Liu Xiaobo: Ph.D., his research interests are art theory and criticism, and contemporary Chinese literature. He has published papers in journals such as Contemporary Literature, Novel Review, and Yangtze River Review.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > Urban Literature: Writing Traditions and Research Paradigms</h1>
Text/Liu Xiaobo
introduction
With the continuous acceleration of the urbanization process, the role and status of the city in social life continue to become prominent, and the artistic expression of the city is becoming more and more common, and urban literature is one of them. Urban literature has gradually become a topic that has been discussed by many parties, and has gradually become a mature literary term, academic term and literary history concept. However, to conduct a systematic study of urban literature, it is first necessary to examine its tradition as a literary category and construct its research paradigm. In general, in a country as early as China, which was relatively urbanized and has recently accelerated suddenly, urban literary writing has hardly yet formed its own tradition. From a research perspective, the same is true. The context of the era of literary development has been different from the past, and at present and for a long time in the future, the division between urban literature and vernacular literature is not only a distinction between themes, but also a change of the main tide of literature of the times. The writing of urban literature needs to establish its own traditions, and the study of urban literature also needs to establish its own paradigm.
Urban literature in both the narrow and broad senses
"By changing the definition of the object of study, we change what we see." a The conceptual definition of urban literature is directly related to its cognition. Strictly speaking, urban literature has a narrow and broad sense. Urban literature in the narrow sense is often equated with urban writing, fashion writing and other categories, which is a typical type of writing, and sometimes even slides into popular writing, beyond the scope of pure literary discussion. These writings focus on the lights and greenery of the metropolis, petty bourgeoisie, lust and materialism, etc. The most obvious is Guo Jingming's "Little Times", the whole novel is shrouded in the lights and wine of Shanghai; the "beautiful writing" hyped by the media, such as Wei Hui's "Shanghai Baby", Mian Mian's "Hong Kong Lover", etc., as well as Murong Xuecun's "Chengdu, Please Forget Me Tonight" and other urban emotional novels, which tell the confusion and struggle between career, emotion and marriage of Chengdu youth. Some urban writing in recent years has continued this tradition. This narrow sense of urban literature is over-topical, as Xu Chenliang said, the field of "urban literature" has long been occupied by various issues. b
In a sense, this narrow sense of urban literature has not brought much value to the literary world. Meng Fanhua once pointed out with concern: "A single theme of urban life will also make us call for the diversity and diversity that we love incomparably, and the difficult struggle will be easily abandoned in another form." Through this quotation, we can appreciate the limitations of urban literature and the hidden dangers it faces, both thematic and technical, which hinder the healthy development of urban literature. Therefore, urban literature needs to open its own boundaries and cannot ignore those that are less typical urban literature.
Urban literature in a slightly broader sense revolves around the center of highlighting the characteristics of the city to different levels, including outlining the urban style, writing the impression of the city, expressing the urban life form different from the countryside, describing the individual urban experience and portraying various types of citizen images. Qiu Huadong's urbanist series of novels is the most representative, which both criticizes the metropolis and exudes a fascination. Other writings about metropolises, such as Zhang Xin's Guangzhou writing, Chi Li's Wuhan writing, Deng Yiguang's Shenzhen writing, Wang Anyi's Shanghai writing, Xu Zechen's Beijing writing, etc., are typical representatives of urban literature. These writings touch on many aspects of urban life.
Taking Shanghai writing as an example, from Han Bangqing's "Biography of Flowers on the Sea" on the eve of the birth of vernacular literature, to Ye Lingfeng since the birth of vernacular literature, to Mu Shiying and Liu Naou, representatives of Haipai literature, and then Zhang Ailing, until Sun Hao, Wang Anyi, Jin Yucheng, etc. in the new era, generations of writers have depicted a colorful Shanghai. Jin Yucheng's "Blossoms" is typical, "Blossoms" is a Shanghainese novel in terms of language, and the writer also writes the detritus of The Well of Shanghai. Sun Yong's "The Peak of The Ethereal Peak" inherits the Literature of the Shanghai School and also writes the Style of Shanghai. Among the younger writers, Tang Ying is another representative of Shanghai writing. In Tang Ying's novels, Shanghai scenes such as Lane Hall, The Bund, Ah Fei Street, and Park97 Bar continue to appear. In particular, it is worth mentioning that Tang Ying's Shanghai writing is also shown in the comparison between China and the West, and many novels travel between Shanghai and foreign metropolises, looking at Shanghai through extraterritorial perspectives, such as "The Wife from the United States", "Another City", "Dinner on the Upper East Side", and "Studying with Children", in which a scene of "A Tale of Two Cities" was staged. Teng Xiaolan's "New Home" starts with the housing problem, writing about the dilemma of urban people, everyone is anxious for the house, and the author writes a state of uneasiness of urban people. Cai Jun's "Spring Night" also uses suspenseful brushwork to string together the history of Shanghai for a hundred years.
Beijing is another focal point of urban writing. Xu Kun's "Rhapsody in August" writes about the cityscape of Beijing before the Olympic Games. Diane's "Jingheng Street" freezes the story in the capital and writes the "entrepreneurial history" of the younger generation. Xu Zechen's "Wang Cheng Ru Hai" writes about the "New Beijing" in the eyes of all classes, writing about the people hiding in this city; his "Collection of Stories of the Western Suburbs of Beijing" is titled beijing and describes the life situation of a group of young people from Huajie. Shi Yifeng's "Roses Blooming in a Wheat Shop" also depicts the story of a country girl wandering to the city. Miao Wei's "Smoke and Chocolate and Sad Stories" writes about the real confusion and emotional dilemma of a group of Beijing Wenqing. The focus of these urban works is not the same. Zhang Xin's "Ultimate Bottom Card", "Not in the Plum Side in the Willow Side", "Ten Million and Spring Residence" and other Guangzhou writings, Deng Yiguang's "Shenzhen Blue", "Shenzhen Details" and other Shenzhen writings are also written.
All of the above belong to urban literature in a broader sense, including the relationship between urban and rural areas, the urban bottom and other aspects of writing. This kind of urban writing is not only concerned with urban people, but also with urban outsiders, people who live like ants at the bottom of the city. Some commentators have pointed out that the core of urban literature is to write a kind of "melancholy" d. In fact, this melancholy is not a literal melancholy, but points to a deep concern for reality.
In the author's view, the category of urban literature should not be overly limited, but should adopt a broader field of discussion, that is, urban literature in a broad sense. Literary phenomena such as "peasants entering the city", "migrant poetry", and "low-level literature" are all things that urban literature research should pay attention to. Cao Zhenglu's "There", Chen Yingsong's "Taiping Dog", Chen Cang's "Peasants Entering the City" series, etc., which emerged in these writing ideas, all wrote about the city from different aspects. There are also a large number of small town literature and county town literature, which can be regarded as "pre-city texts". It should be noted that the generalization of urban literature is not to blur the boundaries between urban literature and vernacular literature, but to consider the following aspects. First of all, there is an era of literature in an era, and in the development of New Chinese Literature in the past hundred years, vernacular literature has always been the mainstream, but with the acceleration of the process of urbanization, urban literature has become the next mainstream trend. More and more writers live in the city, local memories gradually disappear, the older generation of writers use their memories to remember and write, and the younger writers have no memory. Especially in emerging literary styles such as online literature, local themes rarely appear. Therefore, generalizing it is a manifestation of a literary development trend. Secondly, the distinction between vernacular literature and urban literature is a concept born in the vision of modernity, although it can be distinguished from the identity of the writer, the story scene written, and the connotation behind the text (whether it is a reflection on modernity, or a simple "thing" writing), but in many writers and theorists, it is not very realistic to make a clear distinction. Theoretical research should pay some attention to this and discuss the generalized status quo of this formulation from a deeper and broader level.
Second, the three forms of urban literature in a broad sense
From a broad point of view, urban literary writing currently presents three kinds of patterns. The first type of writers who enter the city from the countryside, whose identity is changed from peasants to citizens, and the main stories written are also the mixture of city and countryside; the second type is the writing of the urban-rural junction, which can be described as "small city writing", mainly small town literature and county town literature; the third type is pure urban writing, which is called "urban literature". The coexistence of the three urban literary forms points to the broad concept of urban literature, and such writing actually has its own internal relationship and literary tradition.
In the writing of the first type of writer, the memory of the countryside cannot be separated. When writers write about the city, they often associate the city with the countryside, which is more obvious in the older generation of writers. Under the huge difference between urban and rural areas, writers think deeply. Through the depiction of the process of urbanization and the disappearance of the countryside, it is deeply reflected. Yan Lianke's later works are different from the early vernacular writing, and the urban perspective has become more involved, and this transformation still has not left the track of the underlying concern. Liu Zhenyun's "Children of the Eating Melon Age" is a more typical work, the novel revolves around four characters, one is a rural girl, three are urban leaders, and four seemingly unrelated characters are connected. The ruin and backwardness of the countryside is a matter of great concern to these writers, but the theme is the continuation of the poor root writing of the peasants. Li Peifu's "Plains Guest" writes the story of provincial leaders, almost all of which occur in the city, but the root of all tragedies is the countryside, which cannot be truly integrated into the metropolis, and the preservation of rural consciousness further makes the thinking about the relationship between urban and rural areas go further. These writings of urban life have never been able to get rid of the countryside and the countryside.
Most of the older generation of writers came from the countryside, because they went to school and joined the army and entered the city, but they could not fundamentally get rid of the countryside. They have an extremely contradictory mentality, on the one hand they feel compassion and sympathy for the backwardness of the countryside, and pay attention to those who are still suffering there; on the other hand, they are disappointed in the bad habits of the countryside, and they spare no effort to criticize them in many cases. There is also a category of writers who have had local experiences and are often associated with the countryside when writing about the city. For example, Wang Anyi, she has always used the great Shanghai as the object of writing, but she is not only depicting the tall buildings and lights of the magic capital, but peeking into the complexity of human nature from the subtleties. Her Fu Ping has a large number of depictions of the countryside, and many other novels also write about the process of urbanization. There are also some writers who remain optimistic about the countryside, often confused by superficial and individual phenomena, which can be described as the optimist of vernacular writing. They have been away from their hometown for too long, and their new understanding of the countryside and the countryside often comes from the style of collecting, investigating, traveling, visiting relatives, etc., and they cannot deeply understand the real side of the countryside, so many texts are idyllic scenes. When these works involve urban writing, they are often optimistic, and even the peasants' way to the city is extremely smooth.
The second type is the writing of the urban-rural interface, which is actually a continuation of the first type of writing, but it points to more complex and diverse. Because of the acceleration of the wave of urbanization, the development of many villages and cities has shown a chaotic situation, and there have been unmanaged "enclaves" in the urban-rural junction, and the events that have arisen are more typical, such as "small-town youth" becoming a typical figure. Almost all of Lu Nei's works have this characteristic, "Mercy", "Man in the Clouds", and "Follow Her Journey" are all small-town youths who focus on the urban-rural junction. The novels included in "Seventeen-Year-Old Hussars" are all campus stories that take place at the Chemical Technical School, depicting a group of young people with no names but only nicknames and the "wind-like enigmatic girls" they yearn for, just like the other novels, this is a group of sunshine teenagers, but Lu Nei writes their other side, showing an alternative cruel youth narrative. From his first novel, "Young Babylon", Lu Nei began to write a period of failed adolescent love and besieged youth, and the tone of the story has been fixed in the previous batch of short stories. In addition to the technical school, Lu Nei also wrote about factory life, from the campus to the factory, still young people. A B's "Wake Me Up at Nine in the Morning" is also written in the town. Through the narration of a hasty and perfunctory funeral, the novel retraces the experience of how Ai Hongyang used his physical strength and deception to grow into a stormy figure with a face in the town, thus making a picture-scrolled description of the characters who gradually disappeared in the countryside and its space, and the novel digs deeper into the urban and rural living space. Others include Yan Ge's "Our Home", which sets the story in the suburbs of the metropolis, and most of Ban Yu's writing background is the Tiexi Industrial Zone.
He Ping scholars put forward the concept of "county town", and "county town" actually belongs to the writing of the urban-rural interface. Because the county seat is the most important link between the countryside and the metropolis. The "county seat" (which may also include the suburbs and smaller cities larger than the county seat) as a literary space, a literary "place", is neither vernacular nor urban writing. The study of modern Chinese literature focuses more on the two poles of the city and the countryside, in addition to these two poles may also lurk a third literary tradition lineage. In fact, from another point of view, the county town is both a township and a city, a small town with an expanded area, and the stories that occur in the county town cover a wider range of literary values.
The third category is the writing of pure cities. This includes both urban writing and all-round attention to urban life, such as the aforementioned Guangzhou writing, Shenzhen writing, Shanghai writing, Beijing writing, etc. What needs to be discussed here is the continuation of urban literature in the future. There is no doubt that the main force of future literature will be those who have been in the city since birth, which can be described as the writing of "pure city". There seems to be some hidden worries in this kind of writing, and some clues can be seen from the current youth writing. Although a few young writers born in the metropolis have written some atypical urban texts (such as the post-90s writer Wang Zhanhei's "Street Jianghu", "Empty Cannon", "Xiaohuadan" and other writings about Shanghai), from the perspective of most creative practices, the reality is not optimistic.
Among younger writers, the trend toward urbanization is more pronounced. But their works are almost a reproduction of the daily life of the student era, and the core elements are nothing more than early love, the struggle between "school bullies" and "scum", the current situation after graduation, etc. These writings often lack broad vision, the stories and themes are extremely repetitive and monotonous, and the intergenerational conflicts they experience, campus life, and first love experiences are repeatedly written.
The countryside offers not only a life, but also a literary experience and tradition. Young writers have little vernacular experience, which can easily lead to their writing sliding into a "rootless" state, that is, the textual expression floats on the surface and goes to a single. Some of the works are deliberately technical, the story is thin, there is no cleverness, and the language is extremely carved, but it is more pretentious. The single repetition of the story makes these works monotonous and empty without depth.
If we compare the writing of these young people with the early writing of famous writers in the current literary world, we will obviously feel the gap between the two. One of the more important factors is the lack of local experience and local literary experience. Although the older generation of famous writers now live in big cities, they either grew up in the countryside, had the experience of local life, or have been in the queue of young people, experienced the local life, or personally experienced the wave of urbanization, and have a sense of skin, so most of their writings have a rural background, even if they are urban writing, there are local characters, backgrounds, backgrounds or a reflective perspective. Young writers rarely have these experiences, and such creations are naturally impossible to talk about. Therefore, the life experience and literary experience tradition of the ancestors have become a nourishment to be drawn. When everyone is talking about urban writing and urban literature without establishing their own traditions, it is necessary to find experience in the writing that has formed traditions.
3. Urban literature
How do you structure your writing tradition?
One of the important reasons why the current development of urban literature is not satisfactory is that urban literature lacks creative traditions in the development of Chinese literature. This tradition is both internal and external.
The external tradition is mainly a reference to foreign literary resources. As far as the process of urbanization is concerned, the West actually predates China, and writing the urban literature of the West and Asian countries such as Japan has long had a very important experience. For example, Modiano's Paris has its own unique style; Dickens's London also has a unique style; Joyce's Dublin, Dostoevsky's Petersburg, Kafka's Vienna, Milan Kundera's Prague, etc., have also constructed a unique urban form. However, when Chinese writers learn from foreign countries, they often fall into the quagmire of practicality and instrumentalization, learn some fur in a vacuum, and then produce some textual "freaks", many things come and go quickly, and do not produce absolute effects. Of course, the relationship between Chinese literature and foreign resources is a more systematic issue, and it will not be explored here.
China's own literary tradition is an issue that requires special attention. China's thousands of years of classical literature are almost all the products of agricultural civilization, and even vernacular literature is mostly presented in the form of local literature. Vernacular literature is deeply entrenched in China, making it impossible to exploit the riches of urban literature. "Vernacular literature has a relatively solid and profound tradition in China, and many writers represented by Lu Xun, Shen Congwen, Zhao Shuli, etc., have contributed unique models to vernacular literature and provided a paradigm of artistic expression that can be used as references for later writers." However, urban literature has not formed an orderly inheritance of large-scale texts and creations in the history of new Chinese literature in the past century, resulting in writers lacking the necessary innate preparation for urban writing, and also lacking a paradigm that can be used as reference and reference. Coupled with the rapid development of the current urban development, it is too difficult to accurately grasp and present it in three dimensions, and the writers or the city experience is not rich enough, or the aesthetic interest is not here, so although the real life of the city is a rich mine of literature, how to excavate it has become a problem. Because of the long tradition of vernacular literature, urban literature, as He Shaojun said, "there is a lack of thoughtful and powerful works... Haven't established its own tradition yet" g. Meng Fanhua also pointed out that as far as the contemporary Chinese novel-writing tradition is concerned, the most experienced and accomplished novels should be novels with rural themes and folk customs. h urban writing, in fact, can not forget the countryside, many works nowadays write about the city just stare at the city, urban life is the whole of the work, which is actually a misunderstanding of the connotation that urban literature should have. Urban texts in the broad sense have different writing paths, so urban literature should not narrow its scope too narrowly.
The healthy and sustainable development of urban literature cannot only stay on a few single texts, but also needs to be classicized and historicized by the trend of writing. In short, the construction of literary traditions is crucial. As an agricultural country, urbanization is still a process of "on the road", in plain words, Chinese pushed up generations, are farmers, so the introduction of local perspectives can better observe urban literature. From the background of the times, China's urbanization process is "super-speeding" development, this development model may have a breakthrough in the economy, but the development of culture may not be able to keep up with such a pace. The tradition of urban literature did not take shape in such a rapid development.
If we go deeper into the topic, we need to further reflect, is China's urbanization process complete? Has the countryside disappeared? Are farmers no longer there? It is not just that there is a need for words describing local or rural scenes, characters, and events to appear in the work, but also that there is such a consciousness in the creative thinking of the writer? Neither the city nor urban literature can simply be separated from the countryside. Vernacular literature is crucial to urban literature, and only by dealing with vernacular themes can urban literature be written well. Excellent urban literature is the accumulation of local writing. On the one hand, local writers write about cities, because of references, they behave more maturely. Ge Fei and Jia Pingwo are both leaders in vernacular writing, and they also have high achievements in urban literature. Jia Pingwa, a writer who has been writing about the countryside, because of the blessing of local experience, it is very easy to write "Temporary Sitting" with urban themes. Ge Fei's writing, whether it is the countryside or the city, is very wonderful, and it is very convenient to wander between the city and the countryside, which is extremely beneficial to local writing and urban writing, and "Looking at the Spring Breeze" and "Invisibility Cloak" have become models in their respective fields. On the other hand, many writers who have no local memory tend to slide into frivolity, can only go to the sky, can not enter the ground.
Urban writing requires writers to use words to depict different urban landscapes. China's urban construction is almost all demolition and construction, and rarely preserves its own characteristics. In the end, whether it is architecture or humanistic customs, the city is the same. Literature may reveal a different side of the city. In China, many writers' urban writing is also trying to construct a personal style, and Jiang Lan's "Chengdu Notes" series is a relatively successful attempt. Chi Zijian's "Long Roll fireworks" is a concentrated presentation of his writing on the city of Harbin over the years, and the writer's breakthrough lies in exploring the "spiritual world" of the city.
All in all, if you can't cherish this subject and write aimlessly, you will end up writing about the "invisible city". The writing of China's current urban literature is inseparable from the local literature formed by traditional literature for thousands of years and new literature for a hundred years, and it is necessary to return to the local tradition to absorb nutrients. Not without extremes, writers who deal with the countryside are more comfortable writing about the city. Of course, urban literature can not only stay in the experience of vernacular literature, after all, urban literature has the particularity of its subject matter, but the new tradition is not born out of thin air, but innovates in inheritance. Combined with the general trend of literature in the future, the tradition of urban literature needs to create its own tradition and establish its own paradigm on the basis of integrating literary tradition.
epilogue
In recent years, many publications have launched urban literature albums, and in addition to publishing original works, there are also many research articles. These articles have made a more in-depth exposition of the historical origins, current situation, and future trends of urban literature. However, there are still some studies that have not formed their own unique research paths. Perhaps the study of urban literature needs a good perspective, such as the duality between the countryside and the city, the mixture of the countryside and the city; a good theoretical reference, such as landscape society and space theory; a good way of interpretation and a new way of interpretation, such as Xu Chenliang's interpretation of Wang Zhanhei's novel, Chen Peihao's interpretation of the connection between "Long Rolling Fireworks" and the city of Harbin. Urban literature is a branch of literary writing, and cannot produce a research paradigm beyond literature out of thin air, so it is necessary to find a theoretical paradigm and interpretation framework that is more suitable for urban literature in the existing theoretical framework, so as to take this as a breakthrough and gradually establish a unique research paradigm and theoretical system. One of the most crucial points is to clarify what urban literature is. At present, the writing and discussion of urban literature is still limited to the narrowest category of urban literature, and it is necessary to jump out of the trap of genre writing, incorporate those works with deep practical concerns, and derive more themes and expand their discourse on the inherent tone of modernity criticism, urbanization reflection, and local retrospection. With the change of the context of the times, the distinction between urban literature and vernacular literature is not only a distinction of subject matter, but a matter of literary development trend and form. Only by breaking the inherent topical framework of urban literature, opening its boundaries, and observing the local literary tradition can we truly understand what cities and urban literature mean in rural China, and what they mean in china in the future.
exegesis:
Wallace Martin, Contemporary Narratology, translated by Xiaoming Wu, Chinese University Press, 2018, p. 1.
b Xu Chenliang, "Opening the City in the Folds: Observations on Youth Writing at present", Youth Literature, No. 4, 2020.
c Meng Fanhua, "Reading Notes on Novels", Theory and Creation, No. 3, 2001.
d Liu Shiyu, "2019 Novels: Turbulent History, Upheaval Realities," Selected Novels, No. 2, 2020.
e He Ping, "Twelve Fragments on The County Town and Literature", Flower City, No. 3, 2020.
f Han Chuanxi, "Urban Literature: Writing the Spirit of the City," People's Daily Overseas Edition, October 22, 2020.
He Shaojun, "The Sociality, Urbanization and Literary Community of The Region", New Space for Contemporary Literature, China Social Science Press, 2017.
h Meng Fanhua, "Reading Notes on Novels", Theory and Creation, No. 3, 2001.
Originally published in Youth Literature, No. 2, 2021 "Voice"
Editor-in-charge: Zhang Jing, Li Lu