A New Literary History of Modern China 9780674967915, 0674967917

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A NEW LITERARY HISTORY OF MODERN CHINA

Editorial Board KirK A. Denton Michel hocKx theoDore huters cArlos rojAs xiAofei tiAn jing tsu BAn WAng Michelle Yeh with jingling chen KYle shernuK DYlAn suher

A NEW LITERARY HISTORY OF

Modern China Edited by DAVID DER- WEI WANG

the belknap press of harvard university press cambridge, massachusetts · london, england · 2017

Copyright © 2017 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of Amer­i­ca First printing Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data Names: Wang, Dewei, editor. Title: A new literary history of modern China / edited by David Der-­wei Wang. Description: Cambridge, Mas­sa­chu­setts : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016046104 | ISBN 9780674967915 (alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Chinese lit­er­a­ture—­History and criticism. | Lit­er­a­ture and Society— China—­History. Classification: LCC PL2258 .N49 2017 | DDC 895.109—­dc23 LC rec­ord available at https://­lccn​.­loc​.­gov​/­2016046104 Jacket image: Liu Guosong, “Misty Mountains Afar,” 1969, ink and color on paper © Sotheby’s  Hong Kong, Ltd. Jacket design: Sam Potts

CONTENTS

xxiii Acknowl­edgments 1 Introduction: Worlding Literary China david der-­w ei wang 1635; 1 9 3 2 , 1 9 3 4

29 The Multiple Beginnings of Modern Chinese “Lit­er­a­ture” sher-­shiueh li 1650, JULY  2 2

35 Dutch Plays, Chinese Novels, and Images of an Open World paize keulemans 1755

46 The Revival of Letters in Nineteenth-­Century China theodore huters 1792

51 Legacies in Clash: Anticipatory Modernity versus Imaginary Nostalgia andrew schonebaum 1807, S E P T E M B E R  6

56 Robert Morrison’s Chinese Lit­er­a­ture and Translated Modernity john t. p. lai 1810

62 Gongyang Imaginary and Looking to the Confucian Past for Reform benjamin a. elman

v

vi Contents 1820

69 Flowers in the Mirror and Chinese ­Women: “At Home in the World” carlos rojas 1820 , B E IJING

74 Utter Disillusion and Acts of Repentance in Late Classical Poetry stephen owen 1843 , T HE S E COND HA L F O F JUNE

79 In Search of a Chinese Utopia: The Taiping Rebellion as a Literary Event huan jin 1847 , JANUA RY  4

85 My Life in China and Amer­i­ca and Transpacific Translations chih-­m ing wang 1852 , 1 8 8 5

91 Two Chinese Poets Are Homeless at Home xiaofei tian 1853

97 Foreign Dev­ils, Chinese Sorcerers, and the Politics of Literary Anachronism david der-­w ei wang 1861

103 ­Women Writers in Early Modern China ellen widmer 1862 , OC TOB E R  1 1

108 Wang Tao Lands in Hong Kong emma j. teng 1872 , OC TOB E R  1 4

114 Media, Lit­er­a­ture, and Early Chinese Modernity rudolf g. wagner

Contents vii 1873, JUNE  2 9

119 The Politics of Translation and the Romanization of Chinese into a World Language uganda sze pui kwan 1884, M AY  8

125 In Lithographic Journals, Text and Image Flourish on the Same Page xia xiaohong and chen pingyuan Translated by Michael Gibbs Hill 1890, FA L L

133 Lives of Shanghai Flowers, Dialect Fiction, and the Genesis of Vernacular Modernity alexander des forges 1895, M AY  2 5

139 The “New Novel” before the Rise of the New Novel patrick dewes hanan 1896, A P R IL  1 7

144 Qiu Fengjia and the Poetics of Tears chien-­h sin tsai 1897

151 Language Reform and Its Discontents theodore huters 1899

156 Oracle Bones, That Dangerous Supplement . .. andrea bachner 1900, F E B R UARY  1 0

161 Liang Qichao’s Suspended Translation and the ­Future of Chinese New Fiction satoru hashimoto 1900, S UM M E R A ND FA L L

167 Fallen Leaves, Grieving Cicadas, and Poetic Mourning ­after the Boxer Rebellion shengqing wu

viii Contents 1901

173 Eliza Crosses the Ice—­and an Ocean—­and ­Uncle Tom’s Cabin Arrives in China michael gibbs hill 1903 , S E P T E M B E R

178 Sherlock Holmes Comes to China wei yan 1904 , AUGUS T  1 9

184 Imagining Modern Utopia by Rethinking Ancient Historiography n. göran d. malmqvist 1905 , JANUA RY  6

190 Wen and the “First History(-­ies) of Chinese Lit­er­a­ture” kwok kou leonard chan 1905

196 Münchhausen Travels to China géraldine fiss 1906 , JULY  1 5

202 Zhang Taiyan and the Revolutionary Politics of Literary Restoration tsuyoshi ishii 1907 , JUNE  1

208 Global Theatrical Spectacle in Tokyo and Shanghai natascha gentz 1907 , JULY  1 5

214 The Death of China’s First Feminist hu ying 1908 , F E B R UA RY; 1 9 0 8 , NOV E M BER

219 From Mara to Nobel david der-­w ei wang 1909 , NOVE M B E R  1 3

225 A Classical Poetry Society through Revolutionary Times shengqing wu

Contents ix 1911, A P R IL  2 4 ; 1 9 1 1

231 Revolution and Love haiyan lee 1913; 2 0 1 1 , M AY

237 The Book of Datong as a Novel of Utopia kai-­c heung dung · Translated by Victor Or 1916, AUGUS T  2 3 , NE W YOR K C ITY

242 Hu Shi and His Experiments susan chan egan 1916, S E P T E M B E R  1

248 Inventing Youth in Modern China mingwei song 1918, A P R IL  2

254 Zhou Yucai Writes “A Madman’s Diary” ­under the Pen Name Lu Xun ha jin 1918, S UM M E R

260 Modern Monkhood ying lei 1919, M AY  4

265 The Big Misnomer: “May Fourth Lit­er­a­ture” michel hockx 1921, NOV E M B E R  3 0

271 Clinical Diagnosis for Taiwan pei-­yin lin 1922, M AR C H

277 Turning Babbitt into Bai Bide tze-ki hon 1922, S P R ING

282 Xiang Kairan’s Monkey john christopher hamm

x Contents 1922 , DE CE M B E R  2

289 New Culture and the Pedagogy of Writing charles a. laughlin 1924 , AP R IL  1 2

295 Xu Zhimo and Chinese Romanticism michelle yeh 1924 , M AY  3 0

301 Enchantment with the Voice chen pingyuan · Translated by Andy Rodekohr 1925 , JUNE  1 7

306 Lu Xun and Tombstones wang hui · Translated by Michael Gibbs Hill 1925 , NOVE M B E R  9

311 Mei Lanfang, the Denishawn Dancers, and World Theater catherine vance yeh 1927 , JUNE  2 ; 1 9 6 9 , O CTO B E R  7

319 “This Spirit of In­de­pen­dence and Freedom of Thought . .. Will Last for Eternity with Heaven and Earth” wai-­y ee li 1927 , JUNE  4

325 The Legend of a Modern ­Woman Writer of Classical Verse grace s. fong 1927 , AUGUS T  2 3

331 Ba Jin Begins to Write Anarchist Novels mingwei song 1928 , JANUA RY  1 6

337 Revolution and Rhine Wine pu wang 1928

343 Genealogies of Romantic Disease andrew schonebaum

Contents xi 1929, S E P T E M B E R

348 Gender, Commercialism, and the Literary Market amy dooling 1929

354 The Author as Celebrity eileen cheng-­y in chow 1930, O CTO B E R

360 Practical Criticism in China q. s. tong 1930, O CTO B E R  2 7

365 Invitation to a Beheading david der-­w ei wang 1931, F E B R UARY  7

371 The Chinese League of Left-­Wing Writers, 1930–1936 lawrence wang-­chi wong 1932

376 Hei Ying’s “Pagan Love Song” andrew f. jones 1934, JA NUARY  1 ; 1 9 8 6 , M AR C H  20

382 Roots of Peace and War, Beauty and Decay, Are Sought in China’s Good Earth jeffrey c. kinkley 1934, O CTO B E R – 1 9 3 6 , O CTO B E R

388 Recollections of ­Women Soldiers on the Long March helen praeger young 1935, M AR C H 8

394 On Language, Lit­er­a­ture, and the ­Silent Screen kristine harris 1935, JUNE  1 8

400 The Execution of Qu Qiubai andy rodekohr

xii Contents 1935 , JULY  2 8 AND AUGUS T  1

406 The Child and the ­Future of China in the Legend of Sanmao lanjun xu 1935 , DE CE M B E R  2 1

414 Crossing the River and Ding County Experimental Theater man he 1936 , M AY  2 1

420 One Day in China charles a. laughlin 1936 , OC TOB E R

426 Resonances of a Visual Image in the Early Twentieth ­Century xiaobing tang 1936 , OC TOB E R  1 9

432 Lu Xun and the Afterlife of Texts eileen j. cheng 1937 , F E B R UA RY  2

437 Cao Yu and His Drama li ruru and david jiang 1937 , S P R ING

443 A Chinese Poet’s War­time Dream john a. crespi 1937 , NOVE M B E R  1 8 ; 1 9 3 8 , F E BRUA RY 28

449 William Empson, W. H. Auden, and Modernist Poetry in War­time China q. s. tong 1939 , OC TOB E R  1 5

456 The Lost Novel of the Nanjing Massacre michael berry 1940 , S E P T E M B E R  3

462 The Poetics and Politics of Neo-­Sensationism peng hsiao-­y en

Contents xiii 1940, DE C E M B E R  1 9

467 Between Chineseness and Modernity: The Film Art of Fei Mu wong ain-­ling 1940– 1 9 4 2

473 Chinese Revolution and Western Lit­er­a­ture ban wang 1941, DE C E M B E R  2 5

478 Eileen Chang in Hong Kong leo ou-­fan lee 1942, JA NUARY  2 2 ; 2 0 1 4 , FA L L

484 In War She Writes katherine hui-­ling chou 1942, M AR C H 1 6

489 Taiwan’s Genius Lü Heruo faye yuan kleeman 1942, M AY  2 –­M AY  2 3

495 The Cultural and Po­liti­cal Significance of Mao Zedong’s Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Lit­er­a­ture and Art qian liqun · Translated by Dylan Suher 1943, A P R IL

500 The Genesis of Peasant Revolutionary Lit­er­a­ture hui jiang 1944, NOV E M B E R  1 4

506 The North Has Mei Niang norman smith 1945, AUGUS T  1

512 Ideologies of Sound in Chinese Modernist Poetry nick admussen 1945, AUGUS T  2 9

517 The Enigma of Yu Dafu and Nanyang Lit­er­a­ture e. k. tan

xiv Contents 1946 , JULY  1 5

522 On Lit­er­a­ture and Collaboration susan daruvala 1947 , F E B R UA RY  2 8

528 On Memory and Trauma: From the 228 Incident to the White Terror kang-­i sun chang 1947

533 The Socratic Tradition in Modern China jingling chen 1948 , OC TOB E R ; 2 0 1 4 , F E B R UARY

539 The Life of a Chinese Lit­er­a­ture Textbook joseph r. allen 1949 , M A R CH 2 8

544 Shen Congwen’s Journey: From Asylum to Museum xiaojue wang 1949 , 1 9 5 8

550 A New Time Consciousness: The ­Great Leap Forward har ye kan 1951 , S E P T E M B E R ; 1 9 5 2 , S E P T EM BER

556 The Genesis of Literary History in New China yingjin zhang 1952 , M A R CH 1 8

562 Transnational Socialist Lit­er­a­ture in China nicolai volland 1952 , JULY

568 A Provocation to Literary History shuang shen 1952 , OC TOB E R  1 4

573 Salvaging Chinese Script and Designing the Mingkwai Typewriter jing tsu

Contents xv L ATE 1 9 5 3

580 Lao She and Amer­i­ca richard jean so 1954, S E P T E M B E R  2 5 –NOVE M B E R 2

585 The Emergence of Regional Opera on the National Stage wilt l. idema 1955, M AY

590 Lu Ling, Hu Feng, and Literary Persecution kirk a. denton 1955

597 Hong Kong Modernism and I wai-­lim yip 1956

602 Zhou Shoujuan’s Romance à la Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies jianhua chen 1956; 1 9 8 3 , S E P T E M B E R  2 0

607 Orphans of Asia chien-­h sin tsai 1957, JUNE  7

613 Sino-­Muslims and China’s Latin New Script: A Reunion between Diaspora and Nationalism jing tsu 1958, JUNE  2 0

619 A Monumental Model for ­Future Perfect Theater tarryn li-­m in chun 1958

625 Mao Zedong Publishes Nineteen Poems and Launches the New Folk Song Movement xiaofei tian 1959, F E B R UARY  2 8

630 On The Song of Youth and Literary Bowdlerization yunzhong shu

xvi Contents 1960 , OC TOB E R

635 Hunger and the Chinese Malaysian Leftist Narrative chong fah hing and kyle shernuk 1962 , JUNE

640 Three Ironic Moments in My ­Mother Ru Zhijuan’s Literary ­Career wang anyi · Translated by Carlos Rojas 1962 – 1 9 6 3

644 The Legacies of Jaroslav Průšek and C. T. Hsia leo ou-­fan lee 1963 , M A R CH 1 7

650 Fu Lei and Fou Ts’ong: Cultural Cosmopolitanism and Its Price guangchen chen 1964

656 The “Red Pageant” and China’s First Atomic Bomb xiaomei chen 1965 , JULY  1 4

663 Red Prison Files jie li 1966 , OC TOB E R  1 0

669 Modernism versus Nativism in 1960s Taiwan christopher lupke 1967 , AP R IL  1

674 The Specter of Liu Shaoqi ying qian 1967 , M AY  2 9

680 The Red Lantern: Model Plays and Model Revolutionaries yomi braester 1967

685 Jin Yong Publishes The Smiling, Proud Wanderer in Ming Pao petrus liu

Contents xvii 1970

691 The Angel Island Poems: Chinese Verse in the Modern Diaspora steven yao 1972, 1 9 4 7

697 In Search of Qian Zhongshu theodore huters 1972– 1 9 7 3 , 2 0 0 0

703 A Subtle Encounter: Tête-­bêche and In the Mood for Love mary shuk-­han wong 1973, JULY  2 0

707 The Mysterious Death of Bruce Lee, Chinese Nationalism, and Cinematic Legacy stephen teo 1974, JUNE

712 Yang Mu Negotiates between Classicism and Modernism michelle yeh 1976, A P R IL  4

718 Poems from Underground lucas klein 1976

725 A Modern Taiwanese Innocents Abroad clint capehart 1978, S E P T E M B E R  1 8

731 Confessions of a State Writer: The Novelist Hao Ran Offers a Self-­Criticism richard king 1978, O CTO B E R  3

737 Chen Yingzhen on the White Terror in Taiwan ping-­h ui liao 1979, NOV E M B E R  9

742 Liu Binyan and the Price of Relevance perry link

xviii Contents 1980 , JUNE  7 ; 1 9 9 6 , A P R IL , ON A N UNSPEC IFIED DAY

747 A Tale of Two Cities lingchei letty chen 1981 , OC TOB E R  1 3

753 Food, Diaspora, and Nostalgia weijie song 1983 , JANUA RY  1 7

758 Discursive Heat: Humanism in 1980s China gloria davies 1983 , S P R ING

765 The Advent of Modern Tibetan Free-­Verse Poetry in the Tibetan Language lauran r. hartley 1984 , JULY  2 1 – 3 0

771 Literary Repre­sen­ta­tion of the White Terror and Rupture in Mid-­Twentieth-­Century Taiwan sung-­sheng yvonne chang 1985 , AP R IL

777 Searching for Roots in Lit­er­a­ture and Film michael berry 1986

782 The Writer and the Mad(wo)man andrea bachner 1987 , S E P T E M B E R

787 The Birth of China’s Literary Avant-­Garde yu hua · Translated by Carlos Rojas 1987 , DE CE M B E R  2 4

791 Gao Xingjian’s Pursuit of Freedom in the Spirit of Zhuangzi liu jianmei 1988 , JULY  1

797 “Rewriting Literary History” in the New Era of Liberated Thought chen sihe · Translated by Mingwei Song

Contents xix 1989, M AR C H 2 6

803 Anything Chinese about This Suicide? maghiel van crevel 1989, M AY  1 9

809 The Song That Rocked Tian­anmen Square ao wang 1989, S E P T E M B E R  8

815 Trauma and Cinematic Lyricism emilie yueh-yu yeh 1990, 1 9 9 1

821 From the Margins to the Mainstream: A Tale of Two Wangs kyle shernuk and dylan suher 1994, JULY  3 0

827 Meng Jinghui and Avant-­Garde Chinese Theater claire conceison 1995, M AY  8

833 The Death of Teresa Teng andy rodekohr 1995, JUNE  2 5

839 Formal Experiments in Qiu Miaojin’s “Lesbian I Ching” ari larissa heinrich 1997, M AY  1

845 Modern China as Seen from an Island Perspective hsinya huang 1997, M AY  3

850 “The First Modern Asian Gay Novel” john b. weinstein 1997

856 Hong Kong’s Literary Retrocession in Three Fantastical Novels bonnie s. mcdougall

xx Contents 1997

861 Representing the Sinophone, Truly: On Tsai Ming-­liang’s I ­Don’t Want to Sleep Alone pheng cheah 1998 , M A R CH 2 2

867 The Silversmith of Fiction chu t’ien-­h sin · Translated by Kyle Shernuk 1999 , F E B R UA RY

873 The Poet in the Machine: Hsia Yü’s Analog Poetry Enters the Digital Age brian skerratt 1999 , M A R CH 2 8

879 Sixteen-­Year-­Old Han Han Roughs Up the Literary Scene martin woesler 2002 , OC TOB E R  2 5

883 Resurrecting a Postlapsarian Pagoda in a Postrevolutionary World tarryn li-­m in chun 2004 , AP R IL

889 Wolf Totem and Nature Writing karen l. thornber 2006 , S E P T E M B E R  3 0

895 Chinese Verse ­Going Viral: “Removing the Shackles of Poetry” heather inwood and xiaofei tian 2007

900 Suddenly Coming into My Own li juan · Translated by Kyle Shernuk 2008

906 Writer-­Wanderer Li Yongping and Chinese Malaysian Lit­er­a­ture alison m. groppe

Contents xxi 2008– 2 0 0 9

912 Chinese Media Fans Express Patriotism through Parody of Japa­nese Web Comic casey lee 2010, JA NUARY  1 0

918 Ang Lee’s Adaptation, Pretense, Transmutation darrell william davis 2011, JUNE  2 6

924 Encountering Shakespeare’s Plays in the Sinophone World alexa huang 2012

930 Defending the Dignity of the Novel mo yan · Translated by Dylan Suher 2012, 2 0 1 4

934 Minority Heritage in the Age of Multiculturalism kyle shernuk 2013, JA NUARY  5

940 Ye Si and Lyricism rey chow 2013, M AY  1 2 , 7 :3 0 P.M .

946 Lightning Strikes Twice: “­Mother Tongue” Minority Poetry mark bender 2066

951 Chinese Science Fiction Pres­ents the Posthuman ­Future mingwei song 959 Contributors 987 Illustration Credits 989 Index

A C K N O W L­E D G M E N T S

This volume represents the collective effort of more than 140 scholars, writers, and translators in the Chinese, Sinophone, and Sinological worlds. I wish to express my deepest gratitude to them—­contributors from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany, Holland, France, Sweden, Canada, and the United States—­for their willingness to participate in a highly unconventional proj­ect. This proj­ect would not have come into being without the benefit of their critical and imaginative input, as well as their ingenious writing. I also extend my heartfelt thanks to the members of the Editorial Board, Professors Kirk Denton, Michel Hockx, Theodore Huters, Carlos Rojas, Xiaofei Tian, Jing Tsu, Ban Wang, and Michelle Yeh, for their strongest support at e­ very stage of editorial work. They have always illuminated me with their thoughts and scholarship. Their conscientiousness and generosity of time and wisdom are deeply appreciated. Special thanks go to the assistant editors of the volume, Jingling Chen, Kyle Shernuk, and Dylan Suher, for undertaking research assistance, reading the manuscript, and offering editorial suggestions. They are promising scholars of the field and their dedication and insight have taught me again the power and plea­sure of lit­er­a­ture. I would also like to thank other young scholars—­Dingru Huang, Jessica Tan, Tu Hang, Huanruo Wang, and Ying Lei—­who have been involved in the proj­ect at vari­ous stages. Dr. Lindsay ­Waters, executive editor for the humanities at Harvard University Press, has been extremely perceptive and patient in helping me prepare the volume. I thank him and his colleagues, Heather Hughes, Shan Wang, and Amanda Peery, as well as John Donohue and Ashley Moore of Westchester Publishing Ser­vices for their editorial expertise and professionalism. Due to format constraints, sources are not referenced in footnotes but are often mentioned in the text itself. More source details are provided in select biblio­graphies at the ends of the essays. To all references the authors of ­these essays are deeply indebted.

xxiii

xxiv Acknowl­edgments Two leading se­nior scholars passed away as this volume was being prepared. Professor C. T. Hsia (1921–2013) pioneered modern Chinese literary studies in Western academia, and his A History of Modern Chinese Fiction (1961) remains the most provocative work to date. Professor Patrick Hanan (1927–2014) was one of the most erudite scholars in late imperial and early modern Chinese lit­er­a­ture, and a first-­rate Sinologist. I was extremely fortunate to have been able to work with both of them, enjoying their guidance and friendship, at Columbia University and at Harvard University. Hsia’s contribution to the field is a topic within this volume, and Hanan wrote the final piece of his ­career for it. This book is dedicated to my mentor, Professor Arthur E. Kunst (1934–2013). His scholarship, cosmopolitan mind, and passion for lit­er­ a­ture and life are remembered forever.

A NEW LITERARY HISTORY OF MODERN CHINA

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INTRODUCTION

Worlding Literary China David Der-­w ei Wang

A New Literary History of Modern China is a collective proj­ect that introduces the “long” modern period of Chinese lit­er­a­ture from the late eigh­teenth c­ entury to the new millennium. The volume, with 161 essays contributed by 143 authors on a wide spectrum of topics, is intended for readers who are interested in understanding modern China through its literary and cultural dynamics. At the same time, it takes up the challenge of rethinking the conceptual framework and pedagogical assumptions that underlie the extant paradigm of writing and reading literary history. The past two centuries have been an era of constant turmoil for China. The nation has been wracked by military and po­liti­cal upheavals, from the first Opium War (1839–1842) to the Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864), the Boxer Rebellion (1900), the first and second Sino-­Japanese Wars (1894–1895; 1937–1945), the founding of the Republic of China (1911–) and the P ­ eople’s Republic of China (1949–), the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), and the Tian­anmen Incident (1989). Chinese society has under­gone cataclysmic social changes, ­running the gamut from advancements in technology and commerce to a revolution in epistemology. Modern China has been the site of drastic contestations between indigenous innovations and foreign stimuli, radical provocations and conciliatory responses. Now, in the new ­century, another drastic change is taking place in China amid calls for its “peaceful rise” and the global dissemination of the “Chinese Dream.” This was also a period that saw lit­er­a­ture conceptualized, practiced, circulated, and assessed in ways without pre­ce­dent in Chinese history. Imported printing technology, innovative marketing tactics, increased literacy, widening readership, a boom in the diversity of forms of media

1

2 Introduction and translation, and the advent of professional writers all created fields of literary production and consumption that in the preceding centuries would hardly have been imaginable. Along with ­these changes, Chinese lit­er­a­ture—as an aesthetic vocation, scholarly discipline, and cultural institution—­underwent multiple transformations to become “lit­er­a­ture” as we understand the word to mean t­ oday. The shifting definition of lit­er­a­ture was indeed one of the most acute symptoms of Chinese modernity.

The World of Chinese Lit­er­a­ture According to conventional wisdom, literary history is a coherent narrative of canonical figures, masterpieces, and notable movements and events, and an articulation of national characteristics. Such a concept was introduced to China at the turn of the twentieth ­century and still remains dominant in Sinology in general. In fact, the institution of literary history has had profound po­liti­cal implications for modern Chinese lit­er­a­ture. This volume seeks to explore new ways to engage the roots and ramifications of modern Chinese literary history. It proposes that we rethink issues such as the periodization of “modern” Chinese lit­er­a­ture, the conceptualization of Chinese “lit­er­a­ture,” the feasibility of “literary history,” and, more controversially, the meaning of “Chinese” literary history. To begin with, according to the extant paradigm, the May Fourth Movement—­a nationwide cultural and po­liti­cal campaign begun on May 4, 1919, that called for self-­rejuvenation in response to China’s setbacks in post–­World War I international politics—­was the turning point in China’s search for literary modernity. By contrast, the late Qing era (that is, the last de­cades of the Qing dynasty [1644–1911]) is seen as a transitional moment between the collapse of the old sociopo­liti­cal and literary order and the establishment of a new one. Scholars have taken issue with this paradigm in recent years, suggesting that the conception, production, and dissemination of lit­er­a­ture during the late Qing possessed a vigor and variety that exceeded the narrow confines prescribed by May Fourth discourse. What makes Chinese lit­er­a­ture since the nineteenth c­ entury “modern”? One way to answer this question is to consider the historical context in which this inquiry is grounded. In the storyline drawn by po­liti­cal

Introduction 3 scientists and (literary) historians, China’s literary initiation into the modern was a pro­cess of inscribing, and being inscribed by, developments such as the advent of Western powers; the call for constitutional democracy and vernacularism; the discovery of psychologized and gendered subjectivities; the industrialization of military, economic, and cultural production; the rise of an urban landscape; and, above all, the valorization of the forward movement of historical time as an evolutionary or revolutionary sequence. ­These phenomena first developed in Eu­rope, but, as they reached non-­Western civilizations such as China, they gained global relevance and took on local urgency. This ­imagined scenario describes the conditions that gave rise to modern Chinese lit­er­a­ture, but falls short of explaining the distinctive modernity that characterizes Chinese lit­er­a­ture alone. Literary modernity may arise in response to the shared global phenomena of po­liti­cal and technological modernization, but it need not repeat the same predetermined order or content. As a collective reimagining of the function of lit­er­a­ture vis-­à-­vis the invention of a modern China, this volume addresses the following questions: How has modernity manifested itself in the specific regional context of China? Is modernity an imported conceptual and empirical entity, and therefore a product of cross-­cultural translation and transaction, or is it a native force of self-­renewal arising in response to external stimuli? Can terms commonly associated with “modern,” such as “novelty,” “creativity,” and “rupture,” shed new light on a literary tradition that has valued convention, derivativeness, and “reactionary reform”? Fi­nally, to what extent did the Chinese experience contribute to the global circulation of modernities? With ­these questions in mind, A New Literary History of Modern China proposes to view Chinese literary modernization not as a monolithic pro­cess, with each stage inevitably leading ­toward a higher one in accordance with a certain timetable, but as a pro­cess with multiple entry points and ruptures.1 As demonstrated by the essays in the volume, the advent of the modern at any given historical juncture resulted in a fierce competition of new possibilities, and the winners of this competition ­were not necessarily the best of t­ hose possibilities. For instance, C ­ hinese literary modernization used to be attributed to the rise of vernacular lit­er­ a­ture; recent scholarship indicates nevertheless that a domestic transformation of the classical concept of “literariness” (wen) and the culture of

4 Introduction translation fostered by missionaries might have played equally impor­tant roles. Many innovations, what­ever their capacity for generating more positive outcomes, nevertheless perished due to the contingencies of history. To say that the end of this pro­cess is not necessarily the “best of all pos­si­ble worlds,” however, does not mean that the very idea of literary modernization is meaningless. Rather, it simply means that ­there is no one set path of literary evolution and that no outcome could have been predicted from the outset; indeed, no discrete constituent ­factor could ever be replicated ­were the pro­cess repeated, ­because any pathway to the realization of the modern proceeds through countless mutable and amorphous stages. Second, Chinese “lit­er­a­ture” as we understand it in academia ­today is a phenomenon that arose in late imperial China and gradually became institutionalized at the turn of the twentieth c­ entury. In 1902, at the order of Cixi (1835–1908), the Empress Dowager and then de facto ruler of China, the politician and educator Zhang Baixi (1847–1907) proffered several regulations to reform the recently founded Imperial University of Peking. Via t­ hese regulations, Zhang introduced wenxue ke, literally “division of lit­er­a­ture,” which covered the following programs: Confucius Studies, History, Ancient Thought, Archival Studies, Foreign Languages, Philology, and Literary Works (cizhang). While similar in some ways to the liberal arts, wenxue ke reflected the traditional paradigm of Chinese “lit­er­a­ture,” one that comprised several dif­f er­ent fields of humanistic learning. The prototype of “lit­er­a­ture” in modern terms was the program of Literary Works. The core curriculum of Literary Works featured courses such as Methodology of Literary Study, Etymology, Phonology, Literary Trends across Dynasties, and Classical Treatises on Writing. Combining traditional Chinese philological study and the Western Romantic appeal to aesthetic taste, the program paved the way for the eventual institutionalization of lit­er­a­ture as an exercise and appraisal of rhetorical forms and fictional narratives. Nevertheless, though it has a­ dopted the Western system of generic classification with categories such as fiction, prose, poetry, and drama, and though it experiments with modern discourses ranging from realism to postmodernism, modern Chinese lit­er­a­ture continues an implicit dialogue with the traditional concepts of wen and wenxue. That is to say, writers and readers of Chinese lit­er­a­ture tend to associate literary

Introduction 5 exercises not only with the endeavor of using the word to represent the world, but also with the continued pro­cess of illuminating a cosmic pattern, a pro­cess that purportedly emanates from the mind and finds manifold manifestations—in corporal, artistic, sociopo­liti­cal, and natu­ral terms—in the world. Thus, instead of merely playing with the dialectic of truth versus fiction, modern Chinese lit­er­a­ture implants itself at ­every level of ­human experience, forming an ever-­amplifying orbit of manifestations that are imaginatively evoked and historically embedded. This understanding of lit­er­a­ture is deeply imbricated in the ancient poetics of wen, a classical Chinese term that can mean “ornamentation,” “pattern,” “sign,” “artistic inscription,” “cultural upbringing,” “civilization,” and “a sign of the movement of the cosmos.” By extension, wenxue, or “lit­er­a­ture,” refers to the art of registering, and being registered by, the incessant metamorphosis, from era to era and from region to region, of forms, thoughts, and attitudes regarding wen.2 In Stephen Owen’s words, If lit­er­a­ture (wen) is the entelechy of a previously unrealized pattern, and if the written word (wen) is not a sign but a schematization, then ­there can be no competition for dominance. Each level of wen, that of the world and that of the poem, is valid only in its own correlative realm; and the poem, the final outward form, is a stage of fullness.3 Beyond the familiar canon of lit­er­a­ture as repre­sen­ta­tion, we need to include the tradition of lit­er­a­ture as manifestation, on both textual and contextual levels, in a history of modern Chinese lit­er­a­ture. Therefore, in addition to familiar genres, this volume features a diverse lineup of forms, from presidential speeches to pop song lyr­ics, from photo­graphs to films, and from po­liti­cal treatises to prison ­house jottings—­forms that not only represent the material world, but can also shape it and complete it. All of t­ hese forms “manifest” in one way or another the evolving and changing concept and “pattern” of wen in modern China, a concept that has evolved in terms of both what it aims to enact within the world and how it aims to enact it. As Owen puts it, “The pro­cess of manifestation must begin in the external world, which has priority without primacy. As a latent pattern follows its innate disposition to become manifest, passing from the world to mind to lit­er­a­ture, a theory of sympathetic resonance is involved.”4

6 Introduction Such a belief in wen as a manifestation of the heart and the world explains why lit­er­a­ture was taken so seriously in China throughout the modern ­century: in the 1900s, when Liang Qichao (1873–1929) promoted a literary reform as the foundation of national reform; in the 1920s, when post–­May Fourth radicals debated not only literary revolution but lit­ er­a­ture as revolution; in the 1940s, when Mao Zedong (1893–1976) made lit­er­a­ture a key princi­ple of communist revolution; in the 1960s, when lit­er­a­ture became the key to the “revolution fought in the deepest niche of the soul” during the Cultural Revolution; and in the 1990s, when the nation was engulfed in a frenzy for the Nobel Lit­er­a­ture Prize. Third, A New Literary History of Modern China seeks to engage with the institution of “literary history” as a humanistic discipline in modern China. Although t­ here was a cornucopia of historical accounts recording literary figures, activities, and accomplishments in dynastic China, the writing of Western-­style literary history did not take place ­until 1904. When the Imperial University of Peking established its Lit­er­a­ture Program, a young teacher named Lin Chuanjia (1877–1922) was commissioned to write a History of Chinese Lit­er­a­ture for the purposes of teaching. Modeled a­ fter the Japa­nese scholar Sasagawa Rinpū’s (1870–1949) History of Chinese Lit­er­a­ture (1898), which was in turn inspired by Eu­ro­pean literary histories, Lin’s history is an eclectic undertaking that comprises genre classification, philological inquiry, and chronological periodization. He highlights the vicissitudes of intellectual history from Confucius onward and describes the transformations of classical prose, paying ­little attention to poetry, vernacular fiction, and drama. The same year also saw the publication of the History of Chinese Lit­er­a­ture written by Huang Ren (1866–1913), a scholar at Soochow University. Huang’s history, by way of contrast, takes the form of a quasi-­encyclopedic narrative of bygone literary events. During the Republican era (1911–1949), classical lit­er­a­ture was the dominant subject of literary historiography, and modern lit­er­a­ture was rarely taught in schools. Although May Fourth leaders such as Hu Shi (1891–1962) and Zhou Zuoren (1885–1967) published books on Chinese literary history during the 1920s and 1930s, new lit­er­a­ture represented only a small part of their investigations. From the 1930s onward, new lit­er­a­ture attracted more attention from leftist historians such as Wang Zhefu and Li Helin (1904–1988), yet in general it remained marginal

Introduction 7 in the discourse prior to 1949. In 1951, a young scholar and Communist Party member, Wang Yao (1914–1989), published A Draft History of New Chinese Lit­er­a­ture, the first major modern Chinese literary historiography. Since the publication of Wang’s work, hundreds of histories of modern Chinese lit­er­a­ture have been published in China, a level of production of literary historiography unparalleled by any other country in the world. The upsurge of modern Chinese literary historiography a­ fter 1949, to be sure, is related to the ideological agenda of the Communist regime. According to communist ideology, literary development parallels po­liti­cal development; as the allegorical other of politics, new, robust lit­er­a­ture is said to replace old, feudalistic lit­er­a­ture on the path to the socialist telos. But this ideology alone does not explain why lit­er­a­ture and literary history matters so much to the new regime and the Chinese public. As I have discussed, although it has been deeply influenced by the Western impulse to develop systems of repre­sen­ta­tion, modern Chinese literary practice still reflects the time-­honored concept of wen. Despite its antitraditional platform, the Communist regime uncannily has held on to this concept. As a m ­ atter of fact, the regime seems to have continued to implement the concept of wen in everyday life and even in the realization of national proj­ects. The regime therefore cannot treat lit­er­a­ture as merely a linguistic, fictitious repre­sen­ta­tion of the world, and instead must view it as an integral part of the pro­cess by which ideology becomes rooted in one’s heart and blossoms into an ideal polity. By corollary, literary history, as a chronicle of the zeitgeist, is subject to careful writing, reading, and revision. With this ideology in mind, we must rethink the intertwined relationship between lit­er­a­ture and history in traditional Chinese thought. Scholars have long pointed out that the “representability” of historical experience was a contested issue among ancient Chinese historians.5 Narrating history—­fleshing out the figures and events ­under treatment—­requires not only archival data and a theoretical framework, but also rhetorical expertise and personal integrity. According to the Analects, Confucius said that “when ­there is a preponderance of acquired refinement (wen) over native substance (zhi), the result ­will be ornamentation as performed by historians and bureaucrats (shi).”6 Contrary to the conventional wisdom that ­favors history as more reliable than lit­er­a­ture, the sage seems to

8 Introduction suggest that historical discourse tends to be more exaggerated and insubstantial than literary engagement, and that both history and lit­er­a­ture should be modulated in such a way as to illuminate the world truthfully. Thus, the arch-­historian Sima Qian (135?–86 BCE) is said to have created in his work the ideal juncture between the represented and repre­sen­ta­tion, and between objective facts and palpable truth. With Sima’s Rec­ords of the G ­ rand Historian in mind, Shen Congwen (1902–1988), the greatest writer of lyricism and nativist lit­er­a­ture in modern China, concludes that a ­great history must be a literary history.7 Ever since the ninth ­century, the concept of “poetry as history” (shishi) has become a fundamental idea within Chinese poetics. The ninth-­ century Tang literatus Meng Qi (fl. ninth century) commented, “When a poetic incantation is occasioned by an event, it is precisely where deep feelings concentrate” (chushi xingyong, yousuo zhongqing).8 Meng considers both the circumstantial and emotive functions of feeling (qing), thereby articulating the reciprocal relationship between historical experience and poetic mind. Accordingly, when Du Fu (712–770), the “Sage of Poetry,” is honored in traditional Chinese historiography as the arch-­practitioner of “poetry as history,” the title refers not only to his skill in rendering mimetic accounts of historical events, but also to his poetic vision, which resonates with ­human and cosmic movements. The discourse of “poetry as history” reached a climax in the mid-­seventeenth ­century, coinciding with the cataclysmic decline of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). Hence, to slightly paraphrase the Ming loyalist Huang Zongxi (1610–1695), “Where history collapses, poetry arises.”9 The structural framework of A New Literary History of Modern China has been influenced by a variety of Western theories, ranging from Walter Benjamin’s “constellation,” to Mikhail Bakhtin’s “heteroglossia,” Michel Foucault’s “genealogy,” and Gilles Deleuze’s “assemblage.” However, it is the mutual illumination between wen (lit­er­a­ture) and shi (history) that underlies my editorial vision. How modern writers reflected on, and how modern lit­er­a­ture came to reflect, this dialogic remains a central concern of this volume. Through the essays, I intend to configure a world in which lit­er­a­ture of myriad attitudes, styles, and levels is brought to bear on history, and history is similarly brought to bear on lit­er­a­ture. Each essay in this history is identified by a date and a corresponding event. ­These events are of very dif­fer­ent sorts: the publication of a par­tic­u­lar

Introduction 9 work; the establishment of a specific institution (a society, a magazine, a publishing ­house); the first use of a notable stylistic, thematic, or technological innovation; a debate or controversy over a specific issue; a po­liti­cal action; a romance; a scandal . ... The purpose of each essay is to elicit the historical significance of that event, as represented through literary texts or experiences, be it in terms of its par­tic­u­lar circumstances, its long-­term relevance, or its con­temporary resonance or dissonance. Moreover, insofar as “poetry as history” compels one to treat even a fantastic work as “a unique factual account of an experience in historical time, a ­human consciousness encountering, interpreting, and responding to the world,” I encouraged the contributors, some of whom are renowned creative writers, to adopt what­ever form they felt best expressed their historical  “feeling.”10 For instance, Ha Jin writes a story about how Lu Xun (1881–1936) composed “A Madman’s Diary,” the harbinger of modern Chinese fiction; Uganda Sze Pui Kwan personifies Sir Thomas Wade (1818–1895), whose audience with the Tongzhi Emperor (r. 1862–1874) helped institutionalize the practice of translation in early modern China. Ari Larissa Heinrich’s contemplation of Qiu Miaojin (1969–1995) and queer writing leads him to compose a piece that can be read with any paragraph as the starting point. By combining selectivity and intensity of focus with a flexible frame of inquiry, I hope to produce a constellation of essays that ­will each illuminate a singular cultural-­historical moment and a literary mind, and that collectively w ­ ill resonate with one another in such a way as to provide a more nuanced reading of the literary rendition of history. Fi­nally, we come to the subject of literary history and national repre­ sen­ta­tion. Chronologically, this volume covers lit­er­a­ture through a series of po­liti­cal regimes, from the late Ming dynasty to the Qing dynasty, and then from the Republic of China (ROC) to the P ­ eople’s Republic of China (PRC). Although “China” is the umbrella term used to refer to all of t­ hese po­liti­cal regimes, we must keep in mind that “China” as a po­liti­cal, racial, and cultural entity has been defined differently at dif­fer­ent points in history. According to historians Cho-­yun Hsu and Ge Zhaoguang, the earliest usage of the Chinese equivalent to “China,” zhongguo, dates as far back as the Zhou dynasty (1046–256 BCE), when it referred to the spatial position “right in the ­middle of ” a social and geo­graph­i­cal domain.“China” gradually came to apply to the nation as a ­whole during the Song dynasty (960–1279), when “barbarian” regimes in the north intensified the Song

10 Introduction court’s awareness of territorial rule.11 “China” was invoked to represent both the Ming and the Qing; it was not u­ ntil the early twentieth c­ entury that “China” became associated with po­liti­cal sovereignty and nationhood in the modern sense. The ROC was founded in 1911 ­after the revolution to overthrow the Qing. The PRC was founded in 1949 ­after the victory of the Communists in the Chinese Civil War (1946–1949). The ROC government withdrew to Taiwan, where it continues to exist to this day. Therefore, when we discuss the literary history of modern China, t­ here are at least four layers of meaning that compose the term “China” that we must consider: China as a historical pro­cess, as a cultural and intellectual lineage, as a po­liti­cal entity, and as an “­imagined community.” Since the ­Great Divide in 1949, modern Chinese lit­er­a­ture has bifurcated into two traditions, each with a distinct national agenda. For all the ideological antagonism between the two traditions, t­ here ­were striking similarities between Nationalist and Communist governance of literary activities during the 1950s. However, the sixties saw the unlikely advent of modernism in the literary scene of Taiwan, followed by the nativist debate over ­whether “China” should be located in exile in Taiwan or on the mainland (to be restored eventually by the nationalists). Meanwhile, the Cultural Revolution pushed Chinese socialist lit­er­a­ture to the extremes of collectivity. Lit­er­a­ture in both Chinese communities underwent a shakeup in the eighties. As vari­ous movements have come and gone in both the mainland and Taiwan, “China” has been postsocialized, decolonized, postmodernized, deconstructed, gendered, and even de-­Sinicized. For advocates of Taiwanese in­de­pen­dence, “China” has become a po­liti­cally incorrect signifier. By contrast, as nationalism gains new momentum on the mainland, the government has coined the surprisingly literary term “Chinese Dream”—­uncannily resonating with the familiar “American Dream”—in order to consolidate public feeling. In 1971, C. T. Hsia (1921–2013) coined the term “Obsession with China” to describe the ambivalent attitude of modern Chinese literati t­ oward the challenges of Chinese modernity. Hsia holds that modern Chinese literati are so obsessed by national crises as to turn their repugnance for the status quo into a masochistic mentality. ­These literati see any given social or po­liti­cal malaise as a sickness unique to China, and thus grapple with Chinese modernity only negatively, by denouncing it.12 To remedy this syndrome, Hsia calls for a cosmopolitanism characterized by

Introduction 11 interaction with Western lit­er­a­ture. Hsia authored A History of Modern Chinese Fiction (1961), which remains to date the most influential book of modern Chinese literary history in the English-­speaking world. Although it has been criticized, particularly among leftist circles, for endorsing Cold War ideology, Western liberal humanism, and New Criticism, one cannot overlook its polemical power. Now, almost half a c­ entury ­after Hsia’s critique, the “Obsession with China” still casts a shadow over Chinese discourse, but the phenomenon has developed in unexpected ways. Whereas writers and readers on the mainland have turned their “obsession” into something more complex—­from fanat­i­cism to cynicism, from passion to nonchalance—­their radical counter­parts in Taiwan have come to love hating every­thing about China, such that, in an ironic way, they reinstate the classic symptoms of “obsession” with China. A New Literary History of Modern China seeks to rec­ord the changing imaginaries of China by assessing the enunciative endeavors, ranging from classical treatises to avant-­garde experiments, from foreign thoughts to native ruminations, that have informed Chinese literary discourse, and also to identify the historical f­ actors that have affected the interplay of Chinese (post)modernities. More significantly, it recognizes the fact that modern Chinese lit­er­a­ture is not merely a national proj­ect, with distinct linguistic, discursive, and cultural characteristics, but also part of a transnational endeavor that defines the nation in relation to other po­liti­cal and cultural entities. At a time when both mainland China and Taiwan are developing literary histories hemmed in by ideological guidelines and cultural provincialism, we need additional perspectives in order to expose the limitations of Chinese national lit­er­a­tures. As w ­ ill be elaborated in the rest of this introduction, I argue that this volume, by involving contributors from vari­ous communities in greater China and beyond, and by covering subjects that transcend conventional national and generic bound­aries, can contribute to a vision of literary China more complex than ­those sanctioned by ­either the PRC or the ROC.

Worlding Literary China A New Literary History of Modern China is the fourth volume in H ­ arvard University Press’s series of national literary histories, following A New History of French Lit­er­a­ture, edited by Denis Hollier (1989); A New History

12 Introduction of German Lit­er­a­ture, edited by David Wellbery (2004); and A New Literary History of Amer­i­ca, edited by Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors (2009). All three previous volumes seek to revise the traditional formula of writing and reading literary history, one that places masters, canonical works, and crucial events into a linear sequence informed by politics. Instead, ­these volumes feature a series of entries based on seemingly arbitrary dates and data, and generate from them a web of mutually illuminating timelines and meanings. By combining both the pointillism of the chronicle and the comprehensiveness of ­grand récit, this revisionist endeavor has been received with much critical acclaim. ­These three volumes differ, nevertheless, in their visions of literary history. Both A New History of French Lit­er­a­ture and A New History of German Lit­er­a­ture begin in the eighth c­ entury CE and move forward to trace the multiple literary repre­sen­ta­tions of socie­ties that predate the emergence of the modern French and German nations. But whereas A New History of French Lit­er­a­ture recognizes the role of contingency and playfully deconstructs the ­grand narrative of history, A New History of German Lit­er­a­ture tries to identify a set of “framing conditions”—­such as mediality, time, linguistic-­national identity, and communication—so as to reinstate the thematic structure in historical inquiry. A New Literary History of Amer­i­ca begins in the sixteenth ­century but focuses mostly on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It tells the story of an i­ magined nation that in many ways preceded the emergence of recognizable American society. To quote Marcus and Sollors, unlike its French or German counterpart, American lit­er­a­ture was not “inherited but in­ven­ted, as if it w ­ ere a tool or a machine, or discovered, as if it w ­ ere a gold strike or the next won­der of the Louisiana Purchase.” Thus, “no tradition has ever ruled and no form has ever been fixed.”13 The volume introduces a multitude of repre­sen­ta­tions of the American experience—­ ranging from po­liti­cal speeches to poetic articulations, from constitutional negotiations to novelistic adventures—­and frames them as lit­er­a­ture. While following compositional princi­ples of the three previous volumes, A New Literary History of Modern China makes a few conceptual and structural innovations that respond to both the distinct characteristics of modern Chinese literary culture and developments in literary studies in the past few de­cades. One of the most salient features of this new volume is that it pres­ents not Chinese literary history in its entirety

Introduction 13 but only modern Chinese history. Thus it has to engage at the outset in reconciling—­indeed, rethinking—­the temporal and conceptual frameworks proposed by the French, German, and American literary histories. In light of the lineage of Chinese literary culture spanning more than three thousand years, it has to account for the ways in which the moderns inherit or abandon the resources of tradition. On the other hand, in view of China’s drastic sociopo­liti­cal transitions during the modern era, from a dynastic monarchy to a republic and then a socialist nation-­state, it has to deal with the way in which lit­er­a­ture is continually reinvented in response to each emerging ethos. The key concept for this im­mense display of topics, figures, objects, and events has been the idea of “worlding literary China.” “Worlding” is a term originally coined by Martin Heidegger (1889–1976).14 By turning the noun “world” into an active verb, Heidegger calls attention to the way in which the world is constructed and exists eternally in a constantly shifting state of becoming. Worlding is a complex and dynamic pro­cess of ever-­renewing realities, sensations, and perceptions through which one incessantly works to access “the Open of the world.”15 Insofar as worlding is always already a flux of unfolding experience, it suggests a world as familiar as it is forever fresh. Importantly, Heidegger stresses that worlding is not a task in which we engage volitionally, but emerges automatically in response to specific phenomena, or “­things”: “If we let the ­thing be pres­ent in its thinging from out of the worlding world, then we are thinking of the ­thing as ­thing.”16 The concept of “worlding” has been a­ dopted by critics in recent years to describe proj­ects ranging from urban planning to comparative lit­er­a­ture and medicinal studies.17 The term is often used, however, merely to refer to global or transnational proj­ects, a far cry from the Heideggerian definition. In his study of con­temporary China, Arif Dirlik describes the end of revolutionary politics and the rise of cultural nationalism since 1978. He places t­ hese developments within a global context, ultimately making a case methodologically for “worlding” China: bringing China into the world and the world into China.18 Lisa Rofel takes up the recently recanonized term tianxia (­under heaven) and proposes strategies for cosmopolitan, socialist “worldings.”19 My approach is inspired by but not limited to t­ hese scholars’ adaptations of the term. While examining the “making” and “becoming” of

14 Introduction lit­er­a­ture in the context of China encountering the world through the past two centuries, I call attention to the subtle reverberations between wen (the literary; literariness) and the Heideggerian concept of worlding. “Worlding” describes the conditions of being-­in-­the-­world in relation to the foregrounding and evolvement of t­ hings as such. The conditions are less fixed essences than conduits of differences between verbal, written, and ­mental concepts. According to Heidegger, it is poetry that brings the world and ­things together in a topology of being, “gathering into a ­simple onefold of their intimate belonging together.”20 As discussed previously, wen points to a multitude of artifacts, locations, or encounters that manifest the world over time. Wen is not a sign so much as an articulation of the meaning of the world through a set of correlating ideas, objects, or ­doings. To be sure, Heideggerian philosophy and traditional Chinese literary thought differ greatly in their conception of what constitutes the “world,” let alone the meaning and practice of lit­er­a­ture.21 My point is that the concept of worlding nevertheless may help us to understand Chinese literary modernity in the broader sense of wen, as a vehicle “bringing the world home,” and, more importantly, as an agency that continuously opens up new configurations of the world.22 With this argument in mind, A New Literary History of Modern China introduces the following four themes of worlding Chinese lit­er­a­ture: architectonics of temporalities, dynamics of travel and transculturation, contestation between wen and mediality, and remapping of the literary cartography of modern China. Architectonics of Temporalities

Readers of this volume w ­ ill first be struck by the conflation of, and conflict between, two historiographical schemes in the volume. On the one hand, the volume introduces the significant figures, works, discourses, and movements that have constituted modern Chinese lit­er­a­ture in chronological order. On the other hand, it also features a series of dates, events, and encounters of relatively lesser significance, making them points of reference to more significant historical phenomena. Alternating between presenting time as a causal sequence and time as a contingent or coincidental arrangement of events, the volume encourages the readers to observe—­and imagine�