of opposing axes of "suzerainty" and "subordination", "inside" and "outside", "regression" and "discrete". Needless to say, from the perspective of nationalism and the history of immigration, such a definition has its basis. But as literary researchers, if we seriously consider the relationship between literature and geography, can we make good use of our ability to observe and reflect and ask a different proposition: "Must literary geography always depend on the geography of political history, forming a reciprocal or corresponding relationship?" This is the first meaning of literary "geography.".
As a literary practitioner, we must make good use of the imaginary energy of working with texts. This imaginary energy is not aimless, nor is it a wild idea, but it is also a way to stimulate our dialogue in the face of the situation of existence. These spaces constructed by literature necessarily form a geography different from those defined by history, politics, and socioeconomics. And it is precisely for this reason that when such a fictional literary space is involved in the actual historical situation, it will inevitably produce collisions, resulting in dialogue relationships that strike the real with the virtual or the real with the virtual. This is the second meaning of literary "geography".
Back to a more specific question. As mentioned above, when generally talking about the history of Chinese literature, of course, it is based on the coordinates of Chinese mainland. On a piece of land, because of the literary phenomenon that occurred in the People's Republic of China, or in the past, we call it "modern and contemporary Chinese literature." But anyone who is a little involved in "state" and "literature" will actually understand that national literature is a literary representation formed by the rise of nationalism in the West since the nineteenth century. Every independent nation seems to need a national literature as its representative. Thus the equivalence between national literature and national geography has almost become a conventional phenomenon.
This phenomenon has begun to loosen in recent decades. Since the 1980s, both theoretical intervention and the actual international political crisis have led literary researchers to rethink the inevitability and necessity of the reciprocal relationship between the state and literature. When we talk about Chinese literature, can we also calm down and think about whose China this "China" is? What is the definition of China under what period? What kind of literature can fully express China?
Chinese literature outside Chinese mainland also has wonderful performances. Do we regard these literary works written in Chinese as part of Chinese literature, or as overseas Chinese literature, world Chinese literature, or as part of the greater "Tianxia" literature? This topic may be just a naming trade-off, but if you think about it, it contains the results of the struggle between the national imagination and literary geography at home and abroad. The resulting tensions are discussed in detail below. In particular, I would like to draw attention to what new methods of discourse and nomenclature have been available in recent years in such a situation that can be used as identities, positions or strategies for literary researchers to intervene in this issue?
▍ From cultural China to the Chinese-speaking world
First of all, we will introduce "Chinese Language Literature". This research has sprung up in the past decade and has become a new direction for the study of "overseas Chinese", "overseas Chinese" and "world Chinese" that are different from the past. The English counterpart of Chinese language literature is "Sinophone Literature". As the name suggests, its focus is on the gradual transition from the "literary" part to the linguistic part. In other words, when discussing the issue of identity, contemporary scholars have experienced the complex aspects of factors such as domestic and overseas, doctrine, gender, etc., and have begun to ask whether they can propose a larger common divisor as a bottom line for discussing various Chinese or Chinese writing. The proposal of "Sinophone Literature" is to hope that language - Chinese - as the greatest common divisor, as a platform for the study and debate of literature outside China and China in a broad sense. "Sinophone" is a newly invented word, but it has gradually become popular over the years, meaning "the voice of Huaxia". Simply put, no matter where we talk about Chinese, no matter what kind of Chinese we are talking about — good Chinese or broken Chinese, Chinese with local and western tones, or the standard Chinese of Beijing CCTV are covered here. But this is just the beginning of a broader "Sinophone." The dialectics it derives from inward and outward, and the dialogue with other linguistic literary studies, are in fact fraught with tension between political history and various literary ideas.
The rise of the word "Sinophone" is a proper noun for literature or culture related to (colonial properties). For example, Anglophone Literature means that at some point in history, there was a political power to use English— an English-speaking hegemonic country — invaded another part of the world and carried out English-dominated language, education, culture, and administrative power in the local area. This location may have been undefined, or it may have a mature civilization, but it may not be related to the invading English hegemony in terms of ethnic culture; but the hegemonic power, because of imperial power, colonialism or various economic expansion motives, has strictly practiced English as a tool for writing and communication, and a common symbol of culture and education. Over time, English has become a common means of communication, on the one hand, suppressing and depriving the originality of local language and culture, on the other hand, it is precisely because of the influence of the locality that the English language of the suzerainty has become mixed and "impure". The hybrid phenomena thus formed can be seen from pronunciation, grammar, and rhetoric to the operation of discourse and cultural production in a broad sense. By analogy, the West Indies were ruled by Britain (as well as the Netherlands, Denmark, Spain, and the United States) for many years from the nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, so that the local population or indigenous people, because of their relative weakness in politics and culture, had to adopt English (or other languages) imposed by the suzerainty as an official language, especially as a tool for education and dissemination. West Africa, or Quebec, Canada, was once a French dependency, hence the Francophone Literature. Or phenomena like Portuguese literature in Brazil and Spanish literature in Latin America are all due to the cultural consequences of expansionism, whether imperial expansionism or economic expansionism or colonial expansionism, since the eighteenth and ninth centuries. These forms of literature, though in the language imposed by the suzerainty, were, after all, far from the matrix of the so-called "fatherland"—away from England, France, Spain, or Portugal—and, together with the mixture of time and customs, formed complex, local linguistic representations.
Anglophone, Francophone, Hispanohone on the one hand remind us of the language/power relations between local literature and the suzerainty, but on the other hand, it also allows us to face up to the local cultural practitioners according to local conditions, and also treat them in their own way, and make alternative derivations, interpretations, and inventions of the language and culture of the suzerainty. Thus there is the result of a mottled mixture of language: mixed, parody and even subversive creation. The words of the colonizers certainly prevailed, but they also had to pay a price; the forces of the colonizers to subvert the authoritarian discourses were always poised to emerge. In the past, we always felt that colonial language works were not worth it, for no reason, it was a second-class, parrot learning tongue vocal drill. However, in the past two decades, due to the rise of post-colonialism and imperial criticism, this kind of linguistic and cultural phenomenon has gradually entered the eyes of critics. We then understand that there is no so-called single, pure, standard English (or French, German, Spanish) that is not threatened by diverse, hybrid, and non-standard English. When it comes to the "English" world, no matter how authentic the language you think you are, you must also understand the linguistic and literary phenomena that arise in the English-speaking world.
Can we also talk about Nippponohone, Japanese language literature? This reminds us that Taiwan was ruled by Japanese colonialism for fifty years from 1895 to 1945. After the 1910s, a new generation of Taiwanese people, through the operation of the educational mechanism, began to get used to using Japanese as a tool of daily expression. By the 1930s, Japanese creation had become a cultural phenomenon, and novels were written in Japanese regardless of political affiliation. In such a situation, at least some works of Taiwanese literature have become Japanese language literature. As mentioned above, the title of Japanese language literature certainly has a strong historical critical significance: this is the result of a cultural hegemony imposed on Taiwan (or Korea) by the (Japanese) colonists in the colonies, and the relationship between the writers in the colonized areas and the suzerainty (Japan), or compromise, or conspiracy, or collision, or ridicule, can often be seen in literary expression.
Now to the next question: Under the big heading of Sinophone Literature, can we say that Chinese literature must be understood from a postcolonial perspective? This is a specious question. Looking at the history of China over the past two hundred years, we can understand that China was not strong enough to conquer any place, and then completely brought Chinese (Chinese) into that place, forming a cultural phenomenon of the so-called Chinese language family. Therefore, when using this term, we must actively reflect on whether the literary phenomenon of defining these phones with imperialist criticism or postcolonial ideas as a real application to the development of overseas Chinese literature in the twentieth century in a broad sense. I think that even in a limited or semi-colonial situation, the emergence of overseas Chinese literature is not so much the intervention of the powerful forces of the suzerainty, but rather the intentional or unintentional continuation of the concept of Chinese cultural inheritance by the local residents, extending the creative form of Chinese literary symbols.
For example, Shanghai, which was once occupied during the war. In Shanghai in the 1940s, even if it fell to Japan, it is difficult to imagine the emergence of Japanese language literature; in contrast, the activities of Zhang Ailing and other writers were popular during this period. Or like Manchukuo literature, in the northeast was occupied, the establishment of puppet regimes in the decade, the bulk of literary production is still dominated by Chinese. That is to say, although Japanese governance has taken root, it has not yet penetrated into the depths of the society of Manchukuo at that time. Local Chinese writers still basically still use Chinese to create. The example of Taiwan is more different, because the colonial period of fifty years is indeed conducive to the Japanese regime to change the life and language habits of generations of Taiwanese from the perspective of culture and educational mechanism. In the 1930s, Japan's official media hung over the island. However, we also note that a considerable number of literati in Taiwan still use Chinese/Chinese forms – such as Chinese poetry, vernacular Chinese, Minnan, Hakka dialect art – to continue their inheritance of broad Chinese culture, and to reflect their resistance mentality. Moreover, folk culture basically still retains a fairly deep Chinese traditional factor. Therefore, Chinese literature can be understood from the perspective of imperial criticism or postcolonialism, but such a theoretical framework may not be fully effective.
A more specific example is Malaysian Chinese Literature (and later extended to Singapore Chinese Literature). The development of MCA literature is a very difficult page of history. Malaysia was a British possession before its founding in 1957 and was occupied by Japan during World War II, and its colonial history dates back to the early 19th century. During the British colonial period, the official language of Malaya was English, and the main inhabitants of the territory were of Malay descent, and we can say that this is an English-speaking area. But there were also large chinese immigrants on the Malay Peninsula, who had migrated in large numbers to the Malay Peninsula and other Southeast Asian regions since the eighteenth century. In such a situation, the conflagration of languages is the fate of the MCA community: the Chinese on the peninsula must use the official dialects and dialects of their homeland, the Malay language of Malay society, the spoken language of the aborigines, and the English of the colonizers, staggering back and forth to find the appropriate place to speak. But when it comes to literary creation, MCA has maintained an endless Chinese (Chinese) literary tradition from the end of the 19th century to today, which is really valuable in overseas Chinese society, not to mention that this tradition has wonderful works presented in every generation.
When Malaysia was founded in 1957, the main language was, of course, Malay, but nearly 6 million Chinese on the peninsula still speak their own language. Even so, these millions of Chinese maintain the traditional culture and language lifeline of the ethnic group, using Chinese (mainly dialects in the Chinese language family, such as Guangdong, Chaozhou, Hakka, Minnan, and Hainanese) as a tool for communicating and creating in Chinese. From the British post-colonial standpoint, Malay society should have English language literature as the mainstay. But this is not the case, and the Mandarin language family thrives within the MCA ethnic group. MCA literature provides a particularly powerful example of the differences between Chinese language literature and other colonial language literature. As mentioned earlier, whether it is compared with the British colonial powers in the past and the current Malaysian regime, it is difficult to say that these MCA writers were driven by post-colonialism to practice their Chinese language and Chinese creation.
Before the rise of the concept of Chinese language, many scholars had begun to think about Chinese issues overseas. Over the past two decades, Western (especially Chinese) scholars have had many different voices about "what is China," "what is Chinese civilization," and "what is Chinese literature," and the debate that has formed is still in the ascendant to this day. The main representative figures include at least the following, and first of all, Professor Tu Weiming must be respected. Professor Du put forward the concept of "cultural China": it means that no matter how tortuous the history itself is, as cultural inheritors, we must maintain a belief that a cultural tradition called "China" will always live and continue to open up the future for the Chinese people. This cultural China has become the greatest common denominator of Chinese society from china to overseas. "Cultural China" is broadly extended, and it covers all Chinese and foreigners who are interested in Chinese culture. Professor Du is a well-known neo-Confucian master, and the "culture" in his mind is naturally a culture with Confucian Taoism as the main axis, and there are different expressions in each region. In any case, there are differences in depth and depth, but in summary, the centripetal force generated by "Cultural China" still makes Professor Du quite confident to imagine a cognitive, emotional and survival community.
Secondly, Professor Wang Gengwu, who was born in Indonesia, moved to Malaysia with his parents, then went to China to attend university, then returned to Malaysia to continue his studies, and returned to Singapore to teach after obtaining a doctorate in the United Kingdom. Such an experience illustrates the tortuous path of an overseas Chinese scholar and national identity. For Chinese scholars like Professor Wang, the concept of "Chineseness" does not need to be expanded into a universal standard. The so-called "Chineseness" must be adapted to local conditions and time, a kind of local and expedient Chineseness. This Chineseness can only be revealed when you settle down in a certain place and take root, put into practice the various "Chinese" cultural beliefs carried by individuals, and consult with objective factors. In this way, Wang Gengwu's belief and Tu Weiming's belief are different, because he emphasizes the possibility of "a kind" of Chineseness in the ground and practice; he no longer insists on the vision of "cultural China" that is scattered all over the world.
The third position can be represented by Professor Li Oufan. In the 1990s, he proposed "wandering Chineseness." That is to say, Chineseness is not practiced by one region. Professor Li believes that as a Chinese at the end of the twentieth century, even at the end of the world, as long as you feel that "I" is a subject that can inherit, dialectic and even invent the concept of "China", no matter how westernized, it can show this "Chineseness" after all. This practice is different from Professor Wang Gengwu's view. Professor Li's two key words, "wandering" and "Chineseness", point out that "Chineseness" comes from the dialogue relationship (cosmopolitanism) with which the individual faces the world and meets it, and thus forms a strategic position. In other words, Professor Li emphasizes the fringe, centrifugal, and mobile Chineseness, which is distinguished from the Chineseness of any one region as the center. The construction and deconstruction of individual subjects is a major feature of Professor Li's statement, reflecting his personal belief in Romanticism in his early years and the turn to postmodernism at the end of the century.
The fourth example is Professor Wang Lingzhi. Born in Xiamen, Fujian Province, Professor Wang moved to Hong Kong in 1948 and completed his secondary education before studying in the United States to pursue a doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley. In the mid-1960s, when the anti-war and human rights movements in the United States were in full swing, he gave up his Middle East studies major to devote himself to the study of Chinese and Asian minorities, thus becoming the first person to start a new role. Faced with the question of Chineseness, Professor Wang emphasized the "structure of dual domination", on the one hand, concerned that the Chinese should maintain Their Chineseness in discrete situations, and on the other hand, strongly aware that the Chinese must integrate into the new environment and thus establish their (minority) representation. He strives to find a balance between the Chinese/American identity, strives for his Own Chineseness under the premise of multi-ethnic Americanness, and advocates the necessity of identifying with Americanism in the Chinese diaspora.
Compared with the position of the above senior Chinese scholars, we have also witnessed a series of strong and powerful critical voices. These voices have formed a new mainstream. For example, Professor IenAng, who was born in Indonesia, is a mixed-race Chinese and indigenous family, who completed her education in the Netherlands and taught in Australia. Peranakan basically follows The Chinese etiquette and culture, but it is already specious in terms of living habits, language expression and identity mentality. In Malaysian society, such a mixed culture is called Baba. Hong Mei-eun's most famous essay is "On Not Speaking Chinese," which talks about her experiences traveling in Taiwan. She is often seen as "her own person" or a returnee because she "looks like a Chinese." Embarrassingly, Hong may look like a Chinese, but because of the different backgrounds, it can't be said that Chinese; she is a foreigner. In the West, she has similar problems, always because of her "quasi-Chinese" background, that is, she is regarded as a representative of Chinese. This caused Professor Hong to sigh and reflect on both sides. In the essentialist discourse of racial culture, too often we follow stereotypes to form unconscious arrogance. In Hong's case, even if she has a Chinese face and Chinese blood, she is either (pure) Chinese, or she cannot say Chinese. Her research efforts emphasize the diversity of Ethnic Chinese and even "China"; for her, Chinese is no longer a deep-rooted cultural carrier, but a communication tool for a pluralistic Chinese society.
Looking back at China, what is the reflection of scholars in recent years? If the results of recent years are only one example, Professor Ge Zhaoguang's "Zhaozi China" of Fudan University is worth recommending. The four characters "Zhaozi China" used by Professor Ge Zhaoguang are based on the inscription on a Western Zhou bronze vessel excavated in Baoji County, Shaanxi Province in 1963, "Zhaozi China". "China" here may refer to the cultural and political context of Luoyang as the geographical center at that time. That "Middle" and that "country" are not completely comparable to today's China. The meaning of "House China" includes the meaning of taking root here and resettling the homeland, which is of great potential significance to Professor Ge's future "China" discourse.
Professor Ge even caught up with the times, talking about the "house" of a thousand years ago, it is not without the meaning of today's "house" male "house" woman's house. In fact, "House China" here has two references, on the one hand, it means that "House" has a vision of settling down in its own homeland; but on the other hand, the "China" of "House China" must be put back into the context of the inextricable history and constantly re-examined. In any case, Professor Ge believes that although this "China" has gradually taken shape in history, it has changed with the changes of dynasties. But as a living subject of culture, it is always "home" stationed there, and we cannot easily disintegrate it all by deconstructing, postcolonial, and imperial criticism. Because as long as we return to the cultural and historical context of China, the concept of "China" always reverberates in various ways in the shaping and representation of culture in different periods. Unlike Professor Tu Weiming's "Cultural China", the "Chinese culture" that Professor Ge sees is historically unchanging, but because "China" is used as a presupposition or practice field for discourse, it can provide a context for future generations to describe a tradition that has both continuity and rupture. In other words, the existence and non-existence of China become a subject of constant dialectical oscillation between essentialism and historical experience.
On the other hand, Professor Ge also criticized the various concepts that are currently popular in the West, even in China, to redefine "China". Like the West, China studies are seen as an area studies—a Cold War-style study of China. Or, like a group of scholars who recently studied the "New Qing History", emphasized that the frontier peoples who fell under the Mongol Yuan Empire, especially the Great Qing Empire established by the Manchus, did not actually take Han China as an absolute refuge in their culture or political ideas. Of course, there is also the postmodern style, deconstructing China as a whole, emphasizing that there has never been a consistent "China", and some are nothing more than the "imaginary community" set up later. Professor Ge believes that these methods and definitions may all be reasonable, but from the perspective of cultural history, he thinks that since there are many representations of actual existence and ideological subjects, as well as various classics, scriptures, cultural relics, systems, and material cultures that follow the name of China, we have to admit that the context of "China" from the past to the present is endless.
Professor Ge's views are certainly criticized by different approaches such as neo-Qing historiography, deconstructionism, or postcolonial/imperial critique. We must understand another research project that Professor Ge is undertaking at the same time, "Looking at China from the Periphery". That is to say, in addition to finding the tradition of "China" from within, Professor Ge also pointed out that this "China" was also established by the relationships (diplomacy, trade, culture, war, etc.) between the civilizations around China and the interaction of countries. The two concepts/research plans of "Zhaozi China" and "China from the Periphery" are juxtaposed to become a very meaningful dialogue: on the one hand, we are "Zhaozi China", but on the other hand, we recognize that "China" is always a field of definition, consultation and interaction from the perspective of others.
At present, there are a number of scholars abroad, especially those who have "gone to the world" from Within China, on the one hand, out of strong dissatisfaction with the Western liberal position of national politics, on the other hand, out of the enthusiasm of "China is rising" and the rekindling of nationalism/ nationalism, believing that China is threatened by liberal "globalization", so they are eager to find and surpass the way of "globalization". In this context, "globalization" is equivalent to the marketization of transnational capitalism, becoming a historical obstacle that the new left camp must quickly remove. In order to transcend "globalization", some scholars yearn for a "country" with nationalism, or a "tianxia" that seems to transcend but is not without traditional Chinese colors, or the "datong" of Confucian utopia.
▍ Lu Xun from Taiwan, Zhang Ailing from Nanyang
Based on the above discussion, I use two examples, "Lu Xun of Taiwan" and "Zhang Ailing of Nanyang", to illustrate the potential of Chinese language literature research and the dialogue relationship with Chinese mainland literature. We have to ask: In addition to the well-known masterpieces of the masters, how many mainland scholars have any knowledge of Taiwan's Qiu Fengjia, Lai He, Yang Kui, Zhong Li, and a series of writers? Or from another point of view, while emphasizing the self-sufficiency of Taiwanese literature, shouldn't Taiwan scholars also hold the mentality of knowing oneself and knowing the other, and explore the complex relationship of intersection and separation between Taiwan and the mainland? Lu Xun— the father of modern Chinese new literature — happened to be a meaningful focal point.
Who is "Lu Xun of Taiwan"? We think of lai he (1894-1943), a doctor from Changhua. Lai He received a "study" education in his early years, laying a foundation in Chinese, and later became known to the world with Chinese poetry. Lai's greater contribution, however, was to promote new literature in Taiwan. Echoing the May Fourth trend, when he presided over the editorial board of the Taiwan Minbao, he introduced a large number of Works of May Fourth writers, and Lu Xun was one of them. Lai He admired Lu Xun in his life, and he not only shared Lu Xun's ambition to change the national spirit through literature and art, but also felt sorry for the master's choice between medicine and literature.
Lu Xun had already entered the field of Taiwanese literature in the 1920s, and was treated differently in the following decades with Taiwan's historical encounters. Lu Xun's Hometown was written in 1921 and published in Taiwan's New Daily in 1925. In 1931, Lai He deliberately used Lu Xun's "Hometown" as a model to write "Homecoming", which depicts the various situations encountered by young people in an educated city (Taiwan) when they returned to their hometown. The question here is not whether Lai He succeeded in imitating Lu Xun, but how Lu Xun was "transplanted" to Taiwan, inspiring a Taiwanese writer to write unique works for Taiwan's specific historical circumstances.
Lai He's vernacular novel creation began in 1926's "Fighting Fever" and "One Shot of Weighing Boy", etc., and it was decent as soon as he shot it. In the next ten years, he made a series of statues for Taiwanese society, including the insulted and damaged struggling people, the self-proclaimed and high-minded people, the rebellious youth who could not be reconciled to the status quo, and the ignorant citizens of the village. With these statues, Lai He wrote for the first time the spiritual history of colonizing Taiwan. In particular, "One Shot" has an intriguing and bloody ending. Lai seems to be suggesting that violence is the only way to break the injustice of colonial trade. Consciously or unconsciously, Lai He echoed the style of mainland left-wing writers. But looking back at Lai He's chivalry in His Han poems, we better understand the historical dimension of his protest spirit.
In real life, Lai He and the doctor are gentle and funny, benevolent and benevolent; it is in his creation that the image of a depressed and angry literati comes to his face. "I was born unfortunate to be a Prisoner of Chu, and it is better to be of any race than others." Lai He always sighed between the lines, and he was indeed imprisoned twice for political reasons. Before the possibility of great change, the fate of a colonial writer can only be. In early 1943, Lai He died of illness in prison, unable to wait for the defeat of Japan. In the early 1950s, he was enshrined in the Martyrs' Shrine as an anti-Japanese soldier, but was withdrawn seven years later on charges of "banditry by the Communist Party of Taiwan" and was not rehabilitated until the 1980s. When we talk about Lai He today, we often call him the father of Taiwan's new literature, Lu Xun of Taiwan.
But "Lu Xun of Taiwan" does not necessarily belong to one statue. We also think of another important writer, Chen Yingzhen (1937~) and Lu Xun's origins. Chen Yingzhen has been a leading figure in Left-Wing Literature and Discourse in Taiwan since the 1950s, and is also one of the most original authors in Taiwan's novel industry. His early works, such as "My Brother Kang Xiong", "Hometown", "The Teacher in the Countryside", etc., have revealed his strong humanitarian concern and deep and restrained narrative style. At the same time, Chen began to get involved in political activities. In 1968, he was charged with membership in the Taiwan Democratic League, arrested by the police chief, and sentenced to ten years in prison. Since the late 1970s, he has continued to publish novels and political treatises, criticizing Taiwan's political economy and advocating Marxist revolutionary beliefs. From 1985 to 1989, he ran The Human Magazine, which intervened in Taiwanese society in the form of media to expose injustice. Chen Yingzhen's image is therefore controversial, far surpassing that of ordinary literary writers.
Chen Yingzhen's works were inspired by Lu Xun's left-wing literature of the 1930s, and he has always used Lu Xun's wind and bones as an object of emulation. Chen Yingzhen himself once said: "Lu Xun gave me a motherland"; "Lu Xun's influence on me is fateful." He recalls that in the "year of the sixth grade of the rapid ascension (primary school)" (between 1949 and 1950), he came across a copy of Lu Xun's "Shouting". "As I grew older, this dilapidated collection of novels finally became my kindest and most profound teacher. Then I learned that China's poverty, ignorance, and backwardness, and this China is mine; then I also knew that I should love such a China with all my heart, the suffering mother, and when every son and daughter of China can rise up and dedicate themselves to China's freedom and rebirth, China will be full of infinite hope and bright future. In addition, he also dabbled in Japanese and European literature; for example, he claimed that the foreign writers who influenced him the most included Ryunosuke Wasagawa in Japan, Chekhov in old Russia, etc. The former's dark and ambiguous vision of life and the latter's deep and gentle brush stroke style can be confirmed in his works.
The Japanese scholar Matsunaga Masayoshi once pointed out: "What Lu Xun's experience gave Chen Yingzhen was that he was able to view Taiwan from the perspective of the whole of China, even though he was currently in an atmosphere of 'Taiwan nationalism', and to take a critical view of 'modernism' in the 1960s, which was the mainstay of Taiwan's literary circles." Professor Qian Liqun further explained that Chen Yingzhen also gained the perspective of Taiwan from the third world through Lu Xun. I remember that Lu Xun said that he 'understood a big thing in Russian literature, there are two kinds of people in the world: the oppressor and the oppressed', and in my opinion, Chen Yingzhen also understood such a big thing from Lu Xun's literature, so that in this era of globalization, he established his own third world position and placed Taiwanese literature in the big vision of third world literature. He attributed chen Yingzhen to the overseas descendants of "Lu Xun's left wing.".
The above scholars are still too one-sided about chen Yingzhen's relationship with Lu Xun. It is true that Chen Yingzhen is here for the left-wing humanitarian realism mission represented by Lu Xun, but commentators also point out that his works contain at least the following ideological clues. Because of his family's Christian background, Chen was a devout Christian as a teenager; original sin consciousness and vision of the apocalypse often became unconsciously potential texts for his work. In addition, the melancholy oriental color introduced by Taiwanese literature in the 1940s has always set off the background of his narrative romance. What is more noteworthy is that although Chen Yingzhen's career is realism, the literary environment he has experienced and the literary resources he has absorbed have made his works reflect the modernist consciousness of a generation of Taiwanese literature.
Chen Yingzhen's literary and political undertakings are mutually causal and paradoxical. In the name of Xu Nancun, Chen once discussed his own creative background and limitations: "Basically, Chen Yingzhen is a small intellectual writer in the town", "In the hierarchical structure of modern society... In an intermediate position. When the economy is good and the way out is good, these little intellectuals can easily climb up... And when it sinks downwards, it often appears frustrated, sad, and wandering. In other words, Chen Yingzhen and the object of his criticism actually share the same background and resources: his criticism of society is also a confession of his original sin. The resulting tension is the most impressive. From the inference, Chen Yingzhen's view of literature is always a self-denying and erased view of literature, which is a means to achieve the goal. Yet he clearly underestimated the ideological appeal of his work, and his literary title was built on this contradiction. In this regard, Chen intentionally or unintentionally also mirrored Lu Xun.
Chen Yingzhen's creation can be divided into three stages of discussion. From 1959 to 1968, before his imprisonment, Chen's novels often highlighted a character full of romantic melancholy temperament, through which the character's pursuit of ideals, helpless frustration, and tragic ends revealed the unspeakable political vision and the limitations of the historical environment. Such as the return of Nanyang in "The Teacher in the Village", the young education reformers who have difficulty reaching out, the nihilist who suffered from the degeneration of the flesh and faith in "My Brother Yasuo", and finally committed suicide, etc., are all excellent examples. On the other hand, Chen's concern also extended to the phenomena of classes and ethnic groups in Taiwan in the 1950s and 1960s. For example, "The General Clan" writes about a pair of provincial soldiers and prostitutes from other provinces who have fallen to the bottom of society, they are in love with each other, but in the end it is difficult to resist the discrimination and indifference of society, and finally commit suicide. It is also like "The First Errand", which describes how a middle-aged businessman from other provinces who has achieved little success in his career gradually realizes the nothingness of career, feelings, and life, and solves all kinds of difficulties, and only chooses death as the final way out. The young policeman of the province who undertook the suicide case could not understand the motives of the deceased, but he vaguely felt some uneasiness of life.
Around 1966, Chen Yingzhen's style gradually changed, and works such as "The Last Summer", "Tang Qian's Comedy", and "The Rose of June" replaced the previous melancholy and romantic colors with mocking satire. However, the ensuing prison disaster made his creative career a dropout. After Chen Yingzhen was released from prison in 1975, his literary style changed. His Washington Building series of novels, such as "Night Truck", "A Day for an Office Worker", "Emperor of Ten Thousand Merchants", and "Cloud", criticize Taiwan's transnational capitalist economic structure and the materialization of the emerging middle class. One of the most widely discussed novellas, "Night Trucks," depicts the tangled antagonistic relationships between local and foreign-owned enterprises, urban and rural, male and female, and between the province and the province, all of which are compounded by the intervention of transnational economic systems. Nationalism obviously could not satisfy his vision, and he preferred to pay more attention to the imperialist competition of capital in the trend of globalization, believing that only by starting from the perspective of economic class could he get to the point of view. He was at odds with the local self-consciousness movement that emerged in Taiwan at the time; on the other hand, he was ahead of the curve compared to the postcolonial discourse popular in academia in the 1990s. But on the whole, Chen Yingzhen's creation in this period is urgent, and his insistence on "ism first" affects his narrative power.
Since the 1980s, cross-strait relations have gradually unfrozen and the prohibition of speech has gradually opened, allowing Chen Yingzhen to express his personal ideological sustenance more directly than before. He not only had frequent contacts with the other side, but also reaffirmed the victims of Taiwan's past political taboos. In addition to investigative reports and reporting literature on left-wing activities in the 1950s, his most high-profile works of this period were the trilogy led by Mountain Road, Mountain Road, Bell Flower, and Zhao Nandong. All three of these works depict the dedication and sacrifice of a generation of left-wing workers in Taiwan, wavering in betrayal, and full of feelings of mourning for the dead and the wounded. Unlike the "scars" or protest writing that prevailed at the time, each of these three works operates a broad temporal dimension. In this way, Chen Yingzhen not only makes a nostalgic review of the past, but also further interrogates the dialectical relationship between history and memory, revolution and decadence.
Leaving Taiwan, our geographic coordinates moved to Nanyang. We discuss the latest development of the overseas Zhang Ailing phenomenon, which is the writing of "Zhang Ailing of Nanyang". Zhang Ailing was one of the most valued writers in the Chinese and Chinese-speaking world at the end of the twentieth century. She was able to enter the classics in the 1960s because of Professor Xia Zhiqing's questions, her personal experience of wandering overseas in the second half of her life, and her works in the 1990s to re-"attack the mainland" with overseas fame, which is enough to illustrate the influence on modern Chinese writers and literary history. Now Zhang Ailing's popularity even threatens Lu Xun, and her followers are "too numerous to be prepared." Many years ago, I once wrote about Zhang Ailing's overseas genealogy, the so-called Zhang Pai writers simply listed, there are dozens of people, both men and women eat, everyone wants to become Zhang Ailing.
However, the appearance of "Zhang Ailing" in Malaysia has produced quite different regional characteristics. Malaysian Chinese literature is a section that cannot be ignored by contemporary writers. The development of MCA literature has always been an outlier of Chinese language literature. Despite the various unfavorable factors in the objective environment, to this day, a situation of branches and leaves has also been formed. Whether settling in Malaysia or emigrating overseas, MCA writers delve into a variety of subjects and create unique styles that set them apart from other Chinese contexts– Taiwan, mainland China, Hong Kong, the American and Canadian Chinese communities, etc.
In such a broad category of MCA literature, Li Tianbao occupies a delicate position. Born in Kuala Lumpur in 1969, Lee began working at the age of seventeen. It has emerged as early as the 1990s, winning a series of important awards in the MCA literary community. At this time, Li Tianbao was only in his twenties, but his pen was sophisticated and meticulous, and it was full of ancient meaning. Like the "Chronicle of State Capital Characters", which describes the ukiyo-e style of Chinatown in Nanyang Prefecture (Kuala Lumpur) during the colonial period, it has attracted a lot of praise. Later, he intensified his efforts and was completely immersed in the antique world shaped by words. This world is beautiful and beautiful, with a faint decadent color, just look at the titles of some of his works, such as "Peach for Li Hong", "Peach Tattoo", "Ten Yan Memories of Tan Lang", "Qi Luo Xiang", "Begonia Spring", and "Cat Sitting on the Stool Beauty". Even his blog is called "Purple Cat Dream Peach Hundred Flowers Pavilion".
Most of the writers of Li Tianbao's generation were brave in innovation and remembered the historical situation of MCA; huang Jinshu and Lai Zishu were no different. Li Tianbao's writing deliberately avoids these current and personal themes. He turned to pile up Luo's sorrow and hatred, depicting the phantom of the song. "I don't write much about the present, but I breathe the air of the moment, and what emerges in front of me is the golden dust and golden shadow that has long been precipitated." - What is to be written, what has been written, is here for the time being for a memorandum. He seems to be an incurable "skeleton obsessive."
But I think it is precisely because Li Tianbao is so "incurable" that his view of writing makes us curious. With his red and green, the contemporary MCA creative landscape is even more intricate. But can Li Tianbao's narrative only make readers think of the humor of the past? Or did he intentionally or unintentionally reveal another extreme sign of MCA modernity?
Li Tianbao's classical world is actually not so classical. In terms of time and space, it is about kuala lumpur in the late 1960s, when he was born, and extends forward and backward for one or two decades. From the 1940s and 1950s to the 1970s and 1980s, this is actually the "modern" period in our minds. But in Li Tianbao's eyes, everything had an atmosphere of trance.
Li Tianbao's writing is delicate and complex, of course, let us think of Zhang Ailing. Over the years, he really can't get rid of the burden of "Nanyang Zhang Ailing". If the zhang cavity marks the jagged contrast of the imagery of the text, the ornate and desolate, Li's writing may be almost similar. But when we read it carefully, we find that Li Tianbao (and his characters) lack Zhang's vision and experience, and therefore Zhang's sharpness and vigilance. However, this may be li Tianbao's true color. He describes a kind of overstretched magnificence, but so desolate, as if to imply that Kuala Lumpur is no better than Shanghai or Hong Kong, far from the birthplace of "Legend", and even the most moving legend is not so legendary. His deliberate workmanship in writing reminds us of the gaps in style and content, time and context of his works. In this way, as a "Nanyang" Zhang Sect private lady, Li Tianbao has unconsciously revealed his discrete position.
We still remember that Zhang Ailing's world is full of Nanyang shadows: Fan Liuyuan was originally a descendant of overseas Chinese in Malaysia; Wang Jiaorui appeared to wear "the sand cage cloth pants that the Nanyang overseas Chinese often wear, the flowers printed on the sand cage cloth, the black pressure does not know whether it is a dragon snake or grass and trees, and the silk climbing vine, the orange green blooms in the Ugin." Nanyang to Zhang Ailing, not out of the conventional symbolic meaning: the beautiful south, the abyss of desire.
In contrast, Li Tianbao was born and grew up in Si, and obviously has different views. Despite his open-mindedness, the picture he presents is full of the smell of the city. Li Tianbao's works rarely appear on location, without the help of the jiaoyuan rainforest and the elephants of the great river, and his "local colors" are often only played in the depressed and dark interior. He completely restored Zhang Ailing's Nanyang imagination to the homes of ordinary people, and thought that the sound and color were in it. In the new work Qiluoxiang, Prequel to Male and Female Thieves writes about the love of market girls and small, Cats Sit on the Stool Beauty writes about the infatuation and unbearable end of the late twilight woman, and Double Female Love Song writes about the struggle of two ordinary women in their lives, which is not a remarkable theme. In such a situation, Li Tianbao insisted on restoring his ancients and worrying about his hometown; He conveys a special MCA style – a reincarnation, internal friction, and misplaced "character serialism".
In the final analysis, Li Tianbao is not like Zhang Ailing, but rather like the generational inheritance of those Mandarin Duck Butterfly Novels that influenced Zhang Ailing. "Jade Pear Soul", "Beauty Tears", "Hibiscus Rain", "Mirror of Wrongdoing", "History of Xuehong Tears"... Even up to "The Legend of the Flowers on the Sea". The authors of these novels tell the greed and resentment of slang men and women, the cause of laughter, and in addition to sentimentality, they inevitably have self-pity that hurts them. The so-called talent is downcast, and the beauty is dusted, which is the appetite of Li Tianbao. The opening sentence of the "Qiluo Xiang" is called "Qiluo Wind and Dust Fragrance and The Sound and Light of the Virgin": "All the dark rooms are Mingjuan, falling on the dust is not a strange flower, the background must always be a sinister river and lake to break out of a piece of sheng song and softness, almost the original willow lane herbs, even if vulgar, also with three points of infatuation." "Sincerely.
Zhang Ailing was taught in the Mandarin Butterfly tradition, but was "vulgar against the contemporary". Li Tianbao did not have such ambitions. He was immersed in the semi-new And not old Chinese social atmosphere in Kuala Lumpur, and it was difficult to extricate himself. He "but please indulge in the cave of lost time, filled with the song of the old and long gone; the warblers of the past, unable to find a place in time and space, can only dwell in the ears of the scab-addicted." With memory, with dreams, woven into a large peach and purple safety net, let us like the dream soul have something to rely on. ”
The question is, compared with the Mandarin Butterfly predecessors of the Late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, what kind of "life" did Li Tianbao have, which was enough to cause such a gorgeous and melancholy performance on his text? This leads us into the dialectical relationship between MCA literature and Chinese sexuality. The year of Li Tianbao's birth in 1969 is an important year in the socio-political history of MCA. Since Malaysia's independence, the contradictions between Chinese and Malays over political rights, economic interests and cultural inheritance have been difficult to resolve. All kinds of contradictions finally led to bloody clashes on May 13. The government has taken advantage of the situation to implement various Chinese exclusion policies. The first to bear the brunt is the issue of the inheritance of Chinese education in the Chinese community.
"May 13" thus became a lingering shadow in the future MCA literary imagination. However, reading Li Tianbao's novels, it is difficult for us to imagine what kind of earth-shaking changes have undergone in MCA society in the years he misses. In "Colorful Butterflies With Cats", a maid was born, and the elderly "mother sister" was married for a lifetime; The world is like a numb, but it also seems to be a thing outside the body:
The Korean War is too far away, Vietnam is at war, and it says it will spread to Thailand, the Middle East is going to war again, what countries are being fought, what people have died, and then Indonesia is again anti-Chinese... Singapore Malaya separated, she began to do the same thing, and then felt confused... After the great riot on May 13, 1969, she went to visit the old owner's house, and before it was dark, she knew that something was wrong, she closed the doors and windows for them, and the afterglow of the sun was purple and bright...
In contrast to the orthodox realist MCA literary tradition, Li Tianbao's writing represents another extreme. He is not concerned about ethnicity or racial righteousness, and is particularly respectful of any subject that flaunts the local colours and national character of MCA. As mentioned above, it is not so much that the narrative tradition he inherited is an overseas version of the May Fourth New Literature and Art, but rather that he smuggled the Mandarin Duck Butterfly Sect through the sign of the New Literature and Art. His ideology was conservative; it was too procrastinating, but it had an unexpectedly radical significance.
Li Tianbao's deep love for writing also reminds us of his predecessors Li Yongping and Zhang Guixing. Li Yongping carved square characters and reverie Shenzhou symbols, which were close to totem worship; Zhang Guixing piled up complicated and devious imagery, directly pounding the bottom line of pictograms and ideographic sounds, forming an alternative spectacle. Neither of them played their cards according to their cards, and their writing was experimental, so they embraced or reflected on Chineseness while deconstructing Chineseness. Huang Jinshu classified the two as modernists, not without reason. Both subvert the Myth of May Fourth Realism as a Symbol of Transparency by Descending and Viewing Modern Chinese.
Compared with Li Yongping or Zhang Guixing, Li Tianbao's writing is much more readable. This may be just the appearance. He quoted chapters and verses of classical poetry novels, ranking more than the popular culture of the mid-twentieth century (mostly from Taiwan and Hong Kong), and the network of allegories formed needed to be carefully deciphered by people with hearts. The Mandarin Duck Butterfly Sect he emulated is itself an ambiguous tradition that distinguishes between the old and the new, and is entangled in elegance and customs. In the final analysis, after Li Tianbao moved all these "Chinese" imaginary resources to the Malay Peninsula, even if he was sincere, he could not avoid the result of orange over huai. It is between these layers of time, space and context that Li Tianbao's narrative becomes obscure: Why did he write this way? Where did his characters come from? Where are you going? Whether or not Chinese sex is also a mystery that cannot be heard.
At the end of 1938, Uddhav came to Singapore and began the last seven years of his wanderings. The new literary figure wrote a large number of old-style poems, all of which exceeded the quality of his prose. Yu Dafu confessed in "The Monologue of the Skeleton Lover": "An incompetent person like me who is lazy and bored, and who often wants to complain, the most suitable temperament is the old poem." You get five words, or seven words, and you can make the complaint out, how simple. ”
From this point of view, Li Tianbao, we have to ask: Is he not also a "skeleton obsessive"? Wandering in the Nanyang Chinese community at the end of the century, time will appear in the past, even if it has just begun. But Li Tianbao was not Yu Dafu after all. Yu had already vigorously changed his life and fallen in love before he came to the south, and the old Chinese poetry he had picked up was a kind of deep-rooted upbringing, a mark related to the verification of Chinese sexuality. Li Tianbao was also late in his life, in fact, he missed the last era of old style poetry. All he was familiar with was pop songs, and they were outdated pop songs, "authentic period songs, but inheriting the legacy of poetry". "Spring Colors in the Garden", "Clear Stream Reflects the Bright Moon", "Once the Sea was Shipwrecked as Water": "The once dull and silent era song was thrown into the cave of light, and after the next month, it was sung leisurely in the heart of a boy. (Time Song)
As mentioned above, I explore the politics of events and memory in contemporary literature from the perspective of "post-remnant writing". As a mourner of the deceased political culture, the remnant points to a "political subject that is out of touch with time, and his meaning is precisely anchored on the crumbling edge of its legitimacy, that is, subjectivity." If the consciousness of the remnants has always hinted at the misplaced disappearance of time and space, and the orthodox replacement is reversed, the later remnants will become more intense, preferring to misplace the time and space that has been misplaced, and even more to remember the orthodoxy that may never be orthodox."
Looking at Li Tianbao in this definition, I think he is a special case of MCA in the echelon of contemporary post-remnants. Abandoning the dependence of the home country or orthodoxy, his writing is glamorous and unique, and even if there is any feeling of worrying about the country, it has become an excuse for the soul to be eclipsed. He managed written symbols, carved the psychology of the characters, had a broom-and-cherishing style of "purity and resoluteness", and also produced an unexpected "slight but solemn commotion, serious and unnamed struggle". "Zhang Guan Li Dai", so there is a new solution. And we can't help but feel the ghost qi in the fragrance of Qi Luo, the emptiness in the splendid article.
Li Tianbao was a late-day Mandarin Duck Butterfly writer at the end of the twentieth century, and he was exiled to the south of the south. Looking back from his conscious position, we understand that the Mandarin Duck Butterfly School could also have been a kind of "discrete" literature. After the great tradition has been stripped away and time has been scattered, the Mandarin Butterfly literati have traced the past with a variety of sorrows. The wind and snow have become a rhetorical performance of rehearsal and transfer of the sense of life, and over time, it has become a "habit". In this way, in Nanyang, in the singing of Yao Li and Xia Houlan, in the figures of Lin Dai, Leti, and Youmin, Li Tianbao murmured to himself about his own will, his "Tianbao" legacy. This is probably Li Tianbao's unexpected contribution to the currents of modern Chinese/Chinese literature.
This article was originally published in the "Yangtze River Review" No. 3, 2013, according to the author's speech at the 2011 Fudan University Guanghua Lecture, the original title was "Literary Geography and National Imagination: Lu Xun of Taiwan, Zhang Ailing of Nanyang", space limitations, some editing and deletion, welcome to share, media reprint, please contact the copyright owner.
