Modernisation of Chinese Culture: Continuity and Change 1443845930, 9781443845939

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Modernisation of Chinese Culture

Modernisation of Chinese Culture: Continuity and Change

Edited by

Jana S. Rošker and Nataša Vampelj Suhadolnik

Modernisation of Chinese Culture: Continuity and Change, Edited by Jana S. Rošker and Nataša Vampelj Suhadolnik This book first published 2013 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright © 2013 by Jana S. Rošker and Nataša Vampelj Suhadolnik and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-4593-0, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-4593-9

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Tables .............................................................................................. ix List of Figures............................................................................................. xi Acknowledgements .................................................................................. xiii Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Jana S. Rošker Intellectual History Chapter One ............................................................................................... 11 New Trends in Theory and Ideology: The Main Theoretical Currents in the 20th Century Jana S. Rošker Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 33 Cultural Construction with Chinese Characteristics: Contemporary Relevance of the 1935 Declaration for Cultural Construction on a Chinese Basis Helena Motoh Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 47 New World Trends in May Fourth Movement Journals Jarkko Haapanen Institutional Transformation Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 71 Republic or Monarchy? Unitary State or Federal State?: Liang Qichao and Republican Institutionalisation Ma Jun

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Table of Contents

Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 85 Liang Qichao and the Impact of His Ideas upon the New Chinese Historiography Marija Šuler History of Modern Chinese Literature Chapter Six .............................................................................................. 105 Competing and Ambivalent Concepts of Modernity, with a Special Emphasis on Literature: Jindai, Dangdai, Xiandai Raoul David Findeisen Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 123 Reflections on a Century of Exploration: Whither Chinese Poetry? Charles Kwong Chapter Eight ........................................................................................... 147 Chinese Literature since 2000: A Continuing Cultural Miracle, Fostered by International Connections? Martin Winter From Modern to Contemporary Prose Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 171 The Moon as a Symbol and Central Motif in Lu Xun’s Short Stories Tina Ilgo Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 193 China Eighty Years Ago in a Forgotten Anthology of Short Fiction Ho Shun-yee Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 215 The Representation of Chinese Rural Migrant Women and the Post-Mao Modernity Discourses: A Study of Zhang Kangkang’s Novel Zhi Ma Liu Xi Art and Public Space Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 233 The Reform of Chinese Painting in the Republican Era: Theory vs. Practice Nataša Vampelj Suhadolnik

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Chapter Thirteen ...................................................................................... 259 Ai Weiwei, the Internet, and the Importance of Public Space Tania Becker Dialogues With the West in Chinese Academic World Chapter Fourteen ..................................................................................... 281 Qunxue or Shehuixue: First Steps in the Introduction of Sociology into China and the Formation of Sociological Lexicon Mariarosaria Gianninoto Chapter Fifteen ........................................................................................ 297 Chinese-English Translations of Neologisms in Online Dictionaries Mateja Petrovþiþ Economy, Ecology, and Social Change Chapter Sixteen ....................................................................................... 345 A Century of Chinese Modernisation: From Revolution and Ideological Cycles to Integration into the Global Economy Mitja Saje Chapter Seventeen ................................................................................... 373 Modernisation Fueled by Coal: The Challenges Facing China’s Energy Sector and Global Climate Protection Eva Sternfeld Chapter Eighteen ..................................................................................... 399 Growing Up without Care: China’s Rural Left-behind Children Wang Xuan Contributors ............................................................................................. 409 Index ........................................................................................................ 411

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1-1: Generations of Modern Confucionists Table 10-1: List of story titles and authors Table 12-1: Statistical data of the first three National Art Exhibitions Table 15-1: Inclusion of neologisms in online resources Table 15-2: Translation of shengnü in online dictionaries Table 15-3: Translation of luokao in online dictionaries Table 15-4: Translation of weixaoquan in online dictionaries Table 15-5: Quality of translated neologisms Table 15-6: List of 117 Neologisms (2006) with Selected or Proposed Translations Table 17-1: Development of coal consumption in selected countries (in million short tons) Table 17-2: Gross electricity generation (in TWh) Table 17-3: Increase in CO2 emissions caused by coal combustion (in millions of tons of CO2) Table 17-4: 12th Five-Year Plan targets for improving energy efficiency per unit of GDP Table 17-5: Nuclear power plants in operation (as of Feb. 16, 2012) Table 17-6: Coal-fired power-generation technologies used in China, 2005–30 (in GW) Table 18-1: The population of rural left-behind children from each Chinese province and its percentage within the whole country Table 18-2: Age structure of rural left-behind children Table 18-3: Education situation of rural left-behind children Table 18-4: Different types of family structures of rural left-behind children Table 18-5: Ages and educational background of grandparents

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 12-1: Xu Beihong, Horse, ink and white pigment on paper, 19431946, 76 x 47 cm, © National Gallery in Prague 2013 Figure 12-2: Gao Jianfu, Flying in the Rain, hanging scroll, ink and pigment on paper, 1932. Reproduced by permission of the Art Museum of the Chinese University of Hong Kong from the collection of the Art Museum Figure 15-1: Number of neologisms with similar distribution per websites Figure 15-2: Translation of neologisms in the six dictionaries Figure 18-1: The distribution of rural left-behind children in China

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The editors are grateful to the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation for its generous support of their research work which enabled them to publish the present book.

INTRODUCTION MODERNISATION OF CHINESE CULTURE: CONTINUITY AND CHANGE JANA S. ROŠKER

The year 2011 marked the 100th anniversary of the Xinhai Revolution, which began with the Wuchang Uprising on 10 October, 1911 and ended with the abdication of Emperor Puyi on 12 February, 1912 and the establishment of the first Chinese republic. The centennial is significant not only in terms of state ideology, but also with respect to academic research into Chinese society and culture. The red-letter date of 10 October, 1911 signifies much more than just the establishment of a new state formation, and figures as the starting point and first step in the century-long process of explosive economic development and political progress which saw China evolve into a major power in the contemporary world. This historic turning point likewise represents the symbolic and concrete linkages and tensions between tradition and modernity, progress and conservatism and traditional values, and the demands for adjusting to contemporary society and social conditions. The present volume consists of select contributions from the 2nd STCS (Specific Topics in Chinese Studies) Conference, which was held to commemorate the centennial in Ljubljana, Slovenia in October, 2011. It is dedicated to modern China and focuses on the 100 years following the Xinhai Revolution. The book’s governing concept is the awareness of the fact that China’s shift from tradition to modernity confronts us with a series of problems which are linked to transformations of both material and ideal paradigms that not only defined the development of Chinese society, but also strongly influenced international relations at the global level. Strategic solutions to these problems must avail themselves of broader perspectives, which are rooted and find their meaning within the context of China’s cultural and traditional background.

2

Introduction

Over the past few decades, the theoretical streams of contemporary sinology and modern Chinese philosophy have devoted increasing attention to investigating and comparing the substantial and methodological assumptions of the so-called “Eastern” and “Western” traditions. The evergrowing number of studies in this area is driven, in part, by the increasingly urgent need to clarify the methodological foundations of modern sinological theory, which must keep abreast of the technological and political developments in the Chinese context. The present collection thus focuses upon the specific reactions of different Chinese material and cultural discourses to modernisation, in an approach which is directed towards articulating and establishing a historically consistent, specifically “Chinese” view of modernity and transformation. China is undoubtedly one of the world’s fastest growing societies, and the present book carefully maps the Chinese modernisation discourse, highlighting its relationship to similar discourses and situating it within historical and theoretical contexts. In contrast to the majority of recent discussions of a “Chinese development model”, that tend to focus more on institutional than cultural factors, and are more narrowly concerned with economic than overall social development, the present collection provides a number of important focal points for many currently overlooked issues and dilemmas. The multifaceted perspectives contained in this anthology are not limited to economic, social, and ecological issues, but also include the political and social functions of ideologies and culturally conditioned values, which represent the axial epistemological grounds of modern Chinese society. All the articles contained herein are original contributions, many of which stem or take their departure from recent theoretical discoveries in the field of Chinese studies, which have overturned the long held classic sociological view that traditional Chinese culture was incompatible with modernisation. Each study adds texture and “grain” to an alternative, emerging picture of the mix of universal and particular features (including problems) within Chinese modernity. However, the present volume is not limited to introducing the main material conditions that shape the specific features of current Chinese society; but also seeks to shed new light on the political, social and ideological backgrounds of the specifically Chinese modernisation process as such. As a result, the reader will hopefully come to grasp why the modernisation of Chinese society cannot be equated with Westernisation. The guiding concept adopted in the present collection rejects projecting present beliefs and standards onto the past, and the often convoluted

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processes by which that past developed into the present. The interdisciplinary approaches privileged herein reveal a new image of the very nature of Chinese modernity, often questioning the absolute authority and putative objectivity of official explanations. The extended scope of the contributions is representative of a new image of the relationship between China’s past and present. In this sense, the present collection will hopefully help define new theoretical and methodological approaches in Chinese studies, which bring to the fore a new idea of intercultural encounters based upon a new culture of recognition. It is the conviction of editors that the book will be of great value to a wide range of scholars, students and civil and social actors who have an active interest in Chinese history, culture and society. Hopefully, it will also be of interest to a more general readership, that might appreciate a critical academic reflection on the legitimacy of classical Western modernisation theories, against the background of the issue of “Modernisation with Chinese characteristics”. The contributions all come from experts in various fields of Chinese studies, and mainly address issues of Chinese modernisation, and the question of how to amalgamate the Chinese tradition with various social and cultural implications of the modern era. In this sense, the collection targets the following domains: - Recent research on the problems of the Chinese tradition and modernity, including history, literature, philosophy, religion, art, media studies, anthropology, sociology, economics, politics and environmental issues; - Critical academic reflection on the first intercultural dialogues between China and European countries; - Political, ideological, cultural, and axiological evaluations of Chinese development over the last 100 years; - Traditional elements in modern Chinese discourses; - (Re)interpretations of specific structures and functional models of modern and contemporary Chinese society, providing new modes of comprehension of historical, cultural, political and economic changes in modern Chinese society; - The nature and magnitude of China’s impact upon economic, political and cultural tendencies in today’s globalised world; - New kinds of historical inquiry into the most characteristic aspects of Chinese modernity. These research areas are also significant because they enable us to examine the broader impact of modern Chinese discourses that have a profound influence on political, economic and cultural relations between

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Introduction

Europe and China. Hence, a further aim is to establish new methodological paradigms for intercultural studies, thereby moving beyond the conventional academic views of research areas which are still (latently, at least) skewed by Western frames of reference. Such views fail to adequately represent a sampling of all possible conceptual positions, upon which any knowledge must be based. The present volume thus constitutes an initial attempt to lay an assumptive foundation in the pragmatic search for specific sets of methods that could serve as a new theoretical framework for intercultural studies. The present volume opens with three contributions that introduce the historical era of cultural and philosophical modernisation in China. Jana S. Rošker’s article provides a systematic and wide-ranging introduction to the most important theoretical currents that have shaped the intellectual transformation of China, on the cusp between tradition and modernity. These currents merit close scrutiny for what they can tell us about the present, and the role of one of mankind’s most important philosophical legacies in the contemporary world. Within the framework of transformations which deeply influenced these currents, Helena Motoh’s article focuses on the so-called “cultural construction” debate in China in the first two decades of the 20th century. This debate focused primarily on what constituted the particular “Chinese quality” of Chinese culture, whether Chinese leaders and the nation should attempt to preserve it and how they were to achieve this end. The author shows why and how certain elements of this debate are still relevant within contemporary ideologies in the PRC. In the final contribution to this introductory chapter, Jarkko Haapanen offers a critical analysis of the “new thought trends” which ––in their differing versions––are shaping a new image of Chinese modernisation discourses. The institutional and historiographical background of these thought trends is explored in detail in the second chapter, which has its focus the political and historical influence of Liang Qichao, a major theoretical figure during China’s transition into the 20th century. Both contributions clearly show how and why the use and abuse of ideas in China can be assessed in the light of constantly changing and contingent social and political structures. Ma Jun investigates Liang Qichao’s ideas regarding the form and structure of the State and stresses those features of his political position that ran counter to the prevailing views of his time. Marija Šuler shows how Liang, despite his putative conservativism, argued for a new historical narrative, advocating a historiographic revolution that would lay the foundation for more coherent and complex

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critical studies in Chinese history. A century later, this vision is still profoundly influencing our understanding of Chinese modernisation. The main features of the political and institutional changes that have led China through a wideranging process of social transformation to modernity, are reflected and documented in the new Chinese literature. Changes in literature––which is probably the Chinese cultural medium with the most profound social and political impact––have been underway in China since the 19th century, and the first two articles explore some of these changes in literary genres and in the socio-political function of literature. The third article elaborates on some key questions concerning literary history and criticism, while the fourth reveals some of the new directions being taken by various modern and contemporary Chinese prose writers. Raoul David Findeisen’s provocative contribution questions the very concept of “Chinese modernity” (especially with respect to its specific chronological categorisation) in the context of modern literary history, and shows how the structuring of such history as “recent”, “modern” or “contemporary” has routinely been influenced by ideological elements. Charles Kwong instead analyses the new, vernacular literature that emerged in the course of cultural modernisation, focusing in particular on its artificial separation from traditional classic forms and the prosodic elements inherent in specific features of the Chinese language. Martin Winter’s contribution closes this chapter with a survey of the development of Chinese literature since 2000, in which he stresses the close connection with various historical and political factors of the last century. The following chapter opens with Tina Ilgo’s analysis of Lu Xun’s short stories. She emphasises that, in literary terms, Chinese modernisation was a process of questioning traditional Chinese culture and was marked by the search for a new, modern Chinese identity. Ilgo underscores the role of a symbolic linkage between this modernisation process and the image of the moon. This nearest of celestial bodies is one of the central motifs in Lu Xun’s work, where it represents both enlightenment and insanity. The following essay by Ho Shun-yee examines another aspect of this process, and reveals the life and sentiments of the Chinese people through the eyes of the authors of Ten Years, an anthology of short fiction published in 1936. Liu Xi then analyses the contemporary novel Zhi Ma by woman writer, Zhang Kangkang. She shows how contemporary Chinese prose is still often imbued with post-socialist modernity discourses which promote and celebrate urbanisation and the free market, but without fully

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Introduction

interrogating or unmasking the deeply institutionalised overlappings of gender, class and power in both rural and urban society. The next chapter deals with issues relating to art and its broader social implications. Building on earlier studies on the production of art, reception aesthetics and cultural capital, the authors investigate the construction of meaning and its specific connections with the Chinese transition into modernity, showing how this process can be better interpreted and understood through art and artistic media. In the first contribution, Nataša Vampelj Suhadolnik offers valuable insights into the connection between early modern Chinese art and politics, and analyses the tensions between Western influence and traditional legacies in the modernisation process of Chinese art. Tania Becker next introduces one of the most intriguing phenomena in contemporary art, namely the public art of Ai Weiwei, and his role as internet activist and civil rights agitator/advocate in challenging political power structures in present-day China. Her detailed account of the dialectic of art and censorship in hyperspace takes the reader inside the new, virtual China which is unfolding in real time, even as we speak. For China, the 20th century was a period of continuous upheaval and sweeping social change. While Western culture manifested itself in its most violent and aggressive form in a series of economic and military invasions, the theoretical discourses that entered China in the wake of its troops and capitalism were seen primarily as a challenge. This challenge was expressed in the specific language of modern formalism and the social function of reason as embodied in modern science and technology, together with longstanding Western ideas on the state, law and democracy. At a more technical level, it also appeared in the form of various theoretical methodologies, as well as in concepts and categories specific to the history of Western thought. Especially challenging were the elementary methodological conditions that determined this set of new, mostly unknown categories and concepts, such as the demand for evidence or the formally flawless positing of essential assumptions and conclusions, explicit argumentation and accurately formulated definitions. The sixth chapter of this collection therefore deals with specific concrete problems connected to these issues. In her article on the introduction of sociology in modern China, Mariarosaria Gianninoto shows how, notwithstanding the need to comprehend, explore and apply Western ideas and ideal concatenations, the acceptance of these foreign theories was essentially superficial and the Chinese tradition of thought proved to be much more resilient and flexible than first appeared. In her article on Chinese-English translations of neologisms in online dictionaries, Mateja Petrovi shows

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how and why these issues, in the context of global communications, are still significant in contemporary China. One of the assumptions of the present volume is that certain relations between social contexts and specific Chinese cultural forms and media in the process of Chinese modernisation need to be not only theorised, but also empirically examined, especially in the accelerating continuum of political and economic globalisation. The final chapter is therefore dedicated to detailed investigations of a number of crucial issues in contemporary Chinese economics, ecology and social studies. The chapter opens with Mitja Saje’s article on the role of ideological cycles and their function in the context of the modern economy. In this specific culturalhistoric context, the author critically explores what is generally known as “Chinese capitalism” and raises important questions concerning the relation between the modern Chinese economy and what appears to be a new phase within the global economic system. While the liberalisation of its system has definitely made China one of the fastest growing economies in the world, it is equally undeniable that public health has deteriorated significantly since the introduction of the so-called socialist market economy. Eva Sternfeld’s contribution deals with one of the most dramatic reminders of social and economic dangers deriving from China’s explosive economic growth. In her article on China’s environmental situation, she examines the challenges facing China’s energy sector and discusses the policies and strategies that are in rapid evolution today, in order to guarantee energy security, while improving environmental and climate protection. Wang Xuan’s article deals with one of the most serious and disturbing consequences of massive internal migration in contemporary China, itself a consequence of major imbalances in regional economic development. This large-scale migration not only changes the lives of migrants, but also has profound effects on those who are left behind. Wang Xuan’s investigation of the reality and life-prospects of the rural “leftbehind children” clearly points to the necessity of implementing and improving better social security mechanisms in order to achieve a more equitable level of well-being in the population. The wide range and scope of the contributions gathered in the present collection indicate that the transition from tradition to modernity in China cannot be understood within the framework of an all-encompassing and unified social model, but requires a series of complex investigations into the interrelations among the physical environment, social structures, philosophy, history and culture. Hopefully, this approach will shed new

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Introduction

light on a number of core assumptions of academic inquiry, and open up new directions in the study of culture and society in China.

INTELLECTUAL HISTORY

CHAPTER ONE NEW TRENDS IN THEORY AND IDEOLOGY: THE MAIN THEORETICAL CURRENTS TH IN THE 20 CENTURY JANA S. ROŠKER

For China, the 20th century was a period of continuous upheaval and sweeping social change. At the end of the 19th century, the ancient “Middle Kingdom”––despite its immense geopolitical dimensions––found itself on the margins of the modern world, as part of its semi-colonial periphery. While Western culture manifested itself at its most violent and aggressive in the form of economic and military invasions, Western philosophy, which entered China in the train of Western capital and its troops, was seen mainly as a challenge. (Cheng 2002, 371) This challenge was expressed in the specific language of modern formal logic and analysis and in the social function of reason as embodied in modern science and technology, as well as in the Western idea of the state, law and democracy. At a more technical level, it also appeared in forms of Cartesian Dualism and their structure of mutually contradictory polarities and in the formal frame of traditional European dialectic, as well as in the concepts and categories specific to the Western history of thought, such as the notions of substance, objectivity, truth, and so forth. Especially challenging were the elementary methodological conditions that determined this confusing set of new, mostly unknown categories and concepts, such as the demand for evidence or the formally flawless establishment of essential assumptions and conclusions, explicit argumentation and accurately formulated definitions. Despite the need to understand, explore and apply Western ideas and ideal concatenations, the acceptance of these foreign theories was essentially a superficial phenomenon and the Chinese tradition of thought proved to be much more resiliant and flexible than first appeared.

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Chapter One

Although the sinificated “Marxism-Leninism” that prevailed in China during the latter half of the 20th century as the new state ideology derived from Western theories, social functions continued to be regulated to a great extent by traditional Confucian concepts.

Political and Ideological Developments After the decline of the Empire and the founding of the Republic of China in 1911, Chinese thought continued to develop in the spirit of confronting Western ideas while contemporaneously attempting to modernise the autochthonous Chinese philosophical tradition. While one group of thinkers, whose approach can be epitomised by their slogan “preserving the Chinese essence and applying the Western sciences (Ёᅌ ⚎储, 㽓ᅌ⚎⫼)”, occupied this middle ground, two more radical currents began to take shape among the Chinese intellectuals of this period. The first of these advocated the complete elimination of the Chinese tradition and a total Westernisation of culture and thought (ܼⲸ㽓࣪), while the second argued for the renewal and rebirth (ᕽসЏ㕽) of the tradition in the form of a new, dominant culture (Ё೟ᴀԡ᭛࣪). Politically, the period of the First Republic was still characterised by a profound crisis and a generalised instability. Under the guise of parliamentary democracy, governmental policies were determined by the authoritarian ambitions and power struggles among rival generals. However, with the outbreak of WWI, China became witness to the bankruptcy of European political theories, as the major Western powers entered into a protracted spiral of devastation and bloodletting. These events naturally dampened the previous Chinese enthusiasm for progressive European thought, and those who had seen in Western philosophy and science the most advanced stage of human civilisation, were very shaken by this experience. The growing demand for a sweeping reform of thought and culture that had emerged from the various rejections of the outmoded Confucian tradition, finally exploded in the so-called May Fourth Movement (Ѩಯ䘟ࢩ). This movement, which began on 4 May, 1919 with student demonstrations in the Square of Heavenly Peace in Peking1, would play a crucial role in the cultural, political and ideal modernisation of Chinese society. Its main publication, New Youth (ᮄ䴦ᑈ), which had been founded by Chen Duxiu 䱇⤼⾔ in 1915, soon became the most influential journal of its kind and a 1

The immediate cause of this demonstration was the decision of the Versailles Conference to cede the Chinese Shandong province to Japan.

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point of reference for a new generation of Chinese intellectuals. The spirit of the future New China was expressed in its demands for the abolition of obsolete Confucian thought and conservative strictures, which were seen as hindering the free development of individuals and society. It also advocated equality between the sexes and free love 2 , and the end of economic and political domination by the privileged classes. For the New Intellectuals, these demands formed the basis and precondition for a more equitable distribution of the material and ideal resources of Chinese society. All these demands were naturally connected to the need for fundamental changes in the general mindset of the people. New Youth, for example, published its articles in colloquial or vernacular language (ⱑ䁅), thereby giving a major impulse to the gradual superseding of ancient Chinese (᭛㿔) as the only acceptable form of public writing. Ancient Chinese was an archaic language which differed radically from modern Chinese, and could only be learned through the lengthy and costly process of a classical education. The exclusive use of ancient Chinese, which was only accessible to the tiny minority of the privileged classes, resulted in the vast majority of the Chinese population being completely cut off from any form of written culture, even if one were not completely illiterate. The so-called “vernacular movement” (ⱑ䁅䘟ࢩ) thus became a cornerstone of the new Chinese culture. This spiritual offspring of the May Fourth Movement first manifested itself in the flowering of the new literature, which was produced by the so-called New Intellectuals and was profoundly influenced by Western literary forms and canons. The new literature differed greatly from traditional literary production, not only in terms of language, but also in its contents and subject matter. However, only a few years after its inception, the May Fourth Movement would disappear, swallowed up by the power struggle between the Communist (݅⫶咼) and Nationalist (೟⇥咼) parties, which only added more tension to an already unstable domestic political situation. The political and military conflicts, accompanied by the chronic corruption and ineffectiveness of the governing Nationalist Party, sounded as a prelude to the Japanese occupation of Manchuria (1931), which was followed by the general Japanese invasion six years later. With the end of WWII (which in China was known as the Anti-Japanese War, (ᡫ᮹᠄⠁), the conflicts between the Nationalists and Communists erupted into civil war, which 2

These demands did not signify a sexual revolution based upon promiscuity, but the free choice of marriage partners, as opposed to traditional arranged marriages agreed between families or clans.

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Chapter One

ended in 1949 with the victory of the Communists and the founding of the People’s Republic of China under the leadership of Mao Zedong ↯╸ᵅ (1893–1976). The political leadership of the defeated Nationalist party emigrated to the island of Formosa (Taiwan ৄ☷), where it established a government in exile that continued the political tradition of the Republic of China. In the People’s Republic, the censorship of the previous Nationalist government, which had been applied unofficially in all areas of public life, was replaced by a systematic intellectual control that permitted only the reiteration and interpretation of Marxist thought in strict accordance with the changing priorities of the ruling elite. The government and the Communist party reformed the university system, which had been established in China at the start of the 20th century based on the British and American model. The Communist reform of higher education was founded upon the ideological directives formulated by Mao Zedong in his famous Yan’an speech (1942) on cultural and intellectual policy. This was followed by a period of massive, centralised campaigns directed against both the traditional and modern spiritual opponents of the new regime. Attempts to liberate China from this repressive yoke resulted in the shortlived Hundred Flowers Movement (ⱒ㧃䘟ࢩ, 1956), which was quickly suffocated by a new Anti–Rightist (ডে⌒) movement. The fiasco of the utopian economic-political campaign of the Great Leap Forward (໻䑡䘆, 1958) was followed by the period of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (⛵⫶䱢㋮᭛࣪໻䴽ੑ, 1966–1976). The Cultural Revolution, which was rooted in the intrigues and power struggles within the highest cadres of the ruling elite, succeeded in completely destroying all the newly established educational structures and ruthlessly eliminated several million intellectuals. Even those who were spared this fate were mostly exiled to rural areas to experience the hard life of the peasant masses and thereby “re-educate” themselves regarding crucial matters of life and politics. After a decade of this movement, which was marked by political and economic chaos, ideological repression, and the impossibility of performing any valid intellectual work, China experienced two decades of relative internal stability and a gradual “ideological liberation (㾷ᬒᗱᛇ)” under Deng Xiaoping’s 䛻ᇣᑇ policy of external openness and economic reforms. This period, however, was brutally interrupted on June 4, 1989 with the massacre of the students demonstrating for a more rapid democratisation of Chinese society in the Square of Heavenly Peace (໽ᅝ 䭔 ), in Peking. Many Chinese intellectuals reacted to this event with nihilism or a resigned withdrawal from intellectual activity, and the free development of contemporary Chinese thought was blocked for several

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more years, with public debate on these issues only gradually re-emerging in the final years of the century. However, after 1949, Taiwanese society was likewise marked by a fairly rigid political dictatorship and generalised intellectual control and only with the economic growth of the last two decades of the 20th century did a greater intellectual freedom become possible. The renaissance of contemporary Chinese thought has been reflected primarily in the development and elaboration of Marxist thought, the search for synthesis between Western theories and ancient Chinese, particularly Confucian tradition, and a new, specific Chinese liberalism. The development of modern Chinese thought, which began to emerge at the end of the 19th century, was therefore interrupted at the end of the 1930s for four decades. And while today contemporary Chinese philosophy is at last slowly awaking from a long sleep, we need to consider the millenial scale of time and vast expanses of space that have determined the unfolding of the Chinese tradition. In this perspective, four decades are but an instant, a breath fogging the glass. In any case, this new awakening, which in many respects resembles the so-called Golden period of Chinese philosophy during the era of the Warring States (᠄೟, 475– 221 BC), seems well-prepared to face the challenges of the global age.

The Changing Role of Confucianism In traditional China, Confucianism served as a state doctrine, based upon ethical paradigms which were claimed to have been derived directly from Confucius’ thought, as first formulated in the 4th century BC. In this respect, the formal critique of all other ideologies was totally moot, due to their incompatibility with this paradigmatic “truth”, while on a symbolic level the “genuine” teachings of Confucius represented that legal instance which ensured, in the context of traditional culture, the generally accepted “correctness” ( ℷ ) of social interactions, and especially the “proper” implementation of government policies. Based on this view of society, and its ideologies and values system, it appears as perfectly logical that the educated elite should, during periods of crisis, seek a solution to social chaos by exploring and correcting the “implementation” of this ideological foundation of the state. Although a dogmatism of this kind resembles the ideological functions of state religions in Western societies, the difference lies in the absolute pragmatism and utilitarianism of Confucian ethics, while the consequences of this difference are much more far-reaching than may first appear. And

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while it is certainly true that the Confucians did not permit any critical questioning of the prevailing doctrine in the social sphere (i.e. in the area to which it actually referred), its neglect of the metaphysical sphere and the absence of any imperative to prove the accuracy of its ethical premises with non-social arguments, meant that Confucianism––as opposed to Christian or Islamic ideal systems––at least tolerated a certain subjective freedom. In any case, in China, the “proper origin” of any essential paradigm still forms the basis of the “legitimacy” of any theory. The only difference in this regard between classical and modern China is that Confucianism was replaced by Marxist dialectical materialism more than half a century ago. After representing the central state doctrine and ideological foundation of traditional Chinese society for two thousand years, beginning in the 19th century it became clear that Confucianism, at least in its orthodox traditional form, could no longer serve as an ideal basis for the further development of modern society. In the early 20th century, this criticism of Confucianism was best exemplified in the May Fourth Movement, which was both nationalist in its opposition to Japanese and Western imperialism, and reformist in its sweeping criticism of the ossification and deleterious effects of traditional state doctrine. However, this period also planted the seeds of so-called Modern Confucianism (ᮄ‫ۦ‬ᅌ) 3 , which arose as a critical attempt to revitalise and modernise this fundamental ancient tradition of thought. This current was distinguished by a comprehensive attempt to revitalise traditional (particularly Confucian and NeoConfucian) thought by means of new influences borrowed or derived from Western systems. In this search for synthesis, the spirit of German idealism was especially important, while certain approaches of the Viennese circle also attracted a number of exponents of this current. During the first twenty-five years of the People’s Republic this current, at least officially, was reduced to silence; however, their main concerns and tenets continued to be developed by Taiwanese theorists and, to a certain extent, also by those from Hong Kong. Over the last two decades, with the explosive economic liberalisation of the People’s Republic of China, this 3

The term Xin ruxue ᮄ‫ۦ‬ᅌ has sometimes been translated literally as The New Confucianism or as Contemporary Confucianism by some Western authors. To avoid confusing it with the traditional School of Principles (li xue ⧚ᅌ), generally denoted as Neo-Confucianism or New Confucianism in Western sources, we shall omit the literal translation and apply the most frequently used term, Modern Confucianism.

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current had been gradually rehabilitated and its tendency to revitalise traditional thought still forms one of the main streams of contemporary Chinese theory. ⧒ҷᮄ‫ۦ‬ᆊᗱ╂ᰃѨಯᮄ᭛࣪䘟ࢩᕠᳳߎ⧒ⱘ᭛࣪⧒䈵, ೼Ё೟⧒ҷ ᗱᛇ৆Ϟऴ᳝䞡㽕ԡ㕂, 㟇Ҟ೼⍋໪㧃ҎϪ⬠ҹঞ␃ৄഄऔҡ᳝ᕜ໻ ⱘᕅ䷓. The contemporary current of Modern Confucianism can be seen as a phenomenon which emerged during the last period of the May Fourth Movement, which was striving for a cultural modernisation. This current occupies an important position in the history of recent Chinese thought and still exercises considerable influence among the Chinese living abroad, as well as those living in Hong Kong and Taiwan. (Song 1991, 10)

This primarily philosophical recasting of the Confucian system of thought thus bore its first fruits in Hong Kong and Taiwan, to which the defeated Nationalist government fled after 1949. While the Chinese philosophers who were active in Taiwan or Hong Kong after this date, were far less concerned with the sinification of Marxism and its semantic connotations, they were instead compelled to confront the issues of modernisation and capitalism much earlier than their colleagues in mainland China. We are thus dealing with a current that had a continuous development from the early 19th century onwards, and was interrupted only by the upheavals of WWII and the civil war which followed. Most theorists focused their efforts on formulating the most appropriate, philosophically-grounded criticisms of the autocratic ideologies and systems that prevailed in Taiwan during the first decades of the government in exile. In this regard, they were driven by the need to solve certain urgent problems of a practical nature in the spheres of politics, society, economics and culture. Thanks to the West’s support of a semi-colonial Hong Kong and a Taiwan viewed (especially by the Americans) as a democratic alternative to Chinese communism, both areas began to undergo an explosive process of Westernisation as early as the 1950s. This rapid integration into the world of modern capitalism was (in the ideological sense) accompanied by traditional Confucian ethics based upon a hierarchical system of obedience to authority, which had already proven itself to be quite compatible with the demands and the often intolerable social conditions of early capitalism in Japan.

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In contrast to the People’s Republic, where until the 1980s 4 Confucianism was regarded as the ideology of a superseded feudalism (Song 1991, 11), a number of intellectuals living in these societies (both of which were determined by post-colonial discourses) began to oppose the increasingly dominant Westernisation of their countries, and started looking mainly to the framework of Confucian thought for alternatives to these developments.

The Modern Confucian Declaration as a Reaction to Modernisation Modern Confucians viewed modernisation mainly as a rationalisation of the world. As a discourse in which the “signposts” for a rehabilitation of traditionalism were most clearly expressed, Modern Confucianism can be considered as originating with the famous Declaration for a renewed valuation of Chinese culture as a world heritage (⚎Ё೟᭛࣪ᭀਞ Ϫ⬠Ҏ ຿ᅷ㿔), which was published by a group of philosophers from Taiwan and Hong Kong, on 1 January, 1958. The declaration included an anticommunist panegyric of Western-style democracy and affirmed the importance of patriotism and preserving traditional values. In defining the goals and contents of Modern Confucianism, it represented the basic manifesto of this current. The key undersigners of the declaration were Carsun Chang (Zhang Junmai ᔉ৯ࣅ, 1887–1969), Mou Zongsan ⠳ᅫϝ (1909–1995), Tang Junyi ૤৯↙ (1909–1978) and Xu Fuguan ᕤ໡㾔 (1903–1982), who are still widely regarded as the founders of Contemporary Modern Confucianism ( ⭊ ҷ ᮄ ‫ ۦ‬ᅌ ), understood as a system which provided a more systematic reinterpretation of traditional Chinese philosophy based on a profounder and more integral command of the foundations of Western, especially Platonic, Kantian and Hegelian, thought (Bunnin 2002, 11). In the Declaration, the four authors expressed the ultimate goal of the new Confucian movement:

4

During the last two decades, in the PRC there has been an increasingly animated debate and a widening series of investigations into Modern Confucian philosophical approaches. An organisation named “Research into the ideal currents of contemporary Modern Confucianism (⧒ҷᮄ‫ۦ‬ᆊᗱ╂ⷨお)”, which was founded in 1986 by two philosophy professors, Fang Keli ᮍ‫ܟ‬ゟ and Li Jinquan ᴢ䣺ܼ, has a particularly important role in this process.

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Human existence as formed by Establishing Man as the Ultimate is that of a moral being which, at the same time, attains a higher spiritual enlightenment (…). Hence, this human existence is simultaneously moral and religious. Such a person is, in politics, the genuine citizen of democracy; in epistemology, one who stands over and above the physical world. Not being bound by his/her concepts, his/her intellectual knowledge does not contradict his/her spiritual apprehension. (Declaration, cf Bresciani 2001, 54)

Actually, the authors and signers of the Declaration are generally viewed as the second generation of Modern Confucianists. The movement has been divided in terms of the philosophers who were functioning as the actual pioneers of the movement and thus belonged to the so-called 1st generation of Modern Confucianism. They were followed by the 2nd and even 3rd generation, which consists of living philosophers, who are mostly active in the USA (see table below): First generation Xiong Shili Liang ❞क࡯ Shuming (1885– ṕ┅⑳ 1968) (1893– 1988) Second generation Tang Junyi Fang ૤৯↙ Dongmei (1909–1978) ᮍᵅ㕢 (1899–1977) Third generation Liu Shuxian Cheng Zhongying ࡝䗄‫ܜ‬ (1934) ៤Ё㣅 (1935)

Zhang Junmai ᔉ৯㛜 (1886– 1969)

Feng Youlan 侂ট㰁 (1859– 1990)

He Lin 䊔味 (1902–1992)

Xu Fuguan Mou Zongsan ᕤᕽ㾔 ⠳ᅫϝ (1903–1982) (1909–1995)

Du Weiming Yu Yingshi ᴰ㎁ᯢ Ѣ㣅ᰖ (1940) (1930)

Table 1-1: Generations of Modern Confucionists (After: Bresciani 2001, 33–36)

Mou Zongsan is generally viewed as the most important exponent of the second generation. With the exception of Fang Dongmei, all the other scholars were disciples of Xiong Shili, who is considered to be one of the key pioneers of the Modern Confucian thought. Their investigations were

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based primarily on the supposition that Confucian thought could be completely amalgamated with the system of capitalistic development. Many of its proponents also believed that a renewed form of this traditional Chinese system of social, political and moral thought could serve as a basis for endowing modern life with ethical meaning and as a spiritual salve for the alienation which appeared as an undesirable byproduct of capitalist competition and self-interest. (Wang 1981, 63; Cheng 2003, 171) Their efforts to revitalise and reconstruct traditional Confucian thought can therefore be seen as an attempt to counter the dominant ideological trends and preserve Chinese cultural identity, while also contributing to the development of philosophical and theoretical dialogue between China and the West.

Comparative Philosophy Chinese philosophy of the first half of the 20th century was still determined by the conditions of the decline of the Chinese New Age. Almost all the theorists of this period were forced to deal with the ideas and contradictions imposed by the incomparably more advanced (technologically speaking) Western countries. While the radical proWestern intellectuals engaged in the iconoclastic repudiation of all traditional culture and sought to resolve China’s crisis through the complete Westernisation of Chinese society, the more conservative thinkers argued for a modernisation of ancient, especially Confucian thought, which they believed provided the only possible spiritual basis for the reinstauration of an independent and sovereign Chinese state. However, ultimately the majority of the intelligentsia preferred to follow a middle course, focusing their efforts on a possible synthesis of both traditions. Based on their command of Western philosophy, they tried to reinterpret their own tradition through the most appropriate methods for integrating Western systems of thought into the framework of traditional Chinese discourses. During this period, which lasted approximately until the outbreak of WWII, many Chinese philosophical theories were also characterised by a faith in progress and in the redemptive potential of reason and the natural sciences. In social terms this outlook manifested itself in a wide range of liberal ideologies, while philosophically it tended towards the neo-realistic and pragmatic discourses of the more recent American philosophical schools. With respect to comparative studies, the contemporary Chinese thinkers who are confronting Western discourses have set themselves two

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major tasks in terms of application: 1) to understand and interpret the old in the new and to interpret the traditional in the modern; 2) given that the West represents the new and the modern 5 , to understand and interpret Chinese tradition in the light of the West and to understand and interpret Western tradition as refracted through the Chinese tradition (Cheng 2002, 372). Thus, the reinterpretation, renewed awareness and reflection upon traditional values currently operative in philosophical circles, is of crucial importance for the preservation of cultural identity, in terms of a system of metaphysical and ethical assumptions. Here, contemporary theorists have also had to deal with the need to research and create new frameworks of traditional systems of thought, especially with respect to the following three aspects (Cheng 2002, 374): a. The reintegration of those theoretical patterns, methods and categories of the autochthonous Chinese philosophical tradition that cannot be explained and understood within social and ideal contexts which do not belong to the discourses of this tradition. This aspect, which is the most important of the three, implies the need for an adequate transformation of those traditional discourses which cannot be comprehended, applied, reproduced or developed beyond the specific frameworks of the Chinese tradition. Hence, this aspect has been connected to the need for the analytical reconstruction of traditional concepts in the context of the modernisation of social developments. b. This process of self-understanding can only take place based on a twofold (and, in part, reciprocal) interpretation of philosophical terms and concepts, by which those that belong to the ancient Chinese tradition are interpreted in the context of modern Western paradigms, and vice-versa. c. After establishing an elementary commensurability of this sort for both systems, the results of this integral synthesis of both basic paradigms must be evaluated in intellectual and critical terms. This final aspect may be the most problematic one, since a paradigmatic evaluation requires “objective” or generally valid valuation 5

The concepts of “Western” and “Modern” have to be treated with a certain degree of caution. In the West, modern discourses superseded medieval traditions of thought. The scission of tradition from modernity, as formulated in the theories of the Enlightenment, is therefore not a universal one and should be viewed as an ideological construct which corresponded to the specific circumstances of European society at that time.

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criterion. More appropriate approaches, that would enable a more consistent, flexible and autonomous axiology of philosophical theory suited to the present time, might be found within the system of situation determined inter-relativeness, as contained in the philosophical discourses of the classical Daoists (䘧ᆊ) and Dialecticians (䖃㗙). In any case, detailed and profound studies which focus on the semantic and morphological functions of the linguistic structures of classical philosophical texts can reveal important epistemological aspects which might prove extraordinarily valuable in current interdisciplinary debates, that involve the fields of epistemology, ontology, analytical methodology, categorical heuristics and the philosophy of language. Indeed, Hans Lenk suggested that these studies may provide important alternatives to the methodological “imperialism of Cartesian dualisms” (Lenk 1993, 4). For this reason, it is also important to avoid an over-valuation of the significance of the grammatical division between the subject and object, which manifests itself as a division between facts and values on the epistemological level, and reality and phenomena on the ontological level.

The Sinification of Marxism During the 1940s, theoretical work was stymied by the cataclysm of war, while with the founding of the PRC, a sinificated ideologisation of Marxist theories necessarily prevailed in the new so-called “socialist society”. The result was that, until the 1970s, philosophy was mainly viewed as a tool for providing the theoretical underpinnings of Maoist policies, and as a means for the mass indoctrination of society. The popularisation and simplification of those aspects of Marxist-Leninist and Maoist thought considered functional for current political trends, was one of the main tasks of the Chinese intelligentsia of that time. This period was marked by a specific shift in discourse, caused by the increasingly broader politicisation of everyday life, and theory was increasingly substituted by forms of symbolic speech. In this context, abstract concepts no longer served as methodological tools for formulating or constituting new systems of thought but, as with the doctrines of orthodox Confucianism, appeared on a formal level as expressions of various ideological directions together with their proponents. The further development of practical theory, in the sense of a systematic formulation of philosophical contents, began in the early 1980s. In the post-Maoist China of the last two decades of the century, there were interesting attempts to sinificate dialectical materialism, as well as more

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frequent efforts to fuse Chinese and Western traditions of thought. While the latter can be found primarily in the new methodological foundations of contemporary Chinese thought, irrespective of the specific theoretical area6, the sinification of Marxist discourses mostly appears in two other theoretical currents. The first is primarily influenced by dialectics, logic and modern linguistic theories, while in the second, the ethical and aesthetic aspects of the synthesis of Marxist and traditional Chinese thought predominate (Li 1997, 97–8). Among the most influential of the “New Intellectuals”, who dedicated themselves to the dissemination and popularisation of Marxist thought in the 1920s, and especially during the 1930s, were Chen Duxiu 䱇⤼⾔ (1879–1942), Li Dazhao ᴢ໻䞫 (1889–1927) and Ai Siqi 㡒ᗱ䍋 (1910– 1966). While Ai Siqi’s reputation is based on his systematic treatises in the field of “socialist philosophy”, which were a mainstay of standard philosophical textbooks for many decades, the first two figures are among the founders of Chinese Marxism. The first party leader, Chen drew many intellectuals away from earlier Chinese radical movements, such as anarchism, while Li’s arguments for interdependent moral and economic revolutions formed the basis for Marxist ethical thinking in China. (Bunnin 2002, 9)

The works of these pioneers of Chinese Marxism were mostly aimed at introducing and popularising a theoretical framework and providing social, as well as historical constructions of dialectical materialism. Here, we should also mention the modern logician, Zhang Shenfu, who translated Wittgenstein’s Logical Philosophical Treatise, and is best known for his attempt to fuse Confucianism with the philosophy of Bertrand Russell and dialectical materialism. A more profound study and theoretical elaboration of Marxism, in terms of integrating certain aspects of traditional Chinese approaches into the framework of Marxist thought, was carried out during the PRC era, especially after the Cultural Revolution (1976). Among the long list of theorists who, each in his own way, contributed to a similar cognitive synthesis and succeeded in formulating their own, more or less innovative theories, we should mention the Modern Confucian, Feng Youlan 侂ট㰁 6 These approaches deal mainly with establishing comparative methodologies and reviving traditional categories and conceptual patterns.

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(1895–1990), Feng Qi 侂༥ (1915–1995), Zhang Dainian ᔉኅᑈ (1909) and Li Zehou ᴢ╸८ (1930). Alongside the creation of these new cognitive systems, “philosophy” also served as a purely symbolic tool for the formation of dominant ideologies. Clearly, the main goal of these popularised forms of “MarxistLeninist” or “Maoist” theories was to preserve the political power of the ruling oligarchy, and to formulate the direction of concrete policy. This form of popularised philosophy, which was usually expressed in allinclusive slogans, assumed the role of providing ideological links between the existing power structure and those subject to its rule, just as orthodox forms of Confucian doctrine had done in traditional China. Hence, every major government official was also a “leading philosopher” who formulated the “correct” interpretation of that “Marxist” (in Taiwan, Modern Confucian) “truth” which had replaced the dogmas of orthodox Confucianism in the latter half of the 20th century, while most leading politicians were also immortalised in philosophical encyclopaedias and modern histories of thought. This practice, which was already operative during the first Nationalist Republic, is still alive and well today, not only in the People’s Republic, but also in Taiwan. The gamut of “theoretical systems” in contemporary Chinese encyclopaedias and philosophical textbooks thus includes a wide range of ideological currents, beginning with Sun Zhongsan’s (Sun Yat-Sen’s) ᄿЁቅ concept of “Three National Principles ϝ⇥Џ㕽”, Mao Zedong’s “Maoism ↯╸ᵅᗱᛇ” , Deng Xiaoping’s 䛻ᇣᑇ “Theory of Socialism with Chinese Features Ё೟⡍㡆 ⱘ⼒᳗Џ㕽⧚䂪”, to arrive at the currently topical Jiang Zemin’s ∳╸⇥ ideology of the “Three Representations ϝ‫ן‬ҷ㸼”. Although these ideological politicisations of theory had a much greater impact in the periods in which they predominated than other more complex and theory-driven currents, they will not form part of discussion. The reason for this is twofold: firstly, because these theories do not in any way represent new theoretical systems, and are therefore of little scientific interest and, secondly, the majority of these treatises were not written by the political figures to whom they were ascribed, but by their “court ideologues”. The most striking example here is that of Mao Zedong ↯╸ ᵅ, who is still considered by many to be the spiritual father of so-called “Maoism” (i.e. the sinificated form of Marxist-Leninist theories), but whose works were shown by scholars years ago to consist primarily of plagiarisms.

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Several works analysing the close dependence of Mao Tse-tung’s theoretical works on Soviet sources, and his plagiarisms, have already appeared (Wittfogel, Takeuchi Minoru, Schram, Lippert, Wylie, Knight, Fogel) and do not need to be discussed at length here. Wittfogel notes the fact that approximately 40 per cent of Mao’s work Dialectical Materialism is plagiarism, while the other parts hardly deviate at all from Soviet models. (Meissner 1990, 11)

The transformation of Marxism to Maoism was, to a great extent, based upon the “inertial” principles of Chinese tradition, which also pervaded the social reality of the new “socialist” society: There is little evidence to suggest that contemporary China has abandoned any significant elements of its syncretic Confucian orthodoxy. The dynastic leadership of contemporary China maintains many of the same characteristics that have dominated since the Han dynasty: a governing state ideology that assigns each person their respective place in their community, the nation understood as a family, a programmatic constitution which functions more like a “Bill of Rites”, than a Bill of Rights, a filial respect for the ruler as “father and mother” of the people, and the consequent sense of rule as a personal exercise. With respect to the personal character of ruler, objecting to the policies that articulate the existing order continues to be considered a condemnation of the ruler’s person. (Hall and Ames 2001, 10)

The only real changes made by Mao in his modification of Marxist thought are to be found in his emphasis on specific elements which, in his view, define even the most general category, and his idea of permanent revolution. This idea, which served Mao Zedong throughout his long rule as an ideal foundation for mobilising the masses in order to preserve his power7, was rooted in the classical concept of correlative dialectics, by which synthesis (as the repeated reappearance of a qualitatively new state) does not occur in a single, instantaneous leap, but through a continual process of interaction between contradictory poles. This idea can also be found in ancient Chinese tradition, in its specific understanding of human nature (Ҏᗻ) and its inclining towards more flexible criteria for regulating human social interactions, which takes into account the particularities of a

7

The clearest and most complete expressions of the concept of “permanent revolution” were the “Great Leap Forward” ໻䑡䘆, the “Antirightist Movement” ডে⌒䘟ࢩ and the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” ⠽⫶䱢㋮᭛࣪໻䴽 ੑ...

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given situation (and which is most clearly expressed in the classical concept of rituality (⾂)). It is precisely this situational adaptability that provides the crucial discriminant with respect to the normative, legal regulation of social relations that form the basis of Western societies. Human malleability and the fluidity of social nature go far beyond the standard Marxist line. Where Marx stresses the uniformity of classoriginated identity, Mao emphasises the importance of those differences which derive from ways of living and thinking that must be factored into the evaluation of any specific “concrete” personality. There is in Mao a basic distrust of abstract, general claims, and a recurrent return to specific cases and historical examples. The contemporary Chinese view so historicises the Marxist sensibility as to allow for an almost unlimited flexibility in terms of the shaping of individual personalities and the development of individual skills. (Hall and Ames 2001, 10)

However, this very Maoist version of popularised Marxism also established elementary valuation criteria for public debates that embraced a wide range of socially significant disciplines, including philosophy and the theory of knowledge. The utopian aims and ideological rigidities of Mao’s thought were used repeatedly to restrict the range of debate, even though Mao’s theory of contradictions distinguished between acceptable and dangerous disagreements. The imposition of orthodoxy curtailed much of the potential creativity of Marxist theory. Nevertheless, some philosophers contributed to serious Marxist thought and historical reassessments of Chinese philosophy. (Bunnin 2002, 9–10)

Among these “court ideologues”, whose theories were entirely at the service of the ruling party and its ideological directions, we can mention Guo Moruo 䛁 ≿ 㢹 (1892–1978), who formulated a new periodic classification of the history of Chinese philosophy. His categories were based upon a simplified application of Marxist conceptual frames and provided new valuation criteria for various other philosophers. His judgement of philosophers as either progressive or reactionary did much to shape the study of the history of philosophy in China. In the open exchanges earlier in the century, Guo’s rejection of a static essence of Chinese society and thought contributed to the development of historical understanding; however, when imposed as orthodoxy, these views distorted and constricted philosophical study. (Bunnin 2002, 10)

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Most of Hou Wailu’s later works փ໪ⲻ (1903–1978) are based upon similar, though much more complex and theoretically more profound periodisations, and, in terms of content, much better differentiated approaches, making him one of the most important modern historians of Chinese thought. ᕲ 30 ᑈҷ䍋,Ҫឝ⫼侀‫ܟ‬ᗱЏ㕽ⱘ⧚䂪੠ᮍ⊩ⷨおЁ೟আ৆, ೼⼒᳗৆ , ᗱᛇ৆䷬ඳ԰њ໻䞣䭟䮶ᗻⱘⷨおᎹ԰.੠ҪҎড়㨫ⱘ໮ोᴀЁ೟ᗱ ᛇ䗮৆ÿ, ᰃ䖘ҞЁ೟᳔䁇‫ⱘ٭‬ϔ䚼ᗱᛇ৆㨫԰, ೼ᅌ㸧⬠ᕅ䷓ᕜ໻. 㨫԰঺᳝'Ё೟সҷ⼒᳗৆䂪','Ё೟সҷᗱᛇᅌ䁾৆','Ё೟䖥Ϫᗱᛇᅌ 䁾৆' ㄝ, ϺЏ㎼ 'Ё೟䖥ҷ૆ᅌ৆', 'Ё೟ᗱᛇ৆㎅', 'ᅟᯢ⧚ᅌ৆'. From the 1930s on, he explored Chinese history in accordance with Marxist theories and methods. His research was an important pioneering work in the fields of social and ideal history. His General History of Chinese Thought, a multi-volume work which he co-authored with others, still remains the most complete work on the history of Chinese thought and had a profound influence on the academic world. Other works worthy of mention are: On the Social History of Ancient China, A History of Ancient Chinese Theoretical Thought and A History of Modern Chinese Theoretical Thought. He was also an editor of The History of Modern Chinese Philosophy, An Outline of Chinese History of Thought and A History of the School of Principles of the Song and Ming Dynasties. (Zhexue 2003, 485)

Despite the great, at times almost unbearable, political and ideological pressures 8 in the latter half of the century a number of theorists were sufficiently subtle and creative (and sufficiently courageous) to plant the seeds of new theories that combined Marxist, Confucian, Daoist and even Buddhist approaches. While maintaining a Marxist perspective, they tried to reconstruct Chinese philosophy and methodology. Through this combination of commitments, they were perhaps more culturally representative than many other Chinese philosophical figures from the 1940s through the 1990s. (Cheng 2002, 381) Zhang Dainian (1909–2004) was one of the most influential Chinese philosophers of the contemporary era. Due to his revitalisation of classical categories and the concepts of traditional Chinese philosophy, he has also

8

Especially during the so-called Anti-rightist movement and the Cultural Revolution.

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recently become celebrated outside China 9 . Zhang has also developed newer methodological approaches for researching ancient Chinese traditions of thought, and has created a number of specific tools for comparative philosophy and related cultural sciences. ೼䞥ኇ䳪㟛侂ট㰁䙷㺵,ᇡЁ೟‫ڇ‬㍅૆ᅌⱘ㑐ᡓᰃ⍌䗣೼Ҫ‫૆ⱘץ‬ᅌ ⷨおЁⱘ,㗠ࠄњᔉኅᑈ,㌖ᮐᇛ䗭。ᇡ‫ڇ‬㍅૆ᅌⱘ㑐ᡓ䔝࣪⚎ϔ。㞾 㾎ⱘᮍ⊩䂪.ৃҹ䁾,䓗П䞥,侂ѠҎ,ᔉኅᑈϡ‫ڙ‬᳈⊼ᛣᇡЁ೟‫ڇ‬㍅૆ᅌ ⡍ᕕⱘᭈ储ᡞᦵ,г᳈⊼䞡㑐ᡓ‫ڇ‬㍅ⱘᮍ⊩䂪ॳࠛ...ᔉኅᑈᇡЁ೟‫ڇ‬㍅ ૆ᅌⱘ㑐ᡓ, ህ݊ᒷᑺ㗠㿔, 䘴䘴䍙ߎњ 䞥ኇ䳪, г䍙䘢њ侂ট㰁, 乃 ⼎Ҫᇡ‫ڇ‬㍅૆ᅌ㑐ᡓⱘ'㍰ড়ᗻ'. The continuation of the Chinese tradition was already apparent in the philosophical works of Yuelin and Feng Youlan. With Zhang Dainian, this continuity finally became a conscious, self-aware methodology. It can be said that Zhang Dainian, as opposed to Jin or Feng, was not only vigilantly preserving the special characteristics of traditional Chinese thought but, more importantly, was also preserving and continuing traditional methodological principles (...). In terms of its range, Zhang Dainian’s continuation of the Chinese philosophical tradition goes far beyond Jin Yuelin’s and even Feng Youlan’s. His work represents a genuine synthesis of the continuations of traditional philosophy. (Hu 2002, 230)

New Epistemology Epistemology represents an important field in traditional, as well as in modern Chinese philosophy. Here, we need to mention Jin Yuelin 䞥ኇ䳪 (1895–1984), who is still regarded as an important philosopher whose intelligible introductions to even the most complex contemporary systems of Western philosophy and logic had a profound influence on his fellow theorists. In terms of his own work, his sinification of modern Western thought is most evident in his metaphysical and epistemological theories. Zhang Dongsun ᔉ ᵅ 㪔 (1886–1973), who created a so-called plural epistemology (duoyuan renshi lun ໮‫ܗ‬䁡䄬䂪), can also be considered as one of the leading Chinese epistemologists of the 20th century, a reputation which rested, in part, on his extraordinary ability to introduce Western thought in a way which was compatible with the spirit of the Chinese tradition.

9

A slightly shorter version of his work Key Concepts and Categories in Classical Chinese Philosophy was translated into English and German, and received considerable attention in international sinology.

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The specific linking of ontology and epistemology provided new possibilities of understanding the traditional Chinese holistic worldview through the lens of modern theories of knowledge. Already during the first half of the 20th century, Chinese theorists had attempted to establish a renewed unity of the subject and the object of comprehension. In this regard, we can recall Tan Sitong’s 㽗ஷৠ concept of circulation, ( 䗮 ) which preconditions the interaction between the “external” and the “internal” reality, and is defined by humanity (or interhuman mutuality), as well as a number of other Neo-Confucian epistemological approaches. The Neo-Confucian philosopher Cheng Hao ⿟ 丹 (1032–1085) had already stressed that an individual could not recognise his unity with Heaven (and with all that exists), if he was not virtuous. Human virtue manifested itself in the harmony with Dao, understood as the highest principle of social ethics. Hence, the recognition of Heaven and the structure of the cosmos were contingent upon the recognition of men and the structure of society. While at the internal level, Tan’s circulation represented a (merely) physiological connection between the sense organs, nerves and the brain, it was still preconditioned by the functioning of an (axiologically understood) relational framework. A similar idea of circulation or decantation (⌕㸠) can also be found in Feng Youlan’s Modern Confucian unity of mechanical and axiological aspects of cognisance, which he called “the incorporation of the Way” (䘧储). Zhang Dongsun (1934) stated explicitly that the relation between beings and actualities was not a onedimensional connection between superficial phenomena and reality, which lay somewhere behind such phenomena. Instead, he saw this relation as an integral circulation (“a relation of source and course”, yuanliu (⑤⌕)), like the roots and branches of a tree. Even the Marxist philosopher Feng Qi 侂 ༥ saw the process of perception and comprehension as a kind of inter-relational network which connected things as such (or the Nature of Nature ໽ П ໽ ) into a comprehensible structural order of facts and possibilities. This structural order revealed both, inter-connections or inter-relations between specific facts (or possibilities), as well as the principles incorporated in them. While the Marxist oriented epistemologists like Feng Qi tried to place the concept of the subject and object of comprehension into a dialectical relation that could transcend the boundaries between traditional ontology and epistemology, the representatives of the Modern Confucian theory of knowledge (especially Xiong Shili ❞क࡯, but to a certain degree also Feng Youlan 侂ট㰁 and Mou Zongsan ⠳ᅫϝ) generally remained loyal

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to the complementary understanding of both elements of comprehension, reproducing this complementary relation either by a revitalisation of essence and function as a basic methodological pattern (Xiong), or by developing either a system of immanent metaphysics (Feng) or the concept of a “genuine”, i.e. objective subjectivity (Mou). According to more recent hypotheses, which attempt to integrate traditional approaches with the philosophical currents of the 20th century, the comprehensive process is based upon interactions between the subject and object of comprehension, in which they are no longer seen as mutually exclusive, absolute entities, but as two interactive, complementary poles of correlative relations, which define the multilayered nature of reality. In this regard, we should recall Zhang Dongsun’s (1934) important postulate that the relation of these two poles is not a direct one; between them there is a complex mean which is not a-priori part of either entity, but has been produced by their dynamic inter-relations with the physical and spiritual (ideal) aspects of being. In this respect, all that exists is a part of eternal change, which manifests itself in continuous modifications of structural connections and the “essential” quality of particular entities. According to Zhang Dongsun, who denied the notion of substance and its qualities, all these structures are empty and the dimension of material being (⠽) is merely a physical substantial appearance which can by no means be identified with material substance but, at most, with the structural relations and physical laws that determine its existence. External reality is the defined by the absence of any substance (ᆺ储), and its existence manifests itself only through “structural relations” (ᶊᾟ䮰֖) that represent the “external order” (ṱ⧚). Based on this understanding, our mind can recognise only certain aspects of these changes. However, this refers only to the level of our perception and comprehension, because the structural order of relations is all that really exists in cosmos. Hence, actuality has no “inner nature” or “essence”. It can only be recognised through its relations that form a relatively solid structure. All external structures manifest themselves in our mind, which re-constructs them by forming structural patterns of thought and comprehension. However, this is not a solipsistic view, given that external reality is not a result of our comprehension, but has been formed in the interactive and correlative relation with our mind, which has also been modified by the changing structures of external reality. Hence, the relation between the external world and our perception has been determined by integral structure(s) and established in accordance with particular principles.

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In these syntheses one can sense the strong influence of Chan Buddhist epistemology. The aforesaid “structure” functions in a way similar to the Chan-Buddhist concept of the all embracing causal relation “yinyuan ಴㎷ ”, in which cosmos represents a complex, unsubstantial network incorporating innumerable inter-dependent relations that unite with and separate from one another in countless way and on countless different levels. This is the cosmic emptiness, understood not as “nothingness”, but as insubstantiality, or the absence of any unchangeable nature or any integral, self-sufficient being. Since relational connections are all that exist in the cosmos, the world is but a series of insubstantial functional relations which, however, are not meaningless. In other words, we as living beings have not been thrown into the cosmos as the by-products of some “higher” order and, therefore, we are not merely overdetermined fragments in the mosaic of the variegated relations that form reality. On the contrary, we possess a-priori (and necessarily) the possibility and obligation to co-create and condition the world in which we live. By means of our individual spirit, we build bridges which represent a synthesis of the universal and specific components of the human mind, and these bridges connect us with our natural and social environments. In such a relativisation of comprehension, one can detect the courage for changing our common world. Thus, these new, innovative approaches can also help us to confront differences and to learn to understand differences by transcending the narrow frameworks of our cultural determined prejudices.

Bibliography Bresciani, Umberto. 2001. Reinventing Confucianism – The New Confucian Movement. Taipei: Taipei Ricci Institute for Chinese Studies Bunnin, Nicholas. 2002. “Introduction.” In Contemporary Chinese Philosophy, edited by Nicholas Bunnin, and Cheng Zhongying /Chung-ying/, 1–15. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd. Cheng, Chung-ying. 2002. “Recent Trends in Chinese Philosophy in China and the West.” In Contemporary Chinese Philosophy, edited by Nicholas Bunnin, and Cheng Zhongying /Chung-ying/), 349–404. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd. ––. 2003. Confucianism: Twentieth Century, in: Philosophy, Chinese – Encyclopedias, edited by Antonio S. Cua, 160–72. New York: Routledge.

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Hall, David L., and Roger T. Ames. 1998. “Chinese Philosophy.” In Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by E. Craig. London: Routledg. http://www.rep.routledge.com/article /G001SECT10. Hu, Weixi 㚵‫؝‬Ꮰ. 2002. Zhishi luoji yu jiazhi ˉ Zhongguo xinshi zai sichao ⶹ䄬ˈ䙣䔃㟛‫ˉؐۍ‬Ё೟ᮄᆺ೼䂪ᗱ╂ ⱘ㟜䍋 (Knowledge, Logic and Values – the Rise of New Chinese Realism). Beijing: Qinghua daxue chuban she. Jin, Yuelin 䞥ኇ䳪. 1996. Zhishi lun ⶹ䄬䂪 (Theory of Knowledge). Beijing Shangwu yinshu guan. (1st edition 1983). Lenk, Hans. 1993. “Introduction.” In Epistemological Issues in Classical Chinese Philosophy, edited by Hans Lenk, and Gregor Paul, 1–10. New York: State University of New York Press. Li, You-Zheng. 1997. Epistemological Problems of the Comparative Humanities – A Semiotic/Chinese Perspective, edited by Peter Lang. Frankfurt/Main: Europäischer Verlag für Wissenschaften. Meissner, Werner. 1990. Philosophy and Politics in China – The Controversy over Dialectical Materialism in the 1930s. Translated by Richard Mann. C. London: Hurst & Co. Mou, Zongsan ⠳ᅫϝ. 2003. Mou Zongsan xiansheng quanji ⠳ᅫϝ‫⫳ܜ‬ ܼ䲚 (Collected Works of Sir Mou Zongsan), 32 Volumes. Edited by Li Minghui. Taibei: Lianhe bao chuban she. Song, Zhiming ᅟᖫᯢ. 1991. “Xiandai xin ruxue ynjiu miyao ⧒ҷᮄ‫ۦ‬ ᅌ ⷨ お 䗋 㽕 ” (“Aberrations and Significance of the Research in Modern Confucianism”). In Zhexue dongtai ૆ᅌࢩᜟ (Philosophical Trends) 1991(2): 10–12. Wang, Zhongjiang ⥟Ё∳. 1981. “Xiandai xin ruxuede shiyu xianzhi ⧒ ҷᮄ‫ۦ‬ᅌⱘ㽪ඳ䰤ࠊ” (“The Limitations of the Modern – Confucian World View.”) In Zhengzhou xuekan 䜁Ꮂᅌߞ (Zhengzhou Academic Journal) 1981(5): 61–60. Xiong, Shili ❞क࡯. 1992. Xin weishi lun ❞क࡯䂪㨫䲚Пϔ (Collected Works of Xiong Shili, Part 1). Beijing: Zhonghua shuju. Zhang, Dainian ᔉ ኅ ᑈ . 1996. Zhang Dainian quanji ᔉ ኅ ᑈ ܼ 䲚 (Collected Works of Zhang Dainian), 8 vols. Shijiazhuang: Hebei renmin chuban she. Zhang, Dongsun ᔉ ᵅ 㪔 . 1934. Renshi lun 䁡 䄬 䂪 (Epistemology). Shanghai: Shanghai shijie shuju. Zhexue xiao cidian ૆ ᅌ ᇣ 䖁 ‫ ݌‬. 2003. (A Small Philosophical Dictionary). Edited by Yu Penglin, Zhang Liangyi, and Liao Jianhua. Shanghai: Shanghai cishu chuban she.

CHAPTER TWO CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION WITH CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS: CONTEMPORARY RELEVANCE OF THE 1935 DECLARATION FOR CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION ON A CHINESE BASIS HELENA MOTOH

In a “thick fog” (⌧䳒Ё), in “freezing cold” (ϹᆦЁ), “without light or warmth” (≵᳝‫ˈܝ‬г≵᳝⛁), such was the miserable state of Chinese culture in 1935 according to the group of ten university professors that signed The Declaration for Cultural Construction on a Chinese Basis (Ё ೑ᴀԡⱘ᭛࣪ᓎ䆒ᅷ㿔).1 This text, which is extremely vague in both its analysis and proposed solutions and which appears more as a historical curiosity than a document with significant literary or theoretical value, is nonetheless remarkably representative of a certain understanding of the “Chineseness” of Chinese culture. In the present paper, I shall attempt to show the logic of this argumentation and juxtapose this view on Chineseness with that of the Declaration’s harshest critic, Hu Shi. The debate mainly focused on what constitutes the particular “Chinese quality” of Chinese culture, whether Chinese leaders and the nation should attempt to preserve it and how they were to achieve this goal. However, the implications of the debate are of a much wider scope. For example, the term the authors used, “Chinese basis” (Ё೑ᴀԡ), already resonates with a later PRC reference. Famously, in the late 1970s, Deng used a similar expression, “Chinese characteristics” (Ё೑⡍㡆), in order to justify his 1

All quotes taken from the Chinese text of the Declaration at: http://www.dujing.org/ClCms/Article/showinfo.asp?infoid=1092 (accessed April 10, 2012). English translation by Helena Motoh.

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deviation from the Maoist economic policies of the previous era. Specifically, in explaining the transformation into a commodity market economy (supposedly as a transitional step before reaching a fully developed socialist economy), Deng referred to “Chinese characteristics” as a unique predisposition of China and Chinese society that demands a modification in ideological presumptions. The historical evidence proved that a socialist economy with Chinese characteristics was practically a capitalist one, and Deng’s phrase thus became a euphemism: anything “with Chinese characteristics” was understood to be “virtually the opposite of what was being claimed”. Recently, however, another claim was made by party leaders, one that resonates even more with the discourse of the 1930s cultural construction debate. The sixth plenum of the 17th CCP Central Committee in October, 2011 proposed a resolution on cultural construction for building internal national coherence, declaring it to be an important element of China’s “soft power” in international relations. (Decision 2011) The return to a particular view on Chineseness, as defined by traditional Chinese culture, appears as an unusual echo of the pro-Guomindang rhetoric of the 1935 Manifesto authors. In the following analysis, I shall first outline the context of the cultural construction debate in 1920s and 1930s, and then against this backdrop analyse both the Manifesto and Hu Shi’s criticism, with special attention to the interpretation of what Chinese culture is and what constitutes its Chineseness. Finally, I will compare the assumptions of the two texts with the current 2011 political program of cultural construction, in order to see how it evokes or challenges certain suppositions of the first cultural construction debate.

Constructing a Culture on a Chinese Basis? The Chinese intellectual scene of the 1920s and ‘30s was defined significantly by the debate on the issue of “cultural construction” (᭛࣪ᓎ 䆒), and what was supposed to serve as its basis. The key issue (and rebus) was how to effectively balance allegedly authentic Chinese knowledge with imported “Western” knowledge. This balance had been sought since the time of Zhang Zhidong’s famous formulation “Chinese learning as basis, Western learning as application” (ЁᄺЎԧ㽓ᄺЎ⫼), but was now being questioned again after the disillusionment of World War I and the disappointment many Chinese felt with the “West” following the Treaty of Versailles. In the 1920s, many authors, most notably Liang Shuming, began to emphasise the importance of Chinese “spiritual” civilisation, as

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opposed to Western “materialist” civilisation (de Bary and Lufrano 2000, 380). However, Hu Shi and others remained faithful to the ideas of the May Fourth Movement, by which traditional Chinese culture was viewed as the main culprit for the semi-colonial status of China and the biggest obstacle to Chinese modernisation. An interesting equation was made between these two viewpoints, though the value attached to them was quite different. In a very Hegelian mode, Chinese culture was seen as representing the “Past”, with respect to the Western present. Whether discredited in a teleological sequence of epochs as in Hu, or eulogised as an ancient spiritual civilisation as in Liang, one thing was clear: no such thing as modern Chinese culture yet existed. A revival of the debate in the 1930s started with Hu Shi’s text on cultural conflicts (᭛࣪‫ކ‬さ䆎) (Yue 2003, 98), which advocated a radical Westernisation ( 㽓 ࣪ ). Both he and his contemporary, Chen Xujing, criticised the view that China should only Westernise up to a certain point, while seeking to preserve essential elements of Chinese culture. According to Hu, this kind of selective modernisation was illogical, and meant that the proponents of this approach wanted China to change without really changing. He was equally sceptical of the foreign view that China should preserve its traditional character in parallel with the introduction of necessary new technologies and innovations, claiming that if a Chinese essence actually existed, it would surely survive in a healthy, wealthy and prosperous China as well (Yue 2003, 98). During the course of this debate, a campaign was begun by Jiang Jieshi and his wife which advocated a repudiation of Westernisation and a return to traditional Chinese morality. This so-called New Life Movement focused on reviving Confucian values in the modern nationalist context. It was launched as part of a spiritual training program for officers, in order to raise their morale after repeated defeats at the hands of the Communists and Japanese (Van De Van 2003, 163). During the 1934 anti-Communist campaign in Jiangxi, Jiang launched a version for the civilian population as well, called the New Life Campaign, which aimed at persuading people to follow pseudo-Confucian values and adhere to discipline, modesty, propriety and loyalty to the nation. Such virtues would serve a threefold purpose, the so-called three transformations (ϝ࣪): cultural uplift, militarisation and industrialisation (Van De Van 2003, 164–65). This revival of tradition, which has been criticised as Jiang’s attempt to create a kind of Confucian fascism (Van De Van 2003, 165), was clearly radically opposed to the uncompromising Westernisation advocated by Hu. As Hans Van De Van puts it:

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Chapter Two The New Life Movement’s purpose was to make propaganda for the idea that its version of a secular and rational Confucianism constituted a uniquely Chinese “spirit” compatible with modernity and shared by all Chinese (…). (Van De Van 2003, 166)

It was thus against the background of these heated debates and the New Life Movement campaign that the Declaration for Cultural Construction on a Chinese Basis was set down by He Bingsong ԩ⚇ᵒ, Sa Mengwu and a group of other university professors. In keeping with the ᮄ⫳⌏䖤ࡼ eclectic ideology and ideas of the radical pro-Jiang Jieshi CC faction (CC ⌒)2, the Declaration focused mainly on the need to preserve the Chinese cultural basis in the process of constructing a new Chinese culture. The authors began their document with the bold declaration that: “China no longer exists” (≵᳝њЁ೑) (Ha et al. 1935). Employing the rather pathos-laden image of a China lost in the fog and darkness of cultural decline, they justified their claim as follows: Ё೑೼᭛࣪ⱘ乚ඳЁᰃ⍜༅њ˗Ё೑ᬓ⊏ⱘᔶᗕǃ⼒Ӯⱘ㒘㒛ǃ੠ᗱ ᛇⱘ‫ݙ‬ᆍϢᔶᓣˈᏆ㒣༅এᅗⱘ⡍ᕕDŽ⬅䖭≵᳝⡍ᕕⱘᬓ⊏ǃ⼒Ӯ੠ ᗱᛇ᠔࣪㚆ⱘҎ⇥ˈг⏤⏤ⱘ ϡ㛑ㅫᕫЁ೑ҎDŽ᠔ҹ៥Ӏৃҹ㚃ᅮ ⱘ䇈˖Ң᭛࣪ⱘ乚ඳএሩᳯˈ⦄ҷϪ⬠䞠䴶೎✊Ꮖ㒣≵᳝њЁ೑ˈЁ ೑ⱘ乚ೳ䞠䴶г޴ТᏆ㒣≵᳝њЁ೑ҎDŽ In terms of culture, China no longer exists; the Chinese political system, social organisation and contents and forms of thought have all lost their characteristics. Therefore, no one is any longer educated and raised within such politics, society and thinking and eventually there will no longer be anyone that can be considered as being Chinese. Thus, we can declare with certainty that, in terms of culture, China no longer exists, and there are no longer any Chinese people in the present world.

Their program for the consolidation and revival of China was summed up by a syntagm: “Cultural construction on a Chinese basis” (Ё೑ᴀԡⱘ ᭛࣪ᓎ䆒). But what constituted this Chinese basis? Instead of giving a direct answer, the authors offered a method:

2

Popular, though informal name for a faction, led by Chen Guofu and Chen Lifu (originating either with the two surnames, Chen and Chen, or the name “Central Club”) that aided Jiang Jieshi in seizing control of the Guomindang (Wang 1998, 43–44)

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ᖙ乏⫼ᡍ䆘ⱘᗕᑺǃ⾥ᄺⱘᮍ⊩ˈẔ䯙䖛এⱘЁ೑ˈᡞᦵ⦄೼ⱘЁ೑ ˈᓎ䆒ᇚᴹⱘЁ೑DŽ We must use a critical approach and a scientific method, in order to explore what China was in the past, consider what it is today and construct what it will be in the future.

The authors criticised previous reform movements that adopted foreign ideas, due to their failure to take into account “Chinese characteristics” and the “specificity of China’s time and place” (Ё೑ぎ䯈ᯊ䯈ⱘ⡍⅞ᗻ). Surprisingly, the argument against adopting foreign models is quite similar to Deng’s use of Chinese characteristics in his slogan. Chinese characteristics thus meant that, when compared with other countries, China was at her own particular stage of development and thus required a different approach: ग़৆ϡ㛑䞡ⓨˈгϡ䳔㽕䞡ⓨ˗᳝ҎҹЎЁ೑ᑨᅠܼ῵ӓ㣅㕢ˈ㣅㕢 ೎᳝㣅㕢ⱘ⡍䭓ˈԚഄ䴲㣅㕢ⱘЁ೑ᑨ᳝݊⣀⡍ⱘᛣ䆚ᔶ ᗕˈᑊϨ Ё೑⦄೼ᰃ೼‫ݰ‬Ϯⱘᇕᓎⱘ⼒Ӯ੠ᎹϮⱘ⼒ӮѸძⱘᯊᳳˈ੠Ꮖᅠܼ 䖯ࠄᎹϮᯊҷⱘ㣅㕢ˈ㞾᳝݊ϡৠⱘᚙᔶ˗᠔ҹ៥Ӏ‫އ‬ϡ㛑䌲៤ᅠܼ ῵ӓ㣅㕢DŽ History cannot and should not be repeated; some believe that China should imitate Britain and the United States in all things, but both these countries have their own, specifically British and American strongpoints. China, however, is neither Britain nor the United States and has its own special ideology; even more importantly, Chinese society is still agricultural and feudal and is only now beginning its transformation into an industrial society; therefore, its situation differs from Britain or the United States, which have already completed this transformation. It is for this reason that we cannot advocate following the example of these two countries in all things.

In the third part of the manifesto, entitled “What should be done?” (៥ Ӏ ᗢ М ࡲ ), they explain what they mean by “Chinese basis”. The Chineseness of China is determined by place and time; by its geographical position and by the time frame, which for the authors is the present time. It is therefore meaningless to uncritically condemn or praise the Chinese tradition. Instead, the only criterion should be what is applicable to China’s current specific situation. Only the most valuable elements of the tradition should be preserved; all the rest should be discarded. ᕦ✊䌲㕢সҷⱘЁ೑ࠊᑺᗱᛇˈᰃ᮴⫼ⱘ˗ᕦ✊䆙੦সҷⱘЁ೑ࠊᑺ ᗱᛇˈгϔḋ᮴⫼˗ᖙ乏ᡞ䖛এⱘϔߛˈࡴҹẔ䅼ˈᄬ݊᠔ᔧᄬˈএ

38

Chapter Two ݊᠔ᔧএ˗݊ৃ䌲㕢ⱘ㡃དࠊᑺӳ໻ᗱᛇˈᔧチ࡯ЎПথᡀ‫ܝ‬໻ˈҹ 䋵⤂ѢܼϪ⬠˗㗠ৃ䆙੦ⱘϡ㡃ࠊᑺथࡷᗱᛇˈ߭ᔧ⎬≄ࡵሑˈ᮴᠔ ৱᚰDŽ It is useless and vain to admire the system and thought of ancient China; but to condemn the ancient Chinese system and thought is just as vain and useless; we must examine the Chinese past as a whole, preserve what is worth preserving, discard what neds to be discarded; the good systems and great ideas worthy of admiration should be praised vigorously for their importance for the whole world; poor systems and inferior thoughts worthy only of condemnation, should be eliminated completely and without mercy.

The same criterion should be applied with respect to foreign ideas, and by means of scientific methods and a critical approach (ḍ᥂Ё೑ᴀԡˈ 䞛পᡍ䆘ᗕᑺ). This conceptualisation is, of course, quite vague. While claiming that this cultural construction on a Chinese basis is “not conservative in intent” ϡᅜᮻ, being raised in the Chinese political system and social structure and assimilating the contents and forms of Chinese thought is given as a prerequisite for being Chinese. But the authors do not specify what political system and social structure is meant, though clearly it cannot be the existing one, or else Chinese culture and Chineseness would not be disappearing. The authors’ denial of their own conservatism is, indeed, quite typical of the ideological stance of the New Life Movement. It is not a return to traditional Chinese society which is being advocated, but the construction of a new society based on very select Confucian values, and interpreted in a completely new light of nationalism, patriotism and militarism. Confucianism, we might say, with GMD characteristics.

Chinese People Are the Chinese Basis This oxymoronic combination of tradition and new nationalism is completely disregarded by Hu Shi. A passionate critic of the Chinese tradition and an advocate of the importation of “Western” learning, his stinging criticism is aimed primarily at the conservatism of the authors. The mere fact that they cannot abandon the idea of a “Chinese basis”, in his eyes makes them as conservative as the previous generations of reformers that had clung onto Zhang Zhidong’s criterion: ᯊ傺ⱘҎᔧ✊ϡ㚃㗕㗕ᅲᅲⱘЏᓴ໡সˈ᠔ҹҪӀⱘֱᅜᖗ⧚䛑ᠬᑛ Ѣᡬ㹋䇗੠ⱘ⚳ᐩᔍПϟDŽ

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It is not fashionable to openly advocate a return to the old, so they hide (this view) behind the smoke screen of compromise and harmony.3

Hu Shi also disagrees with the authors of the Declaration as to the nature of cultural change. In his view, every culture behaves conservatively during periods of change, and seeks to retain its characteristics. The outcome of this process and the degree to which it accepts foreign influences cannot be controlled or defined by scientific method, but instead depends on the relative strength of the two “clashing” cultures. As an example, he cites the liberation of women, where no arbitrary limit can be set as to how far the adoption of a foreign culture might lead: ՟བཛཇᬒ㛮࠾থˈ໻ᆊ೼Ҟ᮹ᑨ䆹݀䅸Ўড়⧚ⱘџDŽԚ៥Ӏϡ㛑Ⓓ ⫼ᴗ࡯ˈ℺ᮁ ⱘᦤߎᷛ‫ޚ‬ᴹ䇈˖ཛཇ㾷ᬒˈা䆌ࠄᬒ㛮࠾থЎℶˈ ᳈ϡᕫ⚿থˈϡᕫⷁ㹪ˈϡᕫこϱ㹰ˈϡᕫ䏇㟲ˈϡᕫ⍖㛖ᢍ㉝DŽ If women today liberate their feet and cut their hair, everybody considers this rational. But we must not abuse our power and set an arbitrary standard to determine that women’s liberation can only extend to unbinding their feet and cutting their hair, and then it must be stopped–– that they must not then go on to wearing a perm, short sleeves and silk stockings, or begin dancing and wearing make-up.

The most interesting element of Hu Shi’s criticism of the declaration is his particular take on what “Chinese basis” means and how this cultural basis is not in danger of being eradicated. In his argument, we can detect elements of the same shift at work in the New Life Movement’s revival of Confucian tradition. According to Hu, every culture is basically conservative: ᭛࣪৘ᮍ䴶ⱘ▔⚜বࡼˈ㒜᳝ϔϾ໻䰤ᑺˈህᰃ㒜ϡ㛑ḍᴀᠿ♁䙷೎ ᳝᭛࣪ⱘḍᴀֱᅜᗻDŽ The torbid manifold changes of a culture still have their limit, and this limit is the ineradicable basic conservatism of the culture.

But how can culture be conservative? In Hu’s view, culture is not a set of practices, values, rituals etc., perpetuated or practiced by a group of

3

For Hu Shi’s text, the Chinese version is quoted from: http://www.093ad.com/ inc/md5.asp?type=doc&doc=79137 (Accessed on April 10, 2012). English translation by Helena Motoh.

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people. Such cultural elements can not be conservative, as culture has no agency to accept or reject change; moreover, culture does not change itself. Change results from groups of actual living human beings who choose to reject certain cultural elements and replace them with others. Hu’s view of culture, therefore, equates culture as agency with people in groups. Hence, according to Hu, it is manifest that the Chinese basis is simply the Chinese people: 䖭Ͼᴀ೑ᴀԡህᰃ೼ᶤ⾡೎᳝⦃๗Ϣग़৆Пϟ᠔䗴៤ⱘ⫳⌏дᛃ;ㅔ ऩ䇈ᴹˈህᰃ䙷᮴᭄᮴᭄ⱘҎ⇥DŽ This national basis is whatever intrinsic living habits were created in certain conditions and through a specific history; simply put, it is the unnumbered masses of the people.

Hu’s equation of the Chinese people with the Chinese basis is only superficially anti-essentialist. He is, in fact, extremely determinist, for it is the Chinese environment and China’s history that determine the “cultural basis” of the Chinese people. This second idea is suspiciously close to the conservative idea of a historically defined Chinese cultural basis, although contrary to the conservatives, Hu is critical of whatever traditional culture is produced in this way. Furthermore, the literal equation of the Chinese basis with Chinese people is colored with the ideas of an emerging Chinese nationalism, by which Chinese culture is the culture of the Chinese people and not viceversa. In any case, Hu’s argument remains as circular as that of the ten authors, for the definition of what constitutes “the Chinese people” is based on the environment and a common history and, consequently, on culture. This new view of the people ( Ҏ ⇥ ) and its central role in Hu’s argument betrays a closer affinity to the ideological solutions of the New Life Movement and the Declaration authors than he would probably have ever cared to admit. Although in complete disagreement on the contents of this desired new culture, the original, extremely untraditional view of the people as both the agents and the goal of a new cultural construction is common to both, while the strength of the nation, though achieved by different means, is the main goal in Hu’s program as well.

New Cultural Construction In a curious coincidence, 76 years after the Declaration, the issue of cultural construction was again invoked by another Hu, or the president of

Cultural Construction with Chinese Characteristics

41

the PRC, Hu Jintao. The program that was accepted at the sixth plenum of the 17th CPC Central Committee in October, 2011 proposed cultural construction as an essential element of consolidating Chinese “soft power” in international relations. A lengthy document entitled Resolution of the CPC Central Committee on Major Issues Pertaining to Extending the Reform of the Cultural System and Promoting the Great Development and Flourishing of Socialist Culture (Ё݅Ё༂݇Ѣ⏅࣪᭛࣪ԧࠊᬍ䴽᥼ࡼ ⼒ӮЏН᭛࣪໻থሩ໻㐕㤷㢹ᑆ䞡໻䯂乬ⱘ‫އ‬ᅮ)4 was promulgated in order to give the directives for this new party line. The opening lines of the text justify this new “cultural turning”, with the CPC Central Committee explaining that the reform: ... ᇍ༎পܼ䴶ᓎ䆒ᇣᒋ⼒Ӯᮄ㚰߽ǃᓔ߯Ё೑⡍㡆⼒ӮЏНџϮᮄሔ 䴶ǃᅲ⦄Ёढ⇥ᮣӳ ໻໡݈‫݋‬᳝䞡໻㗠⏅䖰ⱘᛣНDŽ (...) is of great and far-reaching significance for winning new victories in building a moderately prosperous society in all respects, initiating a new phase in the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics, and achieving the great renewal of the Chinese nation.

The CPC CC Resolution opens with several interesting claims and draws upon a surprising choice of references. In order to prove that culture has always played a central role in party politics, the Resolution makes a rather bold claim concerning the CPC’s relationship with traditional culture: Ё೑݅ѻ‫ܮ‬Ң៤ゟП᮹䍋ˈህ᮶ᰃЁढӬ⾔Ӵ㒳᭛࣪ⱘᖴᅲӴᡓ㗙੠ ᓬᡀ㗙ˈজᰃЁ೑‫ܜ‬䖯᭛࣪ⱘ⿃ᵕ‫׵‬ᇐ㗙੠থሩ㗙DŽ Since the CPC was established, it has faithfully drawn upon and carried forward China’s outstanding traditional culture, as well as actively advocating and developing the country’s advanced culture. (Decision 2011, 4)

This was especially true, according to the Resolution, after the 2002 16th CPC Congress––namely, after the shift from Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao. The text goes on to declare that the policy of “serving the people and the society” and “letting the hundred flowers bloom, letting the 4

All citations of the Chinese text of the Resolution is from: http://news.xinhuanet. com/politics/2011-10/25/c_122197737.htm (Accessed April 10, 2012). The English translation is quoted from: http://www.cctb.net/bygz/wxfy/201111/W020 111121519527826615.pdf (Accessed April 4, 2012).

42

Chapter Two

hundred schools contend” (മᣕЎҎ⇥᳡ࡵǃЎ⼒ӮЏН᳡ࡵⱘᮍ৥੠ ⱒ㢅唤ᬒǃⱒᆊѝ号ⱘᮍ䩜) has been pursued over this past decade, and then adds a more contemporary reference to the “culture of harmony” (੠ 䇤᭛࣪). Some more “traditional” CPC references are also included, e.g., the need to fight ethical and moral corruption, greed and fraud and even–– surprisingly––to promote activities that emulate Lei Feng” (⏅ܹᓔሩᄺ䳋 䫟⌏ࡼ). The Resolution combines two distinct understandings of culture throughout: the respect and promotion of traditional culture as the backbone of the Chinese nation, and the importance of “advanced culture” (‫ܜ‬䖯᭛࣪). It is hardly surprising, therefore, that May Fourth ideals are cited as one of the most important elements of the new Party cultural policy, with respect to traditional culture: ᡞ߯ᮄ㊒⼲䌃こ᭛࣪߯԰⫳ѻܼ䖛⿟ˈᓬᡀ⇥ᮣӬ⾔᭛࣪Ӵ㒳੠Ѩಯ 䖤ࡼҹᴹᔶ៤ⱘ䴽ੑ᭛࣪Ӵ㒳ˈᄺд‫׳‬䡈೑໪᭛࣪߯ᮄ᳝Ⲟ៤ᵰˈ‫ݐ‬ ᬊᑊ㪘ǃम䞛ӫ䭓ˈ... We will infuse a creative spirit into the whole process of creative cultural production, carrying forward the fine cultural traditions of our nation and the revolutionary cultural traditions established since the May Fourth Movement; we will learn from the beneficial achievements and cultural innovation of foreign countries, absorbing everything and taking what is useful from them (...).

In addition to this seemingly paradoxical combination of ideas, the Resolution also provides an assessment of the cultural status quo, for with cultural development and sweeping changes in the cultural sphere, new problems have arisen. Cultural development is not in accord with social and economic development and the cultural needs of the people, while certain individuals and organisations do not realise the urgency of cultural development. They fail to act ethically or according to socialist values, and there is thus an urgent need to strengthen internet development and supervision. This last point is one of the key issues in the plan of action, which also calls for the development of a “healthy internet culture” (‫ع‬ᒋ ৥Ϟⱘ㔥㒰᭛࣪) and demands that measures be taken for “using the Internet in a positive way” (ᕏ⿃ᵕ߽⫼), “strengthening and improving the development and supervision of Internet culture” (ࡴᔎ੠ᬍ䖯㔥㒰᭛ ࣪ᓎ䆒੠ㅵ⧚), “strengthening the guidance of online public opinion” (ࡴ ᔎ㔥Ϟ㟚䆎ᓩᇐ) and “encouraging citizens to create online cultural products with healthy themes” (哧ࢅ㔥⇥߯԰Ḑ䇗‫ع‬ᒋⱘ㔥㒰᭛࣪԰ક). The use of health as a metaphor, replacing more straightforward political

Cultural Construction with Chinese Characteristics

43

or ideological terms, is significant. Writing suspect blogs is not so much an act against the party establishment or other political structure, but endangers the health of the nation. The Resolution also contains similar demands “to promote a healthy social atmosphere” ( ᓬ ᡀ ⼒ Ӯ ℷ ⇨ ), ensure that “art criticism is positive and healthy” (⿃ᵕ‫ع‬ᒋⱘ᭛㡎ᡍ䆘), and that non-public cultural enterprises be encouraged and guided towards a “sound development” (䴲᳝݀ࠊ᭛࣪ӕϮ‫ع‬ᒋথሩ) etc. Ever since China was labelled as dongya bingfu (ϰѮ⮙໿), “the sick man of East Asia”, the issue of the nation’s “health” has been referred directly to the nation’s inner strength and its status within international relations. As the Resolution states in the second chapter, health is one of the goals of this program: മᣕ⼒ӮЏН‫ܜ‬䖯᭛࣪ࠡ䖯ᮍ৥ˈമᣕЎҎ⇥᳡ࡵǃЎ⼒ӮЏН᳡ࡵ ˈമᣕⱒ㢅唤ᬒǃⱒᆊѝ号ˈമᣕ㒻ᡓ੠߯ᮄⳌ㒳ϔˈᓬᡀЏᮟᕟǃ ᦤ‫׵‬໮ ḋ࣪ˈҹ⾥ᄺⱘ⧚䆎℺㺙Ҏˈҹℷ⹂ⱘ㟚䆎ᓩᇐҎˈҹ催ᇮ ⱘ㊒⼲ล䗴ҎˈҹӬ⾔ⱘ԰ક哧㟲Ҏˈ೼ܼ⼒Ӯᔶ៤⿃ᵕ৥Ϟⱘ㊒⼲ 䗑∖੠‫ع‬ᒋ᭛ᯢⱘ⫳⌏ᮍᓣDŽ Adhere to the orientation towards advanced socialist culture, serve the people and socialism, let a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools contend, integrate the carrying on of traditions and making innovations, emphasise the theme while advocating diversity, arm the people with scientific theory, guide them with correct public opinion, mould them with a noble spirit, use outstanding works to encourage them, and cultivate throughout society a spirit of progress and a healthy and civilised lifestyle.

Downplaying the ideological tones and replacing them with discourses on the nation’s health and civilisation does not, however, alter the general approach promoted by the Resolution. Although goals have been somewhat broadened, culture is still, in a decisively Yan’an way, to be “guided”, “encouraged” and “moulded” by party directives. Alongside the obligatory and formulaic goal of “serving the people and socialism” a more significant strategic aim has also been added, that of strengthening China’s role in the world and promoting its culture as part of its “soft power”: ߯ᮄᇍ໪ᅷӴᮍᓣᮍ⊩ˈ๲ᔎ೑䰙䆱䇁ᴗˈཹ୘ಲᑨ໪䚼݇ߛˈ๲䖯 ೑䰙⼒Ӯᇍ៥೑෎ᴀ೑ᚙǃӋؐ㾖ᗉǃথሩ䘧䏃ǃ‫ݙ‬໪ᬓㄪ ⱘњ㾷 ੠䅸䆚ˈሩ⦄៥೑᭛ᯢǃ⇥Џǃᓔᬒǃ䖯ℹⱘᔶ䈵DŽ We will be innovative in our external publicity methods, strengthening the right of free expression in international discourse; properly responding to

44

Chapter Two external concerns; enhancing the international community’s knowledge and understanding of China’s basic national conditions, values, development path and domestic and foreign policies; and displaying an image of China as a culturally advanced, democratic, open and progressive nation.

Thus, culture must still serve the people and the interests of the state, even if these have changed considerably since 1942. Patriotism is likewise considered as an obligatory element of this new Chinese culture, another way in which the Resolution resembles the rhetoric of the 1935 Declaration. However, instead of class struggle we now find “reform and innovation” (ᬍ䴽߯ᮄ) as the two characteristics that should guide the patriotic sentiments of “Chinese sons and daughters” (Ёढ‫ܓ‬ཇ). As in previous decades, culture is still understood as having a guiding role in this new China, and cultural richness is juxtaposed with material wealth in the Resolution’s explicit allusion to Deng Xiaoping: ≵᳝᭛࣪ⱘ⿃ᵕᓩ乚ˈ≵᳝Ҏ⇥㊒⼲Ϫ⬠ⱘᵕ໻Єᆠˈ≵᳝ܼ⇥ᮣ㊒ ⼲࡯䞣ⱘ‫ߚܙ‬থ᣹ˈϔϾ೑ᆊǃϔϾ⇥ᮣϡৃ㛑ቍゟѢϪ⬠⇥ᮣПᵫ DŽ⠽䋼䋿Уϡᰃ⼒ӮЏНˈ㊒⼲ぎ 㰮гϡᰃ⼒ӮЏНDŽ Without the positive guidance of culture, without the people having a rich spiritual world and without fully utilising the spiritual strength of the whole nation, no nation can stand tall among the other nations of the world. Material poverty is not socialism, nor is spiritual emptiness.

This interpretation of the role of Chinese culture also sheds a fascinating new light on the revival of traditional Chinese culture and thought over the last decade. The role of traditional Chinese culture is important, but not as much for its essence as for its function in the internal and external strengthening of the Chinese nation. The same principle applies for modern or contemporary (“advanced”) culture. To paraphrase Deng once again: “It does not matter if the cat is old or new, as long as it is healthy and it catches mice”.

Bibliography de Bary, Wm. Theodore, and Richard Lufrano, ed. 2000. Sources of Chinese Tradition, vol 2. New York: Columbia University Press. Resolution of the CPC Central Committee on Major Issues Pertaining to Extending the Reform of the Cultural System and Promoting the Great Development and Flourishing of Socialist Culture (Zhonggong

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zhongyang guanyu shen wenhua hua tizhi gaige tuidong shehui zhuyi wenhua da fazahn da fanrong ruogan zhongda wenti de jueding Ё݅ Ё༂݇Ѣ⏅࣪᭛࣪ԧࠊᬍ䴽᥼ࡼ⼒ӮЏН᭛࣪໻থሩ໻㐕㤷㢹ᑆ 䞡໻䯂乬ⱘ‫އ‬ᅮ). 2011. Accessed April 10, 2012. http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/2011-10/25/c_122197737.htm English translation is quoted from: http://www.cctb.net/bygz/wxfy/201111/W020111121519527826615.p df, Accessed April 4, 2012. He, Bingsong, Sa Mengwu et al. 1935. Zhongguo benwei de wenhua jianshe xuanyan Ё೑ᴀԡⱘ᭛࣪ᓎ䆒ᅷ㿔 (Declaration for Cultural Construction on a Chinese Basis). Accessed April 10, 2012. http://www.dujing.org/ClCms/Article/showinfo.asp?infoid=1092 Hu, Shi. 1935. Shi ping suowei “Zhongguo benwei de wenhua jianshe” 䆩 䆘᠔䇧“Ё೑ᴀԡⱘ᭛࣪ᓎ䆒” (Criticism of the “Declaration for Cultural Construction on Chinese Basis). Accessed April 10, 2012. http://www.093ad.com/inc/md5.asp?type=doc&doc=79137 Van De Van, Hans J. 2003. War and Nationalism in China 1925–1945. London: RoutledgeCurzon. Wang, Ke-wen, ed. 1998. Modern China. An Encyclopedia of History, Culture and Nationalism. New York and London: Garland Publishing. Yue, Dong Madeleine. 2003. Republican Beijing: The City and Its Histories. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

CHAPTER THREE NEW WORLD TRENDS IN MAY FOURTH MOVEMENT JOURNALS JARKKO HAAPANEN

Contestability of New Trends This paper focuses on the different meanings given to the “new trends” in May Fourth Movement1 journals and argues that writings about these trends should not be treated as passive reactions to circumstances, but as active reinterpretations of them. I treat these writings as attempts to influence the frameworks that were used in comprehending the outside world. The chief claim made is that the concepts of “new world trends” and “socialist trends” were highly contested and that these contestations played a central role in the May Fourth radicalisation2. We will see how different versions of these trends were used to legitimate different sets of ideas. Among reform-minded authors in the early 20th century China, there seemed to be a remarkable number of people who believed the only possible way to save China was to learn from the Western nations, as Japan had done some decades earlier. It was more or less self-evident that China should learn from the concrete technological advancements of the West, but the situation was less clear when it came to the more abstract questions of learning from “Western ways of thought” or “Western philosophies”. There was no consensus as to what were “the prevailing world trends of thought”.

1

According to Chow Tse-tsung’s (1967, 1) definition, the May Fourth period was from 1917 to 1921. In the present paper, “May Fourth period” follows this definition. 2 What is “radical” is, of course, a matter of perspective. Radicalisation of the May Fourth Movement in this paper refers to the spread of Marxist revolutionary argumentation in May Fourth journals.

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In our view, J. L. Austin’s (1965) statement that words are not only used to describe things, but to do things, should be taken seriously. Language always modifies ways of perceiving the world. From this perspective, it makes little sense to take writings about “prevailing trends” literally, as descriptions that provide evidence as to the “true” circumstances of the period. It is nonsensical to imagine some kind of “external reality” that would have appeared identical from all different perspectives and to all individuals. Therefore, readings where statements about “trends” or “needs of the time” are taken literally, are absurd. Writings in these journals should not be treated as some kind of epiphenomenal products of “outer reality”, but instead as speech acts that reshaped understandings of the current situation and the limits of “the possible”. Here, epiphenomenal means the tendency to explain the “mental states” of some actors by certain “physical states” in the world. These types of epiphenomenal explanations can never be watertight, as they tend to undervalue the significance of the inner dynamics of intellectual interactions. These interactions always play a vital role when individuals are creating and expressing their own interpretations of the “outer reality”. Therefore, intellectual life is not seen here as merely “superstructure”, something that could be explained causally by studying the “base”, as in Marxist materialism. Undeniably, there were concrete events in 1919 that could easily be included in the narratives of “socialist world trends”: the Spartacist uprising in Berlin in January, the inauguration of the Communist International in Moscow in March, and the establishment of the Munich People’s Republic in April. Indeed, Sun Lung-kee (2008, 285) has called this year “a year of left-right polarisation”. Some might also claim that the spread of socialism was simply a by-product of the development of capitalism, or a necessary part of industrial development. However, this is not the case. We should bear in mind that there have been industrial societies without significant socialist movements, and there have been powerful socialist movements in places where the process of industrialisation had barely begun (Sassoon 2008, 50–51). For instance, in the early 20th century the United States was the fastest growing capitalist society, but it did not have a strong socialist movement. Thus, socialist movements should not be seen only as products of “outside forces”, as they always require active recruiting and successful literary campaigns in order to gain mass support. Similarly, in the case of China, the rise to power of the Chinese Communist Party was not the outcome of some external necessities; it was the result of a battle that was fought not only

New World Trends in May Fourth Movement Journals

49

with weapons during the Chinese civil war, but also with words. This latter battle started much earlier than the former. A somewhat similar stance has been taken by Rana Mitter who criticised suggestions of some kind of inevitability about the path that China took in the early 20th century. According to Mitter, the communistdominated version of Chinese history has obscured the possibilities of alternative paths during the May Fourth period. Mitter holds that the rise of the CCP was not inevitable, but was instead a remarkable historical outcome. In the 1910s and early 1920s, the socialist movement appeared as quite unpromising, yet ultimately the CCP managed to triumph against a wide range of political options. (Mitter 2004, 103–4) Our view is that it is impossible to define unequivocal or univocal interpretatons of historical events. There are always countless possible interpretations, which are, in any case, always selective. In other words, the context in which the author carries out their “real” actions, does not determine the contents of their writings. The context should instead be seen as a sphere of various possibilities. In addition to the events outside of written discourses, the writings on these events should likewise be treated as events that have similarly influenced intellectual developments. This view can be called “formalist”, in accordance with Hayden White’s (1990, 76) definition that “any historical object can sustain a number of equally plausible descriptions or narratives of its processes”. After all, conflicts between competing interpretations is what politics is all about.

The Relevance of Writings about Time and Trends Terence Ball (1988, ix, 4) has argued that language is not and cannot be a morally or politically neutral medium. The concepts constituting political discourse do have contingently contested meanings. This is true also for words and concepts that are used to comprehend time and trends. In our view, depictions of time are politically relevant because they are claims about prevailing circumstances that can be, and often are, used to delimit and to redefine the scope of “the possible”. Claims about the “requirements of the time” are always interpretations. Still, they are normally depicted as if they were something more than that. In Austin’s (1965, 4) terms, these kinds of claims do not have “actual truth-value” but are often “masqueraded as statements of facts”. The contestability of these claims is, at least in part, hidden and suppressed. By using these types of depictions, the ideas and suggestions of the opposing side can be claimed to be “outdated” or “regressive” and thus senseless or impossible. When

50

Chapter Three

dealing with historical texts containing claims about prevailing trends that require a certain kind of reaction, one should be suspicious of such claims and treat them as performative, and not as objective descriptions of the circumstances of that particular period of time. Similarly, George Lakoff has used the idea of “frames” to explain the role of language in politics, by stating that reframing is a form of social change. Thinking differently requires speaking differently, and thus reframing means changing the way the public sees the world and modifying what we call “common sense” (Lakoff 2004, xv). Different versions of prevailing trends should be treated as attempts to reframe in the Lakoffian sense, and set the limits of “sensible” and “possible”. The May Fourth journals repeatedly claimed that the only alternative to adaptation was the decay of China. Writings about these trends were used to define what the “time required” them to do. Although certain issues were widely recognised as being the ones most urgently requiring solutions, such as educational reform, industrial development or the problem of regional disintegration under different warlord regimes, there were competing and contradictory views on how to solve these problems and from which perspective to analyse them. This is to say, the writings about trends could neither hide concrete problems nor create new problems. Nevertheless, these writings certainly influenced the emphasis placed on certain problems, solution models and frames that were used to discuss these themes. Although the need to adapt to Nature, the will of Heaven or dao (䘧) had been reiterated in Chinese philosophy for centuries, the Social Darwinist schema of the survival of the fittest added new characteristics to this imperative in the late 19th century. By assimilating the term adaptation it no longer referred to any eternal truths or nature, but to the international arena in which nation states were competing against one another. Circumstances were seen as being in a constant state of change and only those able to adjust to these transformations would be able to advance in the competition for the means for sustaining life. Thus, primary difference between the Taoist and Darwinian imperative of adaptation is that the former stresses inaction and tranquility, whereas the latter requires activity and the ability to change. During the late Qing dynasty (1644–1912) several authors had stressed the need to adapt to the prevailing competition among nations. Liang Qichao declared that imperialism was Darwinian and that Chinese imperialism would be the path of the fittest. Democracy, on the other hand, was desirable because it was the government of the fit. (Pusey 1983, 311–12, 333–35)

New World Trends in May Fourth Movement Journals

51

After WWI, Darwinism and Darwinist slogans were constantly criticised in May Fourth journals. The “struggle for survival” thought was blamed for the outbreak of the war. This did not, however, put an end to the demands for the need for adaptation. For even if Darwinism had been refuted, the setting in which the unfit (those who did not adapt) would perish did not disappear. What differed in these writings, as compared to those of the late Qing dynasty by Liang Qichao, Yan Fu and others, were the requirements given for successful adaptation. After the War, “imperialism” and “militarism” were constantly depicted as the ways of the unfit and as ideas essentially against current trends of thought. In the May Fourth journals, adaptation and the way of the fit were linked to identifying the strongest trends and the ability to follow them. Some authors, like Su Jiarong (1920), saw the understanding of the great world trends (shijie de dashi Ϫ⬠ⱘ໻ࢶ) as one of the main purposes of education. During the May Fourth period, phrases such as “new tide” (xin chao ᮄ ╂ ), “new thought trend” (xin sichao ᮄ ᗱ ╂ ) and “trend of world thought” (shijie chaoliu Ϫ⬠╂⌕) were frequently used to underscore the need for reform. The content of these trends was open to discussion and different things could be claimed as belonging to them. Claims concerning these trends revolved around what was possible/necessary and what was not. In other words, writings about the prevailing trends were used to gain legitimacy for certain opinions and theories of society. In many cases, the emergence of the newest trends was linked to the end of WWI. For example, Chen Duxiu (1918), in the second issue of Weekly Critic, wrote that after the War all nations should change their ways of thinking, and that the peoples of the East should likewise adapt to this trend of great change (dabian de chaoliu ໻䅞 ⱘ╂ ⌕). In the post-war period, the exceptionality of that period of time was expressed in various ways. For instance, it was claimed that the world was not only “new”, but also “young”. In Young China, Yun Daiying wrote that the purpose of the Young China Study Society should be to construct a “young China” (shaonian Zhongguo ᇥᑈЁ೟) that would be compatible with a “young world” (shaonian shijie ᇥᑈϪ⬠). In this context, anything that belonged to the pre-war universe could be claimed to be outdated. At the same time, the current period and the future became open spaces for competition among different ideas and “courses of development”. There were different versions of the demands of the new trends. Perhaps the most elaborate treatment of the meaning of “new thought trends” during this period was to be found in Hu Shi’s article “The

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Meaning of the New Trend of Thought”, which appeared in New Youth in 1919. Hu wrote that while “new trends” had been the subject of many articles, all of them had failed to analyse the meaning of these trends satisfactorily. Hu’s own version was that the new trends meant a new kind of critical attitude, in which one sought to analyse both the negative and positive aspects of any given issue or topic. This attitude involved a twofold methodolgy: discussing the problems of society and introducing new Western knowledge. The importance of adapting to trends was often stressed by recalling that without adaptation, there was no future. For instance, in Citizen, Xu Deheng (1919) equated the salvation of the Chinese nation with adapting to the newest world trends. In New Tide, He Siyuan (1919) wrote that it was thought (or ideas) (sixiang ᗱᛇ) that ensured human success in the world of the survival of the fittest. Like the protective coloring of animals in the wild, intellect was the key to adaptation among human beings. Conservative attempts to obstruct the spread of “new thought” and “new tides of thought” were seen as preventing the adaptation to these “tides” which, however, were considered as inevitable. For instance, in New Tide, Luo Jialun (1919b) wrote that despite the constant attempts to block “the world trend” (shijie de chaoliu Ϫ⬠ⱘ╂⌕), it was moving forward like a landslide. In New Tide, Guo Shaoyu wrote that the New Village movement3 was in accordance with the current period and thought trend of humankind. In the same journal, Luo Jialun (1919c) wrote that the newest trend was women’s participation in politics and this trend was, of course, unstoppable. In Young China, Zuo Shunsheng opposed the spread of Christian schools in China, claiming these religious schools were incompatible with “the modern trend of thought” (xiandai sichao ⧒ҷᗱ ╂), whereas Yun Daiying (1920b) warned that narrow nationalism might prevent Chinese intellectuals from understanding the people, who represented the great trends of the world. If something went wrong or was not as it should be, this was due to its “not being in accordance” with the trends. This explanation was used, for example, in the Weekly Critic (1919) report on the UK General Elections of December, 1918, in which the defeat of H.H. Asquith and the Liberal 3

In 1918, the Japanese novelist and philosopher, Mushanokoji Saneatsu, had established a “New Village” commune in the mountains of the Miyazaki prefecture, in Kyushu. Mushanokoji, who was especially influenced by the ideas of Tolstoy, exluded both money and private production from this commune.

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Party was attributed to their inability to respond to current trends (shidai zhi qushi ᰖҷП䍼ࢶ). In Young China, Yang Xiaochun (1921) wrote that neither China nor any other nation should follow the Japanese educational system, given that Japan was a monarchy (junzhuguo ৯Џ೟) and thus not in accord with present trends (shidai zhi qushi ᰖҷП䍼ࢶ). Being against the trend was as serious an accusation as being against democracy and science, as evidenced in Zhou Binglin’s (1920) article on the origins of the Russian socialist movement. Zhou compared Russia with China and claimed that if the Chinese government was “against the world trend” (ni shijie chaoliu 䗚Ϫ⬠╂⌕) by oppressing its people, then the Chinese people should also use terrorism against the Chinese government, as the early Russian socialists had done. These examples show that writings on prevailing trends were not limited to the latest scientific theories. Claims about trends were also frequently used to comment on more concrete topics, such as the Chinese school system. However, the main focus in this paper is on the theoretical constructs that were used to analyze the future of Chinese society.

Kropotkin, Marx and Thought Trends Writings on trends were not alone in advocating the importance of Marxist theories 4 in May Fourth China. As in many other countries, Marxists claimed that their philosophy represented the only true form of scientific socialism and thus offered a more qualified template for analysing societies than other versions of socialism. However, given the specific contexts and the importance attributed to adapting to world trends, the Marxist factor must be taken into account when trying to understand and explain the radicalisation of this movement. According to Michael Luk (1990, 177) the international orientation within the Chinese communist movement began in 1921. At this time, Chen Duxiu, Li Da and others started to advocate proletarian internationalism. The claim that China belonged to the worldwide proletariat first appeared during this period. However, if we consider the wider literary context of these writings, we can easily see that the central 4 According to Arif Dirlik (1978, 19–20), Chinese authors in the early 1920s did not possess a proper understanding of Marxist theories. However, our focus is on the change in agenda in these journals (especially in New Youth), and not the level of orthodoxy or understanding of Marxism they reveal (and without entering into the vexed question of defining what orthodox Marxism is).

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role given to various international connections had been there since at least the late Qing dynasty. Connecting certain ideas with more or less abstract supra-national forces (such as worldwide intellectual trends), in order to present these ideas in a favorable light, had been a popular style of argumentation among reform-minded Chinese authors ever since the idea that China should learn from the West had become a generally held tenet of their thinking. Kotoku Shusui, a Japanese author active in the early 20th century, offers an important example of the different interpretations of intellectual trends. His views as to the most important exponent of modern political theory underwent a radical transformation in 1904, when he criticised Fourier for his “unscientific” and “unnatural” practical plans for reform, asserting that Marx represented the only “scientific socialism”. This was a very typical line of argumentation in debates between anarchists and Marxists. In 1905, Kotoku became interested in Kropotkin’s thought. He translated Kropotkin’s work into Japanese and was also able to enter into direct correspondence with Kropotkin himself. Kotoku published a letter from Kropotkin in the journal Light (Hikari ‫)ܝ‬, which reinforced his reputation as someone with a direct contact with, and a profound understanding of “European trends of thought”. Now it was Marxism that was presented as “outmoded”, while Kropotkin’s ideas were touted as “scientific” and “modern”. Among Chinese students in Japan around 1907 there was a similar turning from socialism to an interest in anarchism. In the Chinese revolutionary journal Min Bao (⇥ฅ), articles on anarchism became more common after the summer of 1906, while New Century (Xin Shiji ᮄϪ㋔) and the Journal of Natural Justice (Tianyi Bao ໽㕽ฅ)5, which espoused anarchist ideas, were established in 1907. According to Bernal, Marx was barely mentioned in Chinese journals between 1907 and 1919. (Bernal 1976, 201, 209–13, 225; Bernal 1968, 136–37) In China, the May Fourth period was not the first time that Marx was said to represent “current world trends” and that his thought was “more scientific” than that of his rivals. But it seems that more than ten years would pass before other influential authors were willing to renew these claims, in 1919–1921. The October Revolution in Russia had made these claims more convincing, but there was no causal connection between the Revolution and the spread of Marxist language in the May Fourth journals. Not all the authors who were enthusiastic about the October Revolution 5 Although both these journals were Chinese, they were not published in China. New Century appeared in Paris and the Journal of Natural Justice in Tokyo.

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became proponents of Marxism. For many, the October Revolution was the sign of a “democratic trend”, and not to be interpreted in terms of class struggle, Bolshevism or Marxism6. As is well known, Western studies have often tried to identify external and generally Western “impacts” that “caused” the May Fourth radicalisation and the rise of Marxism. For example, Jerome Chen (1987, 506) has written about the “double impact” of the October Revolution and the disappointment with the Paris Peace Conference. Some recent research literature offers approaches that avoid these simplifications. According to Jin Guantao and Liu Qingfeng (2009, 411, 418), there were actually very few references to the October Revolution in New Youth between 1917 and 1919. These references became more common only after 1920. The importance given to this event reached its peak after 1922, when the journal had already become an organ of the Chinese Communist Party. It thus makes no sense to conclude that the October Revolution caused these Chinese writers to become Marxists. Jin and Liu (2009, 404–6) also question the notion that it was disappointment in the Paris Peace Conference that “directed” the May Fourth Movement towards Marxism, as if this disappointment were something exceptional. According to Jin and Liu (2009, 404–6), the Chinese had been treated as an inferior interlocutor many times before during the 20th century. They conclude that the composition itself was nothing new, but the attitude towards power politics had become more critical than before. (Jin and Liu 2009, 404–6) The October Revolution was definitely a powerful and concrete event, in the absence of which it would have been more difficult to create narrations of socialist and Bolshevist world trends that were then used to justify the need for class struggle in China. Nonetheless, this specific event did not include this imperative by definition. Once a factual, physical event in the real world enters the linguistic register, it becomes a verbal image and an element for argumentation. Its meaning depends on the teleological goals of the author, as well as the conceptual frameworks and narrative structures within which it is used. Thus, the image of the October Revolution in Russia began to include the idea of class struggle in China only after it was connected with the idea of worldwide trends that would spread from one country to another.

6

See for example Xu Deheng (1919) or Luo Jialun (1919a). In some interpretations, the October Revolution was also associated with anarcho-communism. See Luk 1990, 19.

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Socialist Trends in May Fourth Journals At the same time, during the last decades, socialist movements within civilised nations have made vigorous and rapid progress. This is like nothing that has ever occurred before. According to current world trends, all civilised nations will be transformed over the next 50 or 60 years into socialist-oriented nations. There can be no doubt about that (…). (Li Ji 1921)7

This quotation from New Youth is an example of the many articles on socialist world trends in May Fourth journals. These journals already portrayed a popular view––before the establishment of the Chinese Communist Party––that there were “socialist world trends” that would affect China, in one way or another8. Yet beyond this affirmation there was no consensus about what these socialist trends actually were. In a context where “socialism”, “socialist movement” and “socialist trends” were used primarily in a positive manner, but without consensus as to the signified to which these signifiers referred, different actors attempted to impose meanings to suit their own preferences. Much ink was spilt in discussing other styles of socialism9, such as guild socialism, syndicalism, state socialism, social democracy as well as Bolshevism, Marxism and Leninism. Before 1920, the content of these trends was strongly associated with Kropotkinian ideas of mutual aid. And then there were those who did not accept the conception of “socialist world trends” as a realistic description of the current international situation. In Young China, Zong Baihua (1919) wrote that it was important to make a distinction between new world trends of thought (shijie de xin sichao Ϫ⬠ⱘᮄᗱ╂) and subjective views of the new trends (geren zhuguan de xin sichao ‫ן‬ҎЏ 㾔ⱘᮄᗱ╂). This meant that one should not advocate any ideas before thoroughly researching them. According to Zong, socialism in particular was not studied sufficiently. The new world trend of thought meant the

7

ৠᰖ᳔䖥ᑒᑈЁϪ⬠৘᭛ᯢ೟Ё⼒᳗Џ㕽䘟ࢩⱘ䖥㸠г㫀㫀ࢗࢗ,ϔ᮹ग䞠 ˈ䖹䴲ᕲࠡ↨њ. ህ⧒ҞϪ⬠ⱘ䍼ࢶⳟ䍋՚ˈ৘᭛ᯢ೟೼䗭Ѩ݁कᑈПܻˈ ⃵㄀䅞⚎⼒᳗Џ㕽࣪ⱘ೟ᆊˈ≎䴲䲷џ… 8 See for example Luo Jialun’s (1919a) article “New Tide of Today’s World” in New Tide or Huang Rikui’s (1919) and Qu Xuanying’s (1919) articles in Citizen. 9 There was no clear consensus on whether anarchist theories were to be considered as socialist theories. However, the same authors who wrote about Kropotkin or anarchism also routinely wrote about socialist movements. See Chow 1967, 208.

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“true spirit of natural science” (zhenzheng de ziran kexue de jingshen ⳳℷ ⱘ㞾✊⾥ᅌⱘ㊒⼲) and not writings about empty theories (konglun ぎ䂪). Despite such critical complaints, many thinkers and writers had adopted this “socialist world trend” framework and applied it in various ways. For example, He Siyuan (1919) connected the pragmatism of William James with this “socialist trend”, while Tian Han (1920) tried to find parallel tendencies in poetry. Tian stated that it was the mode of naturalism in poetry which corresponded to the prevailing trend of socialism.10 The one-sidedness of this “socialist world trends” perspective occasionally caused problems: if these trends were as powerful and ineluctable as so often claimed, how could socialist, social democratic or Marxist parties lose the elections in various countries? It was Zheng Boqi (1920) who posed this question in Young China, after the French parliamentary vote of 1919, in which the National Bloc, an anti-Bolshevist centre-right coalition won the elections. Zheng asked his question in the form of a letter addressed to Li Huang, who was living in France at the time. Zheng wanted to hear Li’s explanation as to why French thought was “moving towards old ways”.11 In September, 1920, or nearly three years after the October Revolution in Russia, Chen Duxiu (1920a) wrote in New Youth that class struggle was a necessity in China. This was one of the first, if not the first explicit publicly declaration of this kind.12 If we look closely at the introduction of the class struggle paradigm in the May Fourth journals, we find that declaring class struggle to be a necessity for China was certainly not an easy or simple thing to do. There were at least three significant challenges that a proponent of the Marxist class struggle paradigm faced: the theory of class struggle; the issue of modernism; and the issue of scientific validity. The theory of class struggle is a theory about competing classes that are defined by their relation to production processes in various stages of industrial development. If one wished to apply this theory to early 21st century China, it was necessary to demonstrate that such socio-economic classes actually existed in China. One also had to demonstrate that 10

Tian’s comparisons between socialism and naturalism were based on Kuriyagawa Hakuson’s writings. 11 It is unclear whether Li ever directly replied to this question. He did, however, write several articles about France for the journal, for example, on French sociology and education. 12 Cai Hesen wrote to Mao Zedong about the need for class struggle and the dictatorship of the proletariat in August, but this was in a private exchange of letters, and not a published article. (Van de Ven 1991, 67)

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Marxism was modern and a part of “the prevailing world trends”, and not just a theory about the past; that it was not, in fact, outmoded, as Kotoku and others had claimed earlier. Finally, one had to show that Marxism had a scientifically more solid basis than its rivals, especially social democracy or different versions of anarchism, discussions of which so often filled the pages of May Fourth journals.13 During the May Fourth period, the view that the theory of Marxist class struggle was merely about the past, was fairly general. Li Dazhao, for example, advanced this view in his articles on Marxism for New Youth (1919a) and the Weekly Critic (1919b). If the class struggle paradigm was valid for analysing the past, then it could hardly be seen as representative of the latest trends China should follow. In The Economic Interpretation of History, first published in 1902, Edwin Seligman had argued that class struggle and historical materialism were merely explanations of past history. According to Seligman: “Socialism is a theory of what ought to be; historical materialism is a theory of what has been” (1949, 108). Li was familiar with Seligman’s work and referred to it. According to Arif Dirlik (1978, 32), Li’s version of historical materialism was drawn almost entirely from Seligman. However, Seligman was not the only Western critic of Marx whose works were read by Chinese authors. In The Socialist Movement, James Ramsey MacDonald seriously questioned the validity of the theory of class struggle. MacDonald wrote that the materialist conception of history was one-sided and inadequate conceptually, while class struggle was an “inheritance from the imperfect views of early socialists” (1911, 144–47)14. Li Dazhao was not the only Chinese author who claimed that the theory of class struggle only concerned the past. In the same issue of New Youth. Gu Mengyu (1919), stated that the class struggle and historical materialism were mainly explanations about the past. He also pointed out that various important German socialists, such as Bernstein, had criticised many parts of the theory, clearly indicating that Marx was not an unquestioned authority even among European socialists. Gu also 13

Another challenge not discussed here due to limitations of space, was the fear of many in China that Bolshevism would exacerbate China's unstable situation. This fear was not directly connected to Marxist frameworks, but to writings about socialist world trends. On the fear of Bolshevism, see Chow 1967, 208–9. 14 Portions of MacDonald’s The Socialist Movement were translated in Citizen by “ML Sheng”. Liang Qichao’s journal Liberation and Reform (Jiefang yu Gaizao 㾷 ᬒ㟛ᬍ䗴) had also translated parts of The Socialist Movement. (ML Sheng 1920)

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questioned whether the antagonism between the two main classes (the proletariat and the capitalist) made sense, as it simplified radically the complex structures of society. In addition to questioning the validity of using class struggle theory to analyse contemporary and future social development, other aspects of Marxism and its scientific validity were also challenged in these journals. For example, Tao Menghe (1920) questioned whether the theory of dividing society into two main classes was misleading and simplistic. Tao also argued that although the labour question had become the paramount social issue in Europe and in the United States, the developments in these countries did not correspond to Marxist theory, providing another argument against using these theories to analyse Chinese society. Critical voices were also raised in Citizen. In June, 1920 the journal published a summary of Paschal Larkin’s work Marxian Socialism, written by Chang Naide (1920). Larkin criticised the view that the economic base is what determines thought (superstructure). He also argued that historical materialism offered only a half-truth and there were always numerous other possibilities for development. The Manifesto of the Communist Party, which had been published in London in 1848, should be viewed as an explanation only for that specific period. The ideas of Marx and Engels were not applicable in all times and places. As we have seen, critiques of Marxist theories were often reinforced with Western critics of these theories. Attempts to connect Marxist theories with prevailing world trends were questioned by pointing out that these theories were certainly not universally accepted in the West. Another influential figure who criticised the scientific validity of Marxism was Bertrand Russell, who arrived in China in October, 1920. Russell’s views received wide attention in May Fourth journals and many of his works and his lectures in China were translated and summarised in these journals. A translation of one of Russell’s lectures, by Zhang Tingqian, appeared in Young China in February, 1921. In this lecture, Russell concentrated on religion, and related Marxism to Christianity, Buddhism and Islam. This was probably very inconvenient for those advocating Marxism in China at the time, as religion and superstition had always been criticised in these journals as obstacles to the development of “the scientific spirit” in China15. According to Zhang, Russell asserted that

15 New Youth was the oldest of these journals, and was first published in 1915. Young China began publication in 1919.

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Marxism was often defended in a religious manner, which tended to distance it from critical scientific evaluations. Herman Mast (1971, 239) and Arif Dirlik (1978, 25) have both identified Dai Jitao’s article in the September, 1919 issue of Construction (Jianshe ᓎ䀁) as the first attempt to apply historical materialism to China. In that article, Dai (1919) analysed the unstable Chinese warlord era based on Marxist historical materialism. According to Dai, the chaotic situation was a result of the inability of Chinese industry and Chinese products to compete with the more advanced Western products that were being imported into China. Although Dai did not write about class struggle directly, he did use class in his analysis and also raised the possibility of a future revolution. For Dai, historical materialism offered a valid tool for analysing contemporary Chinese society, and not just its historical development. We should bear in mind that for those authors who had acquired a basic understanding of Marxist theories and vouched for their validity, the role of “thought trends” could change. According to historical materialism, intellectual life (including politics, thought trends, laws, religion etc.) was determined by the economic base and developments in the means of production, a perspective which could diminish the importance given to understanding “world trends”. This was also pointed out in Kawakami Hajime’s (1919) article on Marxist historical materialism that appeared in New Youth. However, such a dismissive attitude towards the discussions on “the world trends” was quite rare. In some of his articles, Chen Duxiu was willing to distance the debates on labour issues from abstract discussions concerning the different schools of socialism and adapting to world trends. For example, in September, 1920 he wrote that the need for a labour movement in China was not created by the need to adapt to world trends, but rather by the very real suffering of the Chinese labour force (Chen 1920b). Nonetheless, such attempts to reduce the importance of world trends were rare and the contents of “socialist trends” was still a highly debated issue. For those authors who wanted to promote class struggle and Marxist theory, it was essential to stress the central role of Marx within socialist trends and defend the relevance of these theories for China, where so many influential authors had already explicitly expressed their scepticism. One way of defending the relevance and value of Marxist theories was to stress the scientific value of historical materialism as a confirmation of evolution. Claims that historical materialism was the most valuable theory in analysing historical evolution, or that evolution required class struggle,

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became more common from late 1920 onwards. For example, in New Youth, Yamakawa Hitoshi (1921) declared that Marx had understood the role of evolution in society, just as Darwin had understood its role in biology. The key mechanism in social evolution was class struggle. According to Yamakawa, the only possible way forward was the one the Russian proletariat had chosen. Thus, the value of Marxism with respect to other versions of socialism was to be found in its ability to provide a comprehensive explanation of the evolutionary development of societies. Another proponent of class struggle, Cai Hesen, claimed that Marxist theory combined revolution with evolution. For Cai (1921), the importance of Marxism was twofold, and could be applied to both the domestic situation of Chinese labour and the worldwide proletarian struggle against capitalism. As for the objection that class theory did not apply to China, given that such classes did not exist, Cai replied almost all of China’s population belonged to the proletarian class and that class struggle in China was thus part of the worldwide class struggle. Li Da (1921a) instead defended Marxist theory against Liang Qichao, who had questioned the relevance of class theory for China, in Reform (gaizhao ᬍ䗴, formerly known as Liberation and Reform). Liang claimed that due to the modest level of industrial development there were no classes in China; hence, the only option available was developing Chinese capitalism. Li countered by saying that China had already entered the period of industrial revolution, and while the development of China’s industry could not be compared with that of Europe, the United States or Japan, Chinese workers had already “suffered enough”. Li also connected the Chinese worker with the international proletariat, thus neatly sidestepping the problem of adapting class theory for China alone. Citing Marx, he asserted that capitalism and socialism did not recognise national borders, and that it was therefore pointless to distinguish between foreign and Chinese capitalism, as Liang had done. Li (1921b) also stressed that “socialist trends” could only mean Marxism: With the advent of Marxism, socialism moved from utopian to scientific socialism. Marxism came to represent socialism; when one mentioned socialism, one realised it meant Marxism. (…) In the Third International, the progressive parts of all the socialist parties of different nations were already represented. They all supported the dictatorship of the proletariat,

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Chapter Three adopting a system based on labor and the peasantry. This can be called the newest trend in the socialist movement of all nations.16

Li Da defended his version of these “socialist trends” by 1) forcefully equating Marxism with “proper” socialism; 2) claiming that this version was supported by “progressive” socialists; and finally, 3) affirming that this version was supported by the “newest trend” within the socialist movement. While the first point repeats the typical view that Marx took socialism to another level and made it something more significant than it had been before, the second and third arguments are more original. Li was clearly aware that there were competing currents within the socialist world; what is interesting is how he identifies the “progressive” or most advanced elements in these currents with those who advocated the dictatorship of the proletariat, and thus as the group that Chinese intellectuals should follow.

Conclusion In conclusion, we can say that there was nothing inevitable in the course China took during the May Fourth period. Instead, there were competing views as to which theories or ideological constructs China should follow. Hence, the idea that there existed certain external “trends” that might have altered the intellectual atmosphere within China, and to which Chinese thinkers might have reacted passively, must be excluded. The debate on thought trends and their relevance was both pluralistic and contingent upon the changing circumstances. The defense of the Marxist class struggle paradigm by various authors was anything but passive or acritical, and many considered Marxist theory as applicable only to the past, with Marx himself dismissed as an outmoded thinker who had been superseded by historical events. Likewise, a support for “socialist trends” did not automatically mean adherence to Marxism, while many questioned the scientific validity of Marxist theory. Those who defended such theories not only had to explain how they could be applied to a China with only a modest level of industrial development, but also had to defend Marxist thought against those who 16

侀‫ܟ‬ᗱᅌ䁾ߎϪҹᕠ, ᕲࠡⱘぎᛇ⼒᳗Џ㕽; 䅞㗠⚎⾥ᅌⱘ⼒᳗Џ㕽; Ѣᰃ ⼒᳗Џ㕽ህ⚎侀‫ܟ‬ᗱЏ㕽᠔ҷ㸼, ϔ䁾⼒᳗Џ㕽, ህᲝᕫ䗭ᰃ侀‫ܟ‬ᗱЏ㕽њ … ㄀ϝ೟䱯ˈᏆ㍧ৃҹҷ㸼৘೟⼒᳗咼ⱘ䘆ℹ⌒; 䛑ᰃ䋞៤ࢲࢩᇜᬓ, ᥵⫼ࢲ䖆 ࠊᑺⱘ, 䗭гৃ々৘೟⼒᳗䘟ࢩ᳔ᮄⱘ䍼ࢶ.

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considered it as outmoded. The idea that Marxist theory was modern and supported by prevailing trends was far from being a universally held view. While a close reading of the May Fourth journals indicates that “socialist trends” were seen mainly as a positive phenomenon, there was no direct causal relation between supporting socialist trends and supporting class struggle. Authors such as Chen Duxiu, Cai Hesen and Li Da actively defended the view that socialist trends could only mean Marxism and class struggle. The debate on the meaning of “proper socialist trends” was central to making the concept of class struggle accepted by the Chinese readership.

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History: Formation of Modern Chinese Political Vocabulary). Beijing: Falü chuban she. Kawakami, Hajime ⊇Ϟ㙜. 1919. “Makesi de weiwu shiguan 侀‫ܟ‬ᗱⱘ ଃ⠽৆㾔” (“Marxist Historical Materialism”). Translated by Chen Puxian. New Youth 6(5), May/September. Lakoff, George. 2004. Don’t Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate: the Essential Guide for Progressives. White River Junction: Chelsea Green. Luk, Michael Y.L. 1990. The Origins of Chinese Bolshevism: an Ideology in the Making, 1920–1928. Oxford: Oxford UP. Li, Da ᴢ䘨. 1921a. “Taolun shehui zhuyi bing zhi Liang Rengong 㿢䂪 ⼒᳗Џ㕽ᑊ䊾ṕӏ݀” (“About Socialism and Liang Rengong/Liang Qichao”). New Youth 9(1), May. ––. 1921b. “Makesi pai shehui zhuyi 侀 ‫ܟ‬ᗱ ⌒⼒ ᳗Џ 㕽” (“Marxist Socialism”). New Youth 9(2), June. Li, Dazhao ᴢ໻䞫. 1919a. “Wo de makesi zhuyi guan (shang) ៥ⱘ侀‫ܟ‬ ᗱЏ㕽㾔(Ϟ)” (“My Views on Marxism” Part 1). New Youth 6(5), May/September. ––. 1919b. 䱢㋮ナ⠁㟛Ѧࡽ “Jieji jingzheng yu huzhu” (“Class Struggle and Mutual Aid”). Weekly Critic 29, July. Li, Ji ᴢ ᄷ . 1921. “Shehui zhuyi yu Zhongguo ⼒ ᳗ Џ 㕽 㟛 Ё ೟ ” (“Socialism and China”). New Youth 8(6), April. Luo, Jialun 㕙ᆊ‫׿‬. 1919a. “Jinri zhi shijie xinchao Ҟ᮹ПϪ⬠ᮄ╂” (“New Tide of Today’s World”). New Tide 1(1), January. ––. 1919b. “Huanying women de xiongdi: ‘Niujin de xin chao’ ℵ䖢៥‫ץ‬ ⱘ‫ܘ‬ᓳ: "⠯⋹ⱘᮄ╂"” (“Welcoming Our Brother: The New Tide of Oxford”). New Tide 2(1), October. ––. 1919c. “Funu jiefang ်ཇ㾷ᬒ” (“Emancipation of Women”). New Tide 2(1), October. MacDonald, James Ramsay. 1911. The Socialist Movement. New York & London: Cambridge UP. Mast, Herman. 1971. “Tai Chi-t’ao, Sunism and Marxism During the May Fourth Movement in Shanghai.” Modern Asian Studies 5(3): 227–49. Mitter, Rana. 2004. A Bitter Revolution: China’s Struggle With the Modern World. New York: Oxford UP. ML, Sheng ML ⫳. 1920. “Shehui zhuyi fangfa ⼒᳗Џ㕽ᮍ⊩” (“The Socialist Method”). Citizen 2(3), October. Pusey, James Reeve. 1983. China and Charles Darwin. Cambridge & London: Harvard UP.

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Qu, Xuanying ⶓᅷ〢. 1919. “Da zhanzheng zhi huixiang ໻᠄⠁Пಲᛇ” (“Thoughts about the Great War”). The Citizen 1(3), March. Sassoon, Donald. 2008 (2001). “Socialism in the Twentieth Century: an Historical Reflection.” In Reassessing Political Ideologies: the Durability of Dissent, edited by Michael Freeden, 49–66. London & New York: Routledge. Seligman, Edwin R.A. 1949 (1902). The Economic Interpretation of History. New York: Columbia UP. Su, Jiarong 㢣⬆㤷. 1920. “Jinhou de wenhua yundong: jiaoyu kuozhang Ҟᕠⱘ᭛࣪䘟ࢩ:ᬭ㚆᫈ᔉ” (“The Future of the Culture Movement: Expansion of Education”). Young China 2(5), November. Sun, Lung-kee. 2008. “The Other May Fourth: Twilight of the Old Order.” In Beyond the May Fourth Paradigm: In Search of Chinese Modernity, edited by Chow Kai-Wing, Hon Tze-Ki, Ip Hung-Yok, and Don C. Price, 271–98. Lanham: Lexington. Tao, Menghe 䱊 ᄳ੠. 1920. “Oumei laodong wenti ℤ 㕢ࢲ ࢩ ଣ 丠” (“Labour Question in Europe and in the United States”). New Youth 7(2), January. Tian, Han ⬄⓶. 1920. “Shiren yu laodong wenti 䀽Ҏ㟛ࢲࢩଣ丠” (“A Poet and the Labour Question”). Young China 1(8), February. Xu, Deheng 䀅ᖋ⦽. 1919. “Guomin sixiang yu shijie chaoliu ೟⇥ᗱᛇ 㟛Ϫ⬠╂⌕” (“National Thought and the World Trend”). Citizen 1(2), February. Yamakawa, Hitoshi ቅᎱഛ. 1921. “Cong kexue de shehui zhuyi dao xingdong de shehui zhuyi ᕲ⾥ᅌⱘ⼒᳗Џ㕽ࠄ㸠ࢩⱘ⼒᳗Џ㕽” (“From Scientific to Operative Socialism”). Translated by Li Da. New Youth 9(1), May. Yang, Xiaochun ἞ ᬜ ᯹ . 1921. “Huiyuan tongxun ᳗ વ 䗮 㿞 ” (“Newsletter”). Young China 2(8), February. Yun, Daiying ᛆҷ㣅. 1920. “Huiyuan tongxun ᳗વ䗮㿞” (“Newsletter”). Young China 1(11), May. ––. 1920b. “Zenyang chuangzao shaonian Zhongguo ᗢῷࡉ䗴ᇥᑈЁ ೟˛(Ϟ)” (“How to Create Young China?”, Part 1). Young China 2(1), July. Van de Ven, Hans J. 1991. From Friend to Comrade: the Founding of the Chinese Communist Party, 1920–1927. Berkeley: California UP. White, Hayden. 1990 (1987). The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation. Baltimore & London: Johns Hopkins UP.

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Zhang, Tingqian ゴᓋ䃭. 1921. “Luosu xiansheng de jiangyan 㕙㋴‫⫳ܜ‬ ⱘ䃯ⓨ” (“Mr. Russell’s Lecture”). Young China 2(8), February. Zheng, Boqi 䜁ԃ༛. 1920. “Huiyuan tongxun ᳗વ䗮㿞” (“Newsletter”). Young China 1(11), May. Zhou, Binglin ਼ ⚇ ᵫ . 1920. “Shehui zhuyi zai Zhongguo yinggai zenmeyang yundong ⼒ ᳗ Џ 㕽 ೼ Ё ೟ ឝ 䁆 ᗢ 咐 ῷ 䘟 ࢩ ” (“How Should Socialism Function in China?”). Citizen 2(2), June. Zong, Baihua ᅫⱑढ. 1919. “Huiyuan tongxun ᳗વ䗮㿞” (“Newsletter”). Young China 1(3), September. Zuo, Shunsheng Ꮊ 㟰 ⫳ . 1920. “Huiyuan tongxun ᳗ વ 䗮 㿞 ” (“Newsletter”). Young China 1(7), January.

INSTITUTIONAL TRANSFORMATION

CHAPTER FOUR REPUBLIC OR MONARCHY? UNITARY STATE OR FEDERAL STATE?: LIANG QICHAO AND THE REPUBLICAN INSTITUTIONALISATION1 MA JUN

As is well known, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries a series of profound institutional changes took place in China, first in the Manchu Empire and then in the Republic. These changes were discussed by political thinkers and actors in terms of two basic issues: the form of the State (guoti ೑ԧ) and the form of the government and its institutions (zhengti ᬓԧ). The former relates to power-sharing between the nation and the monarchic or dynastic principle: the State could be a monarchy or a republic, autocratic or constitutional, and it could take different forms depending on the extent to which these forms relied on monarchic principles. The latter concerns the separation and sharing of power between the central State and the local or regional entities, or among different expressions of political power (legislative, executive, judicial, etc.). Among the outstanding political thinkers and actors at the beginning of the last century was Liang Qichao (1873–1929), who dedicated a lifetime to revealing the interdependent nature of these two issues. Far from being a kind of atavistic conservatism and authoritarianism, his political thought was also far removed from the political mainstream of the time. As a constitutional monarchist in the late Qing Dynasty, Liang defended the 1

This article is a revised version of my another article in French, entitled “Liang Qichao et les institutions républicaines” published in Etudes chinoises, N° XXXI– 1, 2012, p. 109–23.

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dynastic principle at the same time that constitutionalists began to shift towards republicanism, which became dominant in 1912. He supported the Republic while defending the unity of the State against the rise of federalism, which he felt hindered China’s unification. After 1912, he focused mainly on the issue of the form of government rather than that of the State. Within the issue of the form of government, zhengti, Liang concentrated on the form of the central powers, rather than the distribution of these powers at the level of the provinces. The gap that separated Liang Qichao’s thought from that of his mainstream contemporaries persisted when he supported the strong central government of Yuan Shikai 㹕Ϫ߃ (1858–1916), only to oppose him during his imperial restoration in 1916. Due to limitations of space, the third period of Republican institutionalisation will not be discussed in the present paper.

The Debate on the Form of the State The years 1905-07 witnessed an intense debate on the form of the State between by Liang Qichao, chief editor of Xinmin congbao ᮄ⇥ϯ᡹ (New Citizen Journal), and the anti-Manchu revolutionaries of Minbao ⇥᡹ (People’s Journal) (Chi 1966, 1–268), with Liang taking a stance in favour of a constitutional monarchy throughout. In his view, all political actions should be institutionalised under State control and directed at promoting progressive reform in the existing political structure. Instead, the revolutionaries wished to overthrow the central authority and change the form of the State. Here, the concept “form of the State” is crucial. For Liang, the State is an organism with its own will and purpose, whose form, or guoti, is generated by history and tradition. Liang stressed the preservation of the form of the State because the destruction of guoti would mean a break with history and tradition, the fundamental elements of the organic State. However, this does not mean that Liang denied the role of political change. On the contrary, he saw in historical continuity a process of ordered evolution. He supported political reform on two conditions: 1) that in accordance with the historical logic of political reform, it permitted the old imperial institutions and the ruling dynasty to remain, and 2) that the modern political ideas he advocated maintained this historical continuity, as opposed to revolution which implied a fundamental reinvention of the past. In other words, for the revolutionaries all political resources should be dedicated to changing the form of the State, while for Liang, the form of the institutions, whatever they might be, had to be rooted in a historical continuity. The democratic ideas generated in China

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at the turn of the 20th century were thus immediately inscribed in both the revolutionary and institutional programs, within a political space contested by both Republicans and constitutional monarchists. The imperial court lost support from the monarchists after launching its constitutional program in 1906. A few years later, from 1909–11, the court refused their request for the immediate convening of the Parliament. It also suppressed the movement against the nationalisation of the railways, which had united the political opposition, provincial particularisms and the hostility towards the Manchurians in the central and southern provinces. At the same time, the court organised the first cabinet and placed it under the domination of Manchu aristocrats. These actions implied an abuse of power and reaffirmed the Manchu prerogatives, just as Han nationalism was heating up. They had two immediate consequences: the strong political opposition of the elites and supporters of the established social order to the imperial court; and the uniting of the revolutionaries with the masses, in order to forcibly resist these decisions. These two dynamics converged in 1911 when, following the Wuchang Uprising of 10 October, the provinces declared their independence, one after another. Faced with this critical situation which threatened to dismantle the empire, in early November 1911 the Imperial court promulgated the Shijiu xintiao कбֵᴵ (The 19 Fundamental Articles) in order to reduce the privileges and restrict the authority of the emperor (Zizhengyuan…, 1911). At the same time, the court recalled Yuan Shikai and appointed him prime minister of the cabinet and commander-in-chief of the army, which was suppressing the revolution. It is in this historical context that an examination Liang’s views and the evolution of his ideas, which are still little known, can help us to understand the essential nature of democracy in China. As a firm constitutionalist, Liang actively supported the call for the immediate convening of Parliament in 1910. The procrastination and reactions of the imperial court disappointed him, but did not cause him to give up his fundamental position. After the Wuchang Uprising, he refused to join the revolutionaries and the “converted” constitutionalists, who wanted to establish a republic. Instead, he tried to find a compromise between maintaining the actual form of the State and the immediate foundation of a republic without a monarch. Liang then put forward the idea of “republicanism and nominal monarchy” (xujun gonghe 㰮৯݅੠) which was also supported by his mentor Kang Youwei ᒋ᳝Ў (1858– 1927) (Kang 1981, 679–92). In their view, the monarchy was part of the Chinese political tradition and underpinned the monarchic institutions that

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had developed over many centuries. Without real power, the monarch would merely be a spiritual, political and national symbol, with the Parliament playing the major political role. If the xunjun gonghe were a revolution, it was not the revolution expected by the revolutionaries, who had wanted to replace the monarchy with the republic. Instead, it was, in Liang Qichao’s terms, a “political revolution” (zhengzhi geming ᬓ⊏䴽ੑ) which only changed the zhengti, or the form of the government institutions. His intention was thus to maintain the monarchy, with a separation of powers to be realised through the establishment of new political institutions (Parliament, cabinet…), and institutionalised by the Constitution. In Liang’s view, maintaining guoti meant avoiding violent revolution and guaranteeing social stability. In his article Xin zhongguo jianshe wenti ᮄЁ೑ᓎ䆒䯂乬 (“Issues regarding the Construction of a New China”), which appeared during the Revolution of 1911, he analysed republican systems throughout the world. He considered the “English republic” the best model available and the best solution for China: I firmly believe that the republican institutions of the United States and France are not suited to conditions in China. If we want to keep the social order, we should follow the English model and keep the emperor as a nominal ruler. The greatest advantage here is that we can nominally maintain our imperial traditions. (Liang 1936c, vol. 27, 45)

Unfortunately, the Qing court was incapable of resolving China’s national crisis and lost prestige and legitimacy in the eyes of the Chinese people. For Liang Qichao, it did nothing but produce “bad politics” (e zhengzhi ᙊᬓ⊏). He therefore insisted that the best way to preserve the form of the State was not to keep the Manchu emperor, but to instead put a descendant of Confucius on the throne, as an ideal representative of Chinese traditions. As he put it: “(…) in our country, we have Duke Yansheng (㸡೷), a descendant of Confucius and the most influential and respectable person in our country. If we have no other choice, we should invite him to become emperor (Liang 1936c, vol. 27, 46)”. He was certain that this new national dynasty would strive for recognition and legitimacy, both inside and outside the country. Still, there were two possible drawbacks here: 1) the new regime would appear to mix politics and religion (if Confucius was seen as the founder of the Confucian religion, kongjiao ᄨᬭ); and 2) there was the risk of losing sovereignty over Mongolia, Xinjiang and Tibet (Liang 1936c, vol. 27, 46). In order to put

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into practice his “republicanism”, Liang Qichao had to maintain the Qing dynasty. But “if the imperial court could not obtain support from the people, the plan to establish ‘republicanism with a nominal emperor’ would never be realised (Liang 1936c, vol. 27, 46).” The revolutionaries instead sought to legitimise the revolution. The outbreak of the revolution was less a revolt against the Manchu, than against the corruption and political impotence of the Qing court. While violence was inevitable, the outcome would be freedom, rights and wellbeing for the people. Changing the form of the State meant completely changing the life of the Chinese people. In order to improve their lives, the masses had to be fully dedicated to the cause of overthrowing the “bad government” (e zhengfu ᙊ ᬓ ᑰ ) and founding a better China (Hanli 1911). The compromise proposed by Liang Qichao was thus much criticised. According to his critics, the Republic was the mature outcome of historical evolution and the overthrow of the Qing court the result of the general will of the people. Given that the monarchy was considered the root of all evil in China, it should be abolished and replaced by a republican form of government, which had its origins outside of China’s history (Loujin xiansheng 1912). Liang Qichao’s political activities in favor of constitutional reform were not limited to merely proposing ideas. Having established contact with senior military leaders of the Qing army shortly after the Wuchang Uprising, he intended to use military force to compel the court to convene the Parliament immediately and force it to relinquish its political powers. But with Yuan Shikai’s irresistable rise to power, his plans for military intervention were blocked by the new commander. Given this situation, Liang had to “paradoxically” approach this new strongman as the only figure capable of stabilising the political situation, and putting into practice the principle of “enlightened despotism” (kaiming zhuanzhi ᓔᯢ ϧࠊ) in China2. Meanwhile, from December, 1911 to February, 1912, negotiations were held between the representatives of Beijing and the independent provinces on reforming the State. The two sides came to an agreement, which led to the fall of the Qing dynasty. Caught between Sun Yat-sen ᄭ Ё ቅ (1866–1925), the first president of the Republic of China 2

For the concept of “enlightened despotism”, see (Liang 1936b, vol. 17, 13–83). On 23 February, 1912, Liang wrote to Yuan: “from now on, if China does not apply the principles of an enlightened despotism, there will be no good politics (Ding and Zhao 1983, 617).”

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(established in Nanjing on 1 January, 1912), who though weak in both economic and military terms, was nonetheless deeply committed to national unification, and Yuan Shikai, the most powerful and influential figure in the Qing court and the Northern army, the emperor became a pawn on the political chessboard. If the emperor would give up the crown at the request of Yuan, Sun would then confer the presidency on Yuan. The last emperor abdicated on 12 February 1912. Three days later, Yuan was elected by the provisional assembly of Nanjing as Sun Yat-sen’s successor, and inaugurated as president in Beijing, on 10 March. Sun officially resigned in Nanjing on 1 April. The national debate on the form of the State, the guoti, thus faded into the background as the young republic struggled into existence, only to come to the forefront again in 1915 when Yuan Shikai tried to restore the monarchy. Although the debate on the form of the State ended in early 1912, it would be mistaken to conclude that the fundamental political issues were solved with the compromise of 1912. On the contrary, once all the political actors had “converted” to republicanism, the issue of the structure of the State and the form of government became even more important.

Structure of the State and the Form of Government As noted earlier, the issue of the form of government (zhengti) had two main aspects. Firstly, it was posited on political power-sharing between local and central authorities and, secondly, on the power-sharing within the central government, especially between the executive and legislative branches. It is this second aspect which would play such an important role, with respect to the zhengti issue, in the early days of the Republic. However, given the conditions prevailing in early 20th century China, it was the former aspect which initially absorbed the attention of Chinese intellectuals. After the Wuchang Uprising, the first revolutionary and independent government was established in the capital of Hubei and was institutionalised based on a Provisional Constitution (ezhou yuefa 䛖 Ꮂ 㑺 ⊩ ). This Constitution, which represents the first instance of a regional and republican constitutional law in China, would become a point of reference for the other provinces when they began drafting their own constitutions and setting up their own governmental institutions after declaring independence (Chi 2008, 105). The independence of the provinces and the drafting of the provincial constitutions thus raised a fundamental question

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as to whether China would be structured and organised as a unitary or federal State. The provincial uprisings and declarations of independence revealed the growing strength of regionalism at the end of the Manchu empire (Hu 2001, 1–30). Despite the recovery of a certain degree of centralised political influence over local political entities after the Taiping ໾ ᑇ Rebellion in the mid-19th century, the Qing court had lost its ability to directly control the provincial authorities and had to use local forces to intervene in regional military and political affairs. Far from hindering this trend, the reforms of the New Politics (xinzheng ᮄᬓ) launched by the central government in 1901, not only took advantage of this provincial force but worked to strengthen it. The provincial assemblies (ziyiju ੼䆂ሔ ), established in 1909 after the first modern Chinese elections, would likewise promote local autonomy throughout the entire country. Most of the members of these assemblies took part in the regional resistance against the nationalisation of the railways and the centralisation of military and financial powers. When the local elites chose to change their attitude towards Beijing and support the Revolution in 1911, regionalism became more of a driving force than a result of the revolution. The foundation of the Republic was therefore intimately connected to the political institutionalisation of the provincial revolutionary governments. While the, albeit still vague, idea of a unified and federated new China was widely supported, the first problem the national government had to face was that of forming the new Republic’s institutions. The project of creating a federal Chinese state was not only supported by a majority of the provincial governors, but also by some of the revolutionaries, such as Sun Yat-sen. In recognising regional differences, Sun wanted to create a Chinese federalism similar to that of the United States, which would enable the provincial authorities to intervene directly in the governance of different local interests and in the development of the political capacity of the people. It was his belief that the central government should play a secondary role in local affairs and concentrate on national administrative unification in China instead (Sun 1981a, 562)3. Liang Qichao had also been an enthusiastic Federalist in his youth, before abandoning it in 1903. In a work on Rousseau, which had

3

When Sun met the general director of the Bank of Indochina, Stanislas Simon, in Paris, he spoke of the Revolution of 1911 as “a rebellion for establishing a federal republic” (Sun 1981b, 564).

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introduced the French philosopher’s thought into China, he had especially praised Swiss federalism: If a large State is divided into smaller States following the model of Switzerland and puts into practice democratic principles according to the federal system, its power will be strong and its people free. It will be something extraordinary and become an example for other large States. This is precisely the aim of Rousseau! (…) (If China) adopts the regional institutional system of the civilised countries(…) makes local laws based on different special conditions and enacts decrees in accordance with the will of the people, it will become the ideal country that Rousseau envisioned (…). (Liang 1936a, vol. 6, 110)

But in 1911, Liang Qichao’s position was far from this ideal. In 1903, he had changed his ideas radically with respect to a State’s modern political foundations. Given his scepticism as to the political abilities of the Chinese people, he was convinced that China should not establish a democratic system immediately nor expand the scope of political participation, but instead concentrate on building institutions based upon authority and social order, as well as on history and tradition 4 . This solution excluded that principle of particularism which instead defined other politically conservative viewpoints. In Xin zhongguo jianshe wenti, Liang declared himself to be highly dubious about the feasibility of transplanting federalist principles into China, claiming that Chinese history differed completely from that of other existing federal States: The State is an organism which cannot be created suddenly through an act of the imagination. All its political changes depend on its own history. (…) In China, unlike the Western world, completely autonomous institutional systems do not exist. (…) While it may seem simple, it is actually very difficult to create up to twenty smaller States in our country. (…) Even if (transplanting federalism) is an important idea, I am afraid that it will 4

Some scholars contend that Liang Qichao had supported the revolution before 1903, but had then shifted to a reformist position (Huang 1972, 68–84 and Chang 1982, 163–75). However, he was never a true revolutionary aiming at political deinstitutionalisation, but instead supported the progressive reform of existing political structures. After his trip to the United States in 1903, Liang concluded that the Chinese people did not understand the meaning of “real freedom” (zhenziyou ⳳ㞾⬅), were politically immature and not yet ready for democracy (Liang 1936f, vol. 22, 121–26). It was after his return from America that he began to focus on the question of political institutions in China.

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remain an ideal. This is why I cannot insist on this idea. (Liang 1936c, vol. 27, 29–30)

For Liang, the federal system was not compatible with the Chinese tradition, which taught that a “great unification” (dayitong ໻ϔ㒳) had existed in China for more than 2000 years. A unitary State should thus be considered as the ultimate goal of China, while federation was only a temporary solution. However, Liang Qichao remained prudent and claimed that the choice depended on the judgment of the Chinese elites. The structure of the State, whether unitary or federal, permanent or temporary, had first to be stabilised and defended by a strong political power capable of dealing with the national crisis. Unification thus underscores an essential aspect of the new regime and represents a key element of his thought. In fact, for Liang Qichao, the choice between the centralisation of power and local autonomy was secondary to a reflection the organisation of the State. In other words, the choice between the centralisation of power and local autonomy was secondary to a reflection on the organisation of the State, which occupied a position of absolute priority in the creation of political institutions in post-revolutionary times. His disciple, Cai E 㫵䬋 (1882–1916), would likewise focus on the establishment of a powerful central government capable of unifying a chaotic China in the aftermath of revolution (Cai 1983a, 91–92). Liang developed this idea further when he collaborated with the authoritarian President Yuan Shikai, in the belief that the social stability had to be guaranteed by the centralisation of political power. The turningpoint came during the transfer of power from Sun Yat-sen to Yuan Shikai, in early 1912. Liang explained his shift towards the Republic and Yuan by saying that it was necessary to establish a strong central authority. In another article Zhongguo liguo dafangzhen Ё೑ゟ೑ ໻ ᮍ 䩜 (“Guiding Principles for Constructing the Chinese State”) he suggested building a strong and powerful government which could distribute political power to local authorities and intervene directly in the management of regional affairs. In this same article, Liang Qichao also refuted the transplanting of federalism into China and proposed abolishing the provincial system in order to strengthen the power of the central government (Liang 1936d, vol. 28, 51–59). More explicitly and with greater clarity than many of his contemporaries, Liang Qichao revealed the challenges and obstacles involved in establishing the first Chinese democratic institutions. In fact, for many of these revolutionaries and former constitutionalists, the issue of the State

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also gradually narrowed down to the question of the structure of government. The extensive debate on the structure of the State which had occupied the early months of 1912, was steadily replaced in the latter half of that year by mono-thematic discussions on how to establish a strong central government. Although the “Provisional Constitution of the Republic of China” (Zhonghua minguo linshi yuefa Ёढ⇥೑Јᯊ㑺⊩) was finally promulgated on 11 March, 1912, the actual structure of the State remained 5 undefined , with most of the political forces finally agreeing on the need to construct a unitary State in China. The debate was revived in intellectual circles in 1914 when, with the aid of the “New Provisional Constitution” (Xinyuefa ᮄ 㑺 ⊩ ), Yuan Shikai dissolved both the first Chinese Parliament and the provincial assemblies, thereby centralising all political power. The question of federalism in China was raised again in the late 1910s and early 1920s, especially by Liang Qichao. His intention was to revive local and popular forces, in order to rebuild a strong China and save the country from the crisis of the warlords (Liang 1936e, vol. 35, 20). However, after 1914, these discussions were little more than a feeble echo of the great debates of the first decade of the century. The center stage was now occupied by debates on the “new culture” (xinwenhua ᮄ ᭛ ࣪ ), which marked the turningpoint of political deinstitutionalisation in the first period of the young Republic. The debate on the different concepts of forms of government clearly required much more time in order to arrive at some workable definitions and solutions. Due to a lack of in-depth discussions on the nature of revolution and the form of the State between the revolutionaries and the constitutionalists in the late Qing period, it became impossible for the post-revolutionary Chinese to adequately distinguish or correlate concepts such as a unitary vs. a federal State, or the centralisation of power vs. local autonomy. What was clearly present to all the participants in these debates was the spectre of a divided China, split internally among independence provinces and peripheral regions (Tibet, Mongolia, Xinjiang, etc.), while also being threatened from without by foreign powers. The autonomy of the provinces was thus merely symptomatic of a weak central government. In this situation, the desire for a powerful and democratic nation-State capable of unifying all the internal forces, while also playing a decisive 5

The provisional Constitution did not define the structure of the State, but merely stated that the Republic consisted of twenty-two provinces, inner and outer Mongolia, Qinghai and Tibet (Zhonghua… 1912, 2).

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role in the international arena, inevitably appeared as the most desireable solution. Hence, the first problem after the founding of the Republic was determining the magnitude and nature of a centralised state. In the first phase of his intellectual career (until 1903), Liang Qichao had hoped that a renewal of the Chinese tradition and spirit would lead to the founding of a modern nation that would revive the glorious China of the past. But once he realised that his plan for a political mobilisation of the masses was doomed to failure, due to the indifference of an apathetic society and divided elites, he abandoned this approach and instead began to call for a strong and centralised power in China. The events of 1911–12 forced him to change his views on the form of the State and led him to develop a more mature conceptualisation of post-imperial institutions. Remaining aloof from the mainstream opinions of his time, he preferred to maintain a relatively “conservative” position. After the optimism of his youth, he became increasingly convinced that what was needed in postrevolutionary China was a strong centralised State based upon history and tradition. This was the position from which Liang Qichao hoped to resolve political issues such as guoti and zhengti, in the course of Republican institutionalisation, while taking into account the activism of social forces and the weakness of the central political power.

Bibliography Cai, E. 1983a. “Zhi Li Yuanhong ji gesheng dudu dian 㟈咢‫⋾ܗ‬ঞ৘ⳕ 䛑 ⴷ ⬉ ” (“A Telegram to Li Yuanhong and the Provincial Governors”). In Cai E ji 㫵䬋䲚, edited by Mao Zhuqing ↯⊼䴦, Li Ao ᴢ加 and Chen Xinxian 䰜ᮄᅾ, 91–92. Changsha: Hunan renmin chubanshe. ––. 1983b. “Zhi gesheng junzhengfu dian 㟈 ৘ ⳕ ‫ ݯ‬ᬓ ᑰ ⬉ ” (“A Telegram to the Provincial Military Governments”). In Cai E ji 㫵䬋䲚 , edited by Mao Zhuqing ↯⊼䴦, Li Ao ᴢ加, and Chen Xinxian 䰜ᮄ ᅾ, 92. Changsha: Hunan renmin chubanshe. Chang, Peng-yuan ᓴ᳟ು. 1982. “Liang Qichao yu qingji geming ṕਃ䍙 Ϣ⏙ ᄷ䴽 ੑ” (“Liang Qichao and the Revolution in Late Qing”). Zhongyang yanjiuyuan jindaishi yanjiusuo zhuankan Ё༂ⷨお䰶䖥ҷ ৆ⷨお᠔ϧߞ 11: 1–345. Chi, Ping-feng ѧ‫ބ‬ዄ. 1966. “Qingmo geming yu junxian de lunzheng ⏙ ᳿䴽ੑϢ৯ᅾⱘ䆎ѝ” (“The Debates between the Revolutionaries and the Constitutionalists in the Late Qing Dynasty”). Zhongyang

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yanjiuyuan jindaishi yanjiusuo zhuankan Ё༂ⷨお䰶䖥ҷ৆ⷨお᠔ ϧߞ 19: 1–268. Chi, Yunfei 䖳ѥ亲. 2008. Song Jiaoren yu zhongguo minzhu xianzheng ᅟ ᬭ ҕ Ϣ Ё ೑ ⇥ Џ ᅾ ᬓ (Song Jiaoren and the Democratic Constitutionalism in China). Changsha: Hunan shida chubanshe. Ding, Wenjing ϕ᭛∳, and Zhao Fengtian 䍉Є⬄, eds. 1983. Liang Qichao nianpu changbian ṕ ਃ 䍙 ᑈ 䈅 䭓 㓪 (Long Chronological Biography of Liang Qichao). Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe. Hanli ∝ゟ. 1911. “Wannan shequ zhi minzhulun ϛ䲒㟡এП⇥Џ䆎” (“The Democracy Never Abandoned”). Minlibao ⇥ゟ᡹, November 24 and 25. Hu, Ch’un-hui 㚵᯹ᚴ. 2001. Minchu de difangzhuyi yu liansheng zizhi ⇥ ߱ⱘഄᮍЏНϢ㘨ⳕ㞾⊏ (Regionalism in the First Period of the Republic and Provincial Autonomy). Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe. Huang, Philip. 1972. Liang Ch’i-ch’ao and Modern Chinese Liberalism. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Kang, Youwei. 1981. “Gonghe zhengti lun ݅ ੠ ᬓ ԧ 䆎 ” (“On the Republican Regime”) In Kang Youwei zhenglun ji ᒋ᳝Ўᬓ䆎䲚, edited by Tang Zhijun ∸ᖫഛ, vol. 2, 679–94. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju. Liang, Qichao. 1936a. “Lusuo xuean शẁᄺḜ” (“Record of Studies on Rousseau”). In Yinbingshi heji, wenji 佂‫ބ‬ᅸড়䲚·᭛䲚 (hereafter YBSWJ), compiled by Lin Zhijun ᵫᖫ䩻, vol. 6, 97–110. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju. ––. 1936b. “Kaiming zhuanzhi lun” ᓔ ᯢ ϧ ࠊ 䆎 (On Enlightened Despotism). In YBSWJ, vol. 17, 13–83. ––. 1936c. “Xin zhongguo jianshe wenti” ᮄЁ೑ᓎ䆒䯂乬 (“Issues in the Construction of a New China”). In YBSWJ, vol. 27, 27–47. ––. 1936d. “Zhongguo liguo dafangzhen Ё೑ゟ೑໻ᮍ䩜” (“Guiding Principles for Constructing the Chinese State”). In YBSWJ, vol. 28, 39– 78. ––. 1936e. “‘Jiefang yu gaizao’ fakanci lj 㾷 ᬒ Ϣ ᬍ 䗴 NJ থ ߞ 䆡 ” (“Foreword to Liberation and Transformation”). In YBSWJ, vol. 35, 19–22. ––. 1936f. “Xindalu youji jielu ᮄ໻䰚␌䆄㡖ᔩ” (“An Excerpt of Travel Notes on the New Continent”). In Yinbing heji, zhuanji 佂‫ބ‬ᅸড়䲚·ϧ 䲚, compiled by Lin Zhijun ᵫᖫഛ, vol. 22, 1–147. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju.

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Loujin xiansheng 䬖䞥‫⫳ܜ‬. 1912. “Zhi Liang Qichao shu 㟈ṕਃ䍙к” (“Letter to Liang Qichao”). Minlibao, January 3. Sun, Yat-sen. 1981a. “Yu ‘Bali ribao’ jizhe de tanhua ϢljᏈ咢᮹᡹NJ䆄 㗙ⱘ䇜䆱” (“Conversation with the Journalist of the Quotidien de Paris”). In Sun Zhongshan quanji ᄭЁቅܼ䲚 (Collected Works of Sun Zhongshan), edited by the Institute of History of the Guangdong Academy of Social Sciences, the Research Center of the History of the Republic of China of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Research Center on Sun Yat-sen of the Department of History of Sun Yat-sen University, vol. 1, 561–62. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju. ––. 1981b. “Yu ximeng de duihua Ϣ㽓㩭ⱘᇍ䆱” (“Conversation with Mr. Stanislas Simon”). Sun Zhongshan quanji l: 563–66. “Zhonghua minguo linshi yuefa Ё ढ ⇥ ೑ Ј ᯊ 㑺 ⊩ ” (“Provisional Constitution of the Republic of China”). 1912. Linshi zhengfu gongbao Јᯊᬓᑰ݀᡹ 35: 1–9. “Zizhengyuanzou caiyong zuiliang junzhulixian zhuyi bing xiancaoni xianfanei zhongda xintiao kenqing xuanshi taimiao bugao chenmin zhe 䌘ᬓ䰶༣䞛⫼᳔㡃৯ЏゟᅾЏНᑊ‫ܜ‬㤝ᢳᅾ⊩‫ݙ‬䞡໻ֵᴵᙇ䇋ᅷ 䁧 ໾ ᑭ Ꮧ ਞ 㞷 ⇥ ᡬ ” (“Official Request of the National Political Council for the Adoption of the Best form of Constitutionalism and the Proclamation of the Fundamental Articles of the Constitution Written by the Council, under Oath, in the Imperial Ancestral Temple, and Promulgated to the Subjects of the Empire”). 1911. Shuntian shibao 乎 ໽ᯊ᡹, November 5.

CHAPTER FIVE LIANG QICHAO AND THE IMPACT OF HIS IDEAS UPON THE NEW CHINESE HISTORIOGRAPHY MARIJA ŠULER

Introduction Since ancient times, historiography has occupied a central position in Chinese intellectual history and its traditional modes of thought. Historical awareness in the Chinese cultural context is almost as old as Chinese civilisation itself. In the late 19th and 20th centuries, a period which was marked by the global expansion of Western capitalism and ideologies, this historical consciousness proved essential in helping Chinese intellectuals in their search for new methods in writing history. China had for centuries regarded itself as the Middle Kingdom––an age-old civilisation which had played a crucial role in the political, economic, cultural and intellectual spheres throughout eastern Asia. Chinese efforts to spread and reinforce its influence in this geopolitical area throughout history were aimed at absorbing external peoples who had been either assimilated or subjugated to the mother culture of China. In the 18th century, neither knew of nor would have tolerated the concept of equal and independent states. Foreign cultures were considered to be barbarians who needed to be taught subordination and respect for the Middle Kingdom. The well-established tributary system, which for centuries regulated the affairs of those living outside the Middle Kingdom’s borders, began unravelling with the growth of the Western presence in Chinese ports. In the latter part of the 18th century, Europe and America had begun to experience rapid economic growth and wished to expand their trade and business activities abroad, leading inevitably to a collision between China and the West. Earl H. Pritchard describes the collision between these two worlds succinctly as follows: “Against this super-civilised, self-esteeming civilisation, ruled by bigoted and self-

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satisfied mandarins, came a young, virile, and self-confident people who expected to be treated as equals.” (Pritchard 2000, 107) Global capitalist modernity came knocking on China’s door, forcing China to mould a different political, economical, and cultural character for itself in this emerging new world. Chinese intellectuals of this period––under the influence of ideas, categories and disciplinary divisions deriving from Western philosophical and academic traditions––were forced to think about their own traditions in new ways. Chinese historians were no exception. Driven by nationalist impulses in the face of the global expansion of Western capitalism and its ideological structures, they initiated the process of introducing new methods that made traditional Chinese historiography more compliant with Western historiographical methods. From the first attempts at modernisation in the late 19th century until the present, Chinese scholars have completely reconsidered the nature and function of traditional Chinese historical discourse. Ever since the first encounters with the more positivist-scientific Western historiography, the principal concern of Chinese historians has been how to make Chinese historiography more scientifically oriented. According to Q. Edward Wang, searching for new ways in writing history had a two-fold purpose for Chinese historians: firstly, to embark on the project of nation-building and secondly, to embrace the new knowledge that came with the appearance of Westerners and Western culture in China. Wang contends these purposes were brand new and led historians to seek a “historiographical revolution” (Shixue geming ৆ᄺ䴽 ੑ ), a term coined by Liang Qichao ṕ ਃ 䍙 (1873–1929) in his enthusiastic call for a “new history”. Wang further argues that the understanding that history is a resource of wisdom and aid in times of economic, political and social crisis goes to the heart of Chinese cultural tradition. The turn of the 20th century, when Liang evolved his ideas and produced his works, undoubtedly constituted yet another critical time in China’s long history. As the result of a sudden expansion of their world, these altered circumstances required Chinese historians to rethink their past. Some sort of reform within the historiographical frame was inevitable. (Wang 2000, 43) Liang Qichao, a prominent Chinese scholar, journalist, philosopher, translator and reformer during the Qing Dynasty, was born in Guangdong province where, due to the well-established Canton System of regulating foreign trade with China, the presence of foreigners was more common than in other Chinese regions. His initial intellectual interest in Western

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ideologies was thus not surprising. Liang’s aspirations to politically and culturally reform China were further fueled by Kang Youwei’s ᒋ᳝Ў teachings on foreign affairs. Politically advanced ideas of institutional and ideological reforms which Liang believed should be carried out in China are evident in his literary, journalistic and historical works. His writings and reform movements had an immense influence on later generations of Chinese scholars. This paper examines how Liang met the challenges which presented themselves in the political and cultural life of China, at the turn of the 20th century. The focus is on Liang’s historiographical thought which undeniably both marked the beginning of modern Chinese historical discourse and established some basic guidelines for the subsequent development of historical writing in China. Liang stressed that it was imperative for Chinese historiography to achieve a scientific orientation. He strongly believed Chinese historians should acquire more historical truths about the past, and then use these as the basis upon which to build their intellectual and critical historical studies. He launched a series of attacks on traditional Chinese historiography, claiming that since traditional Chinese historians had failed to treat historical documents in a scientific way, their writings for the most part were full of false and silly statements. (Li 2000–2001, 200) By comparing indigenous Chinese concepts of time, history and morality with the new epistemologies, broader narratives and new functions of historical discourse entering China from the West, Liang had a profound impact on early 20th century Chinese historiography. Indeed, Liang Qichao was always in the process of constructing an intellectual synthesis, of providing a cognitive map that would make modern Chinese history both intelligible and capable of being articulated. The questions he raised and the issues he dealt with were always directly related to the unfolding of modern Chinese history, both as a collective enterprise and as individual engagement. For this reason, Liang can indeed be considered a paradigmatic thinker of his time––the mind of modern China. (Tang 1996, 5)

Historical and Ideological Background of Liang Qichao’s System of Thought Liang Qichao was born in Guangdong province in February, 1873, during a time in which, under the successful reign of Emperor Tongzhi

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(Tongzhi di ৠ⊏Ᏹ) the Chinese central government underwent a brief period of military and political revival. In historical terms, this period represents the final stage in the agonising decline of the last imperial dynasty in Chinese history, a period marked by many important events both inside and outside the Middle Kingdom’s borders. In his study of Liang’s historical thought, Tang Xiaobing asserts that at this time, a coherent spatial and juxtapositional connection among historical events around the world and in China itself was not yet possible for Liang. In 1890, disappointed after failing the civil service exams, Liang Qichao left Beijing and made a short visit to Shanghai, then a thriving port city with numerous international communities already residing and conducting their business affairs there. The rich cultural atmosphere of the city would have a huge impact on Liang’s comprehension of global geographic, economic and political reality. (Tang 1996, 1–2) Tang stresses that the concept of a global world, which Liang suddenly discovered during his stay in Shanghai, resulted in a sudden spatiotemporal reorientation and revealed the limitations of the traditional cosmological order and mode of thought by which Liang (like generations of Chinese before him) organised his daily life and sense of identity. This new world map suggested the simultaneous existence of numerous modern nation-states, different national territories and spaces. This meant that in order to gain access to the modern world, one had to accept a new global, universal time, while also affirming a stable, coherent identity based on a national territory. Tang sees this moment of simultaneous differentiation and identification as the birth of a collective, modern Chinese subjectivity, by which it expanded its constitutive imagination into a broader world space in which, however, China as a nation-state had yet to make its appearance. Indeed, Tang affirms that this “shock of recognition” can be seen as the origin of modern Chinese historical consciousness, “for the dialectic of national space and universal time now become indelible in the Chinese discourse of modernity and its historical representation” (Tang 1996, 2). The historian Joseph R. Levenson, instead believes that “it was the contraction of China from a world to a nation in the world that changed the Chinese historical consciousness” (Levenson 1968, 288). But both Levenson and Tang agree that the stay in Shanghai deeply influenced Liang’s intellectual development, transforming him from an essentially Confucian intellectual into a zealous advocate of change and the new learning, and introducing modern liberal-nationalist features into his ideological system. Indications of Liang’s changed intellectual orientation

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begin to appear in the latter half of the 1890s, and it was this enthusiasm for the new world that led him to meet and later follow the famous Chinese reformer, Kang Youwei. When the limited, military-oriented reform (ziqiang yundong 㞾ᔎ䖤 ࡼ , “self-strengthening movement”) 1 did nothing to aid the rapidlydecaying Qing Dynasty, Kang and Liang began to argue for more radical changes in China’s political and cultural tradition. They soon established themselves as the passionate advocates and spokesmen for the growing reform movement, declaring that the whole country resembled “an ancient, dilapidated building on the verge of collapse, with its inhabitants happily unaware of the impending catastrophe” (Tang 1996, 14). The reformers were disappointed with the leaders of that time who, instead of overhauling the entire system, only made random adjustments. Liang’s quest for reforms stressed a paradigmatic shift in post-Confucian China, by which China was now seen as a finite guojia ೑ᆊ (“nation-state”), and not an infinite tianxia ໽ϟ (“all under heaven”) (Levenson 1968, 100). Kang and Liang both proposed a comprehensive program of educational, social, and institutional reforms based on the assumption that the traditional system of political power and control was organised solely and exclusively in order to protect the ruling dynasty from its internal enemies. But with the appearance of external enemies, this system now had to deal with a very different set of circumstances and by failing to meet this challenge, the central government revealed the total ineffectiveness of the entire system. Kang and Liang both proposed the establishment of a central government composed of 12 ministries, which would be staffed by experts educated in the most modern disciplines. They demanded a constitution and parliament, and the founding of local agencies to deal with civic matters. Democratic ideas, gender equality and the simplification of the Chinese writing system were also part of their program. They soon became enmeshed in a court struggle between the young emperor, who had begun implementing administrative, educational, industrial and foreign affairs reforms, and the powerful Empress Dowager Ci Xi ᜜⽻, who viewed these reforms as a direct attack on the foundations of the traditional Chinese system. The opposition of conservative traditionalists, led by the Empress Dowager, prevailed and ultimately crushed the so-called “One Hundred Days Reform” (Wuxu Bianfa ៞០ব ⊩). In 1898, when the Qing court put an abrupt and bloody end to this 1 The “self-strengthening movement” (1861–1895) was a period of essentially military institutional reforms.

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reform movement, it became obvious that institutional change would not come from above, as it had in the Meiji restoration in Japan, but that much needed revolutionary change would probably have to come from below. And while Kang’s and Liangs political reform movement had only lasted one hundred days, their efforts for bringing about sweeping cultural change proved to be of a much longer duration. As one of main initiators of the “One Hundred Days Reform”, Liang Qichao had to flee to Japan, where he would spend the next 14 years in political exile. But Tang argues that “this forced exile (…) never succeeded in severing his emotional and intellectual ties with China. Renewing and modernising Chinese civilisation was a political commitment that for Liang, as well as for many of his contemporaries, had already become a moral imperative.” (Tang 1996, 3) Liang regarded himself as the prophet for new customs, knowledge and people’s rights for future generations of Chinese, as indicated in his poem “Self-encouragement” (translated by Tang 1996, 13). - Willing to subject myself to thousands of piercing arrows, - I shall always write to guide hundreds of generations. - Determined to advance people’s rights and remove old customs, - I must further my studies to embrace new knowledge. Liang spent his time abroad acquiring a reading knowledge of Japanese and devoted himself to studying both classical and contemporary Western social theories and political philosophies. His intellectual orientation shifted from being an essentially Confucian intellectual, to that of a modern liberal-nationalist. Guided by his study of modern Western historical works, he wrote extensively on the possibility and necessity of modernising traditional Chinese historical discourse. Much effort was also devoted to the so-called nation-building project. He studied the thought and biographies of figures such as Darwin, Montesquieu, Descartes, Bentham, Mill, and Aristotle, and was especially influenced by the Utilitarians Jeremy Bentham and John S. Mill, and Darwin’s evolutionary theory. During his years in Japan, Liang edited and published a newspaper called the New Citizen Journal (Xinmin congbao ᮄ⇥ϯ᡹)2. Based on 2

New Citizen Journal published essays on new subjects and academic disciplines such as politics, law, economics, religion, business, education, geography, fiction, social theory, military and current domestic and international affairs. Its aim was to educate and promote new cultural values. The journal became very popular, gaining a wide readership among intellectuals, especially in China and Japan. It initiated a new phase in the historical development of Chinese newspapers.

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the liberalism of Bentham and Mill, it promoted the idea of a “new citizen” (xinmin ᮄ⇥). In his study of historical writings in 20th century China, Wang argues that “liberalism helped Liang to imagine the parameters of a Chinese constitutional monarchy” and that “it was Darwinism, especially Spencerian social Darwinism that justified his effort to import ideas from the West into China” (Wang 2000, 43). Liang believed Darwin’s theory of the survival of the fittest explained China’s need for reform at that time. In order to promote individual rights, eliminate old customs and embrace new knowledge, China had to catch up with the changes taking place in the global geographical and political reality. This was the path that would enable China to once again become a “rich and strong country” (fuqiang de guojia ᆠᔎⱘ೑ᆊ) and claim a new role for itself in the emerging globalised world of modern nationstates. Through his extensive writings on the new citizen, the new China and a new historiography, Liang Qichao had a decisive impact in making the concept of “new” into a positive value. As Tang points out, the new, or making new, became Liang’s central concept and best expressed his modernist-rationalist orientation. He argues it was Liang’s ideological obsession with the new that profoundly marked his intellectual transformation at the beginning of the 20th century. His journals were tools for propagating these ideals and goals. Liang’s expressive literary style reflected the cosmopolitan intellectual orientation of his works, establishing him as a spiritual precursor of what has been termed the Chinese Enlightement, in the first decades of the 20th century. The concept of new, as understood by Liang, involved a distinct historical vision of the emerging world space. He believed the spatio-temporal horizon of both personal and collective human experience had to be reorganised around the modern nation-state which, in turn, had to participate in a global imagination of identity. According to Liang, the most convincing historical narrative and evocation of political agency for the altered global imagination was to be found in nationalist discourse. (Tang 1996, 12–13) Liang gradually became an inspirational influence as a political journalist and universal intellectual. Based on his extensive knowledge of Western social theories and political philosophies, and the practical lessons he drew from his world travels, he advocated ideas of nationalism and liberalism as the new intellectual justifications for modernisation. In his many travels, he sought to promote the reformist cause among the numerous overseas Chinese communities. Liang’s political beliefs were quite radical at first, as he supported a republican revolution to overthrow

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the Qing government. It was only much later that he changed his political convictions and began promoting the establishment of a constitutional monarchy as the only way to modernise China, citing England, Germany and Japan as examples. Between 1905–07, Liang Qichao and Sun Yat-sen debated the transformation of China in the emerging new world. Liang became the leading theorist for a constitutional movement, while Sun Yatsen instead argued for a republican revolution. The latter view ultimately prevailed, and after the republican revolution of 1911 had toppled the Manchurian dynasty, Liang Qichao gave his full support to the new republic, actively engaging in national politics. With the failure of the revolution, however, Liang began to reconsider the efficacy of political revolution and to seek other solutions. In 1918, he left China for Europe, which was in ruins after the end of WWI. The widespread social crisis and the pessimism that prevailed among European intellectuals had a huge impact on his understanding of Western modernity and its cultural values. In Tang’s view, this experience led him to conclude that “productive domestic politics ultimately depended on a new political culture” and that the “project of modernity had to be reimagined and completed as a truly global experience” (Tang 1996, 4–5). Liang’s New Historiography (Xin shixue ᮄ৆ᄺ), which began as a series of essays in the New Citizen Journal and would ultimately lay the theoretical foundation for a nationalist rewriting of Chinese history, marks a major turningpoint in his thought. Tang stresses that “although this ambitious project for a general Chinese history never materialised, Liang’s groundbreaking contribution to modern Chinese historiography is to be found in his urgent call for a thorough ‘historiographical revolution’ at the turn of the century.” (Tang 1996, 3) Liang proposed writing a new national history which would replace the traditional dynastic historical writing. His concept of the kind of history he was looking for can be seen in the following passage: Of the subjects studied in Western countries today, history is the only one which has existed in China for a long time. History is the foundation of scholarship. It is also a mirror of human nature and the source of patriotism. The rise of nationalism in Europe and the growth of modern European countries is due, in great part, to the study of history. But how can one explain the fact that, despite this long tradition of historical study in China, the Chinese people are so disunited and China’s social condition is so bad? (Wang 2000, 44)

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As noted, Darwin’s theories had a huge influence on the formation of Liang Qichao’s historical thought, and he viewed historical processes from the evolutionist perspective. The idea of progress was a fundamental feature of modern Western historical discourse. Liang envisioned a theoretical framework for his historiographical system, asserting that historical writing should describe the “evolution” (jinhua 䖯࣪) of human history, and try to discover “common laws and common examples” (gongli gongli ݀⧚݀՟) 3 . This was the discriminant for determining whether a given author was a new historian, or a traditionalist “old historian” (jiu shijia ᮻ৆ᆊ) (Wang 2000, 44). Liang goes on to identify other problems in traditional Chinese historiography, which can be found in both the content as well as the intent of historical discourse. Liang argued that the content of traditional Chinese historical discourse was focused on events concerning the emperor, his relatives and influential high officials, thus failing to present a national history or the story of the entire nation. As a result, the previous two millennia were without history, whereas New Historiography would mark the appearance of a people’s history, and thus the beginning of a period with history. The issue of intent, on the other hand, was most evident in the lack of interest in general historical evolution, resulting in repetition and triviality (Wang 2000, 44). Liang highlighted yet another major issue regarding the traditional Chinese historiographical writings, namely the impartiality of historians when dealing with historical facts. Chinese historians have not treated historical documents in a scientific way, so their writings are full of false and silly statements. Present-day historians should begin a new Chinese historiography, firstly, by trying to obtain the correct historical documents and then by producing intellectual

3

୘Ў৆㗙ˈᖙⷨおҎ㕸䖯࣪П⦄䈵ˈ㗠∖݊݀⧚݀՟П᠔೼ˈѢᰃ᳝᠔䇧 ग़৆૆ᄺ㗙ߎ⛝DŽग़৆Ϣग़৆૆ᄺ㱑⅞⾥ˈ㽕Пˈ㢳᮴૆ᄺП⧚ᛇ㗙ˈᖙϡ 㛑Ў㡃৆ˈ᳝ᮁ✊гDŽ (Hu 2006, 245–46) (In order to construct good historical writings, we have to research the phenomenon of the evolution of human societies as well as seek common laws and common examples therein. Such historical writings are in accordance with the postulates of the so-called philosophy of history. Although history and the philosophy of history represent two different branches of academic study, it is imperative for historical writings to take into account the ideals of the philosophy of history. If these requirements are not met, good history is impossible, which is inadmissible.)

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Liang concluded that less than scientific Chinese historiography needed to follow the more scientific Western approach and obtain more truth from the historical past. He thought Chinese historians should endeavor to be more scientific in reflecting on their own traditional historical discourse. All of these assertions represent the initial efforts made by Liang Qichao and his contemporaries to change traditional historiography. By adopting the evolutionary outlook and by departing from the principle of writing dynastic history, in which both historical interpretation as well as historical periodisation simply followed the lifespan of a dynasty, modern Chinese historians began shaping a new form of historical writing. This new historical writing was in great part modeled on the basic premises of Western historical discourse. Liang’s efforts to construct a modern, systematic methodological framework of Chinese historiography contributed significantly to the formation of historical studies as a modern and independent intellectual discipline. We will now take a closer look at some of the more significant features of Liang’s conception of the new, modern historical discourse that he envisioned for China.

Liang Qichao’s Critical Remarks Regarding Traditional Chinese Historiography and His Conception of Modern Historical Writing in China Liang’s historiographical thought, according to many authors, marks the beginning of a new, modern historical writing in China and at the same time establishes a series of guidelines which subsequently constituted the foundation for the development of historical writing in 20th century China. The most systematic exposition of Liang’s historical thinking was the manifesto-like New Historiography, “(…) a text that crystallises Liang’s optimistic, if millenarian, historical imagination fostered by Enlightenment rationalism” and embodies all the critical impulses of a modernist reexamination and rejection of the past” (Tang 1996, 48). The last installment of New Historiography appeared in November, 1902, in the twentieth issue of the biweekly New Citizen Journal. At that time, Liang’s paper was enjoying great success among intellectuals in China, Japan and overseas, conveying to a wide audience of readers his new views on

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modern historical writing and the duties of the modern historian in China. Liang’s conception of a new form of historical discourse, as expressed in New Historiography, demanded a fresh style of narration as well as a radical modification in terms of both a proper general historical configuration of subjects and their interpretation. While Liang laid great emphasis on the fact that historical writing had a long tradition in China, he was very critical of this traditional Chinese historical discourse, believing it neither encouraged a public and politically conscious audience nor developed history into a scientific and independent discipline. Liang related the fact that “old historians” disregarded the importance of the social function of historical writing, i.e. fostering a national awareness as the prerequisite for building a strong modern nation, to the chaotic times, corrupt government officials and foreign intrusion China was experiencing at the turn of the 20th century: History is the broadest and most vital discipline of all knowledge. It is the mirror reflecting the nation; it is also the source of patriotism. Historical writing can proudly claim responsibility for the fact that nationalism is flourishing in today’s Europe and that all other countries are making daily progress toward civilisation. Therefore, one only has to worry when the discipline of historical writing is lacking in one’s own country. If this discipline exists, how can the nation not be united, and social administration evolve? Yet, with all the abundance of historiography in our country, we still have an impoverished present. Why is this so? (Tang 1996, 62)

Liang’s demand for a new history thus not only pointed to a new direction for historical writing in China, but also observed the growth of modern historical consciousness among Chinese intellectuals of that time. The historiographic revolution launched by Liang in his New Historiography offered criticism of traditional Chinese historiography, with different views regarding this tradition, as well as proposals for modifying the future development of history writing in China. Liang Qichao poses two basic questions: why has historical writing in China up to the 20th century not been able to develop a national awareness among a wider audience? and why has history in this specific cultural system not evolved into a scientifically-oriented, independent discipline (Tang 1996, 62–63)? In responding to these questions, he explains that, firstly, traditional historians we not concerned with the nation. Instead, they focused on the ruling dynasty; historical writing was, in fact, for private purposes, and

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had the sole aim of instructing the emperor, the members of his family and the court. Historiographers of traditional China concentrated only on victorious and powerful historical personalities, never trying to understand history in its totality or as a culturally, politically and socially interrelated process. Traditional historians were therefore the chief culprits in not evolving an idea of the nation for the Chinese people. Since past histories had essentially been tools for imposing the political values and interests of the ruling class, Liang considered them as useless. Instead, history should reflect all aspects of society. By rejecting the traditional historiography or the mere writing of annals, Liang was looking for a new historical consciousness that would propound the intrinsic value of a true causal historical narrative. With the concept of the modern European nation-state as a template, he proposed the introduction of a national political history for China’s new generation of historians. As Tang notes, denouncing past historiography for not producing general histories is “always the first step taken by nationalist historians to affirm the new political function of national history” (Tang 1996, 62). Secondly, Liang argued that historians had always focused on the individual and not on the collective or society. The importance of society’s characteristics as a key component in the nation’s overall (or wider human) development was either overlooked or completely disregarded by traditional Chinese historians. Consequently, the historical writings of traditional China merely offered “a heap of numerous random epitaphs” (as translated by Tang 1996, 63), utterly failing to give the Chinese people the possibility of evolving a sense of political identity for themselves. Thirdly, and most importantly, traditional Chinese historians were exclusively commited to the past. The present was of no concern to them. To underscore this key point, Liang compared historical works in the West and in China, arguing that in the West more detailed historical accounts generally appeared in connection with more recent times, whereas in China historical records could emerge only long after a particular dynasty had abdicated or been overthrown. Given this basic difference, Liang stressed that the records upon which Chinese scholars had to base their studies of the historical development of the then ruling Manchurian dynasty were scarce, if not missing entirely. Fourthly, Liang decried the lack of a personal interpretation of historical events among traditional historians. Most of the old-fashioned historians, as he called them, were educated according to the principles of the scholastic school of “textual study” (kaozheng㗗䆕), which taught them to merely chronicle historical events. In Liang’s view, this resulted in

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the old histories being “an instrument for wasting one’s intellect rather than tools for improving the mind” (Tang 1996, 63). In his criticisms of the traditional Chinese historical discourse, Liang also drew attention to the extensive compilation of data and imitation, instead of selection and creation that led to the impoverishment of the old historiography. Narration of historical events lacked coherence and causal interpretation, and failed to provide accounts that would enable one to identify with their country and its historical heritage. The concept of nationalism was central to Liang’s historical thinking. He was convinced that only history could provide the intellectual and theoretical basis for the unification and strengthening of the Chinese people, emphasising repeatedly that a historiographical revolution was fundamental to the goal of redeeming the Chinese nation. As noted, Liang was also an accomplished and successful journalist. His efforts in this field were directed at demonstrating that a free press played an important role in a civilised society and that it could be used effectively as a medium for advocating and disseminating political views. In fact, Liang had a huge impact on the development of a modern Chinese press, as a new means for social cohesion and political debate and is commonly regarded as one of the most influential figures in the evolution of journalism in China 4 . Liang’s understanding of the new, modern historian was to a great extent influenced by his notion of the journalist as a prime shaper of public opinion and public awareness. He was convinced that both professions––the journalist writing for the public and the historian studying past events––should share the same sense of purpose and moral commitment. Since they both held up a mirror to society, they had to be truthful, loyal to their fellow citizens and independent of those they wrote about in their articles and historical writings. In comparing the social obligations of the journalist and the historian in a modern context, Liang affirmed that these also included “examining the past”, “revealing the future” and “showing the path of progress to the people of the nation” (Tang 1996, 50). He elaborated upon the tactics the two professions used, stating that despite differences, both the journalist and the historian offered guidance to the people. By studying and revealing the general laws and paradigms governing human history, the historian took responsibility for guiding and advancing civilisation; similarly, by informing the public and creating opinion the journalist also 4 The New Citizen Journal was definitely the most successful political journal to which Liang contributed.

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carried out his activities in the best interest of the people. In fulfilling their social functions, both the historian and the journalist used the same means, namely modern knowledge. When discussing the meaning and function of journalism and historiography in modern times, Liang applied the same terms to both, e.g. “the mirror of society”, “the lamp for the future” and “the sustenance of the present” (as translated by Tang 1996, 50). According to Liang, the new, modern historian should be able to reveal historical phenomena, gather historical sources for the phenomena in question and, ultimately, be able to offer a causal interpretation of historical events. This new agenda is most evident in his classic definition of the spirit of history. What is the spirit of history? Answer: ideas. There are different social groups within a society; and there are various stages within a long historical period. In the interactions among different groups and the succession of one period to another, there are changes and causes. If the historian is able to detect the phenomena, understand causality and, by studying past examples, foretell the trends of the future, his writing will be of use to the world. (Tang 1996, 63)

In order for historical writing in China to develop a scientific orientation and become an independent intellectual discipline, Liang argued for a historiographical revolution that would, above all, construct a brand new historical narrative. This new narrative should be oriented towards the present, seek to understand causes and have the nation or human society (renqun Ҏ㕸) as its central political agent. Liang also took traditional historians to task for their lack of a social awareness, which thus placed them outside the true spirit of history and made them incapable of finding meaning or purpose in historical processes. China’s traditional historians had merely compiled tedious records of historical events instead of incorporating their own interpretations into the historical narrative. Events concerning human societies, or as Liang put it “the evolutionary phenomena of human society” (Tang 1996, 65), should instead be history’s focal point. He thus incorporated the concept of society into his image of the new historical discourse, finally making it the subject of history and at the same time the organising principle of historiography. From his earliest writings, Liang had referred to the notion of society, or the idea of a communal qun 㕸. His concept of society as a key agent of historical evolution was based upon the traditional belief in an organic community. This belief was typical of agrarian cultures, which China undoubtedly was. Liang conceived the formation of society as a means of

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self-defense and survival5, explaining that “the Way (Dao 䘧) is always improved by grouping (qun 㕸) and always weakened by isolation (du ⣀). Isolation leads to separation, separation to ignorance and ignorance to weakness; grouping leads to integration, integration to intelligence and intelligence to strength.” (Tang 1996, 66) The years in which Liang Qichao was evolving his new concept of historiographic discourse were ones of political and social turmoil for China, both inside and outside its borders. Liang firmly believed that in order for China to once again become a rich and powerful country, the Chinese had to form a culturally and politically integrated society that could withstand foreign intrusion and domination. Only that kind of integration would allow the Chinese people to redeem themselves and construct a coherent historical narrative of and for the people, based on scientific principles. With the development of the concept of society, Liang established a theoretical basis which enabled him to elaborate the basic structural principles of his historical thought, i.e. the concepts of national history and of the historian as an interpreter of progress and the nation. In his expanded definition of history, Liang also spoke of the difference between the object and the subject of historical studies. He stressed that a historian should not only narrate the historical evolution of a given society, but should also concentrate on the facts of specific historical phenomena and the mentality of the historian, which is to a great extent culturally determined. Facts are the objective components (known truths) of any historical study, whereas the historiographer’s philosophy represents its subjective component (personal interpretation and opinion). History narrates the evolutionary phenomena of human society and seeks its governing laws and guidance. The object (keguan ᅶ㾖) of historical studies is the facts, both past and present; its subject (zhuguan Џ㾖) is the philosophy in the mind of the writer as well as of the reader of history. Although history and the philosophy of history are two independent disciplines, the essential thing is that without philosophical ideas no good history could be written. (Tang 1996, 68–69)

Liang concluded by warning that historical research should seek a balance between object and subject. “Having an object but no subject, a 5

The concept of society as a means of self-defense and survival was linked to social Darwinism, which applied the principles of Darwinian evolution to sociology and politics. Social Darwinism was popular among the reform-oriented Chinese intellectuals, such as Liang Qichao.

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history is like a body without the soul, and thus close to non-history.” (Tang 1996, 69) At the same time he stressed that “If it’s too subjective and ignores the object, a historical study is but a single point of view, even if it's a good book. It simply cannot be called history.” (Tang 1996, 69) However, Liang in the end humbly admitted it was no easy task to derive common laws and common examples from history. He proposed two main reasons for historians of traditional China not being able to write down a coherent and causally interpretative narrative of the evolution of the Chinese people: 1) the fact that they were only acquainted with a partial history, and not a history incorporating global events, and 2) that they were only familiar with the laws and methods governing the discipline of historical writing and did not seek to learn from other disciplines (or were perhaps not willing or not required to do so)6. Since the role of temporal and spatial factors was neglected and cultural, economic, political and social conditions were not properly compared and incorporated in a specific historical study, it was impossibe for traditional historians to make coherent observations. A modern historian should examine historical questions from all sides, in order to arrive at conclusions that represent human history in its entirety. To do so, however, he must apply the modern form of historiography. To understand (know the truth of) the evolution of human society, one must comprehend the whole of humanity, in order to make comparisons and overcome temporal and spatial boundaries in their observations. Internally (one should know) all the legal subjects, from villages to townships, and externally, the global situation of the five continents; and temporally from the antiquity preserved in fossils, and down to yesterday’s news––everything should become objective material for the historian. (Tang 1996, 71)

When compared to traditional modes of historical writing, Liang’s new historical narrative, as he presents it in New Historiography, is more 6

According to Hu, Liang believed that history is either directly or indirectly linked to many other disciplines. “Ҫ䅸Ўഄ⧚ᄺˈഄ䋼ᄺˈҎ⾡ᄺˈҎ㉏ᄺˈ ⼒Ӯᄺ ˈᬓ⊏ᄺˈ㒣⌢ᄺˈ''ⱚϢ৆ᄺ᳝Ⳉ᥹П݇㋏'', Ӻ⧚ᄺˈᖗ⧚ᄺˈ䘏䕥ᄺˈ໽ ᭛ᄺˈ࣪ᄺˈ⫳⧚ᄺㄝˈ''݊⧚䆎ѺᐌϢ৆ᄺ᳝䯈᥹П݇㋏ˈ…''.” (Hu 2006, 245) (“He believed that disciplines such as geography, geology, ethnology, anthropology, sociology, political science and economics all have a direct connection to the science of history; theories of disciplines such as ethics, psychology, logic, astronomy, chemistry and physiology also often have an indirect link to history.”)

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comprehensive precisely due to its endeavour to present history as a global spatial-temporal totality. The narration of historical events should take into account numerous agents which, through mutual interaction, affect the evolution of human societies. This text establishes new guidelines on how to set down comprehensive historical accounts, and attaches great importance to providing a causal interpretation of particular events and interpreting history based on an evolutionary, progressive viewpoint. In the traditional Chinese historical discourse, the emperor, his relatives, high imperial officials and whole dynasties were the sole protagonists of historical writing, while in the modern form of historical narration, these should be replaced by the nation-state and society.

Conclusion During the period of Liang Qichao’s construction of a new historical narrative, traditional Chinese historiography perhaps underwent its greatest transformation. The following decades would witness important changes in the definition, scope, materials and interpretations, as well as the methods and tools of history. The type of language employed to write history also changed radically. There can be little doubt that Liang’s New Historiography contributed greatly to these changes in Chinese historiographic discourse. Liang’s historical thought revealed the profound impact of Western ideologies. Foreign intrusion, together with China’s humiliation on the international level, also resulted in the introudction of Western academic, scientific and technological discoveries. A century ago, in trying to determine how to make China a strong nation once again, free from foreign domination, an increasing number of Chinese intellectuals, including Liang Qichao, had recourse to the best of Western knowledge. Many of Liang’s ideas for a new historical narrative were based on evolutionary theories of history which had been clearly influenced by Social Darwinism. In following decades, these theories led to the formation of new concepts of time and history, and new understandings and interpretations of the past. These theories were radically opposed to traditional views of history (i.e., traditional concepts of the distant Golden Age and cyclical history) and had a huge impact on the development of Chinese historiography. A scientific and empirical approach to historiography began to emerge, while the transformation of historical writing in China was further influenced by new concepts of nationalism and society.

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In this paper, I have tried to show how a more scientific history began to develop after Liang Qichao and his contemporaries started calling for a new form and content in historical narrative. They demanded a more critical attitude to traditional historiography, and while considering texts such as biographies as important data for interpretation, they refused to accept them as representing a literal truth. They also advocated impartiality in historical writings, declaring that historical investigation should be independent and free from political affiliation. Historical studies were slowly expanded by incorporating literary, social and economic factors in their discourse. Over the years, an increasing number of historical texts became available to the general public, which thus became aware of the greatness of China’s historical heritage. Historiography was furthermore enriched by the development of archaeology, which in the 20th century became its indispensable and enlightening counterpart.

Bibliography Hu, Fengxiang 㚵䗶⼹. 2006. “Liang Qichao shixue lilun tixi xin tan ṕਃ 䍙৆ᄺ⧚䆎ԧ㋏ᮄ᥶” (“A New Investigation of the System of Liang Qichao’s Theory of Historiography”). In Shixue shi du ben ৆ᄺ৆䇏 ᴀ (Readings in History: History of Historiography), edited by Zhang Yue ᓴ䍞, 240–55. Beijing: Beijing Daxue chuban she. Levenson, Joseph R. 1968. Confucian China and Its Modern Fate: A Trilogy. Berkeley: University of California. Li, Youzheng. 2000–2001. “Modern Theory and Traditional Chinese Historiography.” In Nachrichten der Gesellschaft für Natur-und Völkerkunde Ostasiens, edited by Herbert Worm, 181–204. Hamburg: Universität Hamburg. Pritchard, Earl H. 2000. The Crucial Years of Early Anglo-Chinese Relations, 1750–1800. London: Routledge. Tang, Xiaobing. 1996. Global Space and the Nationalist Discourse of Modernity: The Historical Thinking of Liang Qichao. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Wang, Edward Q. 2000. “Historical Writings in 20th Century China: Methodological Innovation and Ideological Influence.” In An Assessment of 20th Century Historiography, edited by Rolf Torstendahl, 43–69. Stockholm: The Royal Academy of Letters, History, and Antiquities.

HISTORY OF MODERN CHINESE LITERATURE

CHAPTER SIX COMPETING AND AMBIVALENT CONCEPTS OF MODERNITY, WITH A SPECIAL EMPHASIS ON LITERATURE: JINDAI, DANGDAI, XIANDAI RAOUL DAVID FINDEISEN

“Modernity” is the term most generally associated with the historical event that has entered official historiography as the Xinhai Revolution. However, whether and in what ways this event of 1911 (which is commemorated in the present collection) was “modern” or anything else, has yet to be fully clarified. The event itself is fairly complex and temporally extended: beginning with what is generally defined as a military putsch in Wuchang, on 10 October, 1911, continuing with the promulgation of the Chinese Republic in Nanjing, on 1 January, 1912, and by far not concluding with the abdication of Puyi on 12 February, 1912. The term “revolution”, both as a comprehensive label, or as a concept denoting the whole range of events between October 1911 and January 1912, is certainly inappropriate, while any other concept would not reflect the full extent of what was indeed “new” at the time, especially in terms of the creation of new institutions and the abolition of the old (and foremost, that of the already much weakened Emperor). The focus of this paper, however, is literature, and how concepts of “modernity” were applied in this specific area, albeit in an inflated or hyperbolic fashion, in the period 1911–12 and up to the present day. This approach implies a mediated and “secondary” perspective, thereby modifying views that would otherwise be identified unilaterally with specific ideological positions. This is not the method adopted here: regardless of the position being examined, it will be analysed in terms of its origins and influence.

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In order to better clarify the issues, we will first examine the current usage and definitions of the often intricate terminology, before analysing the actual usage in literary historiography, both past and present. Not surprisingly, the definitions found in authoritative sources are often anything but descriptive, and thus corresponding to actual usage, but abound in ideological bias and preconceptions.

Concepts, Definitions and Usage In general usage, jindai 䖥ҷ denotes the “recent past”, or a period which obviously shifts with respect to the observer’s point of view. In terms of historiographical usage, the Great Dictionary of the Chinese Vocabulary distinguishes between different historical periods, such that the term can denote either the “period of capitalism in history (…) until the Russian October Revolution” or, in the specifically Chinese context, the period from “the Opium War until the May Fourth movement” (HDC 10, 732). However, when the term is applied to “Literature”, the situation becomes more confusing. Literature of this period is defined as extending “from the Opium War of 1840 up to the eve of the May Fourth movement, i.e. literature from the phase of the old democratic revolution (of 1911 …) and still using traditional forms from ancient China” (ZDW 1, 325a).1 At least three different conflicting criteria are applied here, two of which denote specific periods: the first ranging from 1840–1919, while the second covers the “79 years from 1840–1919”, as well as the period 1901– 1919, with a clear nod to both Marxist stereotypes and Mao Zedong’s authoritative 1940 essay, New Democracy (Xin minzhuzhuyi lun ᮄ⇥ЏЏ Н䆎). The third criterion, which is based on the actual literary devices used and is in principle therefore preferable to the other two purely chronological criteria, would define Mao Zedong’s own poetry as jindai wenxue. These definitions thus not only do not reflect usage, but are not even helpful as working definitions. With the key concept of “modernity”, things become even more complicated. The most general lexical usage of xiandai ⦄ ҷ merely denotes “the present age”. A second, “softer” definition states that the term “frequently denotes the period from the May Fourth movement to the present”—which becomes descriptive if the conventions established by the 1

“1840 ᑈ叺⠛៬ѝ㟇 1919 ᑈѨಯ䖤ࡼࠡ໩ⱘ᭛ᄺˈेᮻ⇥ЏЏН䴽ੑ䰊↉ ⱘ᭛ᄺDŽǒ‫ڮ‬ǓЁ೑সҷӴ㒳ԧ㺕ⱘ᭛ᄺDŽ”

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procedures mentioned are taken into consideration. However, an authority frequently cited in the Great Dictionary, Qu Qiubai ⶓ⾟ⱑ (1899–1935), introduces a contradiction here when, in his Fragments on Russian and Soviet Literature (Guanyu Eluosi yu Sulian wenxue de pianduan ݇Ѣ֘㔫 ᮃϢ㢣㘨᭛ᄺⱘ⠛↉, 1932) he writes: “Marxism examines historical and current (present) phenomena” (HDC 4, 579a). But with the application of xiandai to “Literature”, contradictions only increase. The Chinese literature volumes of the Great Encyclopedia define “modern literature” as follows: “It (i.e. modern literature) not only employs modern language to express ideas of modern science and democracy, but also transforms traditional literature, both in its artistic forms and its modes of expression” (ZDW 2, 1048b).2 Here, a number of additional criteria are introduced with respect to the definitions above, i.e.: 1) the language register predominates, and in a clearly tautological fashion, unless we take the liberty of reading xiandai as “contemporary”; 2) content-, or rather, attitude-related standards are introduced, thus echoing Chen Duxiu’s 䰜⣀⾔ (1879–1942) De ᖋ and Sai xiansheng า ‫⫳ܜ‬, but by ignoring the polemical and formulaic nature of Chen Duxiu’s text of 1919 (“Xin qingnian zui’an zhi dabian shu” ljᮄ䴦ᑈNJ㔾Ḝⱘㄨ 䕽к), this reference could be considered as being ingenuous, while also raising the question whether, if the term denotes a period, it begins in that particularly year of 1919 in January; and finally 3) it establishes a delicate connection with the idea of the “traditional”, i.e. the preceding literature, and its procedures. What does it mean “to transform” existing forms and modes? As we shall see, the archaic and conveniently flexible expression used here, gexin 䴽ᮄ, which suggests a fairly limited degree of novelty, will become significant later on. The term dangdai ᔧҷ, while quite common as a period label, is not really lexicalised in this usage. The Great Dictionary gives only two meanings: “the present time” and, with citations reaching as far back as Tang times, “the dynasty of the present emperor” (HDC 7, 1389b). This sheds an unexpected light on the use of dangdai to denote all literature written since 1949, a period almost as long and convoluted as the “79 years” of jindai wenxue, explaining why “dynastic” criteria prevail. But this relatively long period makes it necessary to introduce additional terminology which, however, does not appear in any authoritative compilation of neologisms (Zhou Hongbo 2003, passim), namely the term 2

“(‫ )ڮ‬ᅗϡҙ⫼⦄ҷ䇁㿔㸼⦄⦄ҷ⾥ᄺ⇥Џᗱᛇˈ㗠Ϩ೼㡎ᴃᔶᓣϢ㸼⦄᠟ ⊩Ϟ䛑ᇍӴ㒳᭛ᄺ䖯㸠њ䴽ᮄDŽ

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xin shiqi ᮄᯊᳳ to denote literature which appeared after the Cultural Revolution.3 We can note here, that the term gaige kaifang yilai ᬍ䴽ᓔᬒ ҹ ᴹ (“ever since [the policy] of reform and opening [to the ouside world]”) has probably become even more dominant. All these denotations reflect an approach based on “period”, as opposed to the craft and pecularities of the literary texts themselves which, of course, remain inextricably linked with the prevailing political conditions of that period. That said, one domain where a strictly chronological approach is, to some degree, legitimate, is library cataloguing. Here, the use of such terminology is strictly chronological, even differing from the stereotyped Marxist ordering of Chinese and world history, with jindai denoting the years 1840–1911, xiandai 1911–49, and dangdai anything after 1949.4 The same patterns of periodisation are applied in many areas of the humanities, with the preference for convention overriding all other considerations, such that the principles underlying such terminology are hardly ever questioned.

Usage in Literary Historiography Obviously, such terminological confusion increases significantly once we begin to examine literary histories. Or, to put it another way, the specific wording of book-titles may reveal much about the author’s ideological position, regardless of whether the issue of terminology is addressed explicitly within that text or not. Even more so than in the general histories of Chinese literature which appeared in the first decades of the 20th century, 5 authors are likely to have a personal stake in this issue. A brief list of titles can help illustrate how the apories of “period code” and “qualities of the writing being examined” were either circumvented or resolved:

3

Online encyclopedias such as Hudong baike Ѧࡼⱒ⾥ do list the term, but are vague as to whether the period (if it is, in fact, a period label) begins with the demise of the “Gang of Four” in 1976, or with the Party congress in December 1978. We can note that a certain indifference to idiomatic stability in present-day usage is adversely affecting the compilers of lexicons, with respect to their obligation to register and record. 4 I have been unable to identify the respective norms in Guojia biaozhun ೑ᆊᷛ‫ޚ‬ GB, but am certain they exist, albeit at a lower level. 5 For a detailed analysis of four representative examples of the genre, see Doležalová-Velingerová and Král 2001.

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Hu, Shi 㚵䗖. 1922. Wushi nian lai Zhongguo zhi wenxue Ѩकᑈᴹ Ё೑П᭛ᄺ Chen, Zizhan 䰜ᄤሩ. 1929. Zhongguo jindai wenxue zhi bianqian Ё ೑䖥ҷ᭛ᄺПব䖕 —. 1930. Zuijin sanshi nian Zhongguo wenxue shi ᳔䖥ϝकᑈЁ೑ ᭛ᄺ৆ Zhu, Ziqing ᴅ㞾⏙. 1929. Zhongguo xin wenxue yanjiu gangyao Ё ೑ᮄ᭛ᄺⷨお㒆㽕. Zhou, Zuoren ਼԰Ҏ. 1932. Zhongguo xin wenxue yuanliu Ё೑ᮄ᭛ ᄺ⑤⌕. Qian, Jibo 䪅෎म, 1933. Xiandai Zhongguo wenxue shi ⦄ҷЁ೑᭛ ᄺ৆ (since 1911). Wang, Zhefu ⥟૆⫿. 1933. Zhongguo xin wenxue yundong shi Ё೑ ᮄ᭛ᄺ䖤ࡼ৆. Li, Helin ᴢԩᵫ. 1939. Jin ershi nian Zhongguo wenyi sichao lun 䖥 ѠकᑈЁ೑᭛㡎ᗱ╂䆎. Ren, Fangyiu ӏ䆓⾟. 1944. Zhongguo xiandai wenxue shi (shang) Ё ೑⦄ҷ᭛ᄺ৆˄Ϟ˅. Wang, Yao ⥟⩊. 1951. Zhongguo xin wenxue shi jiaoxue dagang Ё ೑ᮄ᭛ᄺ৆ᬭᄺ໻㒆. —. 1953. Zhongguo xin wenxue shi gao Ё೑ᮄ᭛ᄺ৆〓, 2 vols. Zhongguo xiandai wenxue shi Ё೑⦄ҷ᭛ᄺ৆˄Ϟ˅. 1959, edited by Fudan daxue xuesheng. Qian, Liqun 䪅⧚㕸 et al. 1987. Zhongguo xiandai wenxue sanshi nian Ё೑⦄ҷ᭛ᄺϝकᑈ. Yan, Jiayan Ϲᆊ♢. 2010. Ershi shiji Zhongguo wenxue shi ѠकϪ 㑾Ё೑᭛ᄺ৆, 3 vols.

As we can see, a number of authors over this period of nearly a century opted for chronological denotations. For Hu Shi, in 1922, New Literature could not, strictly speaking, be the topic, as he was writing to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Shanghai paper Shenbao ⬇᡹ and therefore had to cover the full span of the newspaper’s existence (hence, the “fifty years” of the title). However, this enabled Hu (who was probably more committed to this issue than any of the other authors listed) to structure his study in such a way that it concludes with the appearance of New Literature, which is discussed in the tenth and final section of this very lengthy work. Also of particular interest is the section he dedicates to translation, with Yan Fu Ϲ໡ (1854–1921) and Lin Shu ᵫ㒒 (1852– 1924) as representative figures.

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The only author who displays a keen awareness of this issue is Chen Zizhan, who devotes the first chapter of an earlier work of 1929 to the question: “When Does Early Modern Literature Begin?” In this sense, he can be seen as Hu Shi’s counterpart, while his critical sense of objectivity is confirmed by the following, very circumspect conclusion: The early modern period (jindai) I am referring to here began with the reform movement of 1898 (…), but we must bear in mind that any periodisation results in two distinct currents, which is as problematic as cutting water with a knife. (Chen 2000, 7)

When, in 1987, Qian Liqun, in his role as the editor of a standard university textbook, chose to include both a chronological classification, as well as the qualifying label “modern”, the result was an allusion that, while easily decipherable, remains fundamentally ambiguous. In fact, no reader could doubt that the period from 1918–1948/49 was intended, and yet neither the title, nor the otherwise conventional history addressed the question of whether this thirty-year period was just one part of the “modern” period, or whether the two terms were to be understood as being synonymous. The great scholar, Yan Jiayan (b1933), in his recent summa, likewise opts for the “20th century”, taking up the ideas of Wang Dewei ⥟ ᖋ࿕, Yan Chunde 䯢㒃ᖋ and others who had questioned the mechanical and misleading periodisation of literary historiography implicit in the conventionalised usage of jin-, xian- and dangdai. So too, when Li Helin, in 1939, spoke of the “past twenty years”, both his reference to New Literature and his own personal affiliation were unmistakable. Until well into the 1950s, the term New Literature predominated in discussions of vernacular literature, thereby revealing––and regardless of the quality or seriousness of the criticism being expressed––at least the awareness that New Literature coexisted as a genre or “camp” with other forms of literary expression, and which would soon become dominant. This was also true for the fiercely contested and subsequently revised literary histories by Wang Yao. Despite his efforts to adhere to the blackand-white dictates of official doctrine, as evidenced in his generous use of ideological labels, his work was still considered too cautious to meet the propaganda needs of the day. In this context, we should also note that the first genuine Chinese historian of modern literature historiography prefers to avoid any discussion of terminology as irrelevant. In the introduction to his

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otherwise very rich study, which makes available a wealth of documentary and textual materials, Huang Xiuyi writes: The term “new literature” was often used before the foundation of the state (1949). The first study written after the foundation, by Wang Yao, was titled a “history of new literature”. Subsequently, this term was gradually replaced by “modern literature”. While these two terms denote different things, they have become interchangeable. If the present study uses “new literature”, it is not due to any particular position, but for the sake of uniformity and to avoid confusion, given the interchangeability of these two terms. (Huang 1995, 1)

Huang’s comments seem to betray a basic reluctance to participate in any ongoing discussion on literary historiography, and offers proof that the powers that be are still at work. Another case in point is the history of New Literature by Zhou Yang ਼ᡀ (1908–1989), the much-feared voice of often invisible masters who had an infamous role in many of the purges during the 1950’s, and who can be considered the ideal embodiment of the Party “man of letters”, turned literary historian as the occasion required. Like many of the studies listed above, this work also owes its existence to didactic needs, where an expertise in New Literature was required. It was, in fact, intended for the curriculum of the Yan’an Lu Xun Academy, the “creative writing school”, as it were, of the New China. Zhou Yang’s history was first drafted in 1939, and then rewritten immediately after the publication of Mao Zedong’s essay New Democracy, which appeared one year later. For decades, it only circulated as a neibu ‫ݙ‬䚼 (“for internal use”) publication among a very limited readership, first of the Academy, then of courses taught under the auspices of the Writers’ Association, before it was published in 1986. While not explicitly involved in any public discourse of the time (hence, its exclusion from the list above), for several decades its definition of “modern literature” was probably more influential than any other, within the confines of a fragile and conflictual public academic sphere. Its manipulations and distortions are thus expressions of official positions in their most blatant form: Only after “May Fourth” did a genuine New Literature movement emerge. Without the external influence of the October Revolution, Marxist revolutionary teachings and its philosophical ideas and theories about art would never have been introduced. As for internal conditions, if after the May Fourth movement there had not been both the ideological and organisational guidance of the Chinese Communist Party and the spread of Communism among the masses, together with the efforts of many

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Needless to say, there was no trace of a CCP during the May Fourth movement, and all evidence indicates that the October Revolution was totally unknown to that specific readership both among intellectuals and the “masses” (cf. Wagner 2001), not to mention Marxism. But this passage also demonstrates that, not only in isolated Yan’an, but even long afterwards in the 1970’s, readers were unequipped to identify such statements as gross manipulations of historical events. In any case, this passage contains the core elements of a discourse that was repeated until the present day in numerous literary histories dealing with the early 20th century. To a certain degree, this is also true for the very sketchy treatment of “modern” literature in the equally authoritative, and widely diffused Great Encyclopedia (for which Zhou Yang served as editor-in-chief). While gross distortions are absent or attenuated, the wording clearly tends towards a simplistic class analysis. It is also interesting to note that the Russian Revolution is no longer considered a decisive factor, but is only acknowledged in terms of some unspecified causal connection: Modern literature is a new literature that arose due to historical changes within Chinese society, which had absorbed significant foreign influences. (…) New democratic forces in Chinese society—the proletariat, the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeois intellectuals—had become increasingly powerful. The October Revolution had also brought Marxism to China, offering new hope for the liberation of the people (ZDW 2, 1048b).7

This discourse has provided the interpretative template until the present day, at least for textbook writers. The only new element which has 6

ᮄ᭛ᄺ䖤ࡼℷᓣᔶ៤ˈᰃ೼“Ѩಯ”ҹৢDŽ‫؛‬བ೼݊໪䚼ᴵӊϞ≵᳝क᳜䴽 ੑⱘᕅડˈ≵᳝偀‫ܟ‬ᗱЏН䴽ੑᄺ䇈ǃ૆ᄺᗱᛇ੠㡎ᴃ⧚䆎ⱘҟ㒡ˈ≵᳝㢣 㘨ⱘҹঞ䌘ᴀЏН೑ᆊ‫ݙ‬᮴ѻ䰊㑻ⱘ᭛㡎԰કⱘ໻䞣⿏ỡˈ೼݊‫ݙ‬䚼ᴵӊϞ ≵᳝ҢѨಯҹᴹЁ೑݅ѻ‫ܮ‬ᇍᮄ᭛ᄺ䖤ࡼ೼ᗱᛇϞ੠㒘㒛Ϟⱘ乚ᇐˈҹঞ݅ ѻЏНᗱᛇ೼ᑓ໻Ҏ⇥ЁⱘӴ᪁ˈ੠䆌໮݅ѻЏН㗙ⱘ԰ᆊ㡎ᴃᆊⱘࡾ࡯ǒ ‫ڮ‬Ǔˈᮄ᭛ᄺ䖤ࡼⱘᔶ៤Ϣথሩᰃϡ㛑ᛇ䈵ⱘDŽ 7 ⦄ҷ᭛ᄺᰃ೼Ё೑⼒Ӯ‫ݙ‬䚼থ⫳ग़৆ᗻব࣪ⱘᴵӊϟˈᑓ⊯᥹ফ໪᭛ᄺᕅ ડ㗠ᔶ៤ⱘᮄⱘ᭛ᄺDŽǒ‫ڮ‬ǓЁ೑⼒Ӯᮄⱘ⇥Џ࢓࡯——᮴ѻ䰊㑻ǃ䌘ѻ䰊 㑻ǃᇣ䌘ѻ䰊㑻ⶹ䆚ߚᄤⱘ࡯䞣᳝њᕜ໻থሩDŽक᳜䴽ੑজ㒭Ё೑䗕ᴹњ偀 ‫ܟ‬ᗱЏНˈᏺᴹ⇥ᮣ㾷ᬒⱘᮄᏠᳯDŽ

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been introduced with respect to Zhou Yang’s version of 1939/40, is a form of “class analysis” which, however, abounds in stereotypes that have long since been rejected by both historians and sociologists. Our brief survey thus far suggests that various discourses were developed independently, and that the vast majority of Chinese literature students being trained to become teachers hardly ever came into contact with more pondered or objective critical approaches, and thus were likely to convey images of New Literature that were shaped by Zhou Yang and similarly minded literary historians.

Continuity and Change While many authors were obsessed with the novelty of the new development and labelled it accordingly, and were soon content with having coined a new period code without clarifying much more than that New Literature had to be written in baihuawen ⱑ䆱᭛, Hu Shi and others instead decided to devote their attention to the ancient vernacular literary traditions. The most significant example of this critical approach is Hu Shi’s History of Vernacular Literature (Baihua wenxue shi ⱑ䆱᭛ᄺ৆, 1928) 8 where, on linguistically shaky ground, he dates the origins of literature written the vernacular (baihuawen ⱑ䆱᭛) to the Han dynasty, and makes a fundamental distinction between literature as estranged or disjunct from the spoken language, and a counter-tradition inspired by speech. Hu Shi also finds the vernacular at work in many of his favourite poets during Tang times, but without providing corroborating evidence. Although his patently polemical approach is considered a “turningpoint in the development of Chinese historiography”, it was rejected as unscholarly by Doležalová-Velingerová, who declared it a “contribution to the impoverishment of 20th century Chinese culture” and “nothing more than the Confucian dogma [of dividing literature into two separate streams] applied retroactively” (2001, 157–58; cf. Findeisen 2004, 305–9).9 8

For a copiously though, at times, uncritically annotated partial translation into Italian, see Stafutti, 1980. 9 This judgement is based on questionable grounds, namely that (1) Hu Shi produces a “narration” (in the sense of Hayden White’s formulation) and that (2) Hu Shi like many others wrote as members or beneficiaries of the state-run educational system (Doležalová-Velingerová 2001, 159). Many literary histories were indeed based on lecture notes prepared for didactic purposes, while a critic like Zhou Yang depended on the micro- or para-state in Yan’an (though he also had other sources of income). However, university salaries were low and at times

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In no other critic do we find the past so carefully refigured as a necessary premise or “virtual precursor” that anticipates and prepares the “novelty” of what comes after. In this perspective, the catch phrase of “rearranging the past” (zhengli guogu ᭈ⧚೟ᬙ), used repeatedly by Hu Shi, is nothing other than a propagandistic interpretation of the tradition aimed at formulating the meaning of the present—and of specific developments in the present. An important element in this teleological approach is the conviction that the “new” actually existed as a potential long before its realisation in fact, such that its appearance constitutes a mere revival, i.e. that “Renaissance” which he so often invokes. This conceptualisation, which is developed further in the collection of Hu Shi’s lectures, The Chinese Renaissance (1933), proved to be hugely influential, even cutting across various ideological camps—an influence which remains essentially intact today, despite the many new researches dedicated to the China of this period. At times, the historical break seems to simply shift chronologically, without altering its connotations as wenyi fuxing ᭛㮱ᕽ㟜, i.e. a literary or artistic Renaissance. On the other hand, Liang Qichao’s studies on the Italian risorgimento as a modern European Renaissance, 10 provided an important model for additional studies, most notably those of Chen Hengzhe 䰜㸵૆ (1893– 1976), Hu Shi’s companion during his study-sojourn in the United States. In his History of the European Renaissance (Ouzhou wenyi fuxing shi ⃻ ⌆᭛㡎໡݈৆, 1930), the use of the vernacular as the literary language appears as the first step in nation-building for all European states, leaving little doubt that this was the inevitable historical course which China would likewise follow (or was already following), and this despite certain glaring discrepancies, such as the many centuries that separate Dante from modern Italian statehood. Perhaps the most striking example of this theoretical obsession can be found in the text Liang Qichao originally intended as a preface to the first Chinese monograph on this topic, Jiang Fangzhen’s 㩟ᮍ䳛 (1882–1938) Ouzhou wenyi fuxing shi (1921), but which instead evolved into the book-length study, Qingdai xueshu gailun ⏙ҷᄺᴃὖ䆎(translated as Intellectual Trends in the Ch’ing Period, 1959). Within the context of the Old and New Text debates, Liang Qichao adopts Hu Shi’s view of two contending literary currents as both precarious, and writers supplemented their income writing for profit. For a recent, well documented case study, see Li Jinfeng 2012. Technically speaking, no literary history is free of “narration”. 10 See the detailed discussion in Bertuccioli 1995, 297–338.

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theoretical discriminant and conceptual template. Implicit here is the need to label one of the two currents as “decadent”, “corrupt” etc., in order to highlight the positive nature of the other. Ironically, it is “decadence” which is assigned a prominent role in Matei Calinescu’s famous study on modernity, as a procedure by which specific attitudes towards the past are pushed to extremes, in order to unmask it within the work of art itself (1999, 37–55). Following the pervasive use of xin (“new”) in Liang Qichao’s studies, continuity and change increasingly came to embrace each other in an often obscure and acritical dialectical relationship, and with overtly propagandistic overtones, e.g.: Xinhua ᮄढ, xin shidai ᮄᯊҷ (“new era”) 11 and the more recent xin shiqi ᮄᯊᳳ (“new period”), now firmly established as a convention to denote the period since 1976 or 1979.12 This dual usage as both qualifier and in order to denote a specific historical period has made such usage interchangeable, while the term continues to retain a marked degree of ideological connotation and allusiveness. As a qualifier in combination with “literature” (xin wenxue), “new” has indeed been used to denote not only the quality of texts (“written in the vernacular”), but also their authors’ ideological position as supporters of a large-scale social movement that transcended previous dominant groupings along party and other lines.13 In any case, the antonym jiu ᮻ (“old”) is always implicit, indicating that “new” is defined with respect to “old”, in what is certainly something other than a period code. The largescale process of historicising what was labelled New Literature was only undertaken when both its “novelty” and ideological significance began to be contested, in the early 1930s. The main milestone in this process is the 11 The citation in the HDC (6, 1073a) is likewise taken from Qu Qiubai and mentions “fundamental changes in politics, economy, culture and so forth (…), contributing to progress”. Another citation explicitly connects usage of the term to the changes initiated by the 1911 revolution, changes which, however, only reached remote areas much later, thereby stressing quality over chronology (Wenhui bao ᭛∛᡹ Sep 28, 1986). 12 I have not found this expression lexicalised in any printed sources, while in a number of internet encyclopedias it denotes either “the period since the collapse of the Gang of Four” or “since the Party Congress of December 1978” (Hudong baike Ѧࡼⱒ⾥, June 16, 2012, and others). It also appears as a lexeme in the textprocessing software I am currently using. 13 On the sociological and historical implications of “movements” with respect to the May Fourth demonstrations, as well as its Korean antecedents and models, see Wagner 2001, 66–89.

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Anthology of New Literature (Xin wenxue daxi ᮄ᭛ᄺ໻㋏, ed. by Zhao Jiabi 䍉ᆊ⩻, 1935). This work is significant not only because it quite literally “saved” numerous examples of what had become known as “new literature”,14 but also because it imposed an initial ordering onto a recent heritage and thus became a model for countless other anthologies, right up to the present day. Indeed, we can say it was almost as influential as the sanbai ϝⱒ (“300” … pieces of any writing) model provided by the Shijing 䆫㒣, as constituting a first step in the process of historicisation. It is significant that xin wenxue was used while this literature, with the above-stated qualities, was being successfully imposed as the “dominant trend” (zhuliu Џ⌕, in Hu Shi’s words), that is, up to the publication of Wang Yao’s study in 1953, and was then gradually abandoned in favour of xiandai wenxue. This term then ossified as a denotation for a fixed chronological period (in historiography, library cataloguing, etc.), without any qualitative connotations attached, until its “dominance” was challenged in turn, and xin came into usage once again.

Synchronicities—Pluralism? Underlying the polemical use of xin is, of course, the view that two different currents co-exist, and that “old literature” continued to be written and challenge the “new”, up to the present day. According to Hu Shi, this had been the case ever since the presumed emergence of baihuawen literature in Han times. What was needed was a re-definition of the role of vernacular literature as the “dominant trend” (while the present period was covered in his Baihua wenxue shi). As is well known, New Literature also had its opponents, though not all were as contentious as Liu Bannong ߬ ञ ‫( ݰ‬1891–1934), whose portrayal of Wang Jingxuan ⥟ᭀ䔽 as actually a fictitious representative of “old literature” is exaggerated to the point of caricature (Xin qingnian ᮄ䴦ᑈ 4, 3; Mar 15, 1918). Lin Shu’s characterisation of the vernacular as the “language of bean-curd vendors and rickshaw coolies” was often 14

For ample evidence as to the extent to which printed materials were threatened with elimination see Lydia Liu’s chapter “The Making of the ‘Compendium of Modern Chinese Literature’” (1995, 214–38). (Note here that xin is casually translated as “modern”.). We can add that many local journals of “new literature” published during the May Fourth period mentioned by Mao Dun 㣙Ⳓ (1896– 1981) in his introduction to vol. 3 of the Xin wenxue daxi, have not survived in any of the major Chinese libraries.

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cited in order to make him appear as a hopeless conservative. In academic circles, Wu Mi ੤ᇶ (1894–1978) and his co-editors of Xueheng ᆖ㺑 (Critical Review) were forceful advocates of wenyanwen ᮷䀰᮷ (classical literary Chinese), also in order to keep the literary tradition accessible. As one of the founders of comparative literature studies in China and an inspiring literary theorist, Wu Mi was hardly a diehard, narrow-minded conservative, while Lin Yutang ᷇䈝า (1895–1976), through journals such as Lunyu 䇪䈝 (Analects, 1932–1948), also figures as among the most influential advocates of wenyanwen.15 For most of the authors considered as representatives of the first generation of New Literature, occasionally using wenyanwen in their writings was quite natural. For example, and to cite just one of the most prominent of these authors, Lu Xun’s texts employ wenyanwen and its much-condemned allusions, and to such an extent that selections printed during the Cultural Revolution required numerous annotations to elucidate not only events and persons unknown to a younger readership in the 1970s, but also many of the linguistic devices. In scholarly texts wenyanwen remained and continues to remain in use, and not only in those fields dealing with traditional literature but also in many early histories of New Literature, which can hardly be said to be written in the vernacular. A recent example is Guanzhui bian ㇑䭕㕆 (With Bamboo-Pipe and Awl, 1979), the opus magnum by Qian Zhongshu 䫡䭪Җ (1910–1998). Qian Zhongshu is also probably the first Chinese scholar to have used this issue in his pioneering study of Lin Shu’s translations (Qian 1964), though to very ambiguous ends, for while Lin Shu is not condemned as an arch-enemy of New Literature, he is criticised as being a sloppy translator. We can therefore conclude that the process of presenting 20th century literature based on author- and not text-centered perspectives, and thus ignoring the linguistic qualities of such writing, continues today. This approach is confirmed by the ongoing “rediscovery” of previously banned or ideologically dubious authors in the PRC, such as Zhang Ailing ᕐ⡡⧢ (1920–1995). Though similar rediscoveries in Taiwan generally concern 15

It should be noted that the Guomindang government was hardly a supporter of New Literature, and that the request to abandon the vernacular as a written medium was likewise hardly consistent with conservative Confucian positions, the title of Lin Yutang’s journal notwithstanding. Ideological confrontations thus occurred along very different “fronts” than those suggested by Doležalová-Velingerová (2001, 162–65). Cf. also Benická 2011, 377–80.

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the ideological reverse, they still remain author-centered, while the more open situation in Hong Kong clearly obviated any such uniformity in literary studies. And while certain ideological taboos (though still referred to authors and not texts) have become less important over the past two decades, the influence of Huaren ढҎ among scholars working in the English-speaking world, such as Xia Zhiqing ໣ᖫ⏙ (C. T. Hsia, b 1920), Li Oufan ᴢ⃻ẉ (Leo Ou-fan Lee, b 1939), and Wang Dewei ⥟ᖋ࿕ (David Wang Der-wei, b 1954) remains overwhelming. As a result, even if these scholars have contributed to the abolition of taboos, at the same time they have indirectly abetted the reproduction of an ex post conceptualisation of the 20th century along “two contending lines”. The function originally attributed to the usage of a specific register, i.e. the vernacular, has been shifted onto authors, thereby managing to bypass the issue of “modernity”, or to shift it onto absurdly competitive woolgathering on a putative “modernity” in Song or even Han times, in what hardly figures as an advance over Hu Shi’s sterile polemics.

Conclusions with Reference to the Querelle des anciens et des modernes (17th c.) A striking parallel to the controversies surrounding New Literature— from its origins and, to a certain degree, up to the present—can be found in the 17th century debate which began in France before spreading throughout Europe: the so-called Controversy between Ancients and Moderns. Although the vernacular, or its derivatives in the form of centrally imposed, standardised national languages, was already established, even if somewhat precariously, as a literary medium, also thanks to the normative function of various national Academies, the core issue was the attitude towards literary traditions and their models. The role an ostensible register had played in Hu Shi’s Baihua wenxue shi, found its correspondence in models taken from Roman and Greek antiquity, e.g. characters, structure and organisation in drama, and prosodic patterns and versification in poetry, as opposed to models taken from contemporary life and poetic forms based on the specific characteristics of the emerging national languages. This is also the period when the term “modern” (derived from Latin modo “recent past”, cf. Chinese jindai with similar equivalents) entered into most European languages. This term was understood as an antonym to “antiquity”, and therefore denoted an attitude towards hitherto

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basically unquestioned models, rather than towards a specific period or periods. The Querelle des anciens et des modernes was not only directed against the authority of (literary) models from Greek and Roman antiquitiy, but also against that of enlightened absolutist rulers, who based their authority on precedents in Antiquity. This appears clearly in the following verses by Charles Perrault (1628–1703), who initiated the debate, which sums up the core concerns in terms of state authority, embodied in the person of the sovereign: La belle Antiquité fut toujours vénérable; Mais je ne crus jamais qu’elle fût adorable. Je voy les Anciens sans plier les genoux. Ils sont grands, il est vray, mais hommes comme nous; Et l’on peut comparer sans craindre d’estre injuste, Le Siècle de LOUIS au beau Siècle d’Auguste. (Perrault 1688–96) 16

However, the controversy was not limited to issues of state authority, but also involved textual authority. This appears quite clearly in Anne Darier’s (1647–1720) “Discours sur Homère”, which was appended to her influential translation of the Iliad (1699, followed by the Odyssée in 1708), in which she justified her omissions and emendments with the needs and expectations of “present times”. Her arguments can be compared to those of Qian Zhongshu, when he explains why Lin Shu’s translations merit an in-depth analysis. Unfortunately, there is no space here for a detailed discussion of “hard” and “soft” translations (yingyi— ruanyi ⹀䆥—䕃䆥) in the China of the 1920s, so brilliantly elucidated as to their linguistic outcome by Edward Gunn (1991). Nonetheless, we can confirm that translation activities since the late 19th century probably constitute the single most important element in endowing this body of texts, and therefore the Chinese language, with a distinctively different quality. This quality can be considered legitimately “modern” insofar as it has enabled an emancipation from previous models, in a dynamic which closely resembles the period break Hu Shi detected during Han times,

16

As I have been unable to find an English translation, I shall venture my own version here: “Fair Antiquity was always venerable, / But I never considered it admirable. / I regard the Ancients without bending my knees. // They are great, this is true, but human as we are, / And one can without injustice compare / The age of Louis (XIV.) to that of Augustus.”

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when translations from the Buddhist canon in Sanskrit and Pali revolutionised perceptions of the literary tradition and the language itself. If we consider that the topics of the French controversy would be revived repeatedly within the context of the 18th century Enlightment debates (and not surprisingly so, given that the basic models remained unchanged), and may even find equivalents in the European artistic controversies immediately preceding WWI, the fact that certain core issues of literary historiography (and perhaps historiography in general), including the very concept of “modernity” and the oscillating usage of “modern” and “new”, remain unresolved in China after a century of controversy should perhaps occasion no surprise. Another century may well have to elapse before the texts can finally speak for themselves, without either subtexts or overtones.

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Findeisen, Raoul David. 2004. “Literatur im 20. Jahrhundert.” In Chinesische Literaturgeschichte, edited by Reinhard Emmerich, 288– 395. Stuttgart: Metzler. Guojia biaozhun ೑ᆊᷛ‫ ޚ‬GB. www.chinagb.org Gunn, Eward M. 1991. Rewriting Chinese. Style and Innovation in Twentieth-Century Chinese Prose. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. HDC. 1986–93. Hanyu da cidian ⓶䁲໻䀲‫( ݌‬Great Dictionary of the Chinese Vocabulary), 12 vols, and Appendix. Shanghai: Hanyu da cidian chubanshe. Hockx, Michel, ed. 1999. The Literary Field of Twentieth-Century China. London: Curzon, (Chinese Worlds). Huang, Xiuyi 咗ׂᏆ. 1995. Zhongguo xin wenxue shi bianzuan shi Ё೟ ᮄ᭛ᅌ৆㎼㑖৆ (A History of the Compilation of Histories of New Literature in China). Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe. Hudong baike Ѧࡼⱒ⾥. Accessed July 13, 2012. www.so.hudong.com. Li, Jinfeng ᴢ 䞥 亢 . 2012. “Guo Moruo de jingji shenghuo yu ta de wenxue chuangzuo 䛁 ≿ 㢹 ⱘ 㒣 ⌢ ⫳ ⌏ Ϣ Ҫ ⱘ ᭛ ᄺ ߯ ԰ ” (“Guo Moruo’s Economic Status and His Literary Creation”). Xichuan luntan 㽓Ꮁ䆎യ 2, April 25: 25–32. Liu, Lyida H. (Liu He) ߬⾒. 1995. Translingual Practice. Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity—China, 1900–1937. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Perrault, Charles. 1688–96. Parallèle des anciens et des modernes en ce qui regarde les arts et les sciences, 4 vols. Accessed June 16, 2012. fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Querelle_des_Anciens_et_des_Modernes. Qian, Zhongshu 䪅 䬎 к . 1964. “Lin Shu de fanyi ᵫ 㒒 ⱘ 㗏 䆥 .” In Wenxue yanjiu jikan ᭛ ᄺ ⷨ お 䲚 ߞ vol 1. As “Lin Ch’in-nan Revisited”, translated by George Kao. Renditions 1, Autumn 1975: 8– 21. Stafutti, Stefania. 1990. Hu Shi e la “Questione delle lingua”. Le origini della letteratura in baihua ne Baihu wenxue shi (Storia della letterature in lingua volgare). Firenze: Le Lettere (Pubblicazioni del CESMEO). Sun, Yushi ᄿ⥝⷇ et al., eds. 2000. Wang Yao he ta de shijie ⥟⩊੠Ҫⱘ Ϫ ⬠ (Wang Yao and His World). Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe. Wagner, Rudolf G. 2001. “The Canonisation of May Fourth.” In The Appropriation of Cultural Capital. China’s May Fourth Project, edited

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by Milena Doležalová-Velingerová and Oldich Král, 66–120. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center. Wang, Zhongling ⥟䥒䱉. 1993. Wenxue shi xin fangfa lun ᭛ᅌ৆ᮄᮍ⊩ 䂪 (On New Methods in Literary History Writing). Suzhou daxue chubanshe. ZDW. 1986. Zhongguo da baikequanshu. Zhongguo wenxue Ё೟໻ⱒ⾥ ܼ᳌ˊЁ೟᭛ᅌ (Encyclopedia of China. Chinese Literature), 2 vols., edited by Zhou Yang ਼᦮ et al. Beijing; Shanghai: Zhongguo da baikequanshu chubanshe. Zhou, Hongbo ਼⋾⊶ et al., eds. 2003. Xinhua xinciyu cidian ᮄ㧃ᮄ䀲 䁲䀲‫( ݌‬New China Dictionary of Neologisms). Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan. Zhou, Yang ਼᦮. 1986 (1939/40). “Xin wenxue yundong shi jiangyi ᮄ᭛ ᅌ䘟ࢩ৆䃯㕽” (“Lectures on the History of the Movement for New Literature”). Wenxue pinglun ᭛ᅌ䀩䂪 (Literary Criticism): 1–2.

CHAPTER SEVEN REFLECTIONS ON A CENTURY OF EXPLORATION: WHITHER CHINESE POETRY? CHARLES KWONG

Introduction In January 1917, Hu Shi 㚵䘽 (1891–1962) put forward some “Modest Proposals for the Reform of Literature” ᭛ᅌᬍ㡃㢏䅄 in the journal New Youth ᮄ䴦ᑈ. These proposals consist of an eight-point programme to rejuvenate Chinese literature based on a replacement of the classical language ᭛㿔 with the modern vernacular ⱑ䁅, regardless of topic or genre—or what he calls the creation of “a vernacular literature and a literary vernacular”. A month later, and in the same journal, an essay by Chen Duxiu 䱇⤼⾔ (1879–1942) “On a Literary Revolution” ᭛ᅌ䴽ੑ䂪 went further than Hu’s ambition to reform the medium of literary expression, calling for a fundamental change in the content of literature itself. 1 Since then, Chinese literature has been groping—and sometimes stumbling—its way through almost a century of laboured exploration. In a polemical interview given in 2006 to Deutsche Welle,2 Wolfgang Kubin pronounced that no great modern or contemporary Chinese writer exists other than Lu Xun 元䖙 (1881–1936), dismissing en passant Gao Xingjian 催㸠‫( ع‬1940–), China’s sole Nobel laureate in literature to date (see

1 For a summary description of events in the early development of modern Chinese literature see History of Modern Chinese Literature edited by Tang Tao 1993, 1– 14. 2 Literally “German Wave”, DW is Germany’s international broadcaster, similar to the BBC World Service, Radio Free Europe etc.

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ESWN Culture Blog). 3 And as if the Chinese literary scene were not gloomy enough, what if one happens to consider Lu Xun a bit overrated as a literary artist? Does it mean that there has been no Chinese writer of the first order since the start of the 20th century? Kubin may sound a bit too authoritative in his judgment, but one does hear the common refrain in academic and literary circles (especially among native Chinese scholars and critics) that while there are good authors writing in modern vernacular Chinese, what is sorely missing is a veritable literary giant who can leap over the canonical threshold into the pantheon of immortal literature. Within this uninspiring scenario of modern literary under-achievement in the most populous nation on earth, Chinese critics and writers are by and large agreed that modern Chinese poetry has done even less than fiction and prose. Ironically, Kubin was more approving of contemporary Chinese poetry than he was of contemporary Chinese fiction, but that may be less a reflection of reality than of his uneven touch as a critic in different genres. Not only has it been reported by Michel Hockx that “most Chinese readers are unable to build up respect for modern Chinese poetry”,4 but in Wilt Idema and Lloyd Haft’s admittedly short Guide to Chinese Literature, the chapter on Chinese literature from 1942 to 1990 offers no section (however brief) devoted to poetry in mainland China, mentioning only a few names almost in passing (Idema and Haft 1997, chap. 28). From an aesthetic and linguistic point of view, one reason for this underachievement is that modern Chinese poetry has had to make a more fundamental reorientation and break from tradition than fiction and prose. For instance, China’s earliest novels, the Sanguozhi yanyi ϝ೟ᖫⓨ㕽 and Xiyou ji 㽓䘞㿬, were essentially written in the contemporary vernacular; the same goes for the Honglou meng ㋙ῧ໶. Linguistically, these works are all relatively easy to read centuries later, and represent a welcome living heritage from which modern Chinese writers are happy to learn. In addition, European novelists of the 19th century, particularly the great authors of realism, offered inspiring and timely models for more than one generation of modern Chinese writers. As for the short or medium-length story (which Idema and Haft have loosely called the “novella”), the 3

It should be noted that China had its second Nobel laureate in literature in 2012, when Mo Yan 㥿㿔 (pen name of ㅵ䃼ὁ) was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. 4 See essay by Michel Hockx 䊔呹Ო translated into Chinese by Zeng Zhaocheng ᳒ᰁ⿟˖“䗮䙘ᰃϡ䗮˖Ё೟⧒ҷ䀽℠ⷨおᬭᅌЁⱘϔѯଣ丠,” (2007, 13).

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“Sanyan” ϝ㿔 and “Erpai” Ѡᢡ huaben 䁅ᴀ stories of the Ming dynasty (a genre that may date back to the late Song) were likewise written in the contemporary spoken language. Prose essays, the most flexible of all literary forms, certainly pose no major problem for the vernacular language, which can accommodate more structural flexibility than classical Chinese. Poetry is quite another matter, however, not only because the best classical Chinese poetry is a literary monument hard to match, but also because phonologically, morphologically and syntactically, classical Chinese is an intrinsically poetic language which differs structurally from modern baihua. While the vernacular is, of course, not “unpoetic”, it is far more grammatically explicit and syntagmatically oriented than the classical language, so that in terms of linguistic and aesthetic potential, it is a distinct possibility that fiction, prose and drama may be inherently more promising than poetry in the vernacular. While modern vernacular fiction and prose were under no pressure to cast away their heritage during their development in the 20th century, many among the first generation of modern Chinese poets had to unlearn what they had assimilated from classical Chinese poetry before they began to write baihua verse. Lu Xun was not primarily a poet, while Zhu Ziqing’s ᴅ 㞾 ⏙ (1898–1948) classical poems remain better than his baihua poems. Wen Yiduo 㘲ϔ໮ (1899–1946), and to a slightly lesser extent Xu Zhimo ᕤᖫᨽ (1897– 1931), realised in the process of writing their “new metrical verse”ᮄḐᕟ 䀽that it would be a grave mistake to reject classical Chinese poetry in toto, not for the sake of heritage preservation but in terms of prosody and aesthetics. When modern Chinese verse threw away what it conceived as the shackles of classical poetry in the excessive ardour of early 20thcentury literary reform, it also forfeited many prosodic advantages intrinsic to the Chinese language, e.g. rhyme, tonal rhythm, regular line and parallelism, parataxis and evocative pithiness, causing a crippling loss from which vernacular poetry has yet to fully recover even after a century of trial and error. In form, spirit and technique, modern Chinese poetry bears the visible imprints of Western borrowing; but setting aside the technical limitations of a horizontal transplantation, one must remember that Western poetry is rooted in linguistic resources which differ greatly from the Chinese language. In drawing attention to the relevance of classical Chinese poetry and poetics to modern Chinese verse, the perspective of this essay is not one of cultural preservation, but of aesthetics. In any case, it should be noted that classical Chinese poetry (unlike Latin verse, for instance) is a living, albeit minority tradition today,

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and is likely to remain so in future. Verse writers technically proficient in the classical form still number in the thousands, while a few dozen of these can probably be considered truly meritorious poets.

Prosody and Aesthetics in Chinese Poetry: From Classical to Modern Prosodically and aesthetically, what is of distinctive merit in classical Chinese poetry that is worth assimilating in modern vernacular poetry? One can briefly consider a few of these features, such as rhyme, tonal rhythm, parallelism and line length, and condensed parataxis both in imagery and in overall expression. Poetry is certainly more than prosody and language, but prosody and language are fundamental to poetry, distinguishing it from other literary genres. To draw attention to intrinsic advantages in prosody is not to advocate formalism.

Rhyme It has been pointed out that at its best, rhyme in poetry is a “synergic fusion of sense and sound, (…) a key element of poetic music that serves salient functions”: Structurally, it is both a dividing and integrating factor, distinguishing units within a poem and linking them into an identifiable whole. Semantically, rhyme can be (a means of developing and underlining sense), depending on how sound and sense enhance each other in different languages. Emotively, rhyme recurrences set up pleasing resonances that deepen a poem’s artistic appeal. (Kwong 2009, 190)

In relative terms, Chinese can be said to rhyme with versatile ease. For instance, in the view of Clement Wood, compiler of an English rhyming dictionary, “rhyming is an even more unnatural convention of poetry than meter” in English (Wood 1936, 20). Likewise, his succeeding editors state that rhyme “is not native to English”, “which is often hostile to rhyme” (Allen and Cunningham 1998, 832, 835). In a similar vein, the renowned translators Arthur Waley and David Hawkes both complain about the impossibility of rendering classical Chinese poetry into rhymed English.5 5

Waley has stated that “rhymes are so scarce in English (as compared with Chinese) that a rhymed translation can only be a paraphrase and is apt to fall back on feeble padding.” (see Waley 1962, 9) Likewise, Hawkes has observed that “it is

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To take a core fact, Wood’s rhyming dictionary lists about 60,000 words in 7,800 rhyme groups, giving an average of 8 words per rhyme. But if rhyme did not form the basis of ancient Greek and Latin poetry or the earliest English verse, rhyme has certainly been the basic element in Chinese poetry from its beginnings in the 2nd millennium BC, almost 3,000 years earlier than it took root in English poetry in the age of Chaucer (1343–1400).6 Vernacular poetry from the Shijing 䀽㍧ to Han yuefu ῖᑰ all rhymed; even Yuan sanqu ᬷ᳆, the most vernacular and liberal of the classical poetic forms, continued to use rhyme in a more relaxed mode of mixing rhyme words in the level and oblique tones. The Tang yun ૤䷏, the standard rhyming reference from the 8th to 10th centuries, contains 15,000 characters in 204 rhymes combinable into 106 groups. The Guang yun ᒷ䷏ (1008), the oldest extant Chinese rhyming dictionary, contains 26,194 characters in 206 rhymes reducible to 113 groups;7 a condensed version (Libu yunlüe ⾂䚼䷏⬹, 1037) of an enlarged edition of the Guang yun lists 9,590 characters spread over 106 rhyme groups, or 90 characters per rhyme on average (Kwong 2009, 189–220).8 Given that rhyme is based on the syllable, how does one explain the huge discrepancy in rhyme resources between English and Chinese? In English versification, rhyme “consists of the repetition, in the rhyming words, of the last stressed vowel and of all the speech sounds following that vowel: láte-fáte; fóllow-hóllow” (Abrams 1999, 273), with a “difference in the consonantal sounds that immediately precede the accented vowel sound” (Allen and Cunningham 1998, 1). In terms of the availability of English rhymes, one basic fact to keep in mind is that English words are orthographically made up of letters that combine in multiple lengths and ways (e.g. most vowels and consonants can appear in all positions within the word), so that while the English lexicon is impossible to use the same rhyme for very long in English without running into serious difficulties, and at the same time introducing a heavy emphasis into the rhyming word which is not present in the Chinese. Moreover the effort of sustaining a rhyme in English verse generates a tension which often finds relief in laughter.” (See Hawkes 1964, 90–115) 6 Allen and Cunningham state that rhyme “didn’t exert much influence until Middle English replaced Old English; by the time of Chaucer’s rhymed couplets in The Canterbury Tales (begun 1386), rhyme had become firmly established in English poetry.” (1998, 832). 7 This is achieved by putting near identical finals in the same rhyme group. 8 For a convenient table showing how the 206 rhymes were condensed into 106 groups, see for instance Zhao 2002, 30–31.

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quantitatively large, 9 it also consists of a wide range of phonemic combinations into monosyllabic or polysyllabic words that dilute the rhyming potential of English. At the same time, polysyllabic words carry varying stress positions within the word, which further lower the frequency of sound repetition following the last stressed vowels, i.e. rhyming syllables, than is the case in Chinese. Chinese has far fewer words but richer rhyme resources than English,10 not just because classical Chinese is mostly monosyllabic, but because the structure of the Chinese syllable is simpler. Monosyllabicity is at once a matter of phonetics and morphology as well as orthography. In Middle Chinese, the sound system on which much of classical Chinese poetry was based, a word is in most cases represented by one syllable, 11 which is made up of one to five phonemes: a final consisting of one or two medial vowels, a nuclear vowel and an ending, plus an initial.12 Chinese rhyme is based on the syllabic final, and Stimson lists three medials (including a double vowel cluster), six nuclei and eight (2 vocalic plus 6 consonantal) endings (Stimson 1976, viii), so that the number of rhyming sound combinations lies within compact parameters. The monosyllabic nature of the classical Chinese word is morphologically and syntactically sustained (or parallelled) by the single-morpheme structure of the word and the isolating nature of the language, so that a word is typically made up of one morpheme rather than component parts of added inflectional morphemes (see Li and Thompson 1981, 10–15; Li and Thompson 1990, 816–25) that will make the word polysyllabic, as is the case in a partly agglutinating language like English. Orthographically, the Chinese character’s stable size and square shape may also have helped to keep it monosyllabic, since 9

See Oxford Dictionaries: “there are, at the very least, a quarter of a million distinct English words, excluding inflections, and words from technical and regional vocabulary not covered by the OED, or words not yet added to the published dictionary, of which perhaps 20 per cent are no longer in current use. If distinct senses were counted, the total would probably approach three quarters of a million.” 10 The Kangxi zidian ᒋ❭ᄫ‫( ݌‬1716) lists a total of 47,035 characters. 11 There are of course occasional exceptions, e.g. putao 㨵㧘. 12 As Hugh M. Stimson explains, “(t)he Middle Chinese syllable consists of a final plus any preceding initial. A syllable with no initial may be said to ‘have zero (φ) initial.’ (…) The segmental portion of the final consists of one or two medials, a nucleus, and an ending; each position may be left unfilled, but at least one position is always filled.” See his T’ang Poetic Vocabulary (1976, vi, viii). In other words, the final consists of 1-4 phonemes.

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the Chinese word cannot expand in length as freely as the English word (e.g. the common word “international” contains 5 syllables, 13 letters and 10-11 phonemes). All in all, rhyming in classical Chinese, with each syllable stressed, does not have to deal with the problem of “rhyme dilution” in English, which is further exacerbated by the position shifts of the stress in the polysyllabic English word. On the contrary, Chinese rhyme is enhanced by the tonal nature of the language, with its four tonal categories (still present in modern dialects like Yue ㊉ and Min 䭽 ) extending the possibilities of rhyming and the potential synergy between poetic sense and poetic music, especially in “ancient-style poetry” স储䀽, ci 䀲 and sanqu. It is thus clear that rhyme adds an extra touch of musicality to classical Chinese poetry. With the disappearance of four consonantal endings (-m, -p, -t, -k) in modern Putonghua and the redistribution of the changed syllables among other tonal types, modern Chinese syllables now fall into 18 groups (each subdivided into four tones),13 so that rhyming has become even easier—if not richer in aural variety—in modern Chinese. Although modern Putonghua is more disyllabic than monosyllabic, rhyming in modern vernacular verse is not affected, as Chinese characters and syllable stress remain individually selfstanding. Another reason why Chinese rhyming feels relatively easy is that it allows near identical finals to form rhymes, thus further liberating and enhancing the use of rhyme in Chinese poetry. For instance, in the Pingshui yun ᑇ ∈ ䷏ , the 106-rhyme standard reference for classical Chinese poetry writing, /ngiuæn/‫ܗ‬, /ngiæn/㿔, /mNjn/䭔 and /huNjn/儖 all belong to Rhyme Group 13 ‫ ;ܗ‬/shran/߾, /quan/☷, /shr޽n/ቅ and /g޽n/䭧 all come under Rhyme 15 ߾; while /sen/‫ܜ‬, /tsen/ग, /qiu޽n/࿳, /chiu޽n/ Ꮁ and /hyu޽n/೧ are all grouped under Rhyme 16 ‫ܜ‬.14 Note that within the same rhyme group, there are slight variations in the nuclear vowel itself (/æ/ vs /Nj/, /a/ vs /޽/, /e/ vs /޽/) as well as modifications of the nuclear vowel by the medial (/-iu-æ/ vs /-i-æ/, /Nj/ vs /-u-Nj/, /-iu-޽/ vs /-yu޽/). Furthermore, there is additional flexibility in rhyming if needed: in ancient-style poetry (and later on in ci) words in “neighbouring rhymes” 䜄䷏ (e.g. ᵅ/‫ހ‬, 儮/㰲, ⳳ/᭛, ᆦ/߾/‫ )ܜ‬within each tonal category can 13

See for instance Shiyun xinbian 䀽䷏ᮄ㎼ (1989). Middle Chinese phonetic transcriptions follow Stimson’s T’ang Poetic Vocabulary. Note that ‫ ܜ‬is in fact called Rhyme 1 in Part II of the 30 level-tone groups in traditional Chinese rhyming dictionaries; it is renumbered here for clarity and convenience.

14

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rhyme with one another, while corresponding “rising-tone” Ϟ 㙆 and “departing-tone” এ㙆 (falling tone) syllables can also rhyme with one another. Similarly, in “recent-style” poetry 䖥 储 䀽 , characters from consonant neighbouring rhyme groups can be used for the optional rhyme in the first line. Such neighbouring rhymes have a phonetic affinity and prosodic unity greater than that of consonance in English, which allows for any degree of difference in vowel sound. Wang Li ⥟࡯ states that the 30 rhyme groups form 15 clusters for the purpose of exercising the extra freedom offered by the use of neighbouring rhymes, but it should be noted that within the same cluster not all characters can work as neighbouring rhymes due to varying degrees of phonetic difference.15 This self-restraint also shows that Middle Chinese has sufficient rhyme resources that can be utilised without having to strain every rhyme nerve; a related point is that classical shi poetry rhyme also does not have to rely on the weaker resonances offered by assonance.16 A similar principle of allowing near identical sounds to rhyme is seen in modern Chinese rhyming guides as well. For instance, one finds the following sounds grouped together: /jie/㌤ and /jue/㾎 in Rhyme 4 ⱚ; /bei/ᵃ and /chui/਍ in Rhyme 8 ᖂ; /an/ᅝ, /bian/䙞, /chuan/こ and /yüan/ ೧ (albeit usually written as /yuan/) in Rhyme 14 ᆦ; /ben/༨, /bin/䊧, /chun/᯹ and /jün/৯ (usually written as /jun/) in Rhyme 15 ⮩; /bang/ᐿ, /chuang/に and /jiang/∳ in Rhyme 16 ૤. In addition, Chinese rhyming has been further liberalised since the time of sanqu, where rhyme words in the “level” ᑇ㙆, “rising” and “departing” tones may rhyme with one another (e.g. Ma Zhiyuan’s 侀㟈䘴LJኮ῍ἃ䝿⚽ᛦLj). Such rhyming practice has been used in various regular and semi-regular ways, via single or multiple rhymes, in modern vernacular poems by prosodically sensitive

15

For some examples, see Wang (1979, 331–50), including a 100-line poem by Du Fu that uses 50 rhymes from 6 consonant neighbouring rhyme groups all ending in /-t/. 16 Assonance (even in combination with consonance) is allowable in ci poetry rhyming for two rusheng rhyme groups (17 and 18). This may be because the distinct phonetic flavour of the entering tone (all the sounds being cut off by a /-p/, /-t/ or /-k/ ending and brief in duration) creates a strong sense of common identity that allows a form of near rhyme not otherwise present in the much broader domain of shi versification. Even Li Qingzhao ᴢ⏙✻, a refined poetess with an exquisite sense of poetic music, uses assonance in her famous ci poem to the tune “Shengsheng man” 㙆㙆᜶.

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poets like Wen Yi duo17 and Xu Zhimo,18 as well as in modern lyrics to popular tunes. There is no doubt that near-identical-sound rhyming serves as an extra resource for prosody in modern vernacular verse. A final related point is that rhyme in English is concerned with sound instead of meaning, and syllables rather than words, which may be a basic reason why identities are not accepted as rhymes. Rhyme in Chinese, on the other hand, takes account of sound and meaning at the same time,19 so that identities are perfect rhymes, and the only restriction is that a word cannot rhyme with itself. In sum, rhyme plays a larger role in Chinese than it does in Western poetry. One may argue that rhyme can be used more flexibly in modern Chinese vernacular poetry to foster a modern synergy of sound and meaning, and poets may explore how rhyme can be best employed. But it would be a clear aesthetic loss for Chinese poetry to give up an intrinsic linguistic advantage found in rhyming.

Tones Chinese is a tonal language where characters fall into one of four tonal categories: “level”, “rising”, “departing”/falling and “entering” ܹ 㙆 (truncated sounds ending in -p/-t/-k) tones, regardless of higher and lower pitch variants. These various pitch contours combine to form musical cadences, which came to be systematised into the patterned distribution of level ᑇ㙆 and “oblique” (i.e. non-level) Ҙ㙆 tonal categories in regulated shi and ci writing (with certain variations allowed) to give a mellifluous balance of sound effects. The result was the flourishing of “recent-style” poetry since the Tang dynasty. Furthermore, the level-tone syllable, in its constant pitch, carries a natural extensibility that offers an extra aesthetic means to vary the articulated length of the poetic line as needed, thereby structurally modulating the rhythm and enriching the musicality of the poem. This is an often overlooked factor internal to the poetic line—and not a matter of externally inserted performance (e.g. in chanting). The

17

See for instance Wen’s poems “ᖗ䏇”, “⼜⾅”, “㤦ᴥ”, “⋫㸷℠”, “໾䱑৳”, “ ষկ”, “ᬊಲ” and “г䀅”. 18 See for instance Xu’s poems “䲾㢅ⱘᖿῖ”, “Ⅼ䀽”, “䅞㟛ϡ䅞”, “ञ໰⏅Ꮛ⨉ ⨊”, “៥ϡⶹ䘧乼” and “‫߹ݡ‬ᒋ‟”. 19 Chinese rhyme is also based on the syllable, but as already noted, classical Chinese is essentially monosyllabic, i.e. one syllable is one word. Modern Chinese is more disyllabic in nature (still far less polysyllabic than English), but rhyme continues to take account of both sound and meaning.

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musical effects of tones are no doubt made possible by the monosyllabic nature of the Chinese character (mostly equal to the word), for it is not possible to achieve the same effects in a polysyllabic language like English. One need not call for re-injection of regular tonal patterns into modern vernacular verse, but there can be a lively, flexible use of this resource to enhance what Wen Yiduo calls “musical beauty” (yinyue mei ䷇ῖ㕢) of Chinese poetry.20

Parallelism and Line Length Variations in ci and qu according to the musical tune and in guti shi aside, classical Chinese poetry is mostly written in lines of equal length (5or 7-character lines), with a clear but flexible sense of rhythm. 21 This feature is made possible not just by the basic monosyllabicity of the Chinese character but also by its isolating nature (or that of the morpheme, usually equal to the syllable), without the need for inflectional (e.g. -es, ing for verbs, -es for nouns) and derivational affixes (e.g. a-, -al, -ism, -ity, -ive, -ise) that otherwise affect monosyllabicity and the perfect rhythmic balance it enables.22 In Chinese, grammatical relationships and syntactic functions are given by word order rather than by derivational or inflectional suffixes. It is not surprising, therefore, that since Jin (265–420) times, classical Chinese verse has moved more towards the symmetric “architectural beauty” ᓎ㆝㕢 of parallelism, which is at once semantic, tonal and syntactic. Due to the syntagmatic orientation of the modern Chinese language and its need for grammatical particles, modern vernacular verse can no longer sustain parallelism in the same “seminatural” way. But while parallelism can be seen as the least indispensable and intrinsic of the prosodic features of classical Chinese poetry, it is yet another enhancing aesthetic resource that can be judiciously employed. For instance, without forcing any parallelism, Wen Yiduo tries to ensure 20

See Wen’s essay “䀽ⱘḐᕟ” in the “Literary Supplement” ࡃߞ of Chenbao (Beijing) ᰼ฅ (࣫Ҁ), 13/5/1926, where he says modern vernacular Chinese poetry should have “musical beauty” (metre, tones, rhyme), “architectural beauty” ᓎ㆝㕢 (line and stanzaic neatness) and “painterly beauty” 㐾⬿㕢 (diction and imagery). 21 The primary rhythm of the pentasyllabic line is 2-3 (2-1-2, 2-2-1); that of the heptasyllabic line is 4-3 (2-2-3, 2-2-1-2). Note that due to its extensibility, a leveltone character in the second position is capable of turning the primary rhythm of the heptasyllabic line into 2-5 in oral-aural effect. 22 But of course, only suffixes are relevant in rhyming considerations.

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rhythm in his vernacular poetry by using lines of equal or near-equal length, as his famous poem “Dead Water” ⅏∈ well illustrates: 䗭ᰃϔ⑱㌩ᳯⱘ⅏∈ˈ Here is a ditch of hopelessly dead water. ⏙乼਍ϡ䍋ञ咲⓾⎾DŽ No breeze can raise a single ripple on it. ϡབ໮ᠨѯ⸈䡙⟯䨉ˈ Might as well throw in rusty metal scraps ⠑ᗻ┥Դⱘ࠽㦰Ⅼ㖍DŽ or even pour left-over food and soup in it. г䀅䡙ⱘ㽕㍴៤㖵㖴ˈ Perhaps the green on copper will become emeralds. 䨉㔤Ϟ䧑ߎᑒ⪷ḗ㢅˗ Perhaps on tin cans peach blossoms will bloom. ‫ݡ‬䅧⊍㝽㐨ϔሸ㕙㎎ˈ Then, let grease weave a layer of silky gauze, 䳝㦠㌺Ҫ㪌ߎѯ䳆䳲DŽ and germs brew patches of colorful spume. 䅧⅏∈䝉៤ϔ⑱㍴䜦ˈ Let the dead water ferment into jade wine ⓖⓓњ⦡⦴Ԑⱘⱑ≿˗ covered with floating pearls of white scum. ᇣ⦴ュϔ㙆䅞៤໻⦴ˈ Small pearls chuckle and become big pearls, জ㹿ً䜦ⱘ㢅㱞઀⸈DŽ only to burst as gnats come to steal this rum. 㻃 䙷咐ϔ⑱㌩ᳯⱘ⅏∈ˈ And so this ditch of hopelessly dead water гህ䁛ᕫϞᑒߚ冂ᯢDŽ may still claim a touch of something bright. བᵰ䴦㲭㗤ϡԣᆖᆲˈ And if the frogs cannot bear the silence— জㅫ⅏∈িߎњ℠㙆DŽ the dead water will croak its song of delight. 䗭ᰃϔ⑱㌩ᳯⱘ⅏∈ˈ Here is a ditch of hopelessly dead water— 䗭㺣ᮋϡᰃ㕢ⱘ᠔೼ˈ a region where beauty can never reside. ϡབ䅧㌺䝰ᚵ՚䭟ຒˈ Might as well let the devil cultivate it— ⳟҪ䗴ߎ‫ן‬Ҕ咐Ϫ⬠DŽ and see what sort of world it can provide.23

This is a specimen of what has been called “dried bean curd” poetry 䈚 㜤ђ䀽—a poem lined in perfect rectangular shape and regular rhythm, and far more artificial than a classical Chinese poem due to the need to insert grammatical particles in the vernacular language. Indeed, Wen Yiduo is the purest paradigm of a modern Chinese poet who strives to preserve a clean sense of poetic rhythm and music with prosodic patterns. Its use of imagery, symbolism, colour and lustre aside, “Dead Water” offers the clearest prosodic example of Wen’s “new metrical verse”. In terms of overall structure, the poem is comprised of five stanzas of four lines each, with nine characters in each line. Inter-stanzaic resonance is enhanced by the use of rhyme in the even-numbered lines of each stanza, 23

English translation taken from Kai-yu Hsu (1970, 65–66).

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with the use of a new rhyme in each stanza adding variety to the poem’s sound effects and semantic scope. This dual feature goes along with the use of a separate single rhyme uniting the first lines of the five stanzas, in a phono-semantic refrain underlined by the repetition of the phrase “a ditch of hopeless dead water”.24 On the line level, each is made up of four metrical “feet”, and the majority of lines follow a 2-2-3-2 or 2-3-2-2 pattern, giving the poem a steady and harmonious rhythm. From the micro (line) to the macro (stanza, poem) level, the poem is a sustained effort at creating an integral prosodic style for modern Chinese verse. There are other poems by Wen Yiduo that show a similar effort,25 and Xu Zhimo also wrote poems with a regular rhythm using lines of near-equal length.26 Modern vernacular Chinese poetry should not follow any prescriptive prosody, but it can certainly benefit from a more vital sense of rhythm than cut-up sentences are able to achieve.

Parataxis In poetry and prose, images, parts of sentences or even whole sentences can be juxtaposed in sequence without any explanation of their connection or relationship, except perhaps for the use of the noncommittal connective “and”, so that the literary text is allowed to fully “speak for itself”. For example, in The Sun Also Rises (1926), Hemingway (1899– 1961) writes: “It was dim and dark and the pillars went high up, and there were people praying, and it smelt of incense, and there were some

24

Note that the rhymes are occasionally imperfect, e.g. lun-geng ⎾ - 㖍 (assonance), shui-cui-jiu ∈-㖴-䜦, zai-jie ೼-⬠. Note also that mo ≿ used to be an “entering-tone” word (and still is in the Cantonese dialect), but has changed into a “departing-tone” word in Putonghua that rhymes with po ⸈. 25 For instance, “Heartbeat” ᖗ䏇 is written in 28 lines of 12 characters each with no stanzaic division; in form it reads rather like a modern guti shi, but with a more frequent change of rhyme (every 2 lines). “A Sentence” ϔহ䁅 consists of 2 stanzas of 6 lines each, with 9 characters in each line, plus a “3-pause-5” refrain that is equal in length to the 9-character line. “Confession” ষկ contains 10 lines of 11 characters each, divided into 2 irregular stanzas of 8 and 2 lines. 26 For example, “On the Shanghai-Hangzhou Train” Ⓚᵁ䒞Ϟ uses 2 stanzas of 4 lines each, with 10 characters in each line except for the semi-onomatopoeic first line (two 3-character parts). “Remnant Poem” Ⅼ䀽 consists of 12 lines with 12-14 characters in each, mostly using 14 characters. “Adieu to Cambridge Again” ‫߹ݡ‬ ᒋ‟ uses 7 stanzas of 4 lines each, with 6-8 characters in each line.

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wonderful big windows” (chap. 10).27 Mr Jingle’s ruminations in Chapter 2 of Dicken’s (1812–1870) The Pickwick Papers are more radical still, for they not only do away with “and”, but verge on a mode of fragmentary juxtaposition: (T)ake your fare, and take yourself off—respectable gentleman—know him well—none of your nonsense—this way, sir—where’s your friends?— all a mistake, I see—never mind—accidents will happen—best regulated families—never say die—down upon your luck—Pull him UP—Put that in his pipe—like the flavour—damned rascals.

Classical Chinese poetry feels remarkably modern in this sense, with the added advantage that it can do away with articles, particles and pronouns etc., so that 1) the parataxis (especially in imagery) comes out with greater evocative intensity and visual sharpness, and 2) the reader has even more room to visualise for himself what is expressed. Thus, it is syntactically common to find lines like “Withered vine, old tree, drooping raven; /Small bridge, flowing water, human lodge” ᶃ㮸㗕‍ᯣ勝, ᇣ‟ ⌕∈Ҏᆊ; “Thin mist, dense clouds, melancholy all day” 㭘䳻▗䳆ᛕ∌ ᰱ; “Wind stopped, dust fragrant, blossoms all gone” 乼ԣ้佭㢅Ꮖⲵ; or “Flowing water, fallen blossoms, spring departed— /Heaven and earth” ⌕ ∈㨑㢅᯹এг, ໽ϞҎ䭧.28 Modern Chinese does not allow parataxis in vernacular poetry in as pure a manner as in classical poetry, but parataxis is undoubtedly another evocative resource in the aesthetics of poetry, the most condensed of literary genres. Juxtaposed images, self-expressive and quietly interactive, along with interspersed spaces, form part of the “painterly beauty” of Chinese poetry that can be profitably adopted by vernacular verse.

27

In his short story Indian Camp, Hemingway does away with the connective “and”: “The sun was coming over the hills. A bass jumped, making a circle in the water. Nick trailed his hand in the water. It felt warm in the sharp chill of the morning.” This recalls “I came, I saw, I conquered” (Veni, vidi, vici), the phrase attributed to Julius Caesar in 47 BC; see Plutarch (c. 46–c. 120), The Parallel Lives, “The Life of Julius Caesar” 50; Suetonius (c. 69–c. 122), The Lives of the Caesars, “The Life of Julius Caesar” 37. 28 Respectively lines from Ma Zhiyuan’s LJ໽⎼≭ˊ⾟ᗱLj, Li Qingzhao’s LJ䝝 㢅䱄Ljand LJ℺䱉᯹Lj, and Li Yu’s ᴢ✰LJ⌾⎬≭Lj.

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Poetics of Pithiness Parataxis in classical Chinese poetry is, of course, facilitated by the nature of the classical language, which can dispense with pronouns, articles, prepositions etc., and which is therefore inherently consonant with a culturally distinctive poetics of overflowing understatement and “resonance beyond language” (yanwai shiyi 㿔 ໪ П ᛣ ). To take an obvious example: while the “I” has to assert itself in English and modern vernacular Chinese poetry, it is typically “absent” on a verbal level in classical Chinese poetry, and hence more closely fused into the poetic landscape. As a result, the acts and affects of vernacular poetic expression generally feel more assertive, explicit and laboured: what the vernacular language gains in descriptive flexibility and capacity for fine detail (especially in prose), 29 it loses in expressive subtlety and evocative potency in poetic expression. It might be helpful at this point to use a brief example to illustrate the various aesthetic factors outlined in the three sections above: 主ජΉLJ䘴੠䖥Lj Դˈ ϔ᳗ⳟ៥ˈ ϔ᳗ⳟ䳆DŽ ៥㾎ᕫˈ Դⳟ៥ᰖᕜ䘴ˈ Դⳟ䳆ᰖᕜ䖥DŽ

Gu Cheng, “Distant and close” You— Now looking at me, Now looking at the clouds. I feel— When you look at me you’re very distant, When you look at the clouds you’re very close.

LJ䘴䖥Lj Сⳟ៥ Сⳟ䳆 ⳟ៥䘴 ⳟ䳆䖥

The original vernacular poem in the left-hand column requires the subjects in lines 1 and 4-6 as well as the conjunction ᰖ. Lines 5-6, in order to be syntactically sound, inevitably carries an explicit, declarative and even assertive tone. The English translation requires the same elements (you/I, when) plus the article (the), preposition (at) and verb (are) to achieve syntactic integrity, and the inflection “-ing” to enhance a sense of immediacy. For the purpose of comparing divergent aesthetics, the poem can be recast in 29

See for instance Kang Baiqing’s ᒋⱑᚙ detailed description of colour changes in the sky at sunrise in hisLJ᮹㾔ዄⳟ⍈᮹Lj. Note, however, that classical poetry can bring out the colour transformations more powerfully and cogently through close paratactic juxtaposition.

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a form and rhythm closer to classical Chinese poetry given in the right-hand column: the grammatical elements are dispensed with; so are lines 1 and 4 because semantically and aesthetically unnecessary; and the poem is readily condensed to half its original length (from 24 to 12 characters) without losing in content, rhyme (i.e. the cross-tonal rhymes 䳆/䖥)30 or mood. Indeed, even punctuation has become superfluous. In fact, the shorter poem is cleaner in rhyme and rhythm, and more resonant and penetrating in evocative potential thanks to the laconic expression. This is not to suggest “classicising” modern Chinese poetry wholesale, but to illustrate through a short poem like Gu’s that there is ample room to blend the classical aesthetics of understatement with modern vernacular poetry writing. Tonal, isolating and monosyllabic by linguistic nature, classical Chinese achieves musical, painterly and architectural beauty in poetry with relative ease. No prosodic form can guarantee good poetry by itself, but at least it fosters a sense of aesthetic direction. Gaining in versatility of expression, yet sapped in intensity and divested of metrical strengths rooted in linguistic attributes, modern Chinese vernacular poetry is still struggling to find a sustainable rhythm and true identity after a century of experimentation. Once Chinese poetry loses all sense of form, poets and critics alike can easily become confused and disoriented. Can any oddly idiosyncratic group of lines pass for a poem (especially if it gains some critical approval), including broken parts of a single prose sentence placed in different lines? Witness a simple example below: 䍭呫㧃ΉLJϔ‫ן‬Ҏ՚ࠄ⬄㋡㽓Lj Zhao Lihua, “Arriving in Tennessee by Myself” ↿⛵⭥ଣ There is no doubt ៥‫ⱘخ‬仵仙 The baked pies I make ᰃܼ໽ϟ Are the most delicious ᳔དৗⱘ In the whole world.

30

In terms of rhyme grouping organisation for shi writing, 䳆 belongs to Ϟᑇ㙆क Ѡ᭛, while 䖥 belongs to both Ϟ㙆कѠਏ (adjective) and এ㙆कϝଣ (verb). Putting aside this suprasegmental (tonal) difference, 䳆 and 䖥 are phonetically identical (wen, Stimson, op. cit., p. x), so that they are placed in the same section 6 (㄀݁䚼) in the later rhyme grouping for ci writing. Note that 䘴 belongs to a different rhyme group: Ϟ㙆कϝ䰂 (adjective) and এ㙆कಯ丬 (verb) in shi writing, and section 7 (㄀ϗ䚼) in ci writing.

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Formally, this text reads like a derivative imitation of such modernist experimental poems as William Carlos Williams’ (1883–1963) “This Is Just to Say”, where a sentence is broken up into a number of segments each occupying a separate line in order to foreground some parts of the text; the first sentence in Williams’ text is broken up into eight lines.31 Such fragmentary “free verse” does not always work aesthetically, and the second “stanza” of “This Is Just to Say” is clearly the weakest link in the text. But whereas the words “eaten”, “plums”, “icebox”, “Forgive” and “delicious” do set up an interpretive matrix of potential resonances, Zhao’s broken sentence is flat and insipid in meaning. Take another short text by the same Chinese writer, this time trying tediously to work on repetition rather than prosaic sentence division: 䍭呫㧃ΉLJ៥㌖ᮐ೼ϔỉ‍ϟⱐ⧒Lj ϔ䲏㵲㷏 ঺ϔ䲏㵲㷏 ϔ㕸㵲㷏 ৃ㛑䙘᳝᳈໮ⱘ㵲㷏

Zhao Lihua, “I Finally Discovered under a Tree” One ant Another ant A colony of ants Perhaps there are even more ants.

Beyond the shallow literal meaning of both texts, it would be difficult to detect any profound sense or association (let alone artistic merit) in such lines that pass for poetry; they should be seen for for what they are–– uninspiring prose. Even more worrisome is the fact that this writer is not a young novice, but a seasoned member of the China Writers’ Association and a prize-winning veteran, a “national-class poet” who has been an editor of poetry journals and an adjudicator of prestigious literary awards, such as the coveted “Lu Xun Literary Prize” (Poetry Category). The aesthetic problems displayed by the above two texts—a basic paucity of content and art coupled with a lack of form—are not limited to Zhao Lihua, but are more or less endemic in much of contemporary Chinese poetry. One can take a longer text to illustrate this further. The text below is by a writer called Yi Sha Ӟ≭ (pen name of Wu Wenjian ਇ ᭛‫)ع‬, who, in the words of one critic, has been variously described as—or 31 Grammatically, “This Is Just to Say” (1934) consists of three sentences cut into twelve lines (8+1+3), and typographically divided into three little “quatrains”: I have eaten/ the plums/ that were in/ the icebox and which/ you were probably/ saving/ for breakfast Forgive me/ they were delicious/ so sweet/ and so cold.

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has declared himself to be—China’s preeminent postmodern poet, the Chinese Allen Ginsberg, the “greatest avant-garde in China”, and the architect of a new language of contemporary poetry known as “postcolloquial writing” (houkouyu xiezuo ᕠষ䁲ᆿ԰) (Inwood 2012, 7): 䚴9/11 ᚨ⌦ሒ࿈䚵

“9/11 Psychological Report”

㄀ 1 ⾦䧬Ⳃ⵾ষਚ ㄀ 2 ⾦䧬ਚ㢹᳼厘 ㄀ 3 ⾦䧬ᇛֵᇛ⭥ ㄀ 4 ⾦䧬⺎ֵ⛵⭥ ㄀ 5 ⾦䧬䱨ኌ㾔☿ ㄀ 6 ⾦䧬ᑌ♑ῖ⽡ ㄀ 7 ⾦䧬ষ々ᕽқ ㄀ 8 ⾦䧬ዛᢰ⅍ᕦ ㄀ 9 ⾦䧬ᛳ௚ֵӄ ㄀ 10 ⾦䧬⣯✊㿬䍋 ៥ⱘ㚲ྍ ህԣ೼㋤㋘ ᗹ᩹䳏䁅 㽕೟䱯䭋䗨 ᳾䗮 ᪆৥䳏㜺 Ϟ㎆ ⱐӞྍ‫ܦ‬ ᭆᄫ ᠟ᣛⱐᡪ “ྍᄤˈྍᄤ Դ䙘⌏ⴔ஢˛ 㗕હᖿ㽕ᗹ⅏њʽ”

First second: gaping in shock Second second: dumb as a wooden chicken Third second: in half disbelief Fourth second: convinced without doubt Fifth second: watching the blaze from afar Sixth second: gloating over misfortune Seventh second: claiming revenge Eighth second: worshipping the scoundrels Ninth second: sighing at their faith Tenth second: suddenly remembered My younger sister Lives in New York I rush to make A long-distance phone call It doesn’t connect I pounce on the computer Go online To send an email As I punch the letters My fingers tremble “Sister, sister, are you still alive? Your old brother is worried to death!” 32

This text reads better than the two samples by Zhao Lihua: at the very least, it contains a little more substance. In addition, it feels realistically reflective of the writer’s state of mind, perhaps even reflective of the thinking of a small number of non-Americans. Yet the writer’s response is almost cynically callous, and its concern is narrowly personal rather than broadly humane. The first half of the first ten lines works on repetition, but since the text contains little sense of overall rhythm, the verbal impact 32

The poem is taken from p. 13; the translation is mine. Chinese Literature Today is a new English-language, semi-academic literary magazine.

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might have been strengthened had the first nine “in the nth second” phrases been dropped, for the tenth line would have sufficed to suggest the turns of thought, second by second, in a more subtle manner. The rest of the text consists of four prose lines (or sentential constructions), each divided into three to five lines in printed layout; this section reads even more like a derivative transplantation from Williams’ “This Is Just to Say”, minus associative subtlety. Line 18 is both a transliteration of “email” and a slightly awkward attempt to express the untranslated “I send to her my younger sister”. Whether on a personal or a “nationalistic” level, there is little that is profound or inspiring about this text: its meaning is obvious and narrow, its rhythm and style belong to prose rather than poetry, and its language is half-broken and scrappy, albeit justifiable at the points when the writer’s mind is most anxious. In sum, one is inclined to ask: is aesthetic disorder, together with emotional and philosophical mediocrity, what the future holds for modern Chinese poetry? Is a verbal performance of this kind what is meant by “post-colloquial writing”, or what is partly intended by the catch-all, defensive terms “postmodern” or “avant-garde” used to describe this writer? What is worrisome is not so much the transitory work of the individual, as the general aesthetic integrity of modern Chinese vernacular poetry.

Concluding Reflections In a note sent to Zang Kejia 㞻‫ܟ‬ᆊ (1905–2004) in 1957 for the inaugural issue of Poetry Journal 䀽ߞ, Mao Zedong ↯╸ᵅ (1893– 1976), a fine classical poet himself, offers the view that “as to poetry, the new style must be the mainstream (…) (the old style) restricts thought and is difficult to learn.” (Hsu 1970, 361–62). Mao is right in his conclusion and his second reason, but logically wrong with respect to the first reason. In point of fact, one abiding ideal of classical Chinese poetry, seen as attained by Su Shi 㯛䓒 (1037–1101), is that “there is no meaning that cannot be included, no matter that cannot be expressed.” 33 Besides, the distinction between classical Chinese and modern vernacular Chinese poetry is not a chronological matter of “old” or “new”, but essentially a question of aesthetics. However, inasmuch as classical culture is a thing of the past in collective terms, and the classical language no longer a medium

33

Used by Liu Xizai ࡝❭䓝 to describe Su Shi: “⛵ᛣϡৃܹˈ⛵џϡৃ㿔DŽ” ˄lj㮱ὖNJोಯLJ䀲᳆ὖLj˅. (in Yuan 2009, vol. 2, 497)

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of daily expression, the factual reality of the linguistic milieu dictates that the future of mainstream Chinese poetry lies in the modern vernacular. After a full century of poetic exploration with indifferent results, the pressing aesthetic and cultural question is: what is the future for modern vernacular poetry if it continues its stumbling course utterly devoid of form and prosody, especially for a language like Chinese with prosodic advantages inherent in the language? Needless to say, this essay makes no claim to being a comprehensive investigation. It cannot review a whole century of modern Chinese poetry, or do justice to all the poetic trends and experiments since 1917. Rather, it aims at offering a few reflections on the reality and limitations of modern vernacular poetry, on how it can benefit from a poetics (especially prosody) that is proven and available. For Chinese poetry created a dual aesthetic problem for itself when it declared its “liberation” in the early 20th century, both in abandoning prosody and in switching from the classical to the vernacular language. The move meant giving up a proven aesthetic in form (regular line and poem length), structure (rhyme, tonal balance, parallelism) and substance (imagistic and evocative intensity) in exchange for greater descriptive capacity and flexibility of expression. As for the switch in linguistic medium, one may even say it is in part a shift from poetry towards prose, since syntagmatic elements, causal links and longer constructions all come to play a larger part in vernacular verse: as it turns more explicit and expository in expression, baihua poetry witnesses a dilution in subtlety and intensity of artistic appeal. What vernacular poetry can do is to revitalise some aesthetic features rooted in and capable of bringing out the intrinsic strengths of the Chinese language. Modernisation need not entail a total break from tradition; it can assimilate the best of tradition for use in the present. Drawing attention to aesthetic features in the Chinese language worthy of restoration, in order to open up a wider avenue for modern vernacular poetry, is doubtless only part of the issue. One also thinks of the potential effect of a historical context or “spirit of the age” in nurturing a true literary giant. Is it a mere coincidence to find Li Bai ᴢⱑ (701–762) and Du Fu ᴰ ⫿ (712–770) flourishing in the cosmopolitan High Tang, Ouyang Xiu ℤ 䱑 ׂ (1007–1072) and Su Shi in the intellectually expansive Northern Song, Shakespeare (1564–1616) in the ascending Elizabethan age, Dickens and George Eliot (1819–1880) in towering Victorian times, Dostoevsky (1821–1881) and Tolstoy (1828–1910) in an 1860s Russia, then in the process of emancipating 23 million serfs and their families, ahile engaged in financial and legal reforms? When one

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reflects on the monumental achievements of such giants, one is inclined to think that there exists a certain cultural or national identity and a spirit of the age, an existential faith, hope or compassion in life, a transcendent spirit or a glowing fire of idealism, a vision with a sense of crisis or experience of suffering, that in various modes and manners may foster in the artistic genius an epic spirit and encompassing vision, an elevated impulse to scale the heights and plumb the depths of human experience, and to extend the parameters of human exploration. Yet one would be hard-pressed to identify a confident, expansive or transcendent spirit of this order in modern China, whether in the quasi-colonial age of 1841 to 1949, the extremist ideological era of 1949–1978, or the transitional era still unfolding since 1979. This does not mean to say that the environmental context determines great writers, but to suggest the nurturing effect such a context may exercise. Can one point today to an illuminating “Chinese” voice beyond sensationalism and criticism, concerned with the destiny of the culture and the people, extending to the larger destiny of mankind or even the universe? Perhaps too much of modern Chinese literature is too bound up with politics to be truly encompassing in vision. At any rate, a “cultural” voice has to do with more than national strength. At present, modern China seems to be going through a particularly atomistic and materialistic phase of its development, a crisis in values in the midst of its economic miracle; and it is perhaps in this sense that Kubin criticises contemporary Chinese writers for their “poor awareness”, “limited vistas” and “lack of guts”. (see ESWN Culture Blog) In the meantime, classical Chinese poetry extends its life of three thousand years into the 21st century, largely due to the creative efforts of four categories of practitioners: (a) a dwindling breed of octogenarians (and older poets) bound to vanish soon; (b) professors and teachers mainly in the Chinese departments of universities and colleges in the greater China area, a loose, renewable yet uneven group of mature writers whose works will thrive, survive or fossilise, depending on whether they are refreshingly relevant or slavishly imitative of the classical masters; (c) passing batches of university and college students ardent about their cultural heritage, yet often unable to sustain their passion after graduation as they become entangled in the anxieties of livelihood concerns; and (d) other earnest individuals who do not always master the prosodic requirements or subtleties involved. That demographic factor makes it likely that classical Chinese poetry will remain a lively “minority art”—

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minority in quantity and not in value—but only if it can harmonise the classical aesthetic with modern elements: (i) avoiding a stilted, alienating language of heavy ornateness, and using a purified form of simple, expressive classical Chinese, richly evocative and cleansed of obsolete elements like irrelevant or detached allusions;34 (ii) duly expanding and enriching poetic diction to include modern expressions without going overboard, while remaining condensed, elegant and pregnant;35 (iii) liberating lyric expression from narrow stock themes like self-pitying personal frustration and injustice (“ ់ ᠡ ϡ 䘛 ”), while including topics of modern relevance; and (iv) freeing poetic writing from the rigid, self-fettering imitation of TangSong models. Ultimately, the continuing vitality of classical Chinese poetry will hinge on an organic blend of classical aesthetics and living language, pertinent concerns and resonant meanings. While modern Chinese vernacular poetry has had difficulty finding its course and identity after a century of experimentation, the following can still be said about the future of Chinese poetry. First, both mainstream (vernacular) and minority (classical) currents will continue to exist side by side; both can enhance their artistic and cultural vitality by drawing on each other’s resources. Second, vernacular poetry can rejuvenate its vitality by reincorporating fitting elements of classical poetry in a flexible manner, leading to a living union of classical and vernacular attributes in language, form, structure and aesthetics. Third, classical poetry can extend its longevity by shedding stock, lifeless elements and by internalising a 34

A general style of rich simplicity such as that of Tao Qian, for instance, will be far more healthy and viable than a style of heavy ornateness in the manner of Xie Lingyun. As for obsolete allusions, using the stock gesture of breaking a willow branch at Ba Bridge ☲‟ (east of Chang’an, or present-day Xi’an) to express farewell would be a classic case of spatial and temporal misplacement; in Chinese lyric poetry, genuine scenes and images are far more authentic and appealing than stock allusions. 35 On the other hand, purely modern or contemporary terms completely disjoined from the classical world will not harmonise well with its aesthetic. For instance, one can use 䨉㗐 (iron wings) instead of 亯″ (flying machine) for “airplane”; ❦ ሣ (glimmering screen) instead of 䳏㽪 (electric vision) for “television”—all four words 䨉, 㗐, ❦ and ሣ being diction with a natural classical ambience. The forced insertion of English words or Western acronyms (e.g. “DNA”, “dot.com”) in a classical Chinese poem is almost invariably disastrous.

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genuinely modern pulse—the living nutrients of contemporary subjects and themes plus a modernised classical language. Where the wine is new, the bottle can be historical. Due to tonal and phonological reductions in the course of historical change, the Mandarin dialect (Putonghua) is illequipped to carry the torch of classical Chinese poetry; the Yue (Cantonese) and Min (Fukienese) dialects, each spoken by roughly as many people as, say, Korean is spoken, are generally regarded as the best equipped sound systems for classical poetry. Fourth, as classical poetry is modernised and vernacular poetry takes on classical elements, the two will come closer to fertilise each other in synergy, through sharing a partially common aesthetic platform. After a century of meanderings in which losses probably exceeded gains, modern Chinese poetry should be even more eager than before to explore possible ways out of its creative quandary—through re-historicising the present, and modernising the past.

Bibliography Abrams, M. H. 1999. A Glossary of Literary Terms, 7th ed. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers. Allen, Michael S., and Michael Cunningham, eds. 1998. Webster’s New World Rhyming Dictionary: Clement Wood’s Updated. New York: Macmillan. ESWN Culture Blog. 2006. “Wolfgang Kubin on Contemporary Chinese Literature.” http://www.zonaeuropa.com/culture/c20061214_1.htm. Hawkes, David. 1964. “Chinese Poetry and the English Reader.” In The Legacy of China, edited by Raymond Dawson, 90–115. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hockx, Michel 䊔呹Ო. 2007. “Tong haishi bu tong: Zhongguo xiandai shige yanjiu jiaoxue zhong de yixie wenti” “䗮䙘ᰃϡ䗮˖Ё೟⧒ҷ 䀽℠ⷨおᬭᅌЁⱘϔѯଣ丠.” In Zhongguo wenxue: chuantong yu xiandai de duihua Ё ೟ ᭛ ᅌ ˖ ‫ ڇ‬㍅ 㟛 ⧒ ҷ ⱘ ᇡ 䁅 (Chinese Literature: Dialogue between Tradition and Modernity), trans. Zeng Zhaocheng ᳒ᰁ⿟, edited by Zhang Hongsheng ᔉᅣ⫳ and Qian Nanxiu 䣶फ⾔, 13–18. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe. Hsu, Kai-yu, ed. and trans. 1970. Twentieth-Century Chinese Poetry. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Idema, Wilt, and Lloyd Haft. 1997. A Guide to Chinese Literature. Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan. Inwood, Heather. 2012. “Yi Sha: Running His Race in the ‘Ninth Lane’.” Chinese Literature Today 2(2): 6–10.

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Kwong, Charles. 2009. “Translating Classical Chinese Poetry into Rhymed English: A Linguistic-Aesthetic View.” Traduction, Terminologie, Rédaction 22(1): 189–220. Li, Charles N., and Sandra A. Thompson. 1981. Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar. Berkeley: University of California Press. —. 1990. “Chinese.” In The World’s Major Languages, edited by Bernard Comrie, 816–25. New York: Oxford University Press. Oxford Dictionaries. http://oxforddictionaries.com/words/how-manywords-are-there-in-the-English-language Shiyun xinbian 䀽 ䷏ ᮄ ㎼ (New Poetic Rhymes). 1989. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe. Stimson, Hugh M. 1976. T’ang Poetic Vocabulary. New Haven: Far Eastern Publications, Yale University. Tang, Tao, ed. 1993. History of Modern Chinese Literature. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press. Waley, Arthur, trans. 1962. One Hundred & Seventy Chinese Poems. London: Constable & Co. Wang, Li ⥟࡯. 1979. Hanyu shilü xue ⓶䁲䀽ᕟᅌ (Study of Chinese Prosody). Shanghai: Shanghai jiaoyu chubanshe. Wen, Yiduo 㘲ϔ໮. 1926. “Shi de gelü 䀽ⱘḐᕟ” (“Poetic Prosody”). In Literary Supplement ࡃߞ of Chenbao (Beijing) ᰼ฅ (࣫Ҁ), 13 May. Wood, Clement. 1936. The Complete Rhyming Dictionary and Poet’s Craft Book. New York: Halcyon House. Yuan, Jinhu 㹕⋹⧹, annot. 2009. Yigai zhugao 㮱ὖ⊼〓 (Annotation of Yigai), 2 vols. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju. Zhang, Yushu ᔉ⥝᳌, and Chen Tingjing 䱇ᓋᭀ, eds. 1981 (1716). Kangxi zidian ᒋ❭ᄫ‫( ݌‬Kangxi Dictionary). Hong Kong: Zhonghua shuju. Zhao, Zhongcai 䍭 ӆ ᠡ . 2002. Shici xiezuo gailun 䀽 䀲 ᆿ ԰ ὖ 䂪 (Introduction to Shi and Ci Writing). Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe.

CHAPTER EIGHT CHINESE LITERATURE SINCE 2000: A CONTINUING CULTURAL MIRACLE, FOSTERED BY INTERNATIONAL CONNECTIONS? MARTIN WINTER

Preface: Conditions In the spring of 2011, the artist Ai Weiwei 㡒᳾᳾ was abducted, amid a general crackdown on civil rights lawyers and activists. The two Chinese novels that were perhaps most widely talked about in the first half of 2011 appeared in Hong Kong: Yan Lianke’s 䯢䖲⾥ Four Books ಯ᳌ and The Fat Years ⲯϪ—Ё೑ 2013 by Chan Koonchung (Chen Guanzhong) 䱇 ‫ݴ‬Ё. The latter was originally published in late 2009. The English version appeared in the summer of 2011. The spring crackdown on lawyers and activists ultimately led to a “Christmas crackdown”, when two dissidents were sentenced to 9 and 10 years on 23 and 26 December, 2011, both for Internet articles critical of the political system (Ramzy 2011). Both authors had protested in 1989 and went to prison repeatedly. The conditions are clear: art and literature are tolerated, as long as the system is not openly challenged.

Gradual Changes In literature, there have been some gradual changes over the last 10 to 20 years. Just like workers in factories, artists and writers are supposed to be organised in unions controlled by the Communist Party. For cultural operators, membership in official organisations has brought and still brings important benefits. In the last few years, various writers have written about the poorer classes and struggles in labour situations, with some identifying

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themselves as Marxist or leftist1. But even this could be seen as a sign of diversity. For over 10 years now, a degree of independence has been tolerated for certain artists and writers. They are tolerated to some extent, can be mentioned in the official press, write for TV and so on. Relatively open debate has become a value. At the Mao Dun literature awards 㣙Ⳓ ᭛ᅌ ⤢ in September 2 , the selection of candidates and prize winners through relatively open debate appears as important. Wang Shuo ⥟᳨ has been famous for his irreverence for 20 years. He can say things about the government, call them obscene, use foul language, and everybody knows about it, and he gets away with it, as long as it’s not too often, or so it seems. Han Han3 䶧ᆦ is much younger, and much more fashionable. He can be very critical and outspoken, which is why his blog has millions of hits. But he also makes it clear he wants to enjoy life and his fame. In various ways, asserting independence from official channels has become a more commonplace phenomenon in arts and literature, as well as in other sectors of society. But if one wants to make an unequivocal critical statement, it still must be done from outside China. Recent examples are Murong Xuecun’s ᜩᆍ䲾ᴥ speeches in Hongkong and Oslo and the Taiwan edition of Yu Hua’s ԭ㧃 China in Ten Words क‫ן‬䀲ᔭ㺵ⱘЁ ೟ (Murong 2011). Emancipation in various forms, mostly unofficial, is often under the scrutiny of censorship and other forms of control. Relatively independent music and poetry have found venues and ways of publishing for many decades, generally very precarious, sometimes with the support of academic institutions, at times even with the support of local government. The sound artist and poet Yan Jun 丣ዏ, from Beijing, is now a wellknown icon of the music and poetry scene in China. He was first introduced to an international public in 2003 (Crevel 2003). Documentary and independent films in general have become more widespread in the last ten years. I argue that developments in literature and other art forms, together with other trends in society, are perhaps part of a more general 1

Diceng wenxue ᑩሖ᭛ᄺ, Lower Literature. During the ACCL conference, at Tsinghua University in Beijing, June and August 2009. Authors discussed included Cao Zhenglu ᳍ᕕ䏃, Chen Yingsong 䰜ᑨᵒ, Hu Xuewen 㚵ᄺ᭛, Liu Jiming ߬ 㒻ᯢ, and Wang Xiangfu ⥟⼹໿. (See The Biennial Conference 2009) 2 See the article in Nanfang Zhoumo फᮍ਼᳿, “៥ཛྷ䇈䆘༪ህ䆹䖭М䆘”. 3 For texts, translations and discussions of Han Han’s essays up to the end of 2011, see Fisher-Schreiber 2012; (German, incl. links to original essays) and Kennedy 2011.

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trend towards emancipation. Zheng Xiaoqiong 䜁 ᇣ ⪞ ( 䚥 ᇣ ⨐ ), the migrant worker and poetess, who first came to prominence in 2006/2007, refused to become a member of the local writer’s organisation in Dongguan ᵅ㥲, Canton province. She has become well known, and is well-connected and accepted in writer’s circles, even though she has continued to work in the factory. At the end of this paper, I shall quote a long poem of hers that I am currently translating. Zheng Xiaoqiong 䚥ᇣ ⨐ is part of a wave of migrant worker’s literature consisting mostly of poems, reports and essays. Professional female authors have written novels about female migrant workers for some time now. Veteran writer Zhang Kangkang ᔉᡫᡫ and newcomer Sheng Keyi ⲯৃҹ are two wellknown examples.

Broken Connections? In 1998, the writer Zhu Wen ᴅ᭛, who later became a film director, organised an unofficial survey among young Chinese writers in many provinces. The project was called Duanlie ᮋ㺖, which means a rip, a broken connection. The results of the survey were published in China4 in the periodical Beijing Wenxue ࣫Ҁ᭛ᄺ, but also abroad in the legendary journal Jintian Ҟ໽ (Today), founded in 1978 at the beginning of Beijing Spring ࣫ҀП᯹ and the Democracy Wall ࣫Ҁ㽓ऩ⇥Џ๭, banned in 1981, and published in exile since 1990 (Huang 1999, 26).5. Connections to Chinese-speaking communities, institutions and organisations abroad, mostly in Hong Kong and Taiwan, in North America and Europe, have been vital and necessary for the Chinese economic miracle, ever since the beginning of the Opening Reform policy in the late 1970s. In art and literature, connections to the outside world are probably just as vital. And one might say that it has always been this way for the last 100 years or so, since the times of Sun Yatsen ᄿ䘌ҭ (also known as Sun Wen and Sun Zhongshan ᄿ᭛ǃᄿЁቅ), Hu Shih 㚵䘽, Lu Xun 元䖙, and Lao She 㗕 㟡 and so on. There is the link to history, the connection to 100 years of the Chinese revolution, celebrated in 2011. There are interesting examples of art and literature under Mao Zedong, but just as the economic miracle 4

See the article Xin Shiqi guanyu Luxun de ji ci zhenglun ᮄᯊᳳ݇Ѣ剕䖙ⱘ޴⃵ ѝ䆎 (Several debates on Lu Xun in the New Period) by Chen Shuyu 䰜┅⏱ (2001). 5 See also Huang’s blog on http://blog.roodo.com/book686/archives/4078579.html (Accessed November 2011)

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was so successful and supported by a majority of the population, especially in the first ten years, because there was a consensus to move away from the Cultural Revolution, so too there was a spiritual and cultural miracle, the Culture Fever of the 1980s, the boom in translations and in the social sciences. Here I am following the eminent professors of economics and law, Qin Hui ⾺ᱝ and He Weifang 䊔㸯ᮍ (Qin and He 2009, 53ff, 101ff, 151ff). A social consensus to move away from the Cultural Revolution, to move away from the Mao era in general, in terms of the economy at least, was necessary for the economic miracle, which to some extent is continuing today. And connections outside of China, with other Chinese communities, were also necessary. And just as international investment has been crucial for economic development, international connections and some international investment have been very important for art and literature. In the case of visual arts, there has even been an economic miracle for art, which also continues today. Han Dong 䶧ᵅ, who collaborated with Zhu Wen for the Duanlie survey, remains one of the most active and respected independent poets. He has edited the multiple series Niandai Shicong ᑈҷ 䀽 শ (poetry epochs). 元㕞 Lu Yang (Lu 2002), born 1963, is one of the poets from the series for the 1990s. I want to showcase his work, Absolute Poem #1 Juedui zhi shi ㌩ᇡП䀽 (1) at the end of this paper. The poem is about writing in general, about preserving memory, preserving life in precarious conditions. You could say it is non-specific, because there are no concrete events named, though the background of contemporary history remains palpable. This is one reason why I find the poem symptomatic of writing inside China. There are lots of possibilities, but there are very obvious restrictions. This poem is rather abstract, very restrained. I think of it as the other side of the coin to the poems of Liao Yiwu ᒪѺ℺, who was imprisoned for four years for poetry projects. Liao has acquired worldwide fame since 2010 and has been living in exile since August, 2011.

Developments in Poetry Outside connections are essential for diversity and opportunity in China. I was speaking of Zhu Wen ᴅ᭛, of his survey, the project Duanlie ᮋ㺖, which was published in 1998 in the journal Beijng Wenxue ࣫Ҁ᭛ ᅌ in China, as well as in Jintian Ҟ໽, the literary journal in exile. In 1998 and 1999, this project was discussed a great deal in intellectual circles in China and in Chinese-speaking communities elsewhere. The questions and the context of the survey encouraged the participants to

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reply in the negative. Thus, most of them said that Lu Xun 元䖙 had had no direct influence on their writing, and that none of the established parameters of current literature, i.e. critics, academic institutions etc. had had any decisive influence on their writing as well. Is there a trend towards more independence in literature in China, and was this project Duanlie an important step? I would answer yes to the first question. I am not sure if Duanlie was very important for many people, other than the writers directly involved, and people reading about it and talking about it. Certainly not for everyone working in the arts and literature in China in the last 13 years. But Duanlie was part of a development, an emancipation that can be traced back to the underground culture of the 1960s, during the Cultural Revolution and before. The Taiwanese critic Huang Liang 咗ṕ has written an essay about this development of spiritual and cultural emancipation. He published a mainland avant-garde poetry series in 1999, Dalu Xianfeng Shicong ໻䱌‫ܜ‬䢦䀽শ, with nine books of poetry and one book of essays on poetry by poets, and also his own essay. (Huang 1999) Another mainland avant-garde poetry series came out in 2009 6 . The migrant worker-poetess Zheng Xiaoqiong 䜁ᇣ⪞ is one of the nine poets featured. In his essay from 1999, Huang Liang traces this spirit of emancipation and independence in literature from the 1960s to the Democracy Wall of 1978–1980, the founding of the magazine Jintian and the huge importance of poetry at that time. The narrative continues to the cultural climate of the 1980s, with government campaigns against Bourgeois Spiritual Pollution, and some poets and writers from Jintian and other unofficial circles becoming accepted, and being able to publish, and the debates about that. And then what happened after 1989, in exile and in China.

Imprisonment, Emigration and Exile There is an obvious connection between the suppression of dissent and independent debate on the one hand, and exile or forms of inner exile on the other. After the suppression of the protests in 1989, many writers emigrated from China, and many students and intellectuals who were already abroad found ways to delay their return. Some retained their Chinese citizenship, and many were able to return to China, or at least visit occasionally. This wave of emigration and exile greatly increased the Chinese Diaspora, adding to the large contingents of those who had 6

See the review at http://www.pots.tw/node/4014 (Accessed November 2011)

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already emigrated for economic and other reasons. Hong Kong and Taiwan were greatly influenced by 1989, the political democratisation was accelerated, and social diversity encouraged. All of these migrant journeys from China have meant a greater focus on China, including literature, more connections between China and outside. The above mentioned mainland Avant-garde poetry series from 1999 and 2009, is one example. Liu Xiaobo ࡝Ო⊶, the literary critic and philosopher, became famous in the late 1980s in academic and art circles for his fierce opposition to the optimistic outlook of the official New Era policy, went to prison in 1989 and became a dissident in the 1990s. He was imprisoned again, but in 2000 he published a popular book of literary criticism under a pen name, together with the famous author Wang Shuo ⥟᳨. After 2000, Liu moved away from literature and concentrated on civil rights and opposition politics, which culminated in Charter 08 in 2008 and his current imprisonment. In 2010, Liu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the first recipient who could neither receive the prize himself or via family members. Liao Yiwu ᒪѺ℺ (Liao 2011) is a well-known figure whose life exemplifies the many ties between the suppression of dissent and emigration. Born in Sichuan province and the son of a teacher, Liao was always interested in the culture of common people at the lowest rungs of society. On 3 June, 1989, the night of the massacre in Beijing after the protests in Tiananmen Square, Liao wrote a poem called Massacre Da Tusha ໻ሴ↎7 and recorded the poem on tape. His friends, including the Canadian scholar Michael Day, distributed the tape both within China and abroad. Liao wrote a second long poem called Requiem Anhun ᅝ儖 and with his friends made a TV-film based on it. When the film was finished they were arrested and Liao spent over four years in prison. He tried to kill himself, but also learnt to play an old kind of flute from fellow inmates. When he came out he had no job and survived as an itinerant musician. He wanted to document what he had seen and experienced. Some of his manuscripts were seized, but parts of his interviews and reportages were published in China and available for a short time. His stories were published in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and also in Europe and North America. Although Liao was invited to many poetry festivals in other countries, he was not allowed to leave the country. In 2010, after growing international pressure, Liao was finally able to travel outside of China and visit Germany. After two months he returned to China. In 201, Liao was 7

For Chinese text see Leiden Archive.

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again barred from traveling to promote his books in England, Australia and North America. He was also pressured to cancel his book contracts and not let his reportages on the lowest elements of Chinese society appear in translation. In August, 2011, Liao secretly left China via Vietnam, traveled to Europe and applied for political asylum in Germany. Liao Yiwu’s exile is not an exemplary outcome for those wanting to change conditions in China. He is able to challenge the way China is presented in China and outside, because he provides intimate details of contemporary life, of independent culture and of contemporary history. However, China’s continuing economic miracle, in contrast to the West, has made China more assertive and less susceptible to outside pressure on human rights. However, as worldwide interest in China keeps growing, more and more people want to know about conditions in China. The Chinese government tries to suppress embarrassing accounts. Liao Yiwu ᒪѺ℺ is one example of how such accounts are coming out, also as a result of this pressure. Due to the same kind of pressure, the artist Ai Weiwei 㡒 ᳾ ᳾ , who is still living in China, became widely known internationally, as well as in China. Yu Jie ԭᵄ, a well-known writer and social commentator in China in the last decade, is the latest prominent author to have gone into exile (January 2012). He is a founding member of the independent Chinese PEN, along with Liu Xiaobo, Meng Lang ᄳ⌾ and Bei Ling 䉱ᎎ, who was arrested and exiled in 2000 for printing the journal Tendency ‫ڒ‬৥ in China. The journal was founded by Xi Chuan 㽓Ꮁ and others in the 1980s, but printed abroad and smuggled into China for most of the 1990s.

History and Literature Pamela Crossley (2011), professor of Chinese history at Dartmouth, in.an article in the Wall Street Journal on 10 October, 2011, speaks of “China’s century long identity crisis”. She argues that the 1911 revolution was made possible by the increased openness in China and towards the outside world. And it is precisely this international outlook, Prof. Crossley argues in her very interesting and forceful article, that is suppressed under Communist rule. But it also made me think again that the privilege of literature, and of art in general, is that it has a much more variable focus than history and the social sciences. Chinese literature does not have to be about China. To be sure, most Chinese literature is, in fact, about China, and there has been a lot of debate and scholarship about why this is so. Still, it can be very refreshing to read Chinese fiction and poetry, as well

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as to watch films and plays, because a significant portion of it does not contain, or at least does not stress, either official or oppositional political and historical narratives. Literature is mostly about ordinary life, and is treasured for this reason in China, as elsewhere. There are many connections between literature and history, especially in China, ever since the Spring and Autumn Annals ᯹⾟ and Sima Qian ৌ侀䙋. There are also important differences between literature and history, science and art. As much as I would like to affirm the notions of more independence and emancipation in China, generally speaking, I cannot say that literature explicitly focuses on this. Huang Liang 咗ṕ says this as well, in his article in his mainland avant-garde poetry series. Literature does include personal observations of details that are usually not mentioned in official accounts. Yu Jian’s Ѣ ෙ poetry is independent because it is about ordinary daily life, however dependent the author may be on his official position, and the same can be said about a great many Chinese authors of the last 10 or 20 years, and indeed earlier.

Culture and Society Since 2000 In 2010, I wrote an article on Chinese literature since 2000 for the book Culturescapes China, which came out in Basel, Switzerland, in September 2010 (Schneider-Roos Thiedig 2010; see also Winter 2010; Winter 2011). I began with the situation of writers and intellectuals in China in spring 2010. Censorship is a word that was and is still very often connected with cultural activity in China. But there were hopeful signs, too. For the first time, there were major strikes in factories in the south. The emancipation of migrant workers showed signs of progress, with better working conditions and better pay. Although there had been major uprisings and crackdowns in 2008 and 2009, and despite huge swaths of China being cut off from reliable mobile phone signals and Internet access and even the word “civil society” being banned, informal citizen’s organisations continued to be formed. With the Twitter-like Weiboᖂम microblogs, a degree of public debate and awareness of citizen’s rights and spontaneous solidarity became as vibrant as ever. Ai Weiwei, China’s most famous dissident artist, was detained at a secret location. Many lawyers, writers and activists were silenced through various means, as the government feared a so-called Jasmine Revolution, modeled after the protests in Arab countries. Liu Xianbin ࡝ 䊶 ᭠ , co-founder of the Democratic Party in 1998, got another 10 years in a labor camp after signing Liu Xiaobo’s Charter 08. All this happened in the first half of

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2011. But at the same time, blogs and the Weibo microblogs continued to raise and debate sensitive topics, like the food scandals, housing bubbles and inflation, and corruption in various forms. It was on Weibo that people first heard about the imminent release of Ai Weiwei, after 81 days in captivity. After the tragic, high-speed train accident in Wenzhou ⑿Ꮂ in July, reports and debates in print and other media were at first largely tolerated, then suppressed. But the debate continued online.

Links and Traces Huang Liang 咗ṕ began his line of independence and emancipation in poetry in the 1960s. But independence and emancipation from what? From the established poetic language, which had dominated during the Cultural Revolution. Huang gives a few examples, full of pathos and violence. And then he begins to introduce important figures from the literary underground. There is Huang Xiang 咗㖨 from Guizhou, active since around 1960, at the time of the Great Leap Forward famine. He was often imprisoned and is now in exile. And there are the young poets who began to write during the Cultural Revolution, when they were sent to work in the remote countryside, indefinitely, as was originally planned. Shi Zhi 亳 ᣛ, Mang Ke 㡦‫ܟ‬, Duo Duo ໮໮, Bei Dao ࣫ዊ and others became the Jintian-circle, and are well known today. But Huang Liang begins with another young poet who was killed during the Cultural Revolution: Guo Shiying 䛁Ϫ㣅, son of Guo Moruo 䛁≿㢹. Guo Moruo had been a famous writer since the 1920s, and was the only prominent writer not persecuted during the Cultural Revolution, perhaps because he had exchanged poems with Mao. But two of his sons were killed. There is a small museum in Guo Moruo’s house in Beijing. The exhibition stresses the ideals of his youth, his studies abroad, enlightenment, national awakening, anti-fascism. There are numerous international ties. And then there are the broken family ties, likewise emphasised. Huang Liang quotes nonsense verse from Guo Shiying 䛁Ϫ㣅, a poem with a main character called Shitbucket Xiao fenkuang ᇣ㊲ㄤ (Huang 1999, 7) 8 . Actually, as Huang explains, Shitbucket makes sense. Guo probably had to clean toilets every day during his imprisonment. Ai Qing 㡒䴦, a famous Communist poet since the 1930s, father of Ai Weiwei, had

8 See also Huang’s blog at: http://blog.roodo.com/book686/archives/4078579.html (Accessed November 2011).

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to clean toilets every day for five years when Ai Weiwei was a small child and grew up in the remote regions to which his father had been banished. There are direct links between politics, history, economics and art, and there are indirect, maybe dialectical connections. It is hard to say if there is more independence, more emancipation in 2011, than in 2000. Yes and no. But there is certainly a continuing line of development, a more independent organisation emerging in various fields, and literature can still be a very important factor or indicator, even if at first it doesn’t provide very direct answers.

Bibliography Chen, Shuyu 䰜┅⏱. 2001. Xin Shiqi guanyu Luxun de ji ci zhenglun ᮄ ᯊᳳ݇Ѣ剕䖙ⱘ޴⃵ѝ䆎 (Several Debates on Lu Xun in the New Period). Accessed November, 2011. http://www.china.com.cn/chinese/RS/61103.htm Chan, Koonchung (Chen Guanzhong) 䱇 ‫ ݴ‬Ё . 2009. Shengshi – Zhongguo 2013 ⲯϪ——Ё೑ 2013 (The Fat Years). Oxford, Hong Kong: Oxford University Press ⠯⋹໻ᅌߎ⠜⼒. ––. 2011. The Fat Years. Translated by Michael S.Duke. Introduction by Julia Lovell. New York: Doubleday. Crevel, Maghiel van. 2003. The Poetry of Yan Jun. Ohio: MCLC Resource Center 2003. Accessed November, 2011. http://mclc.osu.edu/rc/pubs/yanjun.htm Crossley, Pamela. 2011. “China’s Century-Long Identity Crisis.” Wall Street Journal October 10. Accessed November, 2011. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020363310457662039 2640141836.html Fischer-Schreiber, Ingrid. 2012. Han Han über “Revolution”, “Demokratie”, “Freiheit”. Accessed January 2012. http://yingeli.net/2012/01/han-han-uber-revolution-demokratie-freiheit/ Han, Han 䶽ᆦ. 2011. Tan geming. Shuo Minzhu. Yao Ziyou. 䇜䴽ੑDŽ䇈 ⇥ЏDŽ㽕㞾⬅DŽ(Essays on Revolution, Democracy and Freedom). Published December 23–26, 2011 on the author’s Sina Weblog, http://blog.sina.com.cn/u/1191258123 (accessed Jan. 2012). He, Weifang 䊔㸯ᮍ. 2009. “Die schwierige Reform des Justizwesens in China.” Translated by Martin Winter. In Wie China debattiert. Neue Essays und Bilder aus China, edited by Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, 101–7. Berlin: Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung.

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Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, ed. 2009. Wie China debattiert. Neue Essays und Bilder aus China. Berlin: Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung. Huang, Liang 咗ṕ. 1999. Dixia de guangmai ഄϟⱘ‫ܝ‬㛜 (Underground ight-pulse). Taipei: Tangshan Chubanshe (Tonsan Publications). Huang, Liang 咗 ṕ . 1999. Dalu Xianfeng Shicong ໻ 䱌 ‫ ܜ‬䢦 䀽 শ (Mainland Avant-garde Poetry Series) 10 volumes. Taipei: Tangshan Chubanshe. Liao, Yiwu ᒪ Ѻ ℺ . 1989. Da Tusha ໻ ሴ ↎ (Massacre). Accessed December, 2011. http://leiden.dachs-archive.org/archive/leiden/poetry/ 20050301a/www.boxun.com/hero/liaoyw/90_1.shtml Lu, Yang 元㕞. 2002. Wo rengran wu fa shen zhi ៥ҡ✊᮴⊩⏅ⶹ (I Still Have No Way of Knowing), edited by Han Dong ᑈҷ䀽শ/䶧ᵅЏ㎼ Shijiangzhuang: Hebei Education Press. Murong, Xuecun ᜩᆍ䲾ᴥ. 2011. Ba guaiwu guan jin longzi li ᡞᗾ⠽䮰 䘆㈴ᄤ㺵 (Caging a Monster. Speech Given in Oslo). November 2011. Translated by Jane Weizhen Pan and Martin Merz. http://www.scribd.com/doc/73185074/Murong-Xuecun-Oslo-Speech Qin, Hui ⾺ᱝ. 2009. “30 Jahre Reform und Öffnung.” Translated by Martin Winter. In Wie China debattiert. Neue Essays und Bilder aus China, edited by Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, 53–63. Berlin: Heinrich-BöllStiftung. Schneider-Roos, Katharina, and Stefanie Thiedig, ed. 2010. Culturescapes China. Chinas Kulturszene ab 2000. Basel: Christoph Merian. Yan, Lianke 䮏䗷⾥. 2011. Sishu ಯ᳌ (Four Books). Taipei: Maitian. Yu, Hua ԭ㧃. 2011. Shige cihui li de Zhongguo क‫ן‬䀲ᔭ㺵ⱘЁ೟ (China in Ten Words). Taipei: Maitian Chuban. ––. 2011. China in Ten Words. Translated by Allan H. Barr. New York: Pantheon Books. Zheng, Xiaoqiong 䜁 ᇣ ⪞ . 2011. Bianyi de cunzhuang 䅞 ⭄ ⱘ ᴥ 㥞 (Variations on a Village). On the author’s Sina weblog. Accessed November, 2011. http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_45a57d300100m5ld.html

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Appendix A Excerpts from Variations on a Village (Bianyi de cunzhuang 䅞⭄ⱘᴥ㥞) by Zheng Xiaoqiong 䜁ᇣ⪞ (First of three parts. Original Chinese text on the author’s Sina weblog. Accessed November 2011. http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_45a57d300100m5ld.html) Variations on A Village by Zheng Xiaoqiong, 2008–2010 Wind and direction, hand and palm, or also you, him: Who is who, who am I? Oh, who is he? Where do you come from˛Where are you going? Oh, why did you come from there? Why are you going there? You are being forgotten, by tangled-up time. Oh, you are forgiven by tangled affairs of the world. They are surging, your restless desires, where will they take you, sometimes when the sunset brings truckloads of brilliance, a horse stands at the river and cries, in his dark grey eyes I am searching for silence; under his hooves this world of dust falling off with the last maple leaves, under his hooves this human world in a shadow; the last wind blowing through, dark grey mountains afar, a village in grey. a horse gone from home stands in this huge sunset, lowering his head; his hooves pounding away like winding peaks. […]

The first line of the poem contains two pronouns, “you” and “he” or “him”. “Wind and [its] direction, hand and palm, or also you, him/who is who, who am I? Oh, who is he?” These questions receive no direct answers in the three lengthy sections of the poem. There is no definite male character; there is no character with a name at all. There are factory workers, who immigrated from rural areas. There is a female cook, flirting with a guard in the canteen. And there is a horse that appears at various points, and which is an important image from the start of the poem. In the original, there are many occurences of “it”, always the same impersonal pronoun, the character for things and abstract entities, also used for animals. The pronunciation is the same as for “he” or “she”, because there used to be only one personal pronoun in classical Chinese. In German, I have to use “es”, the impersonal pronoun. In English, animals are often referred to in the male gender by default. So it would be natural to call the horse “he”, although later one could also speak of “it”. When I first encountered the horse, I thought of Mayakovsky and Nietzsche. The horse is a powerful image, a central character, close to the “I” in the poem. The

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whole poem is about alienation, the worker, the village, the countryside; they are all irreparably damaged, taken apart, rebuilt, alienated, strange. The speaker identifies with the horse, but as the poem goes on, it becomes unclear, at least to me, what each “it” is referring to. “I have become part of it”, I have to use “it” here, because it probably means the machine. Time tangled up in my eyes, all this time like a mountain surging from far away, like a galloping horse with a soul like mine, standing among us. Oh, wind brings the ruins of September. Agricultural wafts from the earth, like a panting white horse. This is the 21st century, machines all in grey, the lychee grooves felled. Falling down, house and home become rubble, and all the land, our earth burned by industrial flames towering up, oh the buildings, the factories, concrete, from the mud up to me, from machine arms to my own arms, corn leaves, rice sprouts. My muscles, bones, skin and hair become part of the machine, “a weak skinny rice field” has an unfitting ignorance, stretching out its pure white roots, seizing the feet of the industrial age. […]

The horse again, representing “agricultural wafts from the earth”, representing time. Time towering up like a mountain, and coming from far away towards now, towards the time of the speaker, “like a galloping horse/ with a soul like mine, standing among us.” I don’t know what the “ruins of September” refer to exactly, and also “a weak skinny rice field”. These could be quotes, probably from a literary work. I want to show you the original poem now, together with my translation. বᓖⱘᴥᑘ Variations on A Village by Zheng Xiaoqiong Part 1 亢Ϣ亢৥ˈ᠟Ϣ᠟ᥠˈ៪㗙ԴˈҪ Wind and direction, hand and palm, or also you, him: 䇕ᰃ䇕ˈ䇕জᰃ㞾Ꮕ˛ଞˈҪᰃ䇕˛ who is who, who am I? Oh, who is he? ԴҢા䞠ᴹ˛জ㽕ࠄ䞠এ˛ଞˈԴ Where do you come from˛Where are you going? Oh, why ЎҔМҢ䙷䞠ᴹ˛জЎԩ㽕ࠄ䙷䞠এ˛ have you come from there? Why are you going this way? Դℷ㹿ᡁ㒧ⱘᯊ䯈䘫ᖬˈଞˈԴ㹿

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Chapter Eight Tangled time is forgetting you now. Oh, you are ᡁ㒧ⱘϪџᆑᘩDŽᅗӀ偮ࡼϡᅝഄ forgiven by tangled affairs of the world. They are surging, ≍⍠ˈ℆ᳯᇚᏺԴএા䞠ˈ‫ي‬ᇨ᳝ your restless desires, where will they take you, sometimes when ᮹㨑䖤ᴹ⒵व䔺ӳ໻㗠䕝✠ⱘᯊߚ the sunset brings truckloads of brilliance キ೼⊇䖍㨑ⴔ⊾ⱘ偀ˈ៥Ңᅗ a horse stands at the river and cries, in his ♄ᱫⱘⴐ⼲䞠ᇏᡒᆖ䴭ˈ೼ᅗಯ䐘ϟ dark grey eyes I am searching for silence; under his hooves ᇬϪϢᵿ৊ϔ䍋㨑‫ˈܝ‬೼ᅗಯ䐘ϟ this world of dust falling off with the last maple leaves, under his hooves 㑶ᇬ‫ڣ‬Ҏ⫳ⱘ㓽ᕅˈ᳔ৢⱘ亢 this human world in a shadow, the last wind ਍ᢖⴔˈ♄ᱫⱘ䖰ቅˈ♄㩭㩭ⱘᇣ䬛 blowing through, dark grey mountains afar, a village in grey ϔऍ⾏ᆊⱘ偀Ԣϟ༈乙キ೼ᑲ໻ⱘ㨑᮹䞠 a horse gone from home stands in this huge sunset, lowering his head ᅗⱘ䐘䷇‫ڣ‬㕸ቅϔḋ䘊䖸 his hooves pounding away like winding peaks

This is the first quotation above. You may have noticed the “truckloads of brilliance”. This is a difficult phrase. “Sometimes the sunset brings full truckloads, this hour of greatness and splendor/ a horse stands at the river and cries, in his/ dark grey eyes I am searching for silence; under his hooves/ (…)” ᮹㨑䖤ᴹ⒵व䔺ӳ໻㗠䕝✠ⱘᯊߚ/ キ೼⊇䖍㨑ⴔ⊾ⱘ 偀ˈ៥Ңᅗ/ ♄ᱫⱘⴐ⼲䞠ᇏᡒᆖ䴭ˈ೼ᅗಯ䐘ϟ/ Perhaps you noticed the rhyme in the original. The last syllable of the first line could be said to rhyme with the fourth syllable of the second line, ߚ “fen” of ᯊߚ “shifen” ((allotted) time, hour) with 䖍 “bian” of ⊇䖍 “hebian” (river bank). And the syllable before the comma, 偀 “ma” (horse) rhymes with the last syllable of this verse, ᅗ “ta” (it), as well with the last syllable of the following line, ϟ “xia” (under). Truckloads or maybe only one full truckload brought in by the sunset, this occasional splendor. Here are a few more lines, with English and German translation: in meinen Augen verdreht sich die Zeit, soviel Zeit wie ein Berg ៥ⱘⴐ⼲䞠ᡁ㒧ᯊ䯈ˈ䙷М໮ᯊ䯈‫ڣ‬ϔᑻቅ time tangled up in my eyes, all this time like a mountain aus der Ferne her treibt, wie ein rennendes Pferd Ң䖰ᮍ≍⍠䖛ᴹˈᅗӀ‫ڣ‬ϔऍ༨偄ⱘ偀

Chinese Literature since 2000 comes surging from far away, like a galloping horse mit einer Seele wie meine, und steht zwischen uns. ᅗ᳝ⴔϔ乫੠៥ϔḋⱘᖗ♉ˈᅗキ೼៥ӀПЁ with a soul like mine, standing among us. Ah, der Wind bringt Verfall im September. Von der Erde die Dünste der Ernte ଞˈ᳝亢ᏺᴹб᳜ⱘ⅟䋹DŽᴹ㞾໻ഄⱘ‫ݰ‬Ϯ⇨ᙃ Oh, wind brings the ruins of September. Agricultural wafts from the earth wie ein schnaubender Schimmel. Die grauen Maschinen ᳝བⱑ偀⌧䚕ⱘ੐਌DŽ䖭ᰃѠकϔϪ㑾 like a panting white horse. This is the 21st century, im einundzwanzigsten Jahrhundert, die gefällten Litschi-Haine, 䖭ᰃ♄㩭㩭ⱘᴎ఼ˈ㹿ⷡӤⱘ㤨ᵱᵫ machines all in grey, the lychee grooves felled die Höfe, verwandelt in Schutt, und die Erde ist eine Ruine. ᅗӀ‫צ‬ϟᴹˈᒁ䰶࣪ⴔ⪺⸒ˈ໻ഄⱘᑳ๳ they are still falling down, house and home become rubble, and all the land, Die weite Erde, verbrannt und verkohlt, aufgetürmt, ah 䖑䯨ⱘ໻ഄ㹿ᎹϮⱘ☿✄⚻⚸ˈ൦⿃ˈଞ our earth burned by industrial flames towering up, oh Gebäude, Fabriken, Beton, vom Lehm bis zu mir, ὐ㕸ˈᎹॖˈ⏋‫ޱ‬ೳˈҢ⊹ೳࠄ៥ˈ the buildings, the factories, concrete, from the mud up to me, von Maschinenarmen zu meinen Armen, Maisblätter, Reiskeime. Ңᴎ఼ⱘ᠟㞖ࠄ៥ⱘ᠟㞖ˈ⥝㉇৊ˈ∈』㢫 from machine arms to my own arms, corn leaves, rice sprouts. Meine Muskeln, Knochen, Haut und Haare sind in den Maschinen. ៥ⱘ㙠㙝ˈ偼㛇ˈⲂ↯䛑៤њᴎ఼ⱘϔ䚼ߚ My muscles, bones, skin and hair become part of the machine, “Ein mageres Reisfeld”, es hat eine unpassende Dummheit, streckt seine “ϔഫ⯺ᔅⱘ』⬄”᳝ⴔϡড়䗖ᅰⱘᛮ㷶ˈᅗԌߎ “a weak skinny rice field” has an unfitting ignorance, stretching out weißen Wurzelfäden aus, will die Füße der Industriezeit umschlingen 㒃ⱑⱘḍ㋏ˈᛇᦾԣᎹϮᯊҷⱘ㛮 its pure white roots, grabbing the feet of the industrial age. da sind noch so viele diamantene Seelen. Es ist meins 䖬᳝ϔ乫乫䪏⷇㠀ⱘᖗ♉ˈᅗᰃ៥ⱘ And there are still so many souls like diamonds, it is mine und so steht es dort betend in seinem Verhängnis, ᅗ䖬キ೼⫳⅏᳝ᳳⱘੑ䖤Ё⼜⽋ⴔ standing there praying doomed to life or death es streicht der Wind der Industrie, ich halte es nicht mehr aus ᎹϮⱘ亢਍ᢖⴔˈ៥Ꮖᖡ᮴ৃᖡଞ

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Chapter Eight in the winds of industry, I can't take much more soviele nostalgische Seelen, die warten und fluchen 䙷М໮乫ᗔᮻⱘᖗ೼ㄝᕙ៪㗙䆙੦ҔМ so many nostalgic souls waiting or cursing im Stehen, ich bin schon in ihm, キⴔⱘᯊ‫ˈ׭‬ԴᏆ៤Ўᅗⱘϔ䚼ߚ standing up, I have become a part of him im Benzingeruch den der Wind bringt im Krach der Maschinen 亢䗕ᴹ≑⊍ੇ੠ᴎ఼ⱘ䕄号 the scent of petrol in the wind and the roar of machines was für eine Landschaft was für eine Handlung ҔМḋⱘ᱃‫៪ڣ‬㗙ҔМḋⱘᚙ㡖 what kind of sight is this what kind of story wird uns das Heute, das wir verfluchen, noch ein ersehntes Gestern? ៥Ӏ䆙偖ⱘҞ໽ӮϡӮ៤Ў៥Ӏᗔᗉⱘ᯼໽ we are cursing today, could today become yesterday, something to yearn for? Ah, Landarbeit vormittags, in der Industrie am Nachmittag, was ist der Unterschied? ଞˈϞजⱘ‫ݰ‬ϮϢϟजⱘᎹϮ᳝ҔМᏂᓖ Oh, farm work till noon and the afternoon industry, what is the difference? Von dieser weiten Erde, die doch die Mühe der Menschen belohnt, bleibt nur 䖭佅ᇱҎ㉏䕯䝌ⱘ໻ഄଞˈা࠽ϟ“б᳜䭓ઑ Mother Earth who awards the toil of mankind, what is left of her, “moaning “das lange vergebliche Stöhnen im September”, es ertränkt sich noch in seinen Tränen; ᅗ⊾∈᮴ܼ”ˈᅗ⫼㞾Ꮕⱘ⊾∈⏍≵㞾Ꮕ in September, crying for nothing”, drowning herself in her tears ah, deinen Schmerz kann ich nicht mehr verstehen, oder Schluchzen ଞˈ៥Ꮖ᮴⊩‫ⶹݡ‬䘧ԴⱘᚆӸˈ៪㗙ુ⊷ Oh, I have no way of knowing your sadness or weeping im Stahlbeton, ah, sei still ೼∈⊹䩶ㄟⱘ⏅໘ˈଞˈ䇋ᅝ䴭 inside the concrete and steel, oh, be still auf dem Wasser, deine schwarze Figur ೼∈ⱘ䬰䴶ЁˈԴ咥㡆ⱘ㚠ᕅ your black figure reflected on water ist ein glitzerndes rennendes Pferd, das seinen Schatten hinterlässt auf der Maschine. ᳝བ‫ܝ‬҂ⱘ偀ℷ䎥䖛ˈᅗ೼ᴎৄ⬭ϟ䰈ᕅ like a shimmering horse running by, leaving its shadow on the machine.

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Appendix B Lu Yang 2002: Absolute Poems (1), “I know these written words below”, from Wo rengran wu fa shen zhi ៥ҡ✊᮴⊩⏅ⶹ (I Still Have No Way of Knowing), Shijiangzhuang: Hebei Education Press, 79–84. 剕㕞, 㒱ᇍП䆫 ˄㄀ϔ˅ ៥ⶹ䘧བϟⱘ䖭ѯ᭛ᄫ ᰃ㽕䗣䖛ᇬ඗৥៥ᰒ⼎ ሑㅵ䖭ѯ᭛ᄫ䖬ϡᄬ೼ ៪㗙䇈ᅗӀᇮ᳾ᄬ೼Ѣ ϔϾӫҎⱚⶹⱘϪ⬠Ё ৃ៥ⶹ䘧ᇬ඗ⶹ䘧ᇬ඗ ᅗ㩭㽚៥Ӏ৲ీњ ៥Ӏܼԧⱘ䑿ᕅ ⹂ᅲᏆ᳝गᑈ ҹ㟇Ҏ䯈ⱘϔߛ䖤䕀 䙁ফඟ≵㗠ϡ㞾㾝 䙁ফ⮯㢺㗠ϡ䄺䝦 䙁ফ㞾ℎ੠ℎ偫 䙁ফᵕ⏅ⱘӸᆇ ᔧϔߛ䖤䕀㹿ᗑ⬹ 㹿ᖬѢ㛥ৢ㹿԰Ўᡯᓗ⠽ ៥ህⶹ䘧ᇬ඗ ϡҙᰃⶹ䘧 㗠Ϩᰃ㹿ਞⶹ জᰃਞⶹ㗙ᇍ៥Ӏ᮴⾕ⱘᦤᨎ I know these written words below must go through dust to show themselves. Although these words don’t yet exist, don’t yet exist in our world for me and you and all to share. But I know dust I know the dust, it covers up it swallows us a thousand yearsˈ and all our formsˈ among the people every turn is buried, no-one is aware. Subject to pain and yet not warned, subject to cheating, self-deceit.

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Chapter Eight Subject to deepest injury, when every turn is overlooked is well ignored and counts for trash. I know the dust. It’s not just knowledge, I’ve been told by those who told us, selfless aid 䖭ᘤᗩㅫᕫϞ༛䗍 䖭᮴⭥ᰃ༛䗍њ৻ 㗠៥Ң᳾㽕∖ ԰Ўᄽᄤ԰Ўᄽᄤⱘᄽᄤ ៥াᰃᛳࠄ⮯㢺 ៉✊Ⳍᩲ 䙷М໻ⱘ䰉㧹 䙷М໮ⱘ䙷М໻ⱘ ⅟ᖡⱘ啓䕂ⳌѦ࣒䖲 ϔࠏгϡᬒᵒ ϔࠏгϡ‫ذ‬ℛ ᳝ᯊ៥ⳟ㾕ᅗӀবᤶⱘ㸼ᚙ⌕䴆ᳳᕙ ᅗӀ↣Ͼ䚼ߚᴑ䋹㗠‫ޠ‬х ✊㗠㒧ড়䍋ᴹњ ᵘ៤ߥ‫៪ ݋‬ᰃ ≭⓴䙷ḋᑓ໻᮴ḍ㗠♐⛁ⱘ⽁യ ᳳᕙ⥯䲙࢛຿ ϔḋ♐⛁ⱘ‫ݙ‬㛣 ੠᳿ҷ೑⥟Ңᆍಯ乒ⱘ ༈乙 ৃ៥Ң᳾㽕∖ ৃ៥া㾝⮯㢺 Ԍߎঠ᠟៥Ң᳾㽕∖ that must be called a miracle. A miracle it doubless is and I have never made demands not as a child, child of a child. I just feel pain from helpless crashes of such large camps, so many big and cruel cogwheels connecting and never relaxing and never a break.

Chinese Literature since 2000 At times I see expectation lurking in restless expressions. They’re rotten all over, in total disorder but then put together to make up a rack. Or maybe an altar a desert all rootless and scorching, expecting Mayan warriors, their entrails in a ritual, the last of the kings in a calm look around from his head. But I never demanded but I only felt pain stretching out my hands I never demanded া㾝⮯㢺 ᨛ᪐њϔϾ᳝♉儖ⱘ⫳⠽ ᵱ৊㣖ⲯ ḍ乏ᩩᮁ ϔϾ⫳⠽ ϔỉᷥ ‫ݡ‬䰡Ԣѯ৻ ៥ⱘ໽ ᡞ៥ҢᏆ᳝ⱘᑻԡϞ ᥔ㗏᥼‫ݡצ‬㫥㾚৻ 䅀བᇚ䙁⑗♁ⱘӏԩϔϾ ៥ᰃ䇈ӏԩϔϾ ᅗজᇚབԩ Ԍߎⱘᣛᥠ੉ 䙷チ࡯৥ࠡ੠৥ϞԌߎⱘᣛᥠ 㴋᳆㗠乸ᡪ བ䙁产亢ⱘᷥⱘᵱ৊ ៪ᰃӏԩϔϾ⫳ੑ ▦⅏ⱘ㾺乏 Ԍ৥Դ Ԍ৥ 㮣Ѣ঺ϔ䖍੠঺ϔ䴶ⱘ໽ූ ੠ഄ⣅ Ԍ৥Դ㗠ϡ㛑㾺ᩌԴ ϔ⾡‫ہ‬䍞ⱘࡾ࡯ I only feel pain shaking a living thing to the soul with leaves and branches flourishing with roots cut off. A living thing. A stem, a tree. Or let us go a little lower.

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Chapter Eight Oh my god. Now push me from the seat I had, push me down, despise me. Like anyone who is destroyed I say like any one of them and how it will the hand the finger outstretched upwards curl up and tremble like leaves and branches in a storm or any living thing dying, stretching feelers towards you. Towards a heaven on another face, another side, or hell. To you, unable to touch you. A force that oversteps its bounds ড৥ഄࠎこњ㞾Ꮕ ࠎこњ ∌೎ПⳒ ࠎこњ䑿ϢᖗП䯈⠶ϡৃ⸈ⱘᡸ㝰ҹঞ ϔߛ⦡䌉ⱘ㰮མ ✊ৢህᰃℸᯊℸࠏњ ᮴乏䖕⿏ 䑿໘݊Ё ད↨∌Ϫⱘ䲒乬 ড໡ഄ㞾៥⣰⌟ ᳔ৢ⋲ᙝⱘ ᰃ㹿∌ᘦ䘫ᖬⱘ ᰃ೼䗔㓽П䗨∌ᘦᤎ䖯ⱘ 㞾Ꮕ 㗠ℸᯊℸࠏ ҆⠅ⱘ 㚂㛣ⱘ ᏺ᳝Ꮌ໻啓䕂П⏅⮩ⱘ ߊ⅟ⱘᴔ♁㗙 ༛཭ⱘ㗏㽚㗙 ϔߛ♒䲒ⱘথ⑤ഄ ҆⠅ⱘ 㗠ℸᯊℸࠏ៥ᛇԴ ៥ᰃབℸ⮯㢺ഄֵ䌪 䖰⾏ᇬϪग䞠П໪ ៪ᰃ ⏅ܹ┰㮣݊Ё and gores itself. And stabs the everlasting shield. Stabs the unbreakable membrane

Chinese Literature since 2000 between the body and the soul, every precious delusion. And then it is exactly now no need to transfer it. You are right in the middle. It is an eternal problem, always guessing at yourself you arrive at what has always been forgotten, pressing forth on the road of retreat, at yourself. At exactly this moment – my darling – filthy, with deep marks from those huge cogwheels, the cruel destroyer; the agent of wonderful change, the root of all catastrophes my darling. And at this moment I miss you so painfully trusting so far from the world of dust removed. Or hidden deeply inside. ៥㽕᮹໡ϔ᮹ഄ⣀㞾キゟ ‫خ‬ϔϾ㛚ᔅ㗠⏙ᳫⱘᷛᖫ ད䅽Դ‫✊ي‬ড乒ⱘ䙷ϔ໽ ᔧᲭ㡆ᖂᯢⱘᯊ‫׭‬ ेৃ⹂䅸 ेৃ⃷✊থ⦄ ៥᳒ᗢḋഄ⸈⹢ ៥জᗢḋⱘֱܼ ೼⸈⹢ⱘ⸈⹢ⱘⶀ䯈 ϔߛᰃᗢḋ䖙᥋ഄ‫⫳ݡ‬ ֱܼѢ‫⫳ݡ‬ 䰽⍝Ѣᅠ㕢 Դⳟ䙷ᰃҔМ೼䈕✊⸈㺖 䙷ᰃҔМ 䙷ᰃҔМ⸈㺖 ᇘᴹϔᴳ‫ܝ‬㡦 ᇬ඗㉦㉦ৃ᭄ 亘✊㗠䘢 ㌖おᰃ‫ܝ‬㡦ᕲ䙷⸈㺖П㰩Ⲹᮟ㗠ܹ ᰃ᭛ᄫⲸᮟ㗠ߎ 㹿✻㗔 㹿䙂᥽⫮៪ 㹿᥽ඟ ✊㗠⸈㺖Ⳉ㟇⸈⹢ⱘ⠽ક៪⫳ੑ

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Chapter Eight 㽾ᛯⱘ I will stand alone day after day and be a clear sign, however weak To let you remember, once in a while It is not quite dawn but you are sure you discover with delight How I broke into pieces How I was preserved at the break of the breaking How everything is born again Recycled, preserved Endangered and perfect Now look what is cracking apart What is it? What kind of breaking Shooting rays of light. You can count each speck of dust Floating by. In the end the light at the crack circles and enters. The writing emerges, circling Illuminated. Concealed, even Buried. But the matter or life broken to pieces My darling ℷᰃ‫ܝ‬㡦丬ᛣ䘆ܹⱘ ᚳϔจ᠔ ᅗ✻㽟亘✊㗠䘢ⱘ้඗ ੠݊Ҫ้඗ ✊ᕠ ೼᭛ᄫⲸᮟ㗠ߎⱘ᮹ᄤ㺵 ⑪⺎⛵䁸ഄ ‫⓴ދ‬ഄ ✻㽟⸈⹢ⱘ⠽ક੠⸈⹢㗠ֱܼⱘ⫳ੑ ✻㽟៥ is the only spot where the light wants to enter. It shines on dust floating by and other dust and then in the days of the writing emerging in circles exactly, detachedly: Shines on the cracked stuff, the life, broken, preservedShines on me. MW Tr. December 2011

FROM MODERN TO CONTEMPORARY PROSE

CHAPTER NINE THE MOON AS A SYMBOL AND CENTRAL MOTIF IN LU XUN’S SHORT STORIES TINA ILGO

Introduction Lu Xun’s 剕䖙 short stories from the collections Call to Arms ਤ୞ (Nahan) and Wandering ᕋᕼ (Panghuang), the subject of this analysis, emerged in a transitional period in China in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. During this period China was torn between internal political and social conflicts and the external threat of Western and Japanese imperialism. At that time, the process of the demolition of the traditional Chinese identity and the search for a new, modern identity began. China found itself in a kind of social and cultural vacuum, the consequences of which are strongly reflected in the literary works of modern Chinese literature, which was finally elevated from the theoretical to the practical level by Lu Xun and his first modern Chinese short story A Madman’s Diary ⢖Ҏ᮹䆄 (Kuangren riji), published in New Youth ᮄ䴦 ᑈ (Xin qiangnian) in 1918. Mao Zedong’s ↯⋑ϰ canonisation of Lu Xun as a national hero, fearless revolutionary fighter and writer, created a distorted image of this literary genius. Simply situating Lu Xun’s literary work in the realm of realism, social realism, or critical realism has hindered recognition of the artistic value of his literary achievements. In the abstract of the article “Lu Xun and Modernism/Postmodernism”, Ming Dong Gu points to the fact that “the scholarly consensus that Lu Xun is a master of critical realism remains unchanged” (Gu 2008, 29). Some European, American and Chinese sinologists, such as Jaroslav Pršek, Marián Gálik, Berta Krebsová, Leo Ou-fan Lee, Douwe W. Fokkema, Patric Hanan and others, have paved the way for an alternative approach to studying Lu Xun’s literary legacy. Pršek pointed to a strong subjective undertone that pervades Lu Xun’s works, and argued that this

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subjectivism, combined with the lyrical elements inherited from classical Chinese literary tradition, represents the essence of Lu Xun’s short stories (Pršek 1980). Krebsová also refers to the influence of classical literature, which may have contributed to the inclusion of allusion, allegory and symbols in the short stories (Eber 1985, 271). Leo Ou-fan Lee characterised the narrative structure of Lu Xun’s short stories as symbolic narration (Lee 1987, 65). Gálik, Fokkema, and Hanan highlighted the important influence of Russian writers on Lu Xun (Gálik 1986, 19–41; Fokkema 1977, 89–101; Hanan 2004, 217–50). I was encouraged by the findings of these sinologists to examine Lu Xun’s short story opus as a whole from the symbolic point of view. The result of my long-term research is a novel classification of the symbolic elements in Lu Xun’s short stories focusing upon the moon symbol as one of the central symbolic elements1. Due to the specific reception of Western literary trends in China and the strong influence of Chinese tradition, mythology, and symbolism on Lu Xun’s short stories, they are extremely difficult to situate in any of the major Western literary trends. For this reason, it is also inappropriate to place them in the realm of critical realism. Lu Xun’s short stories are neither merely an objective depiction of the then social reality, nor are they only a critique of this reality. Rather, they are imbued with a subjectivism typical of modern Chinese literature (Pršek 1980). They contain autobiographical, psychological and strong symbolic elements deriving from Chinese tradition, as well as from Lu Xun’s childhood memories, a personal and collective unconscious, colonial discourses and the contemporary social reality. The symbolic elements that connect the stories into a meaningful whole represent the essence of Lu Xun’s writing. I believe that they are primarily derived from the classical Chinese tradition, but through artistic transformation Lu Xun successfully connects them with the contemporary context. Viewed from this perspective, the creation of the modern Chinese identity is closely linked to Chinese tradition and the preservation of those positive elements within it which are specifically Chinese and not ideologically conditioned. Lu Xun’s iconoclasm was not as radical and absolute as it seems, but was instead quite thoughtful. It focused only on those elements of the 1

According to my classification, the symbolic elements in Lu Xun’s short stories are divided into central elements (the iron room, cannibalism, beheading, madness, and the moon symbol) and latent symbolism (expressed in body language, body mutilation and illness, animalistic elements, personal and proper names, and colours).

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traditional social and political system which have hampered China’s progress, not on the very essence of ancient Chinese traditions, which can contribute positively to building a new modern Chinese identity, while also acting as a connecting element and mirror. Studying Lu Xun’s short stories in this perspective provides a view of Lu Xun’s literary legacy that is neither ideological nor limited in time or space. The most important characteristic upon which to focus when studying Lu Xun’s works is their timelessness, which is to a great extent achieved through the use of symbolic elements. It is precisely for this reason that a further study of his works, aimed at confirming Lu Xun as the founder of symbolic realism in China, is of paramount importance.

From the Classical Chinese Literary Legacy to “Mara poetry” and Russian Neo-realism Despite the fact that Lu Xun is the undisputed paragon of modern Chinese literature and, as such, embodies the very essence of the modern Chinese intellectual who, with his whole being, firmly rejected tradition, we must not forget Lu Xun was a typical representative of the “inbetween” intellectuals (Lyell 1976, 304) who received a classical Chinese as well as a modern education. We could say that although he was constantly torn between tradition and modernity, between East and West, at the same time, and precisely because of his in-betweeness, his literary creations represent a bridge between these two extremes. In Leo Ou-fan Lee’s opinion, “Lu Xun came to look at the totality of traditional Chinese culture from a radically new perspective” (Lee 1985, 4). As Lin Yü-sheng has convincingly shown, Lu Xun’s iconoclasm was more complex than that of most of his colleagues at Xin Qingnian (New Youth); the many levels of his consciousness made him a less totalistic thinker and a far more profound writer. (…) In short, Lu Xun’s art is grounded in a cultural consciousness that goes beyond pure estheticism (or, for that matter, pure ideological antitraditionalism). (Lee 1985, 4–5)

Like Pršek, Lee believes that: Lu Xun, through his family background and education, essentially inherited the two elitist genres of classical Chinese literature: poetry and prose. But he reworked both their style and content so creatively that he transformed the old genres into glittering new forms (Lee 1985, 5).

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Notwithstanding the fact that foreign literature represented a crucial source of inspiration for Lu Xun’s works, we must not overlook the impact of classical Chinese literature on Lu Xun. In his study of traditional fiction he focused his attention primarily on literary works from the Tang and preTang period (Lee 1985, 6). In these works he found a mythic and imaginative realm unfettered by Confucian moralism. Lu Xun’s preference for these tales is also in line with his notion that the true source of literature and art lies in ancient myths and fables, and with his interest in popular drama and superstitions. (…) Though the writing of fiction was an intellectual and ideological rebellion against the mainstream tradition, which upheld prose and poetry, Lu Xun’s basic style nevertheless shows his debt to the past. (Lee 1985, 6)

As Fokkema has pointed out (1977, 91), Lu Xun’s flirtation with Western writers clearly shows that he was not very interested in realism as the art of objective reality. In his most romantically-oriented essay On the Power of Mara Poetry ᨽ㔫䆫࡯䇈 (Moluo shi li shuo), written in 1908, he presented romantic writers such as Byron, Shelley, Pushkin, Lermontov, Mickiewicz, Slowacki, and Petfi as exemplary warriors of the spirit. The European writers that fascinated Lu Xun were not sworn realists. Gogol falls somewhere on the border between romanticism and realism. In his short stories, realistic as well as grotesque and fantastic elements appear (Lah 1994, 36). The same applies to the great Polish writer Sienkiewicz, who is still on the confines of romanticism (Lah 1944, 52), while Ibsen passed from the romantic, through the realistic and naturalistic, to a neo-romantic or symbolic phase (Lah 1994, 63). Leonid Andreyev, who I believe had the greatest impact on Lu Xun, is generally read by literary critics as a writer who continued the psychological realism of Dostoyevsky, and yet he was also an advocate of decadence and symbolism (Lah 1994, 159–60), psychological symbolism (Lee 1987, 23), and neo-realism (White 2006, 6). Lu Xun’s short stories also reflect the influence of Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in which the German philosopher proved that he was “an outstanding word carpenter in the field of lyrical (poetic) prose” (Lah 1994, 120). At the outset, when Chinese intellectuals were first becoming familiar with European literature, they were translating romantic, realistic and later naturalistic literary works, where strongly symbolically coloured literature also had its place. The boundaries between different literary trends known to the West were sometimes blurred. At the same time, and notwithstanding the iconoclasm of the May Fourth era, the influence of Chinese tradition

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can still be felt in modern Chinese literary works. For this reason, it is very difficult to place Lu Xun’s short stories into one of the major Western literary trends, such as realism, social realism or even critical realism. In his contribution Lu Xun: the Impact of Russian Literature, Fokkema states that “the objective representation of social reality was not a value that inspired Lu Xun” (Fokkema 1977, 91). I believe that the symbolic elements in Lu Xun’s short stories reveal the author’s innermost feelings, his view of the then Chinese reality and his expectations and fears concerning the future of China. One of the central symbolic elements which frequently appears throughout his whole short story opus is the ancient moon symbol.

The Moon as an Ancient Symbol The moon symbol has always had a remarkable significance for all human cultures and societies. The Moon is the well-spring of countless myths, legends and cults, providing such goddesses as Isis, Ishtar, Artemis, Diana, or Hecate with its image, and is a cosmic symbol throughout every age, from time immemorial to the present, and common in every culture. (Chevalier and Gheerbrant 1994, 673)

While there are differences in the specific interpretations of the moon symbol, in general they have much in common. The moon symbolises dependence, the female principle; it is a symbol of life-rhythms, renewal, rebirth, as well as temporality (expressed by the moon phases), transformation, change, growth, fertility, indirect cognition (Chevalier and Gheerbrant 1994, 669–73), enlightenment as well as insanity (Lee 1987, 54). In China, as in many other cultures2, the moon ᳜ (yue) is associated with the female principle 䰈 (yin), and the moon goddess Heng E ࿂࿹ (later Chang E Ⴚ࿹) is female. The Chinese believe that the moon is most beautiful in the autumn (Eberhard 1986, 193). The Chinese Mid-Autumn 2

Exceptions are, for example, the Ge Indians from central and northeastern Brazil, where the moon was a male divinity and had no kinship with the sun (Chevalier and Gheerbrant 2006, 329). According to Chevalier and Gheerbrant, in most nomadic societies the sun is female and the moon is male (Chevalier and Gheerbrant 2006, 949).

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festival Ё ⾟ 㡖 (Zhongqiu jie), also known as the Moon festival, is celebrated on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month, which occurs in September or early October in the Gregorian calendar. However, autumn in China is also the time when, in accordance with a “dying” Nature, executions are carried out and “for this reason, the moon was sometimes linked with the execution of criminals” (Eberhard 1986, 193). The moon also symbolises fertility. According to the ancient Chinese belief, “the ‘Moon-blossom’ or ‘Moon-pearl’ falls from time to time to earth, and any woman who swallows it becomes pregnant” (Eberhard 1986, 193). The full moon in addition symbolises “an attractive female posterior” (Eberhard 1986, 193). The lunar cult is not as developed as that of the sun, however individual written records clearly demonstrate that in contrast to the sun, which represents the essence of yang and is frequently linked to a bird, the moon represents the essence of yin and is often linked to a toad. (Vampelj Suhadolnik 2006, 79)

In Chinese mythology, the presence of a toad inside the moon is linked to the moon goddess Chang E, who was the wife of the archer Houyi ৢ㖓, also called Yiyi ་㖓. She stole the elixir of immortality given to her husband by the Queen Mother of the West 㽓⥟↡ (Xi Wangmu) and fled to the moon, where she was punished by being metamorphosed into a toad. Chang E is said to represent the “essence of the moon” (Birrell 1993, 145). The motif by itself denotes the concept of immortality, symbolised by the Queen Mother of the West and her elixir of eternal life. Furthermore, immortality is also revealed by the metamorphosing cycle of the toad sloughing off its skin and its apparent rebirth. In iconography, a toad is frequently depicted with a hare, picking up medicinal herbs and pounding them in a mortar, and with a gui Ḗ tree, a cassia tree, which also symbolises eternal life. (Vampelj Suhadolnik 2006, 79–80)

In this way, the moon also symbolises the essence of human life, accompanied by its many vicissitudes. The emergence of the moon in Lu Xun’s short stories is associated with enlightenment, and therefore with the waxing moon, while the phase of the moon’s decline or its absence is a bad omen and predicts the protagonist’s fall. However, the moon remains invariably a symbol of hope, as it always reappears.

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The Symbolic Meaning of the Moon in Classical Chinese Poetry The moon symbol in Lu Xun’s stories is closely linked with the symbolic meaning of the moon in the classical Chinese poetic tradition, where the moon often symbolises enlightenment. Maja Lavra explains the meaning of the moon symbol in the poem The Bamboo Grove ネ䞠佚 (Zhu li guan) from the Tang ૤ dynasty period, written by Wang Wei ⥟㓈 : This feeling of connection of the human spirit with nature further intensifies the symbolic image of the moon, which here alludes to the poet’s spiritual enlightenment (…) At night, the moon or moonlight is namely that source of light which enlightens the dark void of the sky, i.e. the darkness into which human consciousness never breaks through and is unable to comprehend. (Lavra 1998, 169)

In classical Chinese poetry, the moon also symbolises the bond between friends or lovers who are physically separated, but connected by the moon at which they gaze. The moon also offers some kind of consolation to rejected lovers, as in Li Bai’s ᴢ ⱑ poem Jade Stairs Complaint ⥝䰊ᗼ (Yujie yuan), in which, as Maja Lavra explains, a dejected courtesan who has lost the emperor’s affection consoles herself and expresses her desire to be reunited with her lover by gazing at the autumn moon. Li Bai’s famous poem Drinking Alone under the Moon3 ᳜ ϟ⣀䜠 (Yue xia du zhuo) reveals the extraordinary importance of the moon symbol in the classical Chinese poetic tradition. It pictures the moon and the shadow as the poet’s sole companions, whose friendship is stronger and deeper than the friendship known to mortals; it is a friendship that “will outshine all earthly love” (Li 2006, 109).

3

Translated also as Drinking Alone by Moonlight, Drinking Alone in Moonlight, Three with the Moon and his Shadow, Amongst the Flowers is a Pot of Wine, Drinking Alone with the Moon, etc.

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Interpretations of the Moon Symbol in Lu Xun’s Short Stories A Madman’s Diary In Lu Xun’s short stories, the moon as a symbol plays a very important role, due either to the author’s conscious inclusion of this symbol in his literary world or, on the contrary, an unconscious recourse to it. In A Madman’s Diary the villagers proclaim Lu Xun’s protagonist to be insane, consistently using the term fengzi ⮃ᄤ (lunatic, madman), whereas the madman when talking about himself consistently uses the term kuangren ⢖Ҏ (madman, maniac, an extremely arrogant person). Hence, we can argue that the term kuangren is linked with the positive image of a genius, whereas the term fengzi is linked with the negative image of an insane person, a distinction which applies to other stories as well. 4 The moon symbol, which is a key symbol in the story A Madman’s Diary, combines both aspects of the term madman. In this way, the author satisfies both the reader who understands the story as a realistic narrative of a man who suffers from a persecution complex, as well as the reader who sees through the veil of mental disorder and uncovers symbolic meanings. In the first paragraph of the madman’s diary we read: Ҟ໽ᰮϞˈᕜདⱘ᳜‫ܝ‬DŽ ៥ϡ㾕ҪˈᏆᰃϝक໮ᑈ˗Ҟ໽㾕њˈ㊒ ⼲ߚ໪⠑ᖿDŽᠡⶹ䘧ҹࠡⱘϝक໮ᑈˈܼᰃথᯣ… (Lu 2000a, 20) Tonight the moon is very bright. I have not seen it for over thirty years, so today when I saw it I felt in unusually high spirits. I begin to realise that during the past thirty-odd years I have been in the dark (…). (Lu 2003, 40)

The image of the moon, as Lee has pointed out, “gives rise symbolically to a double meaning of both lunacy (in its Western connotation) and enlightenment (in its Chinese etymological implication)” (Lee 1987, 54). If understood in the light of the latter, the image of the moon testifies that for thirty years the madman had been shutting his eyes to reality (i.e. the society and culture of which he is a part, and to “cannibalistic” human nature). Now, upon finally recognising the truth, he feels renewed. The full moon enables us to see in the dark, and in the case 4

E.g. Medicine 㥃 (Yao) and The Lamp that was Kept Alight 䭓ᯢ♃ (Chang ming deng), where the two protagonists, a revolutionary and a “warrior” against traditional superstition, are both labelled insane in the eyes of the villagers (society). Lu Xun uses the term fengzi in both cases.

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of a madman it enables him to see the truth despite the “darkness” that surrounds him––the hierarchical nightmare that lurks behind the depraved Confucian morality. The moon is connected to the feminine principle, and is therefore closely linked with “dreams and the Unconscious as the properties of darkness” (Chevalier and Gheerbrant 2006, 331). However, as Chevalier and Gheerbrant point out, the Moon’s light is only a reflection of the Sun’s. The Sun therefore represents “immediate, intuitive knowledge, and the Moon rational and speculative knowledge acquired by reflection” (Chevalier and Gheerbrant 1994, 947). The madman, as we read in the story, learned of the “cannibalistic” social reality by studying Chinese history. The realisation that he was living in a world full of maneaters was thus not an instant recognition, but rather a gradual and progressive one. We could say that his intuitive knowledge was confirmed by a rational knowledge acquired through reflection. Tambling suggests that given the moon’s connection with the female principle, we could read the moon symbol “as a sign of femininity, perhaps that of the diarist” (Tambling 2007, 30). Women have a very important role in Lu Xun’s stories. Despite their traditional subordinated position and their being inevitably trapped in the so-called “circle of Confucian double moral standards”, they are tireless combatants for life and the truth, and often braver than men. 5 We could say that it is his feminine nature that enables the madman to intuitively become aware of the truth. But as in Li Bai’s poem Drinking Alone under the Moon, the moon is the madman’s sole companion and his only consolation. Through the moon symbol and the contrast of light and darkness, Lu Xun takes the reader on the madman’s and his own inner journey from enlightenment to insanity, from light to darkness, from hope to despair. The madman’s initial awareness gradually turns into an “iron room”. Trapped within the four walls of his study, he is robbed of light, freedom, and hope. Both moon and sun have “disappeared”.

Absence of the Moon––A Bad Omen In A Madman’s Diary, by applying the moon symbol Lu Xun progressively takes the protagonist from enlightenment to his entrapment in the “iron room”. In the first part of the diary we read: “Ҟ໽ᰮϞˈᕜད ⱘ᳜‫ܝ‬.” (Lu 2000a, 20) “Tonight the moon is very bright.” (Lu 2000a, 5 E.g. Little Shuan’s mother, Xia Yu’s mother, Bao’er’s mother, Xianlin’s Wife, A Shun, Mrs. Siming, Zijun, Aigu.

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21) In the second we read: “Ҟ໽ܼ≵᳜‫ˈܝ‬៥ⶹ䘧ϡ཭DŽ” (Lu 2000a, 20) “Tonight there is no moon at all, I know that this is a bad omen.” (Lu 2000a, 21) In the third part the madman’s agony intensifies: “ᰮϞᘏᰃⴵ ϡⴔDŽ” (Lu 2000a, 22) “I can’t sleep at night.” (Lu 2000a, 23), whereas in the sixth part, light turns into complete darkness: “咥ⓚⓚⱘˈϡⶹᰃ ᮹ᰃ໰DŽ” (Lu 2000a, 34) “Pitch dark. I don’t know whether it is day or night.” (Lu 2000a, 35) In the eleventh part, the awakened individual is totally robbed of his voice and freedom: “໾䰇гϡߎˈӀгϡᓔ…” (Lu 2000a, 48) “The sun has stopped shining, the door never opens.” (Lu 2000a, 49) In the eighth chapter of The True Story of Ah Q 䰓4ℷӴ (Ah Q zheng zhuan), while the protagonist is secretly observing the Zhao 䍉 family being robbed, by employing the motif of the moon Lu Xun warns the reader of the misfortune that is about to come upon Ah Q in the next chapter, “The Grand Finale”, when he is shot in front of the crowd: “䖭ϔ ໰≵᳝᳜ˈ᳾ᑘ೼咥ᱫ䞠ᕜᆖ䴭ˈᆖ䴭ࠄ‫ڣ‬㖆ⱛᯊ‫׭‬ϔ㠀໾ᑇ” (Lu 2000c, 130) “There was no moon that night, and Weizhuang was very still in the pitch darkness, as quiet as in the peaceful days of Emperor Fu Xi.” (Lu 2000c, 131) In the first paragraph of the short story Medicine 㥃 , through the symbols of the moon and the sun Lu Xun reveals the situation in China at the end of the 19th and dawning of the 20th century. “⾟໽ⱘৢञ໰ˈ᳜ ҂ϟএњˈ໾䰇䖬≵᳝ߎˈা࠽ϟϔ⠛Р㪱ⱘ໽˗䰸њ໰␌ⱘϰ㽓ˈ ҔМ䛑ⴵⴔDŽ” (Lu 2000a, 68) “It was autumn, in the small hours of the morning. The moon had gone down, but the sun had not yet risen, and the sky appeared a sheet of darkling blue. Apart from night-prowlers, all was asleep.” (Lu 2000a, 68) The absence of both primary heavenly bodies, which symbolise enlightenment and new beginnings, rational and intuitive knowledge, alludes to the social and cultural vacuum. The dark blue sky that extends to “infinity” symbolises the indefinite and uncertain future, and expresses the author’s pessimism, as blue symbolises misfortune in Chinese tradition (Eberhard 1983, 42).

An Idyllic Childhood Expressed through Three Interrelated Symbols in My Old Home In My Old Home ᬙе (Guxiang), Lu Xun expresses the opposition between childhood and adulthood, and between a simple and an aristocratic way of life, as exemplary instances of the opposition between

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freedom and entrapment. He depicts childhood as an idyllic time, which seems almost unreal. The story is also highly autobiographical. At the beginning, the narrator (Lu Xun), now a grown man, returns to his hometown where he plans to sell his family property and move his family to the city. Pervaded by a kind of dreariness, which clings to a man when he grows up and becomes aware of the numerous fetters that stifle him, his hometown seems gloomy as well. The narrator’s mother mentions that his childhood friend Runtu 䯄ೳ was inquiring after him. This remark takes the narrator into the past. 䖭ᯊ‫ˈ׭‬៥ⱘ㛥䞠ᗑ✊䮾ߎϔᐙ⼲ᓖⱘ೒⬏ᴹ˖⏅㪱ⱘ໽ぎЁᣖⴔϔ 䕂䞥咘ⱘ೚᳜ˈϟ䴶ᰃ⍋䖍ⱘ≭ഄˈ䛑⾡ⴔϔᳯ᮴䰙ⱘ⹻㓓ⱘ㽓⪰ˈ ݊䯈᳝ϔϾकϔѠቕⱘᇥᑈˈ乍ᏺ䫊೜ˈ᠟ᤣϔᶘ䩶ঝˈ৥ϔऍ⤍ሑ ࡯ⱘࠎএˈ䙷⤍ैᇚ䑿ϔᡁˈডҢҪⱘ㛃ϟ䗗䍄њDŽ (Lu 2000a, 170) At this point a strange picture suddenly flashed into my mind: a golden moon suspended in a deep blue sky and beneath it the seashore, planted as far as the eye could see with jade-green watermelons, while in their midst a boy of eleven or twelve, wearing a silver necklet and grasping a steel pitchfork in his hand, was thrusting with all his might at a zha which dodged the blow and escaped through his legs. (Lu 2000a, 171)6

The narrator remembers how Runtu, the son of a peasant who when there was much work to do, helped the wealthy Zhou ਼ family, invited him to spend the summer at his home. ‘…Դ໣໽ࠄ៥Ӏ䖭䞠ᴹDŽ៥Ӏ᮹䞠ࠄ⍋䖍Ẕ䋱໇এˈ㑶ⱘ㓓ⱘ䛑᳝ ˈ儐㾕ᗩг᳝ˈ㾖䷇᠟г᳝DŽᰮϞ៥੠⠍ㅵ㽓⪰এˈԴгএDŽ’ […] ៥㋴ϡⶹ䘧໽ϟ᳝䖭䆌໮ᮄ剰џ˖⍋䖍᳝བ䆌Ѩ㡆ⱘ䋱໇˗㽓⪰᳝䖭 ḋॅ䰽ⱘ㒣ग़ˈ៥‫ࠡܜ‬ऩⶹ䘧Ҫ೼∈ᵰᑫ䞠ߎप㔶њDŽ (Lu 2000a, 174, 176) “…you must come to our place in summer. In the daytime we will go to the seashore to look for shells, there are green ones and red ones, besides ‘scare-devil’ shells and Buddha’s hands. In the evening, when Dad and I go to see to the watermelons, you shall come too.” (...) I had never known that all these strange things existed: at the seashore were shells all the colours of the rainbow; watermelons had such a dangerous history, yet all I

6

They had last seen each other thirty years before. This recalls the protagonist of A Madman’s Diary, who after thirty years “saw” the full moon again. He thus first saw it as a child, then again as a grown man when he was already resigned to his fate, and is finally (re)enlightened and becomes aware of his actual situation.

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This idyllic childhood, when social differences were unnoticed and irrelevant, which enables Runtu (a simple farmer’s son) and the narrator (a member of an aristocratic family) to form a true friendship, is expressed by means of three interrelated symbols: watermelon, shell, and the moon. It is no coincidence that all three symbols relate to fertility. The idyllic image of the boy Runtu, who is pure, innocent and free, is shown in conjunction with the watermelon plantation, full moon, and brightly coloured shells. The watermelon is, like the pomegranate (Eberhard 1983, 240), a symbol of fertility, because of its many seeds. Shells conjure up the waters in which they are formed and share the fertility symbolism which belongs to WATER. In shape and depth they are reminiscent of the female sexual organs7 (…) Shells are linked to the idea of death, in the sense that the prosperity which they symbolise for individuals or for generations of individuals stems from the death of the earlier occupant of the shell, the death of the preceding generation. (Chevalier and Gheerbrant 1994, 871)

Chinese “peasant calendars tell us that mussels are only full when the moon is full: with the new moon they are empty” (Eberhard 1983, 201). According to ancient Chinese myths, they offer shelter to birds like swallows and sparrows (Eberhard 1983, 201), just as the moon offers consolation to man. All three symbols––watermelon, shell, and moon–– when taken together represent a fruitful childhood period, which is eventually “condemned to death”. The moon, with its phases, illustrates birth, death and rebirth, just as the cockle does by changing the occupant of its shell, reminding us that the death of one generation offers shelter and life to the next. In Lu Xun’s story, rebirth is illustrated through the friendship between Runtu’s sun, Shuisheng ∈ ⫳ , and the narrator’s nephew, Hong’er ᅣ‫ܓ‬. But this ideal image of childhood during the transition into adulthood loses all meaning and evaporates. Dashed on the surface are the social differences between old friends, which rear a thick, unbreachable wall between the narrator and Runtu. The hardships of peasant life, aggravated by high taxes, have completely changed Runtu. His playful facial expression has been replaced by a look of indifference, 7 In some parts of Asia (e.g. Korea, Japan, Taiwan) mussels also signify female genitalia (Eberhard 1983, 201).

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apathy and fatalism. The narrator as well as Runtu are both looking forward to seeing each other again, but they are unable to overcome the differences of which they are now conscious. Runtu addresses the narrator as “master” and obliges his son to bow to him. “៥ԐТᠧњϔϾᆦస˗ ៥ህⶹ䘧ˈ៥ӀП䯈Ꮖ㒣䱨њϔሖৃᚆⱘ८䱰ຕњDŽ៥г䇈ϡߎ䆱DŽ ” (Lu 2000a, 186) “I felt a shiver run through me; for I knew then what a lamentably thick wall had grown up between us. Yet I could not say anything.” (Lu 2000a, 187) But that wall had already existed from the very start, when the two friends first met, only they did not see it then, and it therefore did not separate them. 䰓ʽ䯄ೳⱘᖗ䞠᳝᮴か᮴ሑⱘᏠ༛ⱘџˈ䛑ᰃ៥ᕔᐌⱘ᳟ট᠔ϡⶹ䘧 ⱘDŽҪӀϡⶹ䘧ϔѯџˈ䯄ೳ೼⍋䖍ᯊˈҪӀ䛑੠៥ϔḋাⳟ㾕䰶ᄤ 䞠催๭Ϟⱘಯ㾦ⱘ໽ぎDŽ(Lu 2000a, 176–78) Runtu’s mind was a treasure-house of such strange lore, all of it outside the ken of my former friends. They were ignorant of all these things and, while Runtu lived by the sea, they like me could see only the four corners of the sky above the high courtyard wall. (Lu 2000a, 177 and 179)

As in the story Soap 㙹ⱖ (Feizao), where both the young female beggar as well as Siming ಯ䫁 are bound by the shackles of tradition, Runtu and the narrator are also surrounded by a wall, reminiscent of an iron room. At the end of the story, the narrator realises that hope is a form of selfdelusion, a kind of superstition, just like the domestic altar worshiped by Runtu. Hope does not exist, and can be conceived only in relation to the idyllic image of childhood, to which Lu Xun returns, through the symbol of the full moon, at the end of the story. ៥೼ᳺ㚻Ёˈⴐࠡሩᓔϔ⠛⍋䖍⹻㓓ⱘ≭ഄᴹˈϞ䴶⏅㪱ⱘ໽ぎЁᣖ ⴔϔ䕂䞥咘ⱘ೚᳜DŽ៥ᛇ˖Ꮰᳯᰃᴀ᮴᠔䇧᳝ˈ᮴᠔䇧᮴ⱘDŽ” (Lu 2000a, 196) As I dozed, a stretch of jade-green seashore spread itself before my eyes, and above a round golden moon hung from a deep blue sky. I thought: hope cannot be said to exist, nor can it be said not to exist. (Lu 2000a, 197)

We find the answer to the question “What is hope?” in Lu Xun’s poem Hope Ꮰᳯ (Xiwang) from his prose poem collection Wild Grass 䞢㤝 (Yecao). ᏠᳯᰃҔМ˛ᰃတཧ˖

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Chapter Nine ཌྷᇍ䇕䛑㲞ᚥˈᇚϔߛ䛑⤂㒭˗ ᕙԴ⡎⡆њᵕ໮ⱘᅱ䋱—— Դⱘ䴦᯹——ཌྷህᓗᥝԴDŽ(Petfi; in Lu 2003, 35) What is hope? A prostitute! Alluring to all, she gives herself to all, Until you have sacrificed a priceless treasure – Your youth – then she forsakes you. (Petfi; in Lu 2003, 34)

An idyllic childhood, connected to the moon symbol, is also brilliantly depicted in the story Village Opera ⼒៣ (Shexi), where Lu Xun frequently uses the motif of moonlight to conjure up a mystic “lyrical landscape”, e.g.: ៥ⱘᕜ䞡ⱘᖗᗑ㗠䕏ᵒњˈ䑿ԧгԐТ㟦ሩࠄ䇈ϡߎⱘ໻DŽϔߎ䮼ˈ ֓ᳯ㾕᳜ϟⱘᑇḹ‫ⴔ⊞ݙ‬ϔাⱑ㇋ⱘ㟾㠍… (Lu 2000a, 426) My heart after being so heavy was suddenly light, and I felt as though floating on air. Once outside, I saw in the moonlight a ferry-boat with a white awning moored at the bridge. (Lu 2000a, 427)

The White Light In the story The White Light ⱑ‫( ܝ‬Bai guang), the moon finds its most frequent use as a symbol. Contrary to the madman in A Madman’s Diary, Chen Shicehg 䰜຿៤ is a man who longs for an official title and the privileges it provides. The greatest advantage of his newly acquired status is that he will be able to safely suppress all the “bastards” with a lower title, and simple people. After his sixteenth failure at the county examination, Chen Shicheng finally loses his mind. The moon in the story symbolises the protagonist’s insanity, while also indicating a possible path towards a recognition of the truth. Under the influence of strong moonlight, Shicheng begins to dig up a supposed family treasure. ԚҞ໽䪕ⱘ‫ܝ‬㔽ԣњ䰜຿៤ˈজ䕃䕃ⱘᴹࡱҪњˈҪ៪㗙‫ي‬ϔ䖳⭥ˈ ֓㒭Ҫℷ㒣ⱘ䆕ᯢˈজࡴϞ䰈Ểⱘ‫ڀ‬䘐ˈՓҪϡᕫϡজ৥㞾Ꮕⱘ᠓䞠 䕀䖛ⴐ‫ܝ‬এDŽ (Lu 2000a, 374) But this iron light enfolding him today was gently persuasive. And when Chen Shicheng hesitated, the serious proofs it brought forward, backed up by some covert pressure, compelled him to cast his eyes towards his own room again. (Lu 2000a, 375)

Instead of treasure, Shicheg discovers a human jaw-bone, which testifies to the fact that the treasure does not exist––that human history is

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only a history of cannibalistic feasts. His fruitless hunting of the white light, which in the first case turns out to be an old dark chamber, and in the second, merely yellow sand, symbolises illusion. The riddle, ostensibly pointing him to the place where the treasure is buried, testifies to the fact that the treasure does not exist, that it is only a self-delusion, which enables the preservation of the status quo. “Ꮊᔃেᔃˈࠡ䍄ৢ䍄ˈ䞣䞥 䞣䫊ϡ䆎᭫DŽ” (Lu 2000a, 374) “Left turn, right turn, forward, back! Gold and silver by the sack!” (Lu 2000a, 375) The human jaw-bone which he finally digs up does not provide him with knowledge about the real nature of things, i.e. cannibalistic human nature. Since the protagonist is unwilling to give up his illusion, he ultimately loses his mind. Shicheng is therefore unable to read the signs given him by the moon. Following the guidance of a human jaw-bone, he sets out for the mountains, where he believes he will find the treasure. The white light, which symbolises Chen Shicheng’s illusion, leads the protagonist to death.

The Full Moon as a Jade Disc in the Story Soap In the story Soap a Confucian gentleman, Siming, while recounting an incident to his wife and children, is apparently shocked by the inappropriate and immoral comment made by one of his colleagues concerning a young female beggar. 䰓থˈԴϡ㽕ⳟᕫ䖭䋻㡆㛣DŽԴা㽕এфϸഫ㙹ⱖᴹˈઃᬃઃᬃ䘡䑿 ⋫ϔ⋫ˈདᕫᕜઽʽ (Lu 2000b, 128) Afa! Don’t be put off by the dirt on this piece of goods. If you buy two cakes of soap and give her a good scrubbing, the result won’t be bad at all! (Lu 2000b, 129)

Here, the thick veneer of Confucian morality conceals a lustful old man who secretly nurtures sexual fantasies. However, Siming is not prepared to ruin his reputation on account of a beggar. In order to partially satisfy his fantasy, he therefore transfers it onto someone more accessible than the young beggar––his wife. He buys Mrs. Siming a piece of soap which he gives to her as a present, but also mentions the young beggar three times, praising her (moral) chastity. Mrs. Siming immediately discerns the reality behind her husband’s kind gesture. ᗢМϡⳌᑆ˛Դᰃ⡍䆮ф㒭ᄱཇⱘˈԴઃᬃઃᬃⱘএ⋫এDŽ៥ϡ䜡ˈ ៥ϡ㽕ˈ៥гϡ㽕⊒ᄱཇⱘ‫ܝ‬DŽ (Lu 2000b, 136)

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Chapter Nine There’s a connection all right. You bought it specially for the filial daughter; so go and give her a good scrubbing. I don’t deserve it. I don’t want it. I don’t want to share her glory. (Lu 2000b, 137)

Lu Xun shows women to be intuitive, honest and sincere, in unmasking false Confucian morality. In the conversation with her husband, Mrs. Siming reveals herself to be very receptive. Her response to her husband’s description of a young beggar girl indicates her capacity for psychological insights that enables her to realise the true nature of her husband’s interest in the filial daughter. By stating that she “doesn’t want to share her glory”, Mrs. Siming may indicate that she does not want to be in her position, i.e. that of a passive sexual object for men. ៥ӀཇҎᗢМḋ˛៥ӀཇҎˈ↨ԴӀ⬋Ҏདᕫ໮DŽԴӀ⬋Ҏϡᰃ偖क ܿбቕⱘཇᄺ⫳ˈህᰃ⿄䌲कܿбቕⱘཇ䅼佁˖䛑ϡᰃҔМདᖗᗱDŽ ‘ઃᬃઃᬃ’ˈㅔⳈᰃϡ㽕㜌ʽ (Lu 2000b, 136) What about us women? We women are much better than you men. If you men aren’t cursing eighteen-or nineteen-year-old girl students, you’re praising eighteen-or nineteen-year-old girl beggars: such dirty minds you have! Scrubbing, indeed!—Disgusting! (Lu 2000b, 137)

Before Siming is able to defend himself against his wife’s accusations by making up some feeble excuses and blaming his behaviour on others, the conversation is interrupted by He Daotong’s ԩ䘧㒳 and Bu Weiyan’s र㭛ು arrival. Siming’s companions are also enthusiastic Confucians, who came to consult their friend about the title of the eighteenth essay and poem contest of the Moral Rearmament Literary League. It is no coincidence that Daotong’s name includes the Chinese character for tradition Ӵ㒳 (chuantong), while the name Weiyuan is composed of the character 㭛 (wei), defined in ancient books as the common vetch8, and garden ು (yuan). The two characters in combination allude to a garden full of toxic weeds, which symbolises tradition. Perverted “old fools” behind the mask of outmoded tradition discuss the revival of moral values. Despite his wife’s remonstrances, Siming is still greatly impressed by the young beggar girl and argues that the title of the poem should be “The Filial Daughter”. He believes that the beggar girl, who is “full of love and respect for older people”, should be publicly commended. Bu Weiyuan initially disagrees with the suggestion and we learn that he, in fact, 8 Weeds with a bean-like fruit that if consumed in large quantities is toxic for humans.

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“knows” the beggar well. He informs his friends that the girl is a stranger, that he had tried to talk to her but they could not understand each other. Daotong is no less innocent, for he immediately understands the meaning of “a good scrubbing” and finds it very amusing. The only one of these “virtuous” Confucians that still does not have the courage to unmask himself, is Siming. He persuades his colleagues to confirm the theme that he has suggested and even convinces them that they should be the ones to propose the title to the editorial board. Siming thus proposes they should publicly praise the female beggar, for whom all of these seemingly “virtuous” gentleman have more or less overt sexual desires. This young beggar girl has been reduced to a life of hopeless misery by the traditional social system. She must obey men and respect the will of her parents. If she found the courage to resist, she would be barred from any active social participation by the traditional code, and be unable to obtain an education. Due to her vulnerability, she has become a sexual object for old lechers who hide behind the mask of Confucian virtue and morality, but in fact only want women who are obedient, dependent, needy and uneducated. The young beggar can neither read nor write, does not have short hair and would probably offer no resistance to any sexual advance. She is, in fact, the ideal object for abuse. Mr. Siming nevertheless tries very hard to suppress his sexual fantasies, and even succeeds to some extent, on a rational level. Unconsciously, however, his desire only grows, as is brilliantly expressed through the moon symbol at the end of the story. In order to avoid his wife and children, who only increase his sense of guilt, Siming retreats to the yard. When all are asleep, a suppressed desire rises from Siming’s subconscious mind. Ҫⳟ㾕ϔഄ᳜‫ˈܝ‬ӓԯ⒵䫎њ᮴㓱ⱘⱑ㒅ˈ⥝ⲬԐⱘ᳜҂⦄೼ⱑѥ䯈 ˈⳟϡߎϔ⚍㔎DŽҪᕜ᳝ѯᚆӸˈԐТг‫ڣ‬ᄱཇϔḋˈ៤њ‘᮴ਞП ⇥’ᄸ㢺䳊ϕњDŽҪ䖭ϔ໰ⴵᕫ䴲ᐌᰮDŽ (Lu 2000b, 146) The moonlight on the ground was like seamless white gauze, and the moon—quite full—seemed a jade disc among the bright clouds. (Lu 2000b, 147)

As noted, a full moon in the Chinese tradition, inter alia, symbolises an attractive woman’s buttocks, fertility and the female principle. The reference to jade enhances this sexual allusion, for the Chinese compare natural jade, which is cool to the touch, to the skin of a beautiful woman

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(Eberhard 1983, 153). Jade symbolises purity and innocence, the greatest womanly virtues according to Chinese tradition. “Playing with jade” (nong yu) is a metaphor for sexual intercourse: “handling jade” (pin yu) means cunnilingus. “Jade sap” (yu-jiang) is a woman’s saliva, “jade-fluid” is semen or vaginal secretions, the “jade gate” or “jade wall” is the vulva, the “jade stem” is the penis. A young girl has a “jade bearing” and “jade legs”, and her breasts are as firm as “warm jade”. (Eberhard 1983, 153)

These terms are all related to sexuality and sexual attraction. Through the combined symbols of moon and jade, Lu Xun reveals Siming’s true feelings and his human nature, which is incompatible with the abstract ideals of traditional values and norms. Just as the young female beggar is caught in traditional chains, and as a woman is unable to live freely, so too Mr. Siming, despite his material well-being and social-status, is trapped in the shackles of Confucianism, which prevent him from freeing himself and expressing his desires. Both the beggar and Siming are trapped in an “iron house”. As William A. Lyell points out: “He may be a hypocrite, but not a conscious one” (Lyell 1976, 158). However, Lyell describes this as one of Lu Xun’s most optimistic stories (Lyell 1976, 159). Siming’s wife, instead of condemning her husband for not respecting traditional morals, decides to indulge his sexual fantasies. She uses her new soap regularly, and when it is finished, she buys some more (Lyell 1976, 159). Lu’s message seems to be that ignoring one’s own desires eventually leads to ignoring truth and reality in order to preserve appearances and the status quo. This leads to a loss of love and sincerity––values that, according to Lu Xun, were the ones most lacking in the Chinese society of his time.

Conclusion Yellow (the colour of the moon), which symbolises the earth and the female principle, appears after blue (which holds us in awe) and red (which mediates between sky and earth) have vanished and thus, according to Rosenberg, it connotes consolation (Rosenberg 1987, 62–63). The full moon in Lu Xun’s stories symbolises enlightenment as well as insanity, but also offers a form of consolation to the “lost”, despairing and distressed protagonists. It generally appears either at the beginning or at the end of a story, and expresses the general mood. The absence of the

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moon foretells something negative (e.g. A Madman’s Diary, The True Story of Ah Q, Medicine), while its presence fills the characters with hope, enlightens and comforts them, or tries to respond to their dilemma through secret signs (e.g. My Old Home, A Madman’s Diary, The Misanthrope, Soap). The moon, which together with the iron house, cannibalism, beheading, and madness, represents one of the central symbols in Lu Xun’s short stories, is rooted in Chinese tradition and, as Chevalier and Gheerbrant point out, has always been a cosmic symbol in all eras and in all cultures. The lunar symbol is an immensely powerful one, and thus most suitable for poetic expression and the more lyrical forms of prose. In Neuman’s view, creative expression reflects not only the individual, but also the archetypal, which is perdurable and imperishable (Neumann 2001, 47). Personally, I believe that the symbolic elements to which Lu Xun constantly resorted in his writings are an important instrument that contributes to making his literary legacy timeless and appealing to readers everywhere.

Bibliography Birrell, Anna. 1993. Chinese Mythology: An Introduction. Baltimore, London: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Chevalier, Jean, and Alain Gheerbrant. 1994. A Dictionary of Symbols. Oxford, Cambridge (Massachusetts): Blackwell. ––. 2006. Slovar simbolov (Dictionnarie des symbols). Ljubljana: Mladinska knjiga. Eber, Irene. 1985. “The Reception of Lu Xun in Europe and America: The Politics of Popularisation and Scholarship.” In Lu Xun and His Legacy, edited by Leo Ou-fan Lee, 242–73. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. Eberhard, Wolfram. 1986. A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols: Hidden Symbols in Chinese Life and Thought. London, New York: Routledge. Fokkema, Douwe. 1977. “Lu Xun: The Impact of Russian Literature.” In Modern Chinese Literature in the May Fourth Era, edited by Merle Goldman, 89–101. Cambridge, Massachusetts, London: Harvard University Press. Gálik, Marián. 1986. “Lu Hsün’s Call to Arms: Creative Confrontation with Garshin, Andreev and Nietzsche.” In Milestones in Sino-Western Literary Confrontation (1898–1979), edited by Marián Gálik, 19–41. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.

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Hanan, Patrick. 2004. “The Technique of Lu Xun’s Fiction.” In Chinese Fiction of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, 217–50. New York: Columbia University Press. Lah, Andrijan. 1994. Pregled književnosti III: Od zaþetkov realizma do konca nove romantike. Ljubljana: Založba Rokus. Lavra, Maja. 1999. Onkraj belih oblakov: daoistiþna in budistiþna simbolika v poeziji kitajskega pesnika Wang Weija. Maribor: Obzorja. Lee, Leo Ou-fan. 1985. “Tradition and Modernity in the Writings of Lu Xun.” In Lu Xun and His Legacy, edited by Leo Ou-fan Lee, 3–31. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. ––. 1987. Voices from the Iron House. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Li, Bai ᴢⱑ. 2006. “Li Bai ᴢⱑ.” Translated by Xu Yuanchong. In Tang shi san bai shou ૤䆫ϝⱒ佪 (300 Tang Poems), edited by Yang Muzhi ᴼ⠻П, 82–129. Bejing: Higher Education Press. Lyell, William A. (1976). Lu Hsün’s Vision of Reality. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lu, Xun 剕䖙. 2000a. Nahan ਤ୞ (Call to Arms). Translated by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang. Beijing: Waiwen chuban she. ––. 2000b. Panghuang ᕋᕼ (Wandering). Translated by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang. Beijing: Waiwen chuban she. ––. 2000c. Ah Q zhengzhuan 䰓 Q ℷ Ӵ (The True Story of Ah Q). Translated by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang. Beijing: Waiwen chuban she. ––. 2003. Yecao 䞢 㤝 (Wild Grass). Translated by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press. Ming, Dong Gu. 2008. “Lu Xun and Modernism/Postmodernism.” Modern Language Quarterly 69(1): 29–44. Neumann, Erich. 2001. Ustvarjalni þlovek. Ljubljana: Študentska založba. Pršek, Jaroslav. 1980. The Lyrical and the Epic: Studies of Modern Chinese Literature. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Rosenberg, Alfons. 1987. Odkrivajmo simbole: Prasimboli in njihovo spreminjanje. Celje: Mohorjeva družba. Tambling, Jeremy. 2007. Madmen and Other Survivors. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Vampelj Suhadolnik, Nataša. 2006. “Mythological and Religious Aspects of Early Chinese Cosmology.” In Asian and African Studies 10(3): 67– 84.

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CHAPTER TEN CHINA EIGHTY YEARS AGO IN A FORGOTTEN ANTHOLOGY OF SHORT FICTION HO SHUN-YEE

While history provides chronological accounts of what happened in the past, allowing those who read them to interpret and unravel their meaning, literature viewed in its historical context offers valuable insights into the actual lives of men and women. It reveals the essence of an epoch. For example, Tang poetry reflects the vicissitudes of the Tang dynasty (618– 907) and fiction in 19th century Europe reflects the social and economic changes that took place after the Industrial Revolution. And while literature cannot be equated with history, insightful literary works may serve as quasi-historical accounts that supplement and enrich mainstream history by providing details of people’s lives and emotions that would otherwise be overlooked. This paper uses an anthology of short stories entitled Ten Years (henceforth the Anthology) as an exemplary case to explore the observations made by the authors of these stories, and the voices of the people which they express in literary form, in order to illustrate the views and responses of modern Chinese intellectuals, i.e. the writers, to the events of their time. The Anthology was published by Kaiming Bookstore in Shanghai in December 1936. Although reprinted in 1984, few studies have cited it, let alone attempted to analyse it. This lack of attention may be due to the closure of the bookstore, or simply the limited circulation of the original volume. 1 The collection is unique in that it epitomises the historical period from which it emerged in at least three respects. First, the book was published to mark the 10th anniversary (1926–1936) of the

1

Most books published by Kaiming Bookstore are out-of-print. To date, no criticism of the Anthology has appeared in Mainland China, Taiwan, or Hong Kong.

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Kaiming Bookstore, a well-respected bookseller of the time.2 Second, the book marks the second decade of New Literature, which had developed significantly since Hu Shi (1891–1962) first advocated the use of vernacular Chinese literature in 1917. Hsia claims that this decade (1928– 1937) represents “the richest literary period in modern China; fiction especially made major strides forward” (1999, 139). In this sense, The Anthology may rightly be considered as an epitome of modern Chinese short fiction. Third, the Anthology appeared at the end of the “Nanjing Decade” (1927–1937) of the Nationalist government. Scholars who supported the Nationalist Party viewed this period as one of “political tutelage in a golden decade” (Chen 2007, 115; Sih 1970, 26), while Communist Party supporters considered it merely a stage in the proletarian revolution (Wang 2004, 93). In other words, the Anthology is not simply another anniversary publication by a well-known bookstore, but an expression of the ethos of an extraordinary “ten years”––both for modern Chinese literature and modern Chinese politics. Due to limitations of space, this paper will not evaluate the artistic merits of the Anthology, but will instead focus on illustrating the reality of the epoch and the writers’ reflections through a detailed analysis of the stories it contains.

Introduction to the Anthology Ten Years is a rich and representative collection of short fiction (see Appendix for the titles and authors of the 26 stories). It includes many of the established (e.g. Xia Mianzun, Mao Dun, Ye Shengtao, and Wang Tongzhao) as well as emerging writers (e.g. Xiao Jun, Duanmu Hongliang, Lu Fen, and Xiao Qian) of the period, with the notable exception of Lu Xun (1881–1936) who died before its publication. The genre of the Anthology is fiction, which represents a relatively mature literary form as compared with modern Chinese poetry and drama. As Xia Mianzun declares in the preface to the Anthology: “From its very first year of its founding, publishing the new genre of fiction has been Kaiming’s main aim. All agree that Kaiming has published an important series of modern works of fiction. This recognition is an honor that Kaiming must strive to maintain. We therefore invited modern writers to write a single short work to commemorate Kaiming, in order to provide a survey of modern Chinese 2

Kaiming was known for its open-mindedness and rigorous editing, and was very influential socially, culturally, and in education. For details, see Zhou 2009 and Zhongguo Chuban Gongzuozhe Xiehui 1985.

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fiction. Although we cannot capture the whole of the modern fiction of the last two decades, we can least give some idea of what has been done. And this is the value of the present collection” (1936, i). In adhering to the spirit of this initiative, the writers involved took the opportunity to use a well-developed narrative method in order to illustrate contemporary life and society. All 26 stories in the Anthology are in a realist style. Since the late Qing Dynasty, intellectuals had been eager to strengthen their country and further its prosperity by rectifying corrupt practices. New Literature had pursued these goals from the very outset. For example, Zhou Zuoren’s (1885-1967) Humane Literature (1918) advocated that literature should confront life seriously and foster morality. In the 1920s, The Literary Association (wenxue yanjiu hui) advocated the notion of “art for life’s sake.” This line of humanitarian thought had a significant influence on the vision of modern writers, who sought to criticise the evils of society and uphold man’s dignity. This vision can be traced to such 19th century European realist writers as Balzac (1799–1850), Flaubert (1821–1880) and Zola (1840–1902), who stressed using objective methodology and rationality in order to portray the reality of people’s daily lives and historical events. Clearly, the act of writing is influenced by the individual writer’s personal feelings and artistic skill, so “absolute objectivity” is difficult to achieve. Realist writers nonetheless strive to express their feelings based on their observations of society, in order to reveal the truth that lies beneath social problems. Their courage in speaking out for the underprivileged and dispossessed is one of the most praiseworthy aspects of this approach. In literary terms, virtually all 26 stories use a plain, direct style to express their realistic themes. Although realism is not comparable to romanticism and modernism in terms of artistic insight and creativity, it is still capable of producing a very high quality of art. In Ten Years, the very negative behaviour of the characters is caricatured in stories #9 and #13. A modernist Kafkaesque style can be seen at the beginning of story #14, where an employee with an inferiority complex imagines himself becoming a giant. Even after waking from his dream, “he still believes he has the titanic body of his dream” (81). In story #6, the author uses suspense: the protagonist wonders how his old classmates can support poverty and danger (actually they participate in the clandestine activities of the Communist Party). Their unusual behaviour leads him to reflect on his own life, which has been built upon an illusory sense of calm and security. In story #23, a child’s home in Manchuria is sequestered by the

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invading Japanese and he is forced to move to a shabby home in Beijing, the overcrowding and poverty of which is constantly compared with the spaciousness of the child’s pastoral hometown. Although the piece is written in the third person, the author often expresses nostalgia from the child’s innocent perspective, soliciting the reader’s empathy. Stories #3 and #15 enter into the consciousness of the main characters. The former describes the trials and hardships of a common soldier, while the latter portrays a corrupt government official’s suspicious and cunning mind during a journey. Both works reveal their themes by describing the characters’ subjective thoughts and feelings. And while all the aforesaid stories deploy a variety of artistic devices, other pieces in the Anthology, use a more direct language in describing characters and settings. While the style may be less refined, realism certainly has a literary value. Taking 19th century European novels as a paradigm, Auerbach argues that realism expands the vision of literature. He points out that unlike classical literature, lower-class characters in realist works have been elevated from playing trivial roles to centerstage and have becoming living figures in a specific time-space. He concludes that “The serious treatment of everyday reality, the rise of more extensive and socially inferior human groups to the position of subject matter for problematic-existential representation, on the one hand; on the other, the embedding of random persons and events in the general course of contemporary history, the fluid historical background––these, we believe, are the foundations of modern realism” (1974: 491). Realistic fiction has a strong mimetic and affective capacity. If writers are able to give an in-depth and accurate account of the humble and downtrodden, they can expose social problems and invite readers to meditate on their causes. Our intention therefore, is to present, through these fictions, a cross-section of rural and urban life at that time of their composition. It should be stressed that Ten Years is not a history book but a collection of observations and reflections by a group of writers. The Anthology is therefore used as a portal to explore the Chinese social, political, and cultural landscapes in the Republican era of 1927 to 1937.

Social and Economic Conditions The Anthology depicts a chaotic society with an ailing economy where the strong prey upon the weak. More than 60 percent of the stories deal

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with these themes, indicating the gravity of social problems at that time.3 We can analyse these problems in terms of four basic themes. The first theme describes how government officials, businessmen and the powerful in general use even the most unscrupulous means to bleed and exploit the lower classes. In these stories, corruption, extortion, smuggling, usury, outrageous rent increases and withholding wages are all common practices used by those in power to exploit the powerless. The background of story #1 is the Nationalist government’s adoption of the silver dollar as currency. However, the shortage of silver on the world market caused its value to increase sharply, leading to major outflows of the metal from China (Hsu 2000, 566). In this story, Zhao, a banker, tries to smuggle ten thousand dollars worth of silver to Japan in order to earn a great profit. But during the trip to Japan, his son is kidnapped by pirates who demand a ransom. Later, an indebted intellectual named Bi, who had attempted unsuccessfully to extort money from the banker, informs the authorities of Zhao’s silver smuggling and sales of opium. In retaliation, the banker writes to the police to falsely accuse Bi, but the county magistrate and policemen also try to extort from Zhao, which upsets him greatly. Zhao knew that if this “serious crime” was reported further up to the provincial government, the senior officials would never stop trying to extort money from him. This story depicts a shameless and amoral society where everyone is corrupt or an extortionist. Even the magistrates and police are corrupt, covering up crimes and framing the innocent. If even a rich banker like Zhao was the victim of bureaucrats, we can easily imagine the effects of such rampant corruption on ordinary people. Story #25 also shows how wealthy businessmen connive with government officials to smuggle goods and appropriate public funds (267, 276, 287). These stories are reminiscent of another famous fiction, “Lin’s Store” (1932), by Mao Dun (1896– 1981), in which a small shopkeeper goes bankrupt and has to flee due to his economic hardships and extortion by government officials. The disturbing aspect here is how government officials, in fact, reaped major financial benefits. The second theme deals with government officials and local tyrants who are guilty of many injustices and oppress the poor, and can be considered as forming a pair with the first theme. While the former shows 3

Stories that explore the themes of social injustice and hardship among the people include #1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 11, 13, 15, 17, 18, 22, 23, 24, and 25, i.e. 16 stories or more than 60% of the Anthology.

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how the powerful extort wealth from the powerless, the second theme includes other acts of violence such as kidnapping women, making false accusations, and inflicting physical pain and harm on others. If a person with power or wealth murdered someone, they could avoid prosecution just by paying a small financial compensation. In story #15, an honest and upright militiaman, Zhang, escorts the district magistrate Wu back to their hometown where both grew up. Wu is a clever person who obtained his official appointment through flattery and courting the powerful. During the trip, Wu fears Zhang might murder him and steal his money, so he decides to ingratiate himself with the militiaman and discloses some of his illegal acts. After Wu arrives home safely, he regrets having revealed his secrets and orders someone to murder Zhang. The murder is a mystery, as no one knows its secret motivation. The most revealing scene in the story is the conversation between Wu and Zhang, in which the former describes the malefactions of bureaucrats. At a certain point, Wu says that he is afraid of wild wolves, but Zhang replies that in their village there was something even more terrifying––“Your Excellency is the tiger of our village” (3). These abhorrent and predatory civic officials are guilty of a wide range of abuses. Wu, for example, is an uneducated, avaricious, and lustful man who is overbearing in his authority. He smokes opium, uses his power to take women by force (15), is corrupt (13, 16) and has committed other crimes as well. Other stories have similar themes. For example, in story #2, some wealthy persons order their guards to brutally murder students who are protesting against them (42); in story #11, a poor chanteuse is molested by a rich man and bitten by his dog (258); in stories #5 (111, 115) and #25 (298, 302), policemen arbitrarily frame and falsely accuse whoever they wish. As to how government officials and local tyrants could abuse their power in this way, and with total impunity, one must look to the deeprooted systemic problems that existed in the political, judicial and police administrations for an answer. Although the Nationalist Party leaders tried to address the nation’s fundamental needs, “the new government was not an institution with substantial experience in governing” (Wilbur 1984, 8). We shall elaborate on this point in the next section. In the third theme, we find ordinary people and farmers living in dignified poverty. Story #18 concerns a wretched sedan-chair carrier, “his body consumed by wandering and a life of poverty, like a desiccated bean” (73). Story #11 describes miserable rural life in which everybody is either hungry or sick, mothers helplessly watch as their babies’ die of famine during a freezing winter, and officials ignore the suffering of

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farmers forced to pay outrageous taxes. This desperate rural reality has also been described by Eastman: Surveying the rural economy as a whole during the Nanking period, the most striking feature was the depression of 1932–1935. Even before the depression began, China’s villages were in the grips of an economic illness that reduced the ordinary farmer to debilitating poverty. The depression brought that illness to a critical stage, driving millions of farmers from their homes and inflicting awful suffering on millions more. There was probably little that the Nanking government could have done to prevent this economic disaster…. The local bureaucracy, the police force, the militia and the tax collectors did not improve their services, but they greatly expanded in size and salaries (Eastman 1975, 224–25).

Story #4 is instead set in a city, and depicts a powerless employee, Mr. Song, who has worked diligently for ten years without being promoted. “Devoid of the ability to think, he becomes merely a mute and odorless tiny object that always has to raise its head in order to look at others. It seems that he is shrinking day by day while others are forever expanding” (91). Song feels inferior and diffident. Although only 49, his superior claims Song is too old and though “regretting his heavy duty” (95), fires him. Story #5 describes a station master in a small town. He works hard but receives only a meager salary. A young crippled veteran Fei likes to chat with him. Fei is full of grievances and complains bitterly about social injustice. One day Fei and his family are arrested for no reason. The station master would like to help Fei but is afraid of retaliation. In all these stories (#4, 5, 11) cold weather is used to symbolise the mercilessness of society and the misery of the powerless. However, there are also those who refuse to be victimised and try to regain a measure of dignity in the face of adversity, often without success. Story #22 tells the story of a miner named Wang who was injured at work. He has been exploited by the mine owner since he was a child laborer, and though his leg was broken in a mine accident, he received only a minimal financial compensation. Furious at this injustice, he tears up the banknotes. But now that he has lost everything, including his home, he must live on the street, suffering from hunger and humiliation. An elderly person tells him: “My brother, we are disabled people (...). If we want to survive, we have to live with insults. The mine owner has abandoned us” (174). Society has rejected and abandoned these people even though they have worked hard and made sacrifices. In the same story, another miner Chang was blinded in one eye and also received a paltry compensation. After

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learning what happened to his colleague, Wang decides to take revenge by blowing up the mine owner’s buildings. However, his attempt is unsuccessful and he is imprisoned. Wang and Chang’s futile resistance is driven by desperation, and both end tragically. Some individuals instead attempt to rally or organise the collective power of people, realising that only if the oppressed are able to unite will it be possible to change this bleak reality. Stories #8 and #24 are very similar in that both harbor a message of revolution and exalt the collective power of the villagers who seek to combat those that oppress them. The rich local tyrants use any means to exploit the poor, including deception (209, 210), unfair compensation even in case of murder (234, 237) and usury (243). One day, the oppressed villagers decide to resist; though individually weak, they unite into a formidable force. They act in concert to obtain justice, support one another (250) and even succeed in intimidating their enemies (216, 234). Finally, a woman sets fire to a rich man’s wood. The fire sweeps through the trees, but not one villager lifts a hand to help, as a sign of solidarity with the woman. Stories #8 and #24 graphically illustrate what Laughlin calls “the operative quality” of Chinese revolutionary literature, whose authors believed literature should cast the light of revolutionary consciousness on contemporary social experience by raising readers’ awareness of the contradictions in society, and thus move them to demand social changes (2008, 223). This belief was the main feature of the proletarian literary movement when the League of Chinese Left-wing Writers was formed in 1930. In the fourth theme, the Anthology reveals a world of moral decay and spiritual bankruptcy. With the exception of only a few pieces that express positive values––such as story #6 on friendship, #8 and #24 on justice exercised by the villagers, and #15 on the honesty of the militiaman Zhang––almost all the stories in the Anthology describe man’s avaricious, hypocritical, selfish and cold-hearted nature. In an ailing economy, the rich could still enjoy a lavish lifestyle: they gambled, cavorted with women and took opium as we find in stories #1, #2, and #11. In a time marked by political upheaval, instead of helping one another, people think only of their interests. For instance, in story #18, after realising that many people were planning to flee the city due to social unrest, the owner of a sedan-chair company arbitrarily increases the tariff for his sedan-chairs. Men seeking fame and fortune attempt to climb the social ladder through illicit or reprehensible means. Story #13 is a humorous and ironic tale that illustrates this phenomenon. A foreigner donates a sum of money to a church, to fund a scholarship for young Chinese who wish to study

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theology in the United States. Some candidates try to win the scholarship by pretending to be religious. “Pastor Liu has broken a new record in baptising new believers” (290). Many people suddenly became Christians. It is obvious that these candidates are all hypocrites. Wang, the protagonist in the story, is a teacher who dreams of going abroad to earn a great deal of money. He pretends to be a good man and tries to ingratiate himself with the daughter of Pastor Liu who will award the scholarship. In reality, Wang is an unscrupulous and lustful person who routinely uses deception to get what he wants. From these stories we can conclude that when politics are corrupt, people also become corrupt because justice is nowhere to be found. Hence, the authors of the Anthology were not only describing certain significant moments or events, but depicting the very nature of man’s pride and humiliation, passion and weakness, cruelty and impotence in a decadent society.

Political Situations During the Nanjing decade, the Nationalist Party ruled over an area less than half the size of today’s China. Its influence was non-existent or at best nominal outside the central provinces.4 Even though the Nationalist leaders wanted to strengthen the economy, they were trapped in the quagmire of both internal and foreign problems. At least a third of the stories in the Anthology touch on themes related to politics.5 This was a time of great turmoil, with frequent uprisings and armed conflict taking place within the country. Story #18 does not specify its time and background, only referring to a certain city about to fall into enemy hands and with the population seeking to flee and filling the streets (73). We do not know whether the enemies are bandits or warlords. As the veteran Fei remarks in story #5, “We fight our own people so many times I can’t even keep count any more” (106). Conflicts between the Nationalists and Communists often appear in the Anthology. Although stories #2, 6, 14, 16, 19, 23 and 25 clearly indicate the Communist Party, the authors

4

The Nationalist authority extended to only 10 provinces by 1936. They were Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Jiangxi, Fujian, Hubei, Hunan, Henan, Gansu, and Shaanxi (Tien 1972, 5). 5 Short stories that focus on domestic or foreign affairs include #6, 10, 23, and 25, which make up 15% of the Anthology. If we include the six short stories (#2, 14, 16, 18, 19, 22) that touch on this theme more or less directly, the 10 stories occupy about 40% of the Anthology.

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only provide hints and refer to it as the “x Party”, as the Communist Party was banned under the Nationalist Party regime. Party members could only organise opposition through student (as in stories #2, 6, 23) and women’s associations, unions (story #6), civic organisations, such as the Association for Martial Arts of the National Spirit (guohun wushushe) in story #25 and secret study groups located outside China (as in story #6). At that time, the Communist Party was weaker than the Nationalist Party and its members were often arrested and killed. Ba Jin (1904–2005) illustrates the oppression of the Communist Party in detail in story #6. The protagonist Zhiliang cannot understand why his old friends are willing to live in poverty and participate in dangerous underground activities. They tell Zhiliang to leave town as soon as possible because the local government officials are colluding with bandits to wipe out the revolutionaries. These Communist Party members fully understood the danger of the situation and that their sacrifice is inevitable. The mentality of the Party members, many of whom were intellectuals, will be examined below. With respect to foreign affairs, the Anthology reveals Japan’s threat to China. In story #2, a wealthy man plays sycophant to the Japanese to advance his own economic interests (34, 35). Ironically, his own daughter participates in a student protest against national traitors (48). Students were not the only group whose patriotism was stirred by Japanese aggression, and many workers were also provoked by foreign insults and oppression. In story #22, the miner Wang turns his hatred from Germany to the Japanese. He is “waiting for the motherland to take back the ownership of the mine” (185) and establishing a measure of social justice. Story #23 depicts the deep sorrow of an oppressed people. A child, Xing, his grandmother and uncle suffer a great family loss. They once lived in Manchuria, on a beautiful and spacious farm, “but one day the military encampment on the mountain was on fire; soldiers were running about the streets and there was looting everywhere. It was rumored that the Japanese army had occupied the main military garrison” (194).6 In fact, Japanese forces have occupied the Chinese military base in Shenyang. During the battle, Xing’s father is killed and the family is forced to move to a slum in Beijing, where he falls ill due to the appalling hygienic conditions and dies. In his final words, Xing expresses the desire to “go back home,” 6

On 18 September, 1931, Japan attacked Shenyang and later occupied the Northeastern provinces of China. In 1932, Japan established the Manchukuo puppet regime.

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though of course his wish cannot be fulfilled. The story provides a glimpse of the intense suffering inflicted on the Chinese people by Japanese military aggression. Based on the stories analysed thus far, we can conclude that the Nationalist government had utterly failed to deal with both internal turmoil and foreign aggression. This is hardly surprising, given the many insurmountable problems that afflicted the political institutions themselves. Many mediocre officials received their government appointments through nepotism. In story #7, an official of the provincial government, Wang, realises that all the new employees are relatives of the new office chief (193, 194), and that therefore no matter how hard he works, he knows he will eventually be sacked. In story #15, the incompetent and cruel district magistrate, Wu, received his appointment through bribery and fraudulent credentials (11). Scholars have pointed out that the Nationalist government followed the old bureaucratic system, and many officials were incompetent and ignorant and interested only in being promoted and reaping financial benefits. With the absence of a system of “checks and balances” in the political structure, there was nothing to counterbalance the greed of these officials (Tien 1972, 149, 165; Eastman 1975, 9, 14–18, 286). Institutions of this sort obviously had great difficulty in functioning effectively. The Nationalist government relied on the military to maintain its power, but the military itself was deeply corrupt. Story #3, for example, seems to be about a young soldier named Shi and his difficulties in adjusting to the hardships of military life. But the story actually aims at revealing the harshness and dark side of the military, with officers appointing their relatives to various posts (52) and colluding with one another to profit financially from the corrupt system. Nothing better illustrates the dire condition of the military than the insider joke that “while officers rely on opium, soldiers rely on gambling” (61). An officer demands that Shi do extra work with the promise of only a paltry remuneration, and in the end does not even bother to pay him. When Shi, who is already ill and receving no medical care, ultimately dies, the officer curses him for forcing the army to spend money on his burial. His death is just “a trivial event.” This story recalls the ironic ending of Lu Xun’s short story “The New Year’s Sacrifice” (1924). Xianglin’s wife dies in a blizzard, while everyone forgets the injustices they have done her and continue to joyfully celebrate the New Year. The story provides a very pessimistic view of the cruelty and indifference of human nature. The low morale and poor discipline of the military is also illustrated in story #18, in

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which soldiers either oppress ordinary people or look for opportunities to desert (71, 77). Once again, the Anthology provides a stark image of the corruption and incompetence of both the government and the military in the 1930s. Eastman notes that: Nanking armies, like those of many warlords, were generally poorly disciplined, inadequately paid, and without sufficient supplies. When troops moved through an area, therefore, they were like a pestilence upon the land: seizing possession of homes and property, and arbitrarily requisitioning food, animals, carts, and manpower (Eastman 1975, 208).

Their behaviour was no different from that of bandits and they were despised by everyone.

Cultural Thoughts The influx of Western thought in the early twentieth century had a profound impact on the Chinese mentality, despite China’s long history and rich traditions. Young intellectuals, influenced by these new ideas, aspired to save the country through the Western approaches of science and democracy. Their mindset was very different from that of their predecessors. Short stories that explore these themes account for 40 percent of the Anthology.7 Traditional thought, however, remained influential in Chinese society as a whole. For example, in story #25 locals welcome the protagonist Zhang because he comes from a venerated family; in story #2, a rich man regrets not having a son, even though he has an illegitimate son he has never acknowledged. The Anthology also reveals the widespread belief in superstitions. For example, in story #25, some gossipy men suspect that Mrs. Zhang was born of inferior stock, as she has rough hands, a definite sign of low birth (257, 259); in story #2 people believe that worshipping Bodhisattva will be rewarded with male offspring (222, 236); in story #12 we find superstitions concerning the dead (282, 283). Story #21 is the most insightful piece in collection, and describes the resistance of traditional thoughts and the conflicts between generations. In the story, an 7 Seven stories (#9, 12, 19, 20, 21, 25, 26) deal with conflicts between new and traditional thoughts, and another seven (#2, 6, 14, 16, 19, 23, 25) mention how intellectuals were affected by communist ideas. In two stories (#19, 25) these themes overlap. Hence, a total of twelve stories explore these themes, or about 45% of the Anthology.

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old woman with bound-feet, Mrs. Li, insists on upholding tradition. She loathes the love affair between her son Huanzhang and a widow Yuhuai, whom she considers to be “lascivious” and “contemptible.” She has always wanted to arrange her son’s marriage and believes her son should fulfill his traditional role of fathering children. However, things did not work out this way and she is very angry. One day, Yuhuai and her son spend the night in Huanzhang’s village. The ignorant villagers, who believe the old aphorism that “welcoming widows into one’s home will lead to a broken family” (148), accuse both Yuhuai and Huanzhang of immorality and claim their union will bring misfortune to the village. They insist that Huanzhang’s family burn incense to ward off the evil spirits. Mrs. Li now feels she has lost face. She argues with her son and they blame each other. She believes she has acted out of love, but her love is selfish and distorted. Huanzhang believes his mother is ignorant and oldfashioned, but is not courageous enough to defend the woman he loves. He is trapped between his personal beliefs and the hidebound beliefs of his mother. Despite the persistence of old ways of thinking and traditional beliefs, especially in rural China, nothing could stop the spread of new ideas, especially after the 1919 May Fourth Movement. No matter how deeply rooted those traditional thoughts were, the young generation was infused with an unprecedented enthusiasm for new ideas and modern thought. Women also began demanding equal status with men (Hershatter 2004, 1001–3). Stories #16 and #26 describe how this new generation approached the questions of love and marital relations, while one of the implications of story #20 is that both husbands and wives should be respectful and considerate of each other, a very novel concept in patriarchal China. The widow Yuhuai in story #21 and a rural woman Ma Lan in story #19 are good examples of the new womanhood. Yuhuai believes that “once a woman is married, she will be restrained” (131). She instead hopes to earn an independent livelihood and widen her horizons in the world, but has to struggle with a traditional patriarchal society. At the end of the story, Yuhuai shouts “Get out!” to the old lady Mrs. Li and her cowardly son, Yuhuai’s lover, indicating she will no longer accept their insults and narrow outlooks. Goodman has noted that in her demands for independent thinking, self-reliance and individual moral integrity, the new woman of the early Republican era exemplified modern personhood. But there were still many constraints on the emancipation of women, including poor education and limited access to employment (2005, 265, 268). The vicissitudes of Ma Lan in story #19 illustrates some of these

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contradictions. She refuses a marriage arranged by her parents in her native village and elopes with an intellectual named Yixia. But Yixia is an introvert who spends his days working at his desk, while Ma Lan is full of passion and loves freedom. The distance between the two grows, but Ma Lan cannot change her situation because she has no job and is confined to her home. As she tells her friend: All families are the same and disgusting. Men only plan for themselves. They pursue their own interests and comfort. After they are tired of playing around, they come back home, do nothing and yell at you, ‘I want tea!’ If these men meet with some disappointment outside, they will beat their wives at home or demand them to console them. The atmosphere of the family always fluctuates according to the feelings of the men. They only seek their own satisfaction and always neglect the feelings of their wives. They never think about the hardships endured by their women. Women are supposed to stay at home, serve their men, and let them enjoy all the pleasure in life. Women have to rear children (…). Women suffer a wearisome life without any pleasure. No woman wants to stay at home all the time (94).

This passage poignantly expresses a 20th century feminist perspective. Ma Lan stresses the selfishness of traditional men and their unjust treatment of women. Ultimately, she “transgresses” her gender boundary by pursueing her own ideals. She meets some kindred male spirits and participates in “dangerous (underground) activities” for the Communist Party. Even though she is risking her life and may be arrested at any time, she finally feels that she is living life to the full. Ma Lan is the most original character in the Anthology. Her personality and values appear in stark contrast to that of traditional Chinese people. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that she experienced such severe conflicts with the conservative community where she once lived. In a period of social stagnation and dire political malaise, intellectuals began to look for new solutions to save the country. Obviously, their attitudes and responses varied, from an optimistic determination, to indecision, to a growing frustration after repeated failures. The Anthology shows that the younger generation included both idealistic youth and shameless intellectuals, as seen in story #13. As noted, seven stories refer to the Communist Party. While communist ideology is always only implicit, most of the authors of the Anthology clearly endorsed these ideas. Many students, like those in stories #2 and 23, are seen as patriotic and intent on do something for their country, sometimes even risking their

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lives to fight against injustice. In story #6, the sense of calm that emanates from these communist idealists makes a great impression on the protagonist Zhiliang, who was once so complacent about his comfortable life. Zhiliang thinks of these remarkable people as “stars” that shed light on his future path. Similarly, in story #16, a student Zhang who studied abroad in Japan, is encouraged by his friend Yu to give up his “ideal lover” in Japan and instead participate in revolutionary activities in China. He reflects that: in China, there are countless youths who are fighting to free our country despite many obstacles. Having given up their hometown, their parents, and their future happiness, they risk their lives to accomplish the grand mission. For wasn’t Yu almost killed on many occasions? (45).

The intellectuals who participated in Communist Party activities believed such a decision to be honorable. Hsia is convinced that the Communist strategy of uniting with the Nationalist Party to fight against the Japanese invaders is the correct one. In fact, Chinese intellectuals were increasingly patriotic and could no longer tolerate the insult of being attacked and occupied by a foreign country. At the same time, the Nationalist government had no viable alternative ideology that could compete with Communism and gain the support of the intellectuals (1999, 117). Although Chiang Kai-shek (1887–1975) wanted to achieve cultural integration through Confucian teachings in the New Life Movement, a strategy which was heavily promoted in 1934, the movement had little effect. As Sheridan notes: Sophisticated Chinese, considering it regressive and irrelevant, ignored it as best they could. The fact that Kuomintang and government officials continued to behave in a grossly immoral fashion in their public lives also brought discredit to the movement. (Sheridan 1977, 219)

The Nationalist government was losing popular support as they failed to propose a convincing political ideology and establish a value system that would ensure national solidarity. Hence, despite the fierce opposition to the Communist Party during those ten tumultuous years, the Party continued to increase its influence. There is only one story in the Anthology that reveals the pessimism of the intellectuals. In story #14 Dong spends all his time studying Buddhism. He abstains from all secular activities, even though he was once a fervent supporter of the Communist Party. The May 30th Incident

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had inspired him to “join an organisation (the Communist Party) that could not be publicised” (323). 8 He had hoped that a “New China” would emerge from the fall of “imperialism” and firmly supported the Northern Expedition.9 When the Nationalist government began to violently suppress the Communist Party, with a death toll that soon exceeded that of the May 30th Incident, Dong was devastated. He realised that in a country where the so-called “New China” revolutionaries were being killed by their fellow Chinese, his hopes were nothing but a quixotic dream. Completely disillusioned with politics, he withdrew into private life. The experience of Dong echoes Eastman’s criticism of the Nanjing government: “For the purge cut off the Kuomintang from the wellsprings of its revolutionary dynamism” (7). The Nationalist government lost a golden opportunity to capitalise on the public’s patriotism and push forward political reforms and social changes. When Japan attacked Shanghai, in 1932, Dong lost his home and his job and was rendered numb and emotionless.10 He began to spend all his time reading Buddhist scriptures, like “a rat hiding underground” (333). The story illustrates the mental journey of a frustrated intellectual in the 1920s and 30s. However, Dong’s story is an exception in the Anthology. The intellectuals depicted in the rest of the collection are generally positive and optimistic individuals. The powerful intellectual characters depicted in these short stories are arguably projections of the authors themselves, who wanted to use their fictions to enlighten and inspire readers.

8

On 30 May, 1925, protests in Shanghai against the brutal Japanese factory owners were violently suppressed by the police. This event ignited protests all over China, with strikes and a call to boycott foreign goods. Hsia points out that this event was a critical moment in changing public opinion and marked the beginning of the transition from the Literary Revolution to Revolutionary Literature (1999, 16). 9 In June 1926, the Nationalist government in Canton launched the Northern Expedition and Chiang Kai-shek was appointed commander-in-chief. In April 1927, the Nationalist Party established a government in Nanjing and began to purge the Communist Party. 10 On 28 January, 1932, Japan used a pretext to attack Shanghai, but met stiff resistance by the Chinese army. Although the Japanese were forced to retreat after several months, China had suffered heavy casualties and damage to its infrastructure and economy.

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Significance of the Anthology Exploring and evaluating the Anthology, which was all but forgotten for many decades, is an important undertaking. The book was published in a specific historical context. It marked the 10th anniversary of a reputable bookstore, whose owners obviously wanted to celebrate their success as booksellers and publishers. It also appeared in the second decade of the New Literature, and its authors express their feelings and social observations with confidence, in the mature genre of fiction. The ten years captured in the Anthology also coincide with the Nanjing Decade of the Republican government in China, when the country had finally attained a measure of unity and the Nationalist Party was embarking on the arduous task of nation-building. Significantly, both the editors and writers were intellectuals. Ye Shengtao and Xia Mianzun, owners of the Kaiming Bookstore, also contributed two stories to the Anthology. The other 24 contributors were either well-established writers or new and emerging literary figures of the 1920s and 30s. The writers worked as teachers, journalists, editors and one was a librarian; five were known members of the Communist Party.11 The Anthology thus provides a glimpse of how writers with different styles and political outlooks perceived their country. These “insider” perspectives make the book an important historical document, which preserves the views of the Chinese intelligentsia, both temporally and spatially. It is not compiled by “outsiders”, such as the Communist authority after 1949 in mainland China, or by some overseas organisation, but truly represents its own fascinating time. The book is also valuable for the rich, highly contextualised and nuanced details of lives in China––both rural and urban, traditional and modern––it provides. History books inform us about the when’s and what’s of significant events, but they tell us little about the details of the lives and feelings of the people. The Anthology fills the gap left by mainstream historical accounts by presenting a fuller picture. For example, many stories describe the greed and ruthlessness of government officials

11

Between 1926 and 1936, Lao She, Wang Tongzhao, Xu Xiacun, Li Jianwu, Zheng Boqi and Xia Mianzun were university teachers; Zhang Tianyi and Xiao Qian were journalists; Jian Xianai was a librarian; the other contributors to the Anthology were mainly editors. There were five Communist Party members (the year of Party membership is shown in parenthesis): Mao Dun (1921), Zhang Tianyi (1927), Sha Ding (1927), Ding Ling (1932) and Zhou Wen (1932).

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and businessmen who unscrupulously exploit and oppress the most vulnerable segments of society. The Anthology also tells the plight and suffering of the poor, and ultimately, their resignation and impotence. It shows how widespread suffering was at that time, among both the urban and rural poor, with hunger, sickness and poverty, but also humiliation and oppression a common lot. The general image that emerges is that of a dire economic situaton and a society languishing in moral decay. Politically, we find internal conflicts exacerbated by the purges of the Communist Party on the part of the Nationalists, which however were too weak to respond adequately to the main external threat from Japan. In terms of culture and ideology, while the May Fourth Movement had brought with it new ideas and concepts, traditional thought was still deeply entrenched. The discrepancies between the modern and traditional created widespread generational conflict. The older generation was still attached to superstition and other backward concepts and practices, e.g. family honor, losing face, the preference of male over female offspring and discrimination against women. The new generation had instead begun to embrace modern ideas, also in the emotional sphere, with a refusal of planned marriages, while a growing number of women refused to be restrained by their traditional roles. We find students protesting against political tyranny and social injustice, and intellectuals adhering to communist ideology and the notion of a social revolution, a commitment which would be maintained to the point of personal sacrifice, or instead end in disillusionment. By means of the realist style adopted by the various contributors, the Anthology depicts Chinese people from all walks of lives in a specific spatio-temporal context. Wellek points out that while realism cannot photocopy reality, it can break through the conventions of romanticism by reminding writers of the significance of an epoch and society and, even more crucially, of the importance of offering insight into reality (1979, 713). The Anthology thus constitutes a uniquely rich and significant supplement to mainstream historical accounts by providing readers with realistic stories that stress the human component of various social phenomena during an extraordinary decade of 20th century China. It exposes the hidden reality and provides precious insights that cannot easily be forgotten by readers, even after this period has faded into the remoteness of History.

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Bibliography Auerbach, Erich. 1974 (1945). Mimesis. Translated by William R. Trask. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Chenk, Zhengmao 䱇ℷ㣖, ed. 2007. Xinbian zhongguo xiandaishi ᮄ㎼ Ё೟⧒ҷ৆ (Newly Edited Modern Chinese History). Taibei: Xin wenjing kaifa chuban. Eastman, Lloyd E. 1975. The Abortive Revolution: China under Nationalist Rule, 1927–1937. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Goodman, Bryna. 2005. “The Vocational Woman and the Elusiveness of ‘Personhood’ in Early Republican China.” In Gender in Motion: Divisions of Labor and Cultural Change at Late Imperial and Modern China, edited by Bryna Goodman and Wendy Larson, 265–86. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield. Hershatter, Gail. 2004. “State of the Field: Women in China’s Long Twentieth Century.” Journal of Asian Studies 63(4): 99–106. Hsia, C. T. 1999. A History of Modern Chinese Fiction. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Hsu, Immanuel C. Y. 2000. The Rise of Modern China. New York: Oxford University Press. Laughlin, Charles. 2008. “The Revolutionary Tradition in Modern Chinese Literature.” In The Cambridge Companion to Modern Chinese Culture, edited by Kam Louie, 218–34. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sheridan, James E. 1977. China in Disintegration: The Republican Era in Chinese History, 1912–1949. New York: The Free Press. Sih, Paul K. T. 1970. The Strenuous Decade: China’s Nation-Building Efforts, 1927–1937. New York: St John’s University. Tien, Hung-mao. 1972. Government and Politics in Kuomintang China, 1927–1937. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Wang, Guilin ⥟ ⁰ ᵫ , ed. 2004. Zhongguo xiandaishi Ё ೟ ⧒ ҷ ৆ (Modern Chinese History). Beijing: Beijing Normal University. Wellek, René. 1979. “Masterpiece of Nineteenth-Century Realism and Nationalism.” In The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces, edited by Maynard Mack, 707–34. New York: Norton. Wilbur, C. Martin. 1984. “Nationalist China, 1928–1950: An Interpretation.” In China: Seventy Years After the 1911 Hsin-hai Revolution, edited by Hungdah Chiu and Shao-chuan Leng, 2–57. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.

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Xia, Mianzun ໣ϣᇞ, ed. 1936. Shi nian कᑈ (Ten Years). Shanghai: Kaiming shudian. Zhongguo Chuban Gongzuozhe Xiehui Ё ೟ ߎ ⠜ Ꮉ ԰ 㗙 न ᳗ (Association of Chinese Publishers), ed. 1985. Wo yu Kaiming ៥㟛䭟 ᯢ (Kaiming and I). Shanghai: Zhongguo qingnian chubanshe. Zhou, Jiarong ਼Շᾂ. 2009. Kaiming shudian yu wusi xinwenhua 䭟ᯢ᳌ ᑫ 㟛 Ѩ ಯ ᮄ ᭛ ࣪ (Kaiming Bookstore and the May Fourth New Culture). Hong Kong: Zhonghua shuju.

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Appendix A

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 12

Story Titles Yin bian 䡔䅞 (Silver Exchange) Qieshuo wuli Ϩ䁾ሟ㺵 (Let’s Talk about Things That Happen at Home) Yijian Xiaoshi ϔӊᇣџ (A Minor Incident) Xue chao 䲾ᳱ (A Snowy Morning) Zhan chang キ䭋 (A Stationmaster) Xing ᯳ (Stars) Cai yuan 㺕વ (Getting Sacked) Mou ri ᶤ᮹ (A Certain Day) Di yi Ⴕ㺨 (The Legitimate Child) Zhongguo de zuihou yike Ё ೟ⱘ᳔ᕠϔ䂆 (A Final Lesson in China) Yiyue ershisanri ϔ᳜Ѡकϝ ᮹ (The 23rd of January) Si ⅏ (Death) Peng cheng 區⿟ (Great Future) Yingwen jiaoshou 㣅᭛ᬭᥜ (An English Professor) Mi 䃢 (Enigma) Yan ✭ (Smoke) Haidao shang ⍋ዊϞ (On the Island) Tao nan 䗗䲷 (Running Away) Ma Lan 侀㰁 (Ma Lan)

Authors Lu Yan 元ᔹ (1901–1944) Lao She 㗕㟡 (1899–1966) Zhang Tianyi ᔉ໽㗐 (1906–1985) Jin Yi 䵇ҹ (1909–1959) Wang Tongzhao ⥟㍅✻ (1897–1957) Ba Jin Ꮘ䞥 (1904–2005) Xu Xiacun ᕤ䳲ᴥ (1907–1986) Wu Zuxiang ਇ㌘㎫ (1908–1994) Shi Zhecun ᮑ㶘ᄬ (1905–2003) Li Jianwu ᴢ‫ع‬਒ (1906–1982) Ding Ling ϕ⦆ (1904–1986) Ling Shuhua ‫ޠ‬ন㧃 (1900–1990) Xiao Qian 㭁ђ (1910–1999) Sheng Tao 㘪䱊 (1894–1988)12 Jian Xianai 䐛‫ܜ‬㡒 (1906–1994) Zheng Boqi 䜁ԃ༛ (1895–1979) Ai Wu 㡒㬾 (1904–1992) Sha Ting ≭∔ (1904–1992) Lu Fen 㯚⛮ (1910–1988)

Sheng Tao is the same person as Ye Shengtao.

214 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

Chapter Ten Zhu fu Џ် (A Housewife) Ai ᛯ (Love) Si tiao tui de ren ಯṱ㝓ⱘҎ (A Man with Four Legs) Xiang chou 䛝ᛕ (Thinking of Home) Bao chou ฅқ (Taking Revenge) Shou de gushi ᠟ⱘᬙџ (A Story of Hands) Liu dan ⌕ᔜ (Stray Bomb)

Shen Congwen ≜ᕲ᭛ (1902–1988) Zhou Wen ਼᭛ (1907–1952) Xiao Jun 㭁䒡 (1907–1988) Duanmu Hongliang ッ᳼㭏㡃(1912–1996) Jiang Muliang 㫷⠻㡃 (1901–1973) Mao Dun 㣙Ⳓ (1896–1981) Xia Mianzun ໣ϣᇞ (1886–1946)

Table 10-1: List of story titles and authors

CHAPTER ELEVEN THE REPRESENTATION OF CHINESE RURAL MIGRANT WOMEN AND THE POST-MAO MODERNITY DISCOURSES: A STUDY OF ZHANG KANGKANG’S NOVEL ZHI MA LIU XI

This paper1 explores the literary representation of the experiences of Chinese rural migrant women in Zhi Ma, a work of contemporary fiction written in 2003 by the acclaimed female author Zhang Kangkang. It analyses the ways in which this literary text encodes and unfolds migrant women’s changing subjectivities both in reaction to and within the postsocialist discursive framework of gender, class and modernity. This story portrays the migration and work experiences of rural, subaltern migrant women but is written by an urban, middle-class female intellectual; it is thus important to explore how and if the author lets her subaltern protagonists speak about themselves, or, more precisely, the ways in which the female intellectual speaks for underprivileged women. In discussing the relationship between gender and representation, Rey Chow proposes that, Instead of asking how women are represented or made to represent certain ideas, it becomes necessary to query who is engaged in such representations and what motivations lie behind them. For instance: in “representing” women in a certain way, are the representers being descriptive or prescriptive? Are they portraying things as they are or are

1 This paper first appeared in the special issue “Women’s Writing”, of the journal Frontiers of Literary Studies in China 4 (December 2012).

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Chapter Eleven they imposing on readers’ preconceived ideas? Are they speaking for women at the expense of women’s views of themselves? (Chow 2001, 41)

This proposition prompts critics to question and reflect upon the underlying assumptions found in cultural texts, including assumptions surrounding representation of gender issues. In Zhi Ma the prescribed gendered representation is only one aspect of the overall textual politics informing the story’s worldview. The multiple interlocking discourses found in this work should be read together within their historically specific socio-cultural context. The politics of representation should be investigated in terms of not only gender, but also social class/re-stratification and the rural/urban divide in post-Mao China. Throughout the twentieth century, questions surrounding the future of the peasantry and the prospects of rural society have been intimately tied up with the dominant discourses of modernity and nationhood in China. In modern and contemporary Chinese literature, there exist abundant and multifarious literary constructions of Chinese rural areas and their populations. These works are distinguished by two typical representational paradigms which, while mutually contradictory, are not necessarily exclusive within a given author’s works. In fact, most May Fourth era writers portrayed the countryside as a desolate wasteland threatening the project of national modernity, while socialist literature generally glorified the countryside as the revolutionary base that provided the momentum for socialist causes and national (re)construction. Likewise, the peasantry has been depicted both as the backward, unenlightened, and helpless “other” that embodies the problematic aspects of China’s “national character” and thus in need of salvation through modernisation, while at other times it has been characterised as guileless, honest and virtuous, and therefore as epitomising the traditional Chinese spirit. For contemporary Chinese writers, the ever-changing rural subject continues to be a significant source of inspiration in this era of rapid economic and social transformation. The last few decades have been marked by a massive increase in rural-to-urban migration, as a direct consequence of the China’s efforts to develop a market economy and participate in the globalisation process. Stories of experiences of migration and urban life have been an important theme in fictional works since the 1980s. Many of these works depict the frustration and tragedy experienced by rural-to-urban migrant women; they view the difficulties these women encounter as pronounced and enduring symptoms of the “social crisis” that has accompanied the national transition process. Within the post-Mao

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ideological context of neo-liberalism, urbanisation and globalisation, rural migrant women are more likely to become victims of the reconfigured systems of class and gender oppression than their urban, middle-class counterparts. In addition to realistic depictions of the hardship, loss and trauma experienced by lower-class women in modern Chinese society, the corpus of contemporary literature on migrant women also includes works that present the probability for growing consciousness, autonomy and resistance to prevailing class and gender hierarchies. These literary works explore the possibility for rural migrant women to “liberate” themselves from both social and gender inequality, as well as how they can become empowered as actors in the process of social and gender transformation. In examining these texts there are several key issues to address. For example, how do these texts position themselves within modernity discourses, which are closely associated with gender difference and the rural/urban divide in China? Is it possible for these texts to break away from the tendency to stereotype subaltern women, that views them as the “other” within the coding systems demarcating female/male and peasantry/urbanites? Are literary constructions of rural migrants yet another “signifier of ‘otherness? against and around which dominant national ideas about identity are constructed and reproduced”? (Jacka 2005, 43) This paper will use Zhi Ma as an example to investigate these questions. The novella Zhi Ma, written by Zhang Kangkang in 2003, presents the migration and working experiences of Zhima, a rural woman who works as a domestic in Beijing. Migration has been typically perceived as the socio-economic movement from the poorer “margins” to the affluent “modern centres” that has taken place over the past three decades. Zhi Ma likewise follows the female protagonist Zhima’s “progressive rural-tourban trajectory”, that is, from her pursuit of improved living conditions through domestic labour in the city, to her pursuit of a modern identity through the abandonment of a peasant mentality and the reconfiguration of her worldview and value systems. Zhima’s geographical movement from the countryside to the city is ultimately overshadowed by her mental transformation, as she embraces post-socialist urban modernity. The main plot of the story can be summarised as follows: Zhima, a woman living in rural Henan province, gives birth to an extra child, a girl, and is heavily fined by the government institution that implements the one-child policy. This situation adversely affects the family finances. As a result, Zhima goes to Beijing to work as a domestic in order to earn more money, hoping to alleviate her family’s suffering. Because of the rigid “one child” state policy, Zhima must go to hospital for a pregnancy exam once every three

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months. While working in Beijing, she witnesses the sharp rural/urban disparity in terms of wealth, lifestyle, female status within the family and women’s reproductive self-determination. In confronting this social and cultural stratification, she is pushed to think about what kind of life is “worthwhile” and what constitutes a proper lifestyle for a woman. She gradually begins to identify with city-dwellers, and increasingly views rural residents as uncivilised and backward. For her, rural life is meaningless and hopeless. The story suggests that the possibility for rural transformation lies primarily in the recognition and development of a sort of “modern subjectivity”. When Zhima’s friend, who is also a migrant, asks her to help a third woman who is pregnant with an extra child to falsify her pregnancy exam, Zhima refuses, as if to demonstrate that she has discarded the peasant mentality and gained a new, modern, gendered subjectivity. In this way, Zhima’s story symbolises the individual’s pursuit of both urban modernity and modern gender subjectivity. In a public talk, the author once discussed her motivation in writing a story about the life of rural migrants. She stated that she was glad to see that most migrant workers had gained a great deal of “modern knowledge and viewpoints” during their transition from rural to urban life. She claimed that the subjective changes experienced by these migrants were crucial to social progress and that her female protagonist Zhima represented an example of the way in which the process of migration can transform the migrant’s worldview. She went on to say that: I wrote Zhi Ma to express my concern and sympathy for the stories of female migrate workers. From Zhima (literally “sesame”), sesame oil can be extracted. What I wanted to represent is the sesame oil I extracted from the story of Zhima (sesame). In the past 20 years of “reform and opening”, we have noticed the phenomenon of peasants migrating to work in the city, but we have seldom paid attention to what they bring back with them. They return with the money they earned as migrant workers and build new houses, buy TVs and agricultural tools, and transform themselves little by little, step by step. What matters most is the modern cultural consciousness absorbed by huge numbers of migrant workers. For instance, today some rural parents choose not to find a wife for their 18-year-old son, as they would have done in the past, but instead encourage him to learn more scientific and technical skills, or seek a job elsewhere. Their worldview is undergoing a subtle transformation; this process speaks to the core of social progress in China. The main theme of the novel Zhi Ma concerns a kind of “gradual personal progress” or “socio-cultural maturation” among migrant “workers”. (Zhang 2003b)

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The author also intentionally adopts a “female viewpoint” so as to explore the living conditions of subaltern women and calls for contemporary authors to attach more importance to the “gendered perspective” in their writings. (Zhang 2003a) As if in confirmation of this authorial intention, the protagonist Zhima is depicted as actively pursuing a new, modern gendered identity in her rural-urban migration trajectory. Because Zhi Ma also emphasises the gender and class discrimination undergone by Zhi Ma within both the rural and urban contexts, it is important to explore the meaning of “personal progress” and “maturity” for the female migrant worker. Does the process of “growing to maturity” lead to her self-liberation from gender/class inequalities? The ensuing two sections will analyze the way in which Zhi Ma negotiates discourses surrounding the rural/urban divide, gender and post-Mao urban modernity and market economy.

A Progressive Path? Between Rural Backwardness and Urban Modernity Zhi Ma uses its portrayal of migrant women’s experiences to introduce the issue of social re-stratification and class structure. Zhima and her fellow rural women suffer a great deal of discrimination and exploitation when working as domestic maids for urban families. Every day they must perform an endless succession of domestic chores: housecleaning, shopping, cooking, looking after children and the elderly. As household maids, their social status is much lower than that of their employers; they are mistrusted, perceived as careless and are even victims of abuse. Zhima’s fellow domestic, Feng Er, complains that she could tolerate the troublesome domestic chores and psychological abuse; she has even grown accustomed to looking at her employers’ faces all the time, but what she cannot tolerate is the hunger she suffers because she is never provided enough food to eat. (Zhang 2007, 99) Another migrant girl is not allowed to eat the same food as the rest of the household. Besides a wholehearted devotion to their work, the qualities most valued by the employers of these maids are simplicity, docility and submissiveness. Sometimes the employers make demands simply to show their power over the domestic workers. Zhima’s grievance comes from her imposed subordinate position within the employee/employer power relations and the loss of dignity that comes with being a domestic in the city. She complains to her husband:

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She even questions the legitimacy of social stratification and the hierarchical rural/urban divide. “Rural residents and urban ones, aren’t they all human? Why are there such severe social divisions between them?” (Zhang 2007, 116) Zhima is depicted as a simple, honest, virtuous and frugal rural woman. She cannot fully participate in city life, which she finds alienating. She observes the estrangement, indifference and coldness that often exist not only between rural migrants and urban residents, but also among citydwellers themselves. She feels that urbanites rely too much on machines and technology to improve their living standard, so that ultimately they become “machine-like” themselves. She is deeply troubled by the impersonal nature of urban life. Zhima’s move from her hometown to an urban area does not appear to have brought her much freedom. As opposed to her agricultural work in the past, domestic work in the city is devoid of the dignity of labour. When working in the city, she often misses the free time she used to have when she lived in the country and worked on the farm. After migrating to the city, she has to work all day long, like a machine, and has no time for herself. The novella implicitly conveys the loss of freedom and dignity experienced by Zhima in her transition from rural to urban labour. Yan Hairong has discussed the “overdetermined contradiction existing at the core of migrant women’s pursuit of a modern personhood.” Yan argues that: “In the context of post-Mao development, the very condition enabling such women’s entry into the city, the heart of the commodity economy, is that they themselves become the disposable commodities of migrant labour power. Consequently, the very condition enabling their entry and existence in the city fundamentally precludes or undercuts the possibility of attaining the modern personhood for which they have struggled.” (Yan, 2003b, 590) While the depiction of Zhima’s uneasy relationship with her new urban life provides a critical inquiry into the devaluation of the migrant worker, at another level, the story does not manage to deconstruct the myth of the “attainment of modern personhood.”

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Zhima is very annoyed by her employer’s waste of food. Her nostalgia for rural life demonstrates her deep connection with agricultural labour and production. An underlying discourse in the text seeks to restore the dignity of peasants and the value of agricultural labour, which is juxtaposed with the devaluation of peasants in the era of a market economy. Zhima’s memories of her childhood mainly center on food and production: natural disasters, food shortages, hard work and the joy of the harvest. It is worth noting that a retired state cadre in the family of Zhima’s employer, a certain Uncle Liu, continues calling her “Xiao Guo Tongzhi” (Comrade Xiao Guo) or “Jiating Fuwu Yuan” (domestic service helper). These names, understood as residual markers of Maoist social discourse, remind the reader of a past era that celebrated the equality of all forms of labour and professions. As an intellectual from the Maoist era, Uncle Liu also continues to use the outdated term “Ji Ceng (base)” instead of the modern “countryside.” He falls back on Maoist-era socialist discourses regarding the paramount importance of agricultural labour and rural areas as a “base” for both the revolution and national construction. This old-fashioned rhetoric sharply contrasts with the post-socialist discourses of modernity, which prioritise urbanism and the market economy. Zhima likewise comes to view her physical/agricultural labour as unimportant and inferior. She hopes that, in the future, her children will finish their education and pursue modern “careers” like the urbanites she sees around her. According to the new worldview she has gradually acquired as a domestic, a creditable and meaningful “career” is one based on mental labour and participation in urban life. Agricultural production is not an acceptable “career” for rural children anymore. Despite the fact that Zhima’s commodification of her physical labour in the market economy causes her a great deal of suffering, she gradually comes to accept the reinscribed hierarchy of mental labour/physical labour that characterises the post-Mao era. Thus, although the story reveals and negotiates the hierarchical distinctions between urban and rural, it ultimately reaffirms and reinforces the post-Mao discourses of modernity. These discourses privilege the urban and are the product of the reconfigured rural-urban relationship characterising China’s restructured political economy. At the beginning of the story, Zhima is upset with the power of urbanites and the violence with which they treat rural migrants. “When a peasant migrates to the city, he or she becomes subject to the rebukes of all the urban residents.” (Zhang 2007, 95) However, after working in the city for some time, Zhima gradually comes to realise that the huge rural/urban disparity lies not just in material well-being, but also in

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lifestyle and personal choices. At this point, she begins to acquire an understanding of what “modern life” should be like and comes to regard her rural community as uncivilised and backward. She is armed with a multi-dimensional modernity discourse that touches upon all aspects of contemporary life: the social, cultural and legal realms, as well as gender issues. She acquires new knowledge and a new rhetoric, which includes terms such as “science and technology,” “IT,” “law,” “(social) discrimination,” “domestic violence” and “justifiable defense.” She begins to internalise the modern identity and endeavors to make a future for herself and her children that is totally different from the old rural lifestyle and ways of thinking. This newly acquired mentality embodies the concept of “personal progress/maturity” that the author wishes to convey. The idea that contemporary labour migration is a process by which “the individual comes into his/her own” is predominant in the liberal media and mainstream scholarship of post-Mao modernity. (Yan 2003b, 583) Zhima’s equation of the countryside with “backwardness” and “uncivilisation” is in line with the “telos of the city” in post-Mao modernity discourses. Yan Hairong interprets the migrant woman’s lament that “there is no way out in the countryside” as meaning that “there is no path to modernity in the countryside”. Yan goes on to argue: The discourse of modernity in the post-Mao era thus produces the countryside both materially and ideologically as a wasteland devoid of state investment and inhabited by a moribund tradition, with the two dimensions mutually reinforcing each other. If Modernity and Progress reside in the city and the city monopolises the culture of modernity, then the countryside is the city’s spectral Other. It is in this discursive context that the countryside cannot function as the locus of a modern identity for rural young women. (Yan 2003b, 587)

Zhima feels ashamed that her home province, Henan, was known for its moral decay and petty crime among those living in the rural community. She distinguishes herself from her fellow villagers and places the blame for the underdevelopment of rural areas on the shoulders of the peasantry or “peasant mentality.” To Zhima, this mentality is exemplified by moral decline (especially theft), the reluctance to gain new knowledge and skills, and the lack of modern education. These problems are all seen as existing in binary opposition to “urbanity” and modernity. She is eager to break away from the old value system and thought paradigms, in particular, “old” ideas about reproduction like “more children will bring more happiness”. Her exposure to new ways of thinking in the urban

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context eventually leads her to support the Chinese population control policy and to believe that having many children can only result in poverty and suffering. Theft and extra births among rural residents are clearly symptoms of the harsh conditions in the countryside, including the lack of agricultural development. However, Zhima tends to blame the difficulty and decline of rural life on the “low quality” of peasants and, in particular, on their moral weakness and backward views on reproduction. Zhima’s opinions on why rural society is “backward” are configured within the powerful “Suzhi” (quality) discourses of the post-Mao era. As Tamara Jacka has argued: “Suzhi has become a central element in a variety of discourses on development and the achievement of modernity and national power. It can, and has been used to refer to a host of attributes, including education, culture, morality, manners, psychology, physiology and genetics.” (Jacka 2005, 53) The peasant’s lack of education, manners and morality can thus be interpreted as the natural expression or outgrowth of his/her “low quality”. The “Suzhi” (quality) discourses are in fact informed by the post-Mao developmentalist policies: Suzhi perhaps first arose in the early 1980s, in the context of the post-Mao eugenics discourse of You Sheng You Yu (“superior birth and nurture”). Strict population planning has focused on the rural population as an object of intense anxiety for the political and intellectual elite. In this light, the rural population appears as a timorous mass - large in quantity and low in quality- encumbering the national body that strives to join the world of global capital through its policies of “reform and opening”. The image of abject poverty among rural households, further burdened by “too many” children, marks rural people not only as of low-quality and intractable, lacking modern civility and discipline, but perhaps, more importantly, they are seen as lacking an awareness of development that the post-Mao Chinese state has been striving to foster. (Yan 2003a, 495)

Zhima recognises the unequal development of rural and urban areas, but the only solution to alleviate rural poverty that now supports is to raise the “low quality” of rural people. Suzhi discourse is featured by its focus on overcoming individual weaknesses, at the expense however, of overlooking or disregarding the underlying structural inequalities. As Yan Hairong has noted: Another significant feature of the deployment of Suzhi is that it focuses on the attributes of human beings and how to improve them, and diverts attention away from deficiencies and inequities resulting from structures,

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For Zhima, the low quality of the rural Chinese is due primarily to overpopulation in the countryside, which is a result of their ignorance regarding procreation. In turn, the prevalence with which rural people choose to have extra children leads to the widespread lack of education. Zhima contends: Those people only play cards, gather and gossip after their agricultural labour is done. They are so lazy that they don’t even listen to the radio. They really deserve their poverty! They only aspire to bear more children and raise them to have no knowledge, no future, and no happiness. Why should these people be brought into the world? Zhima did not think about such things when she was in her hometown, but she was pushed to do so here in the city. If Zhima had the chance to start over with a totally new life, she would not live this way, at least not the way the villagers live. (Zhang 2007, 127)

The discourse of family planning is a significant feature of the postMao modernity discourses on the achievement of “development” and “progress.” As Susan Greenhalgh notes: Development is also a form of government rationality, a logic of the state whose object is the population and whose aim is the normalisation of society in the name of optimising the health, welfare and usefulness of the population. (Greenhalgh 2003, 197)

Although Zhima’s own experiences reveal the violent and inhumane behaviour of those responsible for enacting the family planning policy, ultimately she comes to regard the state’s birth control policy as the key to improving the “low quality” of rural communities. Zhima believes that bridging the gap between the “low quality” of the peasantry and the “high quality” of urbanites will help to break down the existing social stratification and eliminate class oppression. The idea of state regulation and “Suzhi” discourses on “modernising the population” and “enhancing the quality of the people through planned birth” gradually come to dominate Zhima’s thinking and overcome her initial misgivings regarding the injustice of rural/urban differences. By attributing the underdevelopment of rural society exclusively to overpopulation, the novella reaffirms prevailing hierarchical rural/urban distinctions through reference to discourses of urban modernity, which are

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distinguished by their celebration of development and Suzhi. The story’s conformity with state-sanctioned notions of modernity might explain why it was awarded the “Di Shi Er Jie Quanguo Renkou Wenhua Jiang Xiaoshuo Jinjiang” (The 12th Golden Prize for a Novel on the Chinese Population Issue) in 2004. Therefore, although this text vividly exposes the inequality between rural and urban China through the representation of a rural migrant woman’s gendered experiences, it ultimately colludes with the official discourses on population control, which provide an imaginary solution to bridge the huge rural/urban gap, through controling rural population and enhancing the “quality” of rural lives. This ending precludes any deeper exploration of the political-economic reasons behind the underdevelopment of rural areas.

Female Autonomy? Between Rural Patriarchy and State Birth Control Policy The migration of rural women to urban areas is generally perceived as being motivated by their desire to broaden their horizons and achieve freedom from rural patriarchy. The author presents Zhima’s migration from a gendered perspective and focuses on the transformation of her gendered identity. Zhima’s work in the city not only affords her the opportunity for economic independence, but also gives her access to modern discourses on women’s rights and gender equality. The great distance between her and her rural community and, more importantly, the knowledge and discursive power that she gains, empower Zhima to resist the oppressive conditions of her rural life. Her evolving sense of female self leads her to oppose domestic violence, to struggle for an equal say in domestic affairs, and to reflect critically on the patriarchal reproduction culture predominant in the countryside. The key to the transformation of Zhima’s gendered subjectivity lies in her perception of the importance of women’s reproductive choices. She is encouraged by her husband to bear a second child regardless of her own preference. When she complains to her employer, Aunt Li, about the punishment her family suffered due to the birth of an extra child, Aunt Li tells her that the punishment is Zhima’s own fault and pushes her to reexamine the situation. At the end of the story, Zhima refuses to collaborate in helping another rural woman, Xing Er, to falsify her pregnancy exam. She rebukes Xing Er for her unthinking submission to her husband. Nonetheless, Zhima’s gender consciousness is closely bound

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up with her belief that ignorance and overpopulation are the root cause of poverty and backwardness in rural areas: Xing Er, why don’t you have your own free will? Why do you just do whatever your husband says? If you do have another child, what will you do if it’s another girl? You will be fined tens of thousands for having an extra child––how will you pay for it? Children have to eat, dress and go to school. You’re the one who will suffer in bringing up your children. To bear, bear, bear––peasants only know how to bear more children. Why do you want to bear so many children? (...) All of the villagers are ignorant–– why do you still want to bear more and more children? (Zhang2007, 126)

When she hears some rural men laugh at the rural women who work in the city as domestics, Zhima feels quite sad and angry. But again, it is the “Suzhi” discourse that informs her contestation to gender discrimination: They (the rural men) only aspire to bear more children and raise them to have no knowledge, no future and no happiness (...). Zhima hoped that her son and daughter would not have the same sort of life as she had. She now looked down upon rural villagers. If she helped Xing Er cheat, she would be no different from those villagers. (Zhang 2007, 127)

The male villagers who mock the women who go to work in the city, overlook the important economic contribution these women make to their families. They look upon rural women’s domestic service in the city as shameful and intolerable. Their disparaging attitude may stem from their rejection of these women providing services for men outside the patrilocal community, which is rooted in the patriarchal rural culture. Furthermore, their negative attitude may also reflect their opposition to rural women’s domestic work as an expression of class-based inferiority. Zhima’s response to this disparagement is significant. Instead of responding from a gendered and/or class-based standpoint, Zhima once again attributes their disrespectful behavior to their lack of “Suzhi.” The completion of her “evolutionary trajectory” as a female migrant is marked by her final endorsement of urban modernity as embodied in the state policy of population management. Ultimately, Zhima’s understanding of rural men’s discriminatory attitude towards women’s migrant labour as the manifestation of their ignorance, is both gender-blind and class-blind. Her interpretation lacks a gender-specific analysis of rural men’s socio-cultural humiliation. Zhima’s rejection of the rural phenomenon of “extra births”, therefore, stems not so much from her belief in women’s reproductive

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freedom as from her anxiety about the “low quality” of rural children. Her attitude thus reflects her resolution to uphold the values of urban modernity. The story therefore fails to sufficiently contest to with the asymmetrical power relations between women/men and rural/urban. The story also lacks an objective, comprehensive examination of the economic and ideological causes of the persistence of rural poverty in the transition from Mao to post-Mao China. According to Greenhalgh, rural ideas about reproduction, such as “more children bring more happiness,” may not just be the product of traditional patriarchal culture. By labelling the preferences for several children and for sons over daughters “old-fashioned” and “feudal” in origin, the discourse rendered unthinkable the possibility that contemporary forces might have inadvertently reproduced them. Important socio-cultural and political-economic structures shaping childbearing decisions remained unacknowledged in the official discourse. (Greenhalgh 2003, 203)

The simplistic attribution of rural underdevelopment to “overpopulation” suggests the text’s collusion with state population discourses. Even the text’s construction of Zhima’s “independence” and “autonomy” is rendered questionable by the story’s happy ending. In order to resist the pressure of the local patriarchy, Zhima needs the support of her husband. His spousal authority must be affirmed to ease the growing tension within the narrative. Ultimately, between the rural patriarchy’s demands for more children and the family planning policy enforced by the state, rural women appear to lack any real reproductive autonomy. In the text, the gender discourses are intertwined with discourses surrounding post-Mao modernity and developmentalism, which are underpinned by population control policies. The author’s self-proclaimed feminist standpoint is overshadowed by her cultural politics, which unquestioningly support this same urban modernity.

Conclusion Many scholars have noted that it is not only a class or an urban/rural divide, but also gender that “serves as one of the central modalities through which modernity is imagined and desired” (Rofel 1999, 19). The literary representations of rural women’s migrant experiences examined here, are deployed within the existing discourses of gender and rural/urban

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difference, as well as the intertwining nexus between these discourses and notions of modernity. According to Wang Yu, narratives on the experiences of “rural women” have been important to modernity discourses and counter-discourses since the 1980s. (Wang 2007, 85) As the signifier of “otherness”, the rural female serves as “a subject that must be both put to work and worked upon, if the project of modernity is to succeed”. (Jacka 2005, 43) I have explored how the novella Zhi Ma responds to and interacts with post-Mao modernity discourses. By tracing Zhima’s experiences as a migrant worker, the novel exposes the gender and class discrimination to which she and other rural women are subjected within both rural and urban contexts. Zhima’s nostalgia for, and alienation from her rural life suggest the “in-between” mentality of migrant workers as a symptom of social transformation and crisis. However, the author’s main thematic concern is the process through which Zhima actively forges her modern subjectivity. Zhima’s transformation or “individual progress” is reflected at the end of the novel in her celebration of modern urban values, which are in opposition to rural “passivity,” “hopelessness” and “backwardness.” The prevalent devaluation of the peasantry as uncivilised in comparison with urbanites remains unchallenged, as the author is unable to imagine a future for rural society outside of the post-socialist developmentalist project. The initial questioning of the essential hierarchical distinction between rural/urban eventually gives way to discourses on “Suzhi” and “population control” that re-inscribe and reinforce the rural/urban distinctions. The novel also explores Zhima’s formation of an autonomous female self through her confrontation with gender inequality and rural patriarchy. However, the text’s complicity with state population discourses undercuts its feminist assertions about female liberation and autonomy. All of the class and gender issues experienced by rural migrants in the course of social transformation are ultimately given imaginary solutions relating to population control and the improvement of the peasantry’s “quality”. The problematic of how to achieve rural affluence based on equality, rather than deep social stratification, is left untouched. The deep, institutionalised intersections between gender, class and power in both rural and urban society are never fully explored. The pursuit of modern female selfhood is a difficult process for the rural migrant woman, who is trapped within the huge rural/urban divide, between sacrificing her own interests to the demands of rural patriarchy and commodifying herself in the urban market economy. Shao Ming, who has examined several contemporary literary texts on the lives of migrant

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workers, concludes that: “The post-socialist modernity, driven by the market economy, is generalised and legitimised; any other imaginary social structures outside this modernity are hard-pressed to gain acceptance.” (Shao 2006, 37) Zhi Ma’s representation of Chinese rural migrant women is mediated by the author’s preconceived liberal sociocultural views. This paper has tried to show that this text reaffirms, rather than calls into question discourses surrounding post-socialist modernity, discourses which univocally endorse and promote urbanisation and free markets.

Bibliography Chow, Rey. 2001. “Gender and Representation”. In Feminist Consequences: Theory for the New Century, edited by Bronfen E. and Kavka M. New York: Columbia University Press. Cohen, Myron L. 1993. “Cultural and Political Inventions in Modern China: The Case of the Chinese ‘Peasant.’” Daedalus 122(2): 151–70. Jacka, Tamara. 2005. Rural Women in Urban China: Gender, Migration, and Social Change. Armonk. NY, USA: M.E. Sharpe, Inc. Greenhalgh, Susan. 2003. “Planned Births, Unplanned Persons: ‘Population’ in the Making of Chinese Modernity.” American Ethnologist 30(2):196–215. Rofel, Lisa. 1999. Other Modernities: Gendered Yearnings in China after Socialism. Berkeley: University of California Press. Shao, Ming. 䚉ᯢ. 2006. “Shang tong zhong de xian dai ke wang–jin qi xiao shuo ‘nong ming gong’ shu xie de yi shi jian gou gong neng Ӹ⮯ Ё ⱘ ⦄ ҷ ␈ ᳯ —— 䖥 ᳳ ᇣ 䇈 “ ‫ ⇥ ݰ‬Ꮉ ” к ‫ ⱘ ݭ‬ᛣ 䆚 ᓎ ᵘ ࡳ 㛑 ” (“Modern Aspirations within the Pain: The Role of Ideological Construction in Recent Fictions on Migrant Workers”). Lilun yu chuangzuo ⧚䆎Ϣ߯԰ (Theory and Writing) 5: 37–40, 76. Wang, Yu ⥟ᅛ. 2007. “Xian dai xing yu bei xu shu de “xiang cun nü xing ⦄ҷᗻϢ㹿ভ䗄ⱘ“еᴥཇᗻ”” (“Modernity and the Representation of “Rural Women”). Yangzi jiang pinglun ᡀᄤ∳䆘䆎 (Yangzi River Critique) 5: 85–91. Yan, Hairong. 2003a. “Neoliberal Governmentality and Neohumanism: Organising Suzhi/Value Flow through Labor Recruitment.” Cultural Anthropology 18(4): 493–523. —. 2003b. “Specialisation of the Rural: Reinterpreting the Labor Mobility of Rural Young Women in Post-Mao China.” American Ethnologist 30(4): 578–96.

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Zhang, Kangkang ᓴᡫᡫ. 2003a. “Tan chuangzuo: zhuzhong xingbie zouchu you yan 䇜߯԰˖⊼䞡ᗻ߿䍄ߎ೓ⴐ (“Taking Gender Perspective Seriously and Breaking the Limits of Writing”). Zhongguo funü bao Ё೑ཛཇ᡹ (Chinese Women Newspaper), November 21. ––. 2003b. “Xiezuo yu shenghuo de guanxi, zai Zhongguo xiandai wenxue guan de yanjin” “‫ݭ‬԰Ϣ⫳⌏ⱘ݇㋏”, ೼Ё೑⦄ҷ᭛ᄺ佚ⱘⓨ䆆.” (“The relation between writing and life”; a public lecture delivered in in the Museum of Modern Chinese Literature”). http://www.china.com.cn/chinese/RS/470018.htm. ––. 2007. “Zhi Ma.” In Niao Shan Zou Hai Shi Shan Fei 右୘䍄䖬ᰃ୘亲 ˖ᓴᡫᡫ䖥ᑈЁⷁ㆛ᇣ䇈. (Collection of Recent Novellas and Short Stories by Zhang Kang kang). Shanghai: Shanghai Wen Yi Press.

ART AND PUBLIC SPACE

CHAPTER TWELVE THE REFORM OF CHINESE PAINTING IN THE REPUBLICAN ERA: THEORY VS. PRACTICE NATAŠA VAMPELJ SUHADOLNIK

Introduction Since Michael Sullivan’s publication Chinese Art in the Twentieth Century in 1959, so-called “modern” Chinese art has become a topic for many art historians who deploy diverse methodological approaches in trying to illuminate the new role, meaning and value of Chinese painting in the 20th century. Recently, there has been a visible and valuable shift to a broader critical approach, as evidenced by the specialised bibliographies and literature, with critics and scholars addressing a wide range of issues and research subjects. 1 Foremost among these are how Western art influenced traditional Chinese painting at the beginning of the 20th century and the different ways Chinese artists have dealt with the many new trends that challenged the more than thousand year long painting tradition, which was often denigrated with labels such as “stagnant” and “uncreative”. This major transition in Chinese art is usually recounted in terms of two main groups of artists or scholars, usually denoted as Traditionalists vs. Westernisers, or in Shen Kuiyi’s words the “national essence” advocates vs. the “reformists” (Shen 1997, 607), contrapositions which emerged as a spontaneous response to a cultural struggle between the “East” and “West”. However, this distinction is somewhat misleading, for both groups can be seen as “pioneers” or “revolutionaries” in their search for solutions regarding the status and role of art during this chaotic transition. Both groups sought practical and theoretical answers to fundamental 1 For a rich collection of research materials covering the many different issues and approaches, see John Clark, Modernities of Chinese Art (2010).

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questions, such as: What method of artistic expression is most appropriate for the advanced demands of modern society? What kind of art could contribute to defining the values and aims of the newly established Republic? How determine and define the goals of the arts in a new society? Should they accept Western art and, if so, how should they go about assimilating it? To what extent should the essence of traditional painting be incorporated into the modern art world? Conscious of a deep crisis, both “reformists” and “traditionalists” were aware of the need to revitalise or go beyond the stagnant style of late Qing traditional painting, dominated by “Four Wangs, Wu and Yun” (ಯ⥟ਈᙑ), more commonly known as the “Six Masters of the Qing”. The young students who studied abroad were impressed by Western painting styles and saw in the adoption of Western painting materials and techniques the solution for the impasse in Chinese painting. While they struggled for a synthesis between Western and Chinese art, the traditionalists advocated reform within the native culture, especially by studying the ancient masters of the Tang, Song and Yuan periods (Shen 1997, 611). Their critical views and ideas appeared in the many art journals and magazines that flourished in the first decades of the 20th century. We should point out that this rather arbitrary division between “traditionalists” and “reformists” is mainly operative within the context of the many ardent theoretical debates of that time, while the actual works of art reveal a much more complex phenomena. Each individual artist developed his own specific style of representation in which one can often detect the interplay of various elements. As such, these works resist any reductive form of labelling. Some reformist artists returned to traditional values and ideas later in their careers, while traditional artists often adopted various foreign elements. Having once been exposed to different cultural elements, a mixture of diverse artistic tendencies led to forming the specific styles of individual artists, styles which cannot be neatly categorised as “Chinese” or “Western”––whatever “Chinese” or “Western” may mean. Furthermore, as Shen Kuiyi observed (1997, 616– 17), the reformist ideas and critiques of traditional painting prevailed mainly in theory, while in practice they met with many difficulties and challenges, especially with respect to how best adopt realistic methods and apply Western techniques and materials. Consequently, there was a glaring discrepancy between theory and practice.

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Appearance of New Institutional Media in Art A concatenation of disruptive and unsettling socio-political events in the late Qing culminated in the Xinhai revolution (Xinhai geming 䗋ӕ䶙 ભ), which in turn gave rise to sweeping reforms that would lead the Chinese people and their country from an old-fashioned imperial system to the world of generalised progress and technical development. One result of these changes was that a tradition of Chinese painting which was celebrated for its theory, special media and technique, was now suddenly confronted with new innovations and challenges. In this context, controversy centred primarily on the extent to which the reform of painting should encroach upon the fundamental tenet or principal of traditional painting, in which spiritual essence takes precedence over the outer form. Although a tendency towards the realistic representation of subject matter in art had prevailed in the earliest periods, reaching its culmination in the Song dynasty––the prominent philosopher from the Warring States period, Han Feizi 丙䶎ᆀ (280?–233 BC), argued that the easiest subjects to paint were ghosts, because nobody could judge if the likeness has been achieved or not, while the most difficult to paint were dogs, horses and other real things (Yang 1997, 1),––the general principle of “yi xing xie shen ԕᖒ߉⾎”––“use the form to depict the spirit”, formulated by Gu Kaizhi 亮ᚪѻ (ca. 344–406) in the 4th century and further interpreted by later art historians remained the fundamental theoretical principle of Chinese painting down to the modern era. On the threshold of the 20th century, “spiritual” Chinese painting was exposed to various new innovations and ideas coming from West. As a result, a new term guohua ഭ⭫ (“national style painting”)2 entered into the art vocabulary in order to differentiate it from Western oil painting, called xihua 㾯⭫, yanghua ⌻⭫or xiyanghua 㾯⌻⭫ (“Western-style painting”) (Kao 1983, 373). The role of the artist as an important member 2

As Julia Andrews has pointed out, this term was most probably borrowed from Japan, where the term nihonga ᰕᵜ⭫ (“Japanese style painting”) was used in opposition to yǀga ⌻⭫ (“Western style painting”) (Andrews 1990, 557). With arrival of the French-trained teacher, Kuroda Seiki 唂⭠␵䕍, the first Japanese art school Tokyo School of Fine Arts (today Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music), founded in 1889, added Western-style painting as a new subject to its curriculum; as a consequence original indigenous painting was renamed as Japanese style painting (Wong 2006, 9).

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of the cultural elite in previous periods also started to change from a passive to a more active role in shaping the new society. The foundations were laid by Cai Yuanpei’s 㭑‫ݳ‬ษ famous article Replacing Religion with Aesthetic Education ԕ㖾㛢ԓᇇᮉ䈤 (Yi meiyu dai zongjiao shuo), first published in the very influential journal Xin qingnian ᯠ䶂ᒤ (New Youth) in August, 1917. He argued that an aesthetic education should contribute to the cultivation of one’s feeling and spiritual life, which in turn could lead to the formation of an ideal and harmonious society. For Cai Yuanpei, cultural life should be accessible to everyone. This new role of the artist was also evident in the fact that artists mostly gravitated towards the major cities, such as Beijing ेӜ, Shanghai к⎧, Nanjing ইӜ, Hangzhou ᶝ ᐎ and Canton (Guangzhou ᒯᐎ). In their search for national fame, many provincial artists left home for cosmopolitan cities in order to participate in the lively intellectual life there, while also hoping to sell their art and earn a living. The “urbanisation of painters” (huajia de chengshihua ⭫ᇦ Ⲵ෾ᐲॆ), as Lang Shaojun 䛾㓽ੋ defines this phenomenon in his concise survey of 20th century Chinese painting (Lang 1997a, 14), intensified the close ties between painting and socio-political activities, and gave artists the opportunity of playing an active role in social and political events. Gao Jianfu 儈ࢁ⡦ (1879–1951), a leading representative of the Lingnan school ዝই⍮ which advocated the synthesis between Chinese and Western art, is exemplary of this kind of meaningful interaction. In his second stay in Japan he met Dr. Sun Yat-sen and was captivated by his revolutionary ideas. He joined the Zhongguo tongmeng hui ѝഭ਼ⴏՊ organisation and participated in numerous uprisings in Canton (Li 1979, 45). As members of a newly established educational system where art played a significant role or as active participants in social processes, many other artists likewise contributed to forming modern China and its modern art world. Of particular importance here were the ideas of nationalism, based on the Japanese model introduced into the art world by Gao Jianfu, and that of social consciousness, which derived from the leftist cultural movement and the Communist party, which was first formed in the 1920s. Artists who identified with the poor and oppressed classes were convinced that through the medium of painting they could act effectively against social inequalities, injustice and oppression. The gradual transformation of art and artists into playing a more active social role in shaping an ideal and harmonious society evolved alongside various innovations in the institutionalising of diverse art media: exhibitions, art journals and magazines, photography, reproductions, publishing houses and art schools. These appeared together for the first

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time on the Chinese art scene and contributed to the significant cultural, political and social role artists would come to play in the modernisation of Chinese society. Technical achievements of the modern era, such as the invention of photography and the development of modern printing, made art works available to a much wider audience. Printing accelerated the production and dissemination of a vast quantity of the most diverse journals, magazines, posters, books and albums, while the emerging markets for these and their widening circulation offered artists an additional and updated option for studying old masters, Western concepts and contemporary trends in art circles. The founding of publishing houses that issued numerous art journals further strengthened the link between artists and their audience, contributing to the popularisation of art works, an extremely important collector’s culture and a greater interest in such activities. Here, we should recall the pioneering efforts of Gao Jianfu who, influenced by the art society in Meiji Japan, with its professional artists, urban art market, publications, public exhibitions and government support for the arts (Croizier 1988, 68), shortly after the 1911 revolution established the bookstore and publishing house, Shenmei shuguan ᇑ㖾Җ 侶 (Aesthetic Bookshop) in order to promote new art. The bookstore is best remembered for the publication of the first illustrated magazine in China, Zhen xiang huabao ⵏ⴨⭫ᣕ (The True Record), which appeared from 6 May, 1912 to 6 March, 1913 (Croizier 1988, 68). In his in-depth study of the Lingnan school, Ralph Croizier (1988, 68) notes that the review promised to give its readers the latest news from the political, social, industrial, commercial, educational and artistic fields. The publication Shenzhou guoguang ji ⾎ ᐎ ഭ ‫ ݹ‬䳶 was likewise a pioneer in the reproduction of images for the general public and offered the first major publication of reproductions of Chinese painting and calligraphy, mostly from private collections in Shanghai (Li 1979, 62; Shen 1997, 615). A similar ground-breaking role should be attributed to the series of art books Meishu congshu 㖾 ᵟ ы Җ , first published in 1911. Totalling 120 volumes, it collected all known discourses on various aspects of art, culled from traditional sources. This extraordinary series of texts constitutes the most complete collection of theoretical discussions of art in China (Li 1979, 62; Shen 1997, 615). In addition to publishing activities, public exhibitions and museums were another key innovation that contributed to the popularisation of art. As Kao Mayching has pointed out (1983, 381), the genesis of the modern Chinese exhibition can be traced back to the educational and industrial

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exhibitions towards the end of the Qing dynasty, which were closely linked to the new educational system of 1902. During his Shanghai period (1912–1917) and inspired by the Japan model, Gao Jianfu together with his brother organised public exhibitions of their works in that city and in major nearby cities like Nanjing and Hangzhou (Croizier 1988, 71). Liu Haisu ࡈ⎧㋏ (1896–1994), who in a late interview (1983) recalled that Gao`s bookstore was the first establishment to sell paintings publicly (Croizier 1988, 71), in 1912 had already established one of the first art schools Shanghai guohua meishuyuan к ⎧ ഭ ⭫ 㖾 ᵟ 䲒 , and soon thereafter organised an exhibition of mostly guohua painting. According to Sullivan (1996, 30), he and his pupils were quite aware that Western-style painting was viewed with little or no respect, if not outright hostility. During the first years of the Republican period, the public showings of contemporary art works, organised mostly in Shanghai and Beijing, were promoted under the attentive eyes of enthusiastic young artists. But once the government saw the importance of structuring the art domain, it decided to assume a leading role and exhibitions became one of its main concerns. The selection of works depended on an organisational committee, whose members included both leading officials and recognised artists. Croizier (1988, 86) claims the Guangdong Provincial Art Exhibition of 1920 was the first government sponsored art exhibition in China, while the first National Exhibition was held in Shanghai in 1929. During the Republican period, the government organised two other National Exhibitions, in Nanjing in 1937 and in Chongqing in 1942. These National Exhibitions, which included works by artists from all over China, presented guohua as well as Western-style painting. With the educational reform in the last decades of the Manchu empire, the study of art was gradually incorporated into the curriculum. 3 An important milestone here was the establishment of the painting and handicrafts sections at the Liangjiang High Normal School in Nanjing (Nanjing liangjiang youji shifan xuetang ইӜє⊏Ո㓗ᐸ㤳ᆖา) in 1906, which laid the foundations for modern education in the arts (Kao 1983, 375, 377). It was also noteworthy as the first department of Western art (Sullivan 1989, 174). The curriculum, which followed the Japan model, consisted of Chinese and Western painting; it thus provided the basis for the parallel study of the two painting traditions in later art academies, which gradually began to open elsewhere in China. In fact, its example was soon followed by the Beiyang Normal School (Beiyang shifan 3

For the beginning of modern art education in China see Kao 1983, 377–82.

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xuetang े⌻ᐸ㤳ᆖา) in Baoding ‫؍‬ᇊ in northern China. Kao points out that both schools were the first educational institutions to train future art teachers, in order to meet the demand of the rapidly growing number of schools throughout the Chinese territory (Kao 1983, 377). After the establishment of the Republic, many artists returning from Japan established studios or art schools in Shanghai (Sullivan 1989, 174). In 1912, at just 16 years of age, Liu Haisu established his little art school in Shanghai; by the 1920s and early 1930s this school had become the main centre of Western oil painting in China (Sullivan 1989, 174). The establishment of new art schools created an entirely new atmosphere for artists, who now had the opportunity to learn both traditional and Western technique and skills from different teachers instead of just one maestro, as had always been the case in master-pupil systems.

Theory vs. Practice Art in Theoretical Debates The appearance of numerous art journals offered a platform for the intensive discussion of a wide range of questions related to the role and nature of which kind of art was best suited to modern tendencies. Journals such as Dongfang zazhi ьᯩᵲᘇ (Eastern Magazine), Guohua tekan ഭ ⭫⢩࠺ (Special Issues on Chinese Painting Monthly), Guohua yuekan ഭ ⭫ᴸ࠺ (Chinese Painting Monthly), Guocui xuebao ഭ㋩ᆖᣕ (Journal of National Essence), Huixue zazhi 㔈ᆖᵲᘇ (Painting Magazine), Hushe yuekan ⒆⽮ᴸ࠺ (Lake Society Monthly), Qiantu ࡽ䙄 (Future Road), Shishi huabao ᰦһ⭫ᣕ (Pictorial Magazine on Current Affairs), Xin Qingnian ᯠ䶂ᒤ (New Youth), Xinchao ᯠ▞ (New Tide), Xueheng ᆖ㺑 (Critical Review), Yaboluo ӊ⌒㖇 (Apollo), Yi feng 㢪仾 (Art Wind), Yilin xunkan 㢪᷇ᰜ࠺ (Art Collection Ten-day Periodical) and Yishu xunkan 㢪 ᵟ ᰜ ࠺ (L’Art), etc. were notable publications in which prominent scholars, artists and other intellectuals expressed and shared their views on the role, function and reform of Chinese art and painting. Chen Duxiu 䱸 ⤜ ⿰ (1879–1942), who under Cai Yuanpei’s leadership at Beijing University became the Head of the Literature department, edited the new review Xin Qingnian, which soon became one of the leading intellectual journals of the New Cultural Movement. In the first issue of volume 4, published in 1918, he openly advocated the reform of Chinese painting.

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The Four Wangs––Wang Shimin ⦻ ᰦ ᭿ , Wang Jian ⋤ 䢤 , Wang Yuanqi ⦻ ৏ ⽱ in Wang Hui ⦻ 㘊 ––representatives of the so-called orthodox painting school in the Qing dynasty, followed the literati painting tradition. By imitating ancient paintings, they sought to return to a former age, and especially to the painters of the Song and Yuan periods. Their conventional way of painting was followed by many other artists at the turn of the 20th century, which led to the stiffness and stagnation of pictorial expression. Because so many contemporary artists merely imitated old works, in what appeared as an uncreative art of replication, Chen Duxiu was convinced the Four Wangs were not only having a devastating impact on Chinese painting, but also represented the greatest obstacle to importing Western realism which could contribute to the reform of Chinese art (Shen 1997, 605). In his view, it was fundamental that painters learn to apply the realistic emphasis upon the similarity between image and the object being depicted in their own works. His ideas were influenced by one of the most remarkable figures in the area of art and aesthetic education in the newly established Republic of China, Cai Yuanpei 㭑‫ݳ‬ษ (1868–1940). Cai was born in the village of Shanyin ኡ䱤 in Zhejiang ⎉⊏ province, in 1868. In 1912, he became the first minister of education of the newly established Republic and in 1917 the president of Peking University. Under his leadership, this conservative, bureaucratic and corrupt institution soon became a center of advanced knowledge and the driving force for intellectual and cultural revival in China. With his attacks on the many old-fashioned customs which hindered the development of individuality, creativity and independent thinking, he quickly gained the favor of the young and educated, many of whom were able to travel to Europe thanks to his support. Cai was convinced that, in terms of the spiritual formation of the individual and society as a whole, art should definitely replace religion, and that aesthetic education could thus contribute to shaping and cultivating the feelings and spiritual life of individuals, and become a leading force in shaping an ideal society. He therefore advocated that “aesthetic education” (meigan zhi jiaoyu 㖾ᝏѻᮉ㛢) be established on an equal basis with the other four forms of education: “universal military education” (jun guomin jiaoyu ߋ

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ഭ≁ᮉ㛢), “utilitarian” (shili zhuyi zhi jiaoyu ᇎ࣋ѫѹѻᮉ㛢), “moral” (gongmin daode zhi jiaoyu ‫≁ޜ‬䚃ᗧѻᮉ㛢) and “education for a world view” (shijieguan jiaoyu ц⭼㿲ᮉ㛢) (Cai 1987, 1–8). 㓟㋩ѻ㖾㛢ˈᡰԕ䲦ޫ੮Ӫѻᝏᛵˈ֯ᴹ儈ቊ㓟⌱ѻҐᜟˈ㘼֯Ӫᡁ ѻ㿱ǃ࡙ᐢᦏӪѻᙍᘥˈԕ⑀⎸⋞㘵…㖾ԕᲞ䙽ᙗѻ᭵ˈнᗙᴹӪᡁ ѻ‫ޣ‬㌫ˈ䙲Ӗн㜭ᴹ࡙ᇣѻ‫ޣ‬㌫DŽ What cultivates our emotions in pure aesthetic education is that it produces pure and lofty habits and gradually eliminates selfishness and the concept of benefiting ourselves through harming others (…). Because of the universality of beauty, the distinction between myself and other people no longer exists, and there can be no relationships based on self-interest or harming others. (Cai 1917, 4)4

Kao Mayching stresses that Cai’s core emphasis on aesthetics is a reflection of the influence of Kantian philosophy “which emphasised the universal nature of the appreciation of beauty and its capacity to maintain a feeling of detachment” (Kao 1983, 383). The love of beauty could eliminate greed and hatred, two of the main factors which made harmony in material world impossible. By contributing to the transformation and cultivation of the human spirit, aesthetic education could thus assume a pivotal social role, inspiring in artists a sense of social responsibility. Given this premise, Cai believed painting should become a basic educational media, in order to anchor the spiritual strength of an individual, and thus that of the entire society. Traditional painting and its ink-play was no longer sufficient to fulfil the needs of this social function. He thus advocated the reform of painting by means of Western methods, especially Western realism, and encouraged young students to go abroad to study Western painting. Thanks to his support, Xu Beihong ᗀᛢ呯 (1895–1953) and Liu Haisu were able to study abroad, and after their return both assumed important functions in educational institutions 5 . Modern ideas and the “foreign atmosphere” of Shanghai and other major 4

English translation by Julia F. Andrews, see Denton 1996, 186–87. Another of Cai’s important achievements was establishing China's major art schools, i.e. the National Academy of Art in Beijing (1927), the renovated Art Department of the National Central University in Nanjing (1927), led by Xu Beihong and the National Academy of Art in Hangzhou. The latter was founded by Cai Yuanpei and Lin Fengmian ᷇付ⵐ in 1928. (Li 1979, 6) Cai Yuanpei also founded the North China Academy (Huabei xueyuan ॾेᆖ䲒), which had the express intention of promoting Western art. 5

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cities, propelled a number of young artists abroad, generally first to Japan and then later to Europe. Upon their return, they often became promoters for the reform of Chinese painting, introducing new ideas into the newly established art schools. For example, during his stay in France, Lin Fengmian ᷇ 付 ⵐ (1900–1991) together with other emigrée Chinese artists founded the Overseas Art Movement Society. After his return, he helped launch the National Art Movement Society (Guoli yishu yundong she ഭ ・ 㢪 ᵟ 䘀 ࣘ ⽮ ), which had the express aim of producing contemporary art (Sullivan 1996, 49). In an article in the 1933 inaugural issue of Qiantu, Lin Fengmian stressed the two main maladies of guohua, i.e. the negligence of time and Nature. ᰦԓⲴਈॆቡᓄᖃⴤ᧕ᖡ૽ࡠ㔈⭫㢪ᵟⲴ޵ᇩоᢰᐗ(…).㢪ᵟᱟ㾱㯹 ཆ⢙ѻᖒˈԕᇴᆈ㠚ᡁⲴˈᡆ䈤ᰦԓⲴᙍᜣоᝏᛵⲴDŽ Changes of the time should directly affect the content and techniques of art (…). Art should take advantage of the outer form of objects to register and preserve the thoughts and feelings of oneself or an era (Lin 1933, 59).

In order to correct these deficiencies, he proposed drawing directly from nature and objects, using new materials and tools and aiming at simplicity (Lin 1933, 60). Many artists were influenced by non-Chinese painting, though for different reasons: some were impressed by the technical solutions of Western painting, such as perspective, chiaroscuro, shading, etc., while others laid stress on the conceptual aspects and tried to define the nature of art and the artist’s attitude towards artistic creation. The oldest among them was Gao Jianfu (1879–1951), who together with his brother Gao Qifeng 儈ཷጠ (1889–1935) and the painter Chen Shuren 䱸ṁӪ (1883– 1949) had founded the Lingnan school of painting in Canton. These artists were greatly influenced by the “new Japanese style” movement, and they proceeded to launch a distinctly Chinese version of this movement called “New National Painting” (xin guohua ᯠ ഭ ⭫ ), which would revive traditional art by the injection of realistic elements and the inclusion of contemporary topics (Sullivan 1989, 179). Unlike many painters who tried to assimilate exclusively Western elements, Gao argued that the “new national painting” should absorb elements from all artistic traditions––not just Western, but also Indian, Japanese and even the culture of the Middle East (Croizier 1988, 111). He was convinced that a total Westernisation was impossible (Gao 1955, 34), and in his desire for innovation, creativity and realism, he also sought to preserve the specific Chinese identity. In

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this regard, he gave particular emphasis to the advantages of brush and ink, and the concept of “spiritual resonance”. As Croizier notes, he defined the “new national painting” as a winning combination of “having the spirit and spiritual resonance of national painting and also the scientific techniques of Western painting” (Croizier 1988, 112). 6 He excelled in integrating modern topics and objects, such as airplanes, cars, telephone poles, etc. into his paintings, and argued that art needed to maintain a close relationship with contemporary events. Xu Beihong was instead entirely overwhelmed by the Western academic tradition and the realism of the great masters such as Rubens, Rembrandt, Turner and Constable. He fiercely criticised not only the Chinese “sacred cows” of traditional painting––Dong Qichang 㪓ަ᰼ and the Four Wangs––but leading modern Western artists as well. Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse and Pierre-Auguste Renoir were all in his “Doubts” (Huo ᜁ) and in his debate with Xu Zhimo ᗀᘇ᪙ on the nature of art styles and the meaning of modernity, he denigrated these artists as being “vulgar, shallow and inferior” and accused them of being “deviants” with respect to the great tradition of Western academic painting (Xu 1929, 1–2).7 The Doubts, together with its sequels and rebuttals, focused mainly on the issue of style–– the realistic depiction of the academic tradition vs. more impressionist or post-impressionist depictions––revealing not only the conflict with the traditionalists, but the divisions and differences among the so-called Westernisers themselves. Xu Beihong, who together with Xu Zhimo, Lin Fengmian, Liu Haisu and others, was on the committee of the First National Exhibition, was horrified to learn that the art works to be exhibited were mostly inclined towards the more modern tendencies. He believed the more adventurous avant-garde styles currently reigning in Paris, Berlin and Vienna, i.e. Impressionism, Post-

6

For more details on the theory of “new national painting” see Croizier 1988, 110– 14. 7 The debate between Xu Beihong and Xu Zhimo appeared in the Meizhan huikan 㖾 ኅ ≷ ࠺ (Art Exhibition Report), which accompanied the first National Exhibition. Xu Beihong’s “Doubts” was published in No. 5, April 22, 1929, Xu Zhimo’s “I also have ‘doubts’” (“Wo ye ‘huo’” ᡁҏ“ᜁ”) in No. 6, April 25, 1929. Xu Beihong’s reply “Doubts unresolved” (“Huo zhi bu jie” ᜁѻн䀓) in No. 9, May 4, 1929. This debate was interrupted by Li Yishi with his “I have no ‘doubts’” (“Wo bu ‘huo’” ᡁнᜁ) in No. 8, May 1, 1929 (see also Croizier 1993, 135).

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impressionism, Cubism, et al, would be extremely counterproductive to the successful assimilation of Western art into the Chinese tradition. Of course, the Westernisers were not the only ones involved in heated polemics on how best to reform the guohua tradition. Faced with the fierce attack on traditional Chinese painting, the Traditionalists were eager to answer the challenge. Organised primarily in private groups or associations whose purpose was the promotion of traditional painting, they argued that this kind of reform was a disaster for Chinese art and condemned all those who subordinated Chinese literati values to Western culture. Julia Andrews has described private art groups “as the most important organisations for the preservation, promotion, and development of Chinese painting” (Andrews 1997, 580), pointing out how the Chinese Painting Society (Zhongguo hua hui ѝഭ⭫Պ) established in Shanghai in 1931 performed a vital role in preserving traditional values (Andrews 1997, 580). In their manifesto, they defined the Society’s three basic aims: to develop traditional art, publicise it abroad and guarantee the financial viability through mutual assistance (Andrews 1997, 586–87). In the inaugural issue of their journal Guohua yuekan, Huang Binhong 哴ᇮ㲩 (1865–1955) urged Chinese artists not to look to the power of others, but rather to deepen their own tradition in order to maintain its honour (Huang 1934, 6). The conservative reformation extended well beyond Shanghai. In Beijing, traditionalists such as Jin Shaocheng 䠁㓽෾ (1877–1926), Chen Shizeng 䱸ᐸᴮ (1876–1923) and Zhou Zhaoxiang ઘ㚷⾕ (1880–1954) reacted swiftly by founding the Zhongguo huaxue yanjiuhui ѝഭ⭫ᆖ⹄ ウՊ (“Society for the Study of Chinese Painting”). Jin Shaocheng, who had studied both law and art in Europe and the United States, had a central role in the Society, giving lectures on ancient art and the importance of old painting, especially masters from the Tang and Song dynasties. Particularly resonant were his views on the “old” and “new”. 8 In painting there is no difference between the old and new. Without the old, there isn’t the new. The new evolves from the old. The old, when evolved, becomes new. In sticking to the new, the new becomes old. If you bear in mind that there exist both the old and the new, you will find it difficult to follow any one rule when you paint. (Lang 1997b, 307–8)

8

His Lectures on the Study of Painting (Huaxue jiangyi ⭫ᆖ䇢ѹ) were published in the journal Hushe yuekan.

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Jin Shaocheng’s contemporary, Chen Shizeng, appears more flexible with regard to Western art. He was not opposed to using Western methods, but stated that new works “should be based on the structure of traditional Chinese painting” (Shen 1997, 613). He wrote an important theoretical essay “The Value of Literati Painting” (Wenrenhua zhi jiazhi ᮷Ӫ⭫ѻԧ ٬) which was published in vernacular Chinese in 1921. In this work, he points out the fundamental merits of literati painting, examines the four basic criteria of literati painters (moral character, education, feelings and thoughts) 9 , demonstrates the strong link existing between painting and calligraphy, and emphasises spiritual resonance and the rejection of form. With respect to form, he makes an explicit comparison between Chinese and Western-style painting: 㾯⌻⭫ਟ䉃ᖒլᶱ⸓ʽ㠚ॱҍц㓚ԕᶕˈԕ、ᆖѻ⨶⹄ウ‫ݹ‬㢢ˈަҾ ⢙䊑փ傼ӪᗞDŽ㘼䘁ᶕѻਾঠ䊑⍮ˈѳ৽ަ䚃㘼㹼ѻˈн䟽ᇒփˈу ԫѫ㿲DŽ・փ⍮ǃᵚᶕ⍮ǃ㺘⧠⍮ˈ㚄㘙╄ࠪˈަᙍᜣѻ䖜ਈˈӖ䏣 㿱ᖒլѻнᱟቭ㢪ᵟѻ䮯ˈ㘼н㜭н࡛ᴹᡰ≲⸓DŽ(Chen 2008, 25) Western painting can be described as extremely faithful to form. Since the nineteenth century, in accordance with the principles of science [Western painting] has meticulously rendered objects with light and colours. Lately, however, Post-impressionism has run counter to that course; it deemphasises the objective, and focuses on the subjective, and is joined in its revolutionary performances by Cubism and Futurism. Such intellectual transformations are sufficient demonstrations that verisimilitude does not exhaust the good in art and that alternative criteria must be sought.10

This brief excerpt indicates that he applied Post-impressionism, Cubism, Futurism and Expressionism in his “theory” of subjectivity, where he argued that the intrinsic nature of self-expressionist, and thus literati painting with elements of subjectivity, was perfectly suited to the modern movements in the west. (See also Clunas 2009, 204) As such, traditional literati painting was not only Chinese, but also modern and progressive. And this was actually a tendency by which the radical reformers sought to imitate Western art.

9

For a thorough analysis of the text and its criteria, see Wong (2000, 305–11). The article is also included in the author’s book (2006, 54–76). 10 English translation from Wong (2006, 65).

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Art in Practice If we bear in mind Chen’s “theory” of subjectivity, it becomes clear that, with the exception for Xu Beihong, who actively opposed the Western avant-garde and accused Manet of being mediocre, Renoir vulgar, Cezanne shallow and Matisse inferior (Clunas 2009, 207), many other pioneers of so-called modern art supported the Western anti-academic styles. Although in the debates of the time, Chinese painters were frequently exhorted to follow realism, most failed to master Western-style realistic paintings, and instead adapted the styles and features found in recent Western “isms”. Liu Haisu, for example, became enthusiastic about Van Gogh’s art, which he claimed was “a world of the natural force of inner life” (Sullivan 1996, 73), while both Lin Fengmian and Ding Yanyong б㹽ᓨ (1902–1978) admired the great Fauvist master Henri Matisse. “Isms”––such as Impressionism, Post-impressionism, Cubism, Futurism––deviated from the real world and focused on the essence of the natural and the object, as projected through self-expression. Form became the main medium for revealing the artists’ authentic feelings and ideas, while nature and everyday scenes replaced various kinds of historical, religious and pathetic subjects. As articulated by Chen, Western “isms” “deemphasise the objective, and focus on the subjective” (Chen 2008, 25), which is nothing other than the true essence of the literati painting, that predominated after the Song dynasty. The tendency towards the expression of the inner qualities and spirit of the subject, whereby the form is subordinated to the content, was already firmly ingrained in much earlier periods. In fact, it was the famous painter and art theoretician Gu Kaizhi, a native of Wuxi ᰐ䭑 in Jiangsu province, who formulated the general principle “yi xing xie shen ԕᖒ߉⾎”––“use the form to depict the spirit”, which would remain the chief tenet of Chinese painting until the modern era. Half a century later, Xie He 䉒䎛 (active in the 5th century) in the preface to his book Guhua pinlu ਔ⭫૱ᖅ (Classified Record of Ancient Painters), elaborated this principle in the form of six fundamental rules of painting, known as Liufa ‫“( ⌅ޝ‬Six Principles of painting”), which became the main standards for traditional Chinese painting. The first principle “qi yun shengdong ≄ 严 ⭏ ࣘ ” emphasises the “spiritual resonance” (qi yun ≄严) of painted forms, while the other five principles, which relate to brushwork, form, colour, composition and copying, are the essential medium for attaining this first principle. Later art theoreticians generally only interpreted these principles, while constantly affirming the first and primary principle that

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the pictorial image should express the spirit of life. With the appearance of the literati painters, skilfully trained in calligraphy and poetry, pure landscapes and various plants without prominent figures or architectural structures became a preferred subject matter. These subjects enabled the artist to express his feelings, internal moods and personality, and these painters frequently rejected the outer form and instead accepted the more abstract dimensions of the paintings. This shift towards capturing the subject’s spirit is noticeable in the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, when “sketching the idea” or xieyi ߉᜿ became the chief aim of painting (see also Vampelj Suhadolnik 2011, vi). Coming of age themselves in this millennial painting tradition, it is not difficult to understand the affinity the Chinese “reformist” artists felt with the new non-academic styles of the West. In many modern Western art works, posited on the artist expressing his inner feelings through lines and colours and seeking a source of pleasure in painting, they could find very similar tendencies. Thus, and notwithstanding their prolonged study of Western perspective techniques, bold colours, chiaroscuro modelling and other purely technical aspects, their work preserved the basic essence of literati painting and were to a certain extent, consciously or unconsciously, subjected to traditional values and influences. Indeed, in later years, or at least in certain periods, most of them reverted to the Chinese media of brush and ink as being more suited to capturing the spirit of the objects and a more spontaneous form of self-expression. We can thus conclude that the general principal yi xing xie shen was the main goal for virtually all Chinese painters, even for the so-called Westernised Chinese painters who inclined towards adapting the Western academic style of realism. A representation of the outer form must also comprise the inner essence; hence, as Wen Fong in Modern Chinese Art Debate concludes, all Chinese painters “tried to temper pictorial realism with calligraphic expressiveness” (1993, 29l). Xu Beihong was no exception. Although it is generally acknowledged that he had mastered salon oil painting in realistic representations, Xu’s experiments in applying technical solutions of Western realism with traditional monochrome brushwork––as in his famous patriotic work, The Foolish Old Man who Moved the Mountain, where he used monochrome ink technique to draw gigantic heroic nudes—seem superficial without the dramatic feeling of the subject-matter being depicted. Wen Fong identified the source of this “superficial” realism in the diverse cultural backgrounds, and thus in the differing perceptions of realistic conception and representation (Fong 1993, 291). The main purpose for depicting the form

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in Chinese tradition was to seize and transmit the object’s spiritual aspect, which could be reflected through external representation. In his paintings of animals––horses, water-buffalo, cats, sparrows––Xu Beihong returned to the Chinese media of ink and brush and tried to reach a synthesis between the Western realism and the Eastern national spirit. He executed these works in a traditional literati way, usually in one step, and using monochrome ink with abundant washes (Figure 12-1). Other reformist artists likewise rediscovered Chinese media at various points in their own careers, offering their own “modern” version of the Chinese literary style. While Liu Haisu rediscovered the Chinese media during the 1920s (Li 1979, 229), even exhibiting his own guohua ink paintings in Paris and London, Gao Jianfu vigorously emphasised the brushwork in his paintings. He often depicted plants and flowers, subjects which represent the golden repertoire of the literati painters, and in his landscapes followed the Ming painting tradition of Tang Yin ୀᇵ (1470– 1524) and Lan Ying 㬍⪋ (1585–1664) (Sullivan 1996, 54). Although advocating that the scientific techniques of Western painting should be applied in Chinese paintings, in his desire to promote the “new national painting” his use of brushwork and ink is often emphatic, while many of his paintings are executed so as to enhance the “spiritual resonance”. Even though his efforts were only partially successful––his later works come very close to traditional literati painting,––he must be credited with incorporating the concept of “contemporaneity” into art, often including contemporary topics into his works, such as landscapes with airplanes (Figure 12-2). The most effective promoter of painting which sought to include both the modern and Chinese, was Lin Fengmian. After spending seven years in Europe, Lin returned to China and with Cai Yuanpei’s support he established and became the first director of the Hangzhou Academy. During his time abroad, he had not only become familiar with the new modern “isms”, but had studied traditional Chinese art in Paris museums. He found his aesthetic satisfaction in integrating Western technique, especially the outdoor light and bold colours of the Impressionists, with monochrome heavy ink and line drawing. Lang Shaojun notes that “in style and colour [his still-life paintings] look more like Western still-lifes (…) As a result of his ink colours and rhythmic and graceful use of Chinese brush, they look more like traditional Chinese works” (Lang 1997b, 324). Thus, he too can be seen as extending the ideals of the literati painters.

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Figure 12-1: Xu Beihong, Horse, ink and white pigment on paper, 1943-1946, 76 x 47 cm, © National Gallery in Prague 2013

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Figure 12-2: Gao Jianfu, Flying in the Rain, hanging scroll, ink and pigment on paper, 1932. Reproduced by permission of the Art Museum of the Chinese University of Hong Kong from the collection of the Art Museum

In this context, it is important to stress the difficulty and confusion many Chinese artists experienced during their sojourns in Europe. While their study abroad certainly represented a unique experience, a heady mix of the excitement of a strange culture and their personal enthusiasm for Western art, this experience could also generate depression and confusion as they were forced to confront a series of bewildering and unsettling questions: What was Western art and the Western way of painting? How best absorb Western styles into their own tradition and achieve a synthesis between both kinds of art? From the letters and interviews that have survived, it is clear that these young artists were faced with countless new cultural distinctions and consequently had great difficulty understanding Western painting. Lin Fengmian, for example, asked with disarming simplicity “why are there so many different styles [of painting] in Paris”

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(Sullivan 1996, 41), while Wu Guanzhong ੤ߐѝ (1919–2010), who studied at the École des Beaux Arts from 1946–1950, felt empty and terrified, like Antaeus who lost his strength when lifted from the earth (see Fong 1993, 292). Therefore, even though their art works displayed the colour composition and technical principles of Western paintings, the spirit and rhythmic movement of lines and variations of ink remained typically Chinese. They yearned to express their intense emotions in a genuine and open manner, as we find in the Manifesto of the Storm Society (Juelan she ߣ◌⽮), formed by Pang Xunqin ᓎ㯠⩤ (1906– 1985) and Ni Yide ٚ䍫ᗧ (1901–1970) in 1931: “We recognise that art is certainly not the imitation of nature, nor is it the inflexible repetition of objective form. We must devote our whole lives to the undisguised expression of our fierce emotion.” (Sullivan 1996, 62) Although despising the old forms and colours, they demanded the creative freedom “to use new art to express the spirit of a new era” (Sullivan 1996, 62). Their cry resembled that of the literati painters of the Song dynasty, who resisted the rigid academic style of realistic depictions and sought to convey their inner thoughts and feelings with free-style brushwork. The artists at the turn of the 20th century found themselves in the midst of the tumultuous and wideranging debate on the appropriateness of Western values and their implications for Chinese society. While the so called “reformists” were outspoken about the clear advantages they perceived in Western art and its techniques, materials and concepts, their work demonstrates the many difficulties they encountered in applying these elements into their actual practice. Each artist blended a diverse mix of ideas and concepts into a unique and personal style, often in the face of severe existential problems and a bewildering maze of technical questions and conceptual doubts. As a result, there exists a manifest discrepancy between their theoretical discussions and their actual artistic production. As a final factor in this very confused situation, the paintings displayed in the three National exhibitions confirmed that in the new Republic, traditional art still held sway and maintained its dominant position.

National Art Exhibitions On 16 June, 1922 Shen Bao ⭣ᣕ reported that Cai Yuanpei, Zhang Junmai ᕐੋ࣒ and Liu Haisu would put forward a proposal for a National Art Exhibition at the first congress of the Chinese National Association for the Advancement of Education (Zhonghua jiaoyu gaijin she ѝॾᮉ㛢᭩

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䘋⽮), to be held on 3 July of that year (“Chuangshe minguo meishu zhanlanhui zhi jianyi” 1922). Under 8 headings and in 22 articles they defined the general rules for organising the exhibition. 11 Although Liu Haisu and others repeatedly presented this proposal to the government, stressing the importance of government-funded national exhibitions as the official institutional media that could promote art, educate the general public and enrich spiritual life, as well as stimulate artistic creativity, not until the new Nationalist government was established in Nanjing in 1927 would they see their request granted. Under the direction of Cai Yuanpei, the Art Committee of the University Council (Daxueyuan yishu weiyuanhui བྷᆖ䲒㢪ᵟငઈՊ) held its first meeting on 27 November, 1927 at Rue Massenet 傜 ᯟ 䳮 䐟 in Shanghai (Liu 2002, 253). The members strenuously endorsed the importance of national exhibitions and resolved that the first such exhibition should be realised as soon as possible. One year later, the government issued several guidelines for the organisation of various committees and the rules governing the exhibition of art works and related awards. Shortly thereafter, the University Council, which had been reorganised as the Ministry of Education (Jiaoyu bu ᮉ㛢 䜘), went forward with setting up the exhibition, to which they gave the rather simple name of “National Art Exhibition” (Quanguo meishu zhanlanhui ‫ޘ‬ഭ㖾ᵟኅ㿸Պ), 12 and issued the “Ministry of Education National Art Exhibition Organisational Outlines” (Jiaoyu bu quanguo meishu zhanlanhui zuzhi dagang ᮉ㛢䜘‫ޘ‬ഭ㖾ᵟኅ㿸Պ㓴㓷བྷ㓢) as the organisational roadmap for this large-scale art event (Wang 2006, 27). The opening ceremony of the first official National Art Exhibition was held in Shanghai on 10 April, 1929 and it remained open until the end of that month. Art works were divided into 8 classes: calligraphy and painting (1231), inscriptions on bronze and stone (75), Western painting (354), sculpture (57), architecture (34), arts and crafts (280), fine art photography (227) and reference works––mostly dedicated to ancient calligraphy and paintings (Wang and Chen 2006, 27; Liu 2002, 191). The exhibition was very well received and enjoyed considerable success, with nearly 100,000 visitors (Wang and Chen 2006, 27). However, according to reports in Shenbao, the contemporary paintings did not arouse nearly the 11 The eight headings were: general rules (5 articles), staff members (1 article), funding (1 article), gathering art products (4 articles), display (1 article), examination (5 articles), awards (3 articles) and supplementary (2 articles). 12 For more detailed information about the planning and activity behind the first National Art Exhibition, see Liu 2002, 253–58.

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same interest as the paintings of the great masters from past dynasties (Liu 2002, 193). The ancient works also occupied the largest part of the exhibition, though with more than 10,000 works total, they had to be displayed by turns. A similar pattern could be seen 8 years later during the second National Art Exhibition, held from 1––23 April in Nanjing. Although the number (2339) of works and artifacts displayed declined significantly (Liu 2002, 216), the ancient paintings compared to contemporary paintings sill represented a relevant part of the exhibition. In addition to ancient and contemporary paintings, other art forms such as arts and crafts, sculpture, architectural design, photography, seals, etc. were also displayed. Exhibits even included carved printing blocks, books and ancient utensils. The comprehensive nature of the exhibition tended more towards a general cultural connotation, rather than exclusively fine arts. The official aim of the National Art Exhibition`s was to educate and spiritually cultivate the general public, as well as highlight the role of art in modern society. The Ministry of Education decided to host a National Exhibition every two years in the capital. However, due to the very unstable situation during the war years, another five years would pass before the 3rd National Exhibition could be organised in Chongqing 䟽ᒶ in 1942. Table 12-1 is a summary of the contemporary and Western painting displayed at the first three National Art Exhibitions. It shows the predominance of guohua painting, which far exceeded Western paintings, especially during the 1st exhibition. We should also note that the data for the 2nd exhibition includes only the exhibited art works from the first period, since the art products from the Hunan ⒆ই and Sichuan ഋᐍ provinces arrived too late for the opening ceremony (Liu 2002, 215). Thus the numbers are slightly higher.13

13 For a detailed study of the statistical data for both periods in the 2nd Exhibition, see Liu 2002, 215–16.

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Date

Duration Location Contemporary Guohua painting Western painting15 Contemporary Calligraphy

1st National Exhibition April 10, 1929–April 30, 1929 21 days Shanghai 123114

354

/

2nd National Exhibition April 1, 1937– April 23, 1937

3rd National Exhibition December 25, 1942– January 10, 1943

23 days Nanjing Sent Accepted

17 days Chongqing Sent Accepted

1981

487

658

193

Sent

Accepted

Sent

Accepted

685

207

607

226

Sent

Accepted

Sent

Accepted

285

55

80

34

Table 12-1: Statistical data of the first three National Art Exhibitions16 From the catalogues and reviews of the three exhibitions, it is obvious that except for the inclusion of contemporary subjects in paintings, there was little trace of the other, much-touted theoretical concepts. Lin Fengmian’s figures were criticised for lacking three-dimensional structure, while Liu Haisu’s work was said to be rigid and stiff (Liu 2002, 203–4). As Shen Kuiyi wrote (1997, 617) “the styles and techniques of most paintings shown in the exhibitions still seem very traditional” and for the most part did not stray very far from imitating ancient Chinese styles. Conservative art thus continued to set the agenda as far as artistic production was concerned. Julia Andrews (1990, 571) has shown that conservative practitioners of traditional Chinese painting were probably also more numerous in the 1950s, in spite of the Soviet socialist realism promoted by the new 14

In a number of 1231 are included contemporary guohua painting as well as calligraphic works. 15 Western painting includes oil painting, watercolour and graphics. 16 Data are taken from Zhonghua minguo quanguo meishu zhanlanhui gailan 1929–2005 ѝ ॾ ≁ ഭ ‫ ޘ‬ഭ 㖾 ᵟ ኅ 㿸 ᾲ 㿸 1929–2005 (An Overview of the National Art Exhibition of the Republic of China 1929–2005), edited by Wang and Chen 2006, 15 and 27; and from Liu’s PhD dissertation on art journals and exhibitions in the Republican period (2002, 215–16).

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Communist art leadership, while professors of painting in the national art academies continuing to provide a more narrowly defined synthesis of Chinese and Western art. This synthesis remains prevalent in current art academies, where the study of both artistic traditions continues in parallel, as does the search for answers to the same questions that were first asked on the threshold of the modern era in China.

Bibliography Andrews, Julia F. 1990. “Traditional Painting in New China: Guohua and the Anti-Rightist Campaign.” Journal of Asian Studies. 49/3. 555–77. Accessed August 3, 2011. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2057771. ––. 1997. “Traditional Chinese Painting in an Age of Revolution, 1911– 1937.” In Ershi shiji zhongguo hua »chuantong de yanxu yu yanjin« guoji xueshu taolunhui lunwenji 20 ц㓚ѝഭ⭫“Ր㔏Ⲵᔦ㔝о╄䘋” ഭ 䱵 ᆖ ᵟ ⹄ 䇘 Պ 䇪 ᮷ 䳶 (Chinese Painting and the Twentieth Century: Creativity in the Aftermath of Tradition), edited by Cao Yiqiang ᴩ᜿ᕧ, 578–95. Hangzhou: Zhejiang renmin meishu chuban she. Cai, Jiemin 㭑ᆁ≁. 1917. “Yi meiyu dai zongjiao shuo ԕ㖾㛢ԓᇇᮉ䈤” (“Replacing Religion with Aesthetic Education”). Xin qingnian ᯠ䶂ᒤ 3(6): 1–5. Cai, Yuanpei 㭑‫ݳ‬ษ. 1987. “Duiyu jiaoyu fangzhen de yijian ሩҾᮉ㛢 ᯩ䪸Ⲵ᜿㿱” (“My Views on Educational Policy”). In Cai Yuanpei meiyu lunji 㭑‫ݳ‬ษ㖾㛢䇪䳶 (Collection of Cai Yuanpei’ Essays on Aesthetic Education), edited by Gao Pingshu 儈ᒣ਄, 1–8. Changsha: Hunan jiaoyu chuban she. Chen, Duxiu 䱸⤜⿰. 1918. “Meishu geming – Da Lü Cheng 㖾ᵟ䶙ભ – ㆄ ੲ ▲ ” (“Revolution in Painting – Answer to Lü Cheng”). Xin qingnian ᯠ䶂ᒤ 6(1): 85–86. Chen, Shizeng 䱸ᐸᴮ. 2008. “Wenrenhua zhi jiazhi ᮷Ӫ⭫ѻԧ٬” (“The Values of Literati Painting”). In Ershi shiji zhongguo hua taolun ji Ҽॱц㓚ѝഭ⭫䇘䇪䳶 (Collection of Essays on 20th Century Chinese Painting), edited by Shao Qi 䛥 et al, 59–60. Shanghai: Shanghai shuhua chuban she. Originally published in Huixue zazhi 㔈 ᆖᵲᘇ. 2. 1–6. 1921. “Chuangshe minguo meishu zhanlanhui zhi jianyi ࡋ䇮≁ഭ㖾ᵟኅ㿸Պ ѻᔪ䇞” (“Proposal for the Establishment of the first National Art Exhibition”). 1922. Shen bao ⭣ᣕ, June 16. Clark, John. 2010. Modernities of Chinese Art. Leiden and Boston: Brill.

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Clunas, Craig. 2009. Art in China. 2nd ed. Oxford University Press. Croizier, Ralph C. 1988. Art and Revolution in Modern China. The Lingnan (Cantonese) School of Painting, 1906–1951. Berkely, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. Croizier, Ralph C. 1993. “Post-Impressionists in Pre-War Shanghai: The Juelanshe (Storm Society) and the Fate of Modernism in Republican China”. In Modernity in Asian Art, edited by Clark, John, 135–54. New South Wales: Wild Peony. Denton, Kirk, ed. 1996. Modern Chinese Literary Thought: Writings on Literature, 1893–1945. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Fong, Wen C. 1993: “The Modern Chinese Art Debate.”Artibus Asiae 53(1/2): 290–305. Gao, Jianfu 儈ࢁ⡦. 1955. Wo de xiandai guohua guan ᡁⲴ⧠ԓഭ⭫㿲 (My Views on Contemporary National Painting). Hong Kong: Yuanquan chuban she. Huang, Binhong 哴ᇮ㲩. 1934. “Zhizhi yi wenshuo 㠤⋫ԕ᮷䈤” (“About the Relationship between Culture and State”). Guohua yuekan ഭ⭫ᴸ ࠺ 1(1). Kao, Mayching. 1983. “The Beginnings of the Western-style Painting Movement in Relationship to Reforms in Education in Early Twentieth-century China.” New Asia Academic Bulletin 5. 373–400. Lang, Shaojun 䛾㓽ੋ. 1997a. “Leixing yu xuepai – 20 shiji zhongguo hua lüe shuo ㊫රоᆖ⍮ – 20 ц㓚ѝഭ⭫⮕䈤” (“Types and Schools – A Brief Survey of Chinese painting in the 20th Century”). In Ershi shiji zhongguo hua »chuantong de yanxu yu yanjin« guoji xueshu taolunhui lunwenji 20 ц㓚ѝഭ⭫“Ր㔏Ⲵᔦ㔝о╄䘋”ഭ䱵ᆖᵟ⹄ 䇘Պ䇪᮷䳶 (Chinese Painting and the Twentieth Century: Creativity in the Aftermath of Tradition), edited by Cao Yiqiang ᴩ᜿ᕧ, 12–39. Hangzhou: Zhejiang renmin meishu chuban she. ––. 1997b. “Traditional Chinese Painting in the Twentieth Century.” In Three Thousand Years of Chinese Painting, 299–354. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press. Li, Chu-Tsing. 1979. “Trends in Modern Chinese Painting: (The C.A. Drenowatz Collection) ”. Artibus Asiae. Supplementum, vol. 36. Lin, Fengmian ᷇仾ⵐ. 1933. “Women suo xiwang de guohua qiantu ᡁԜ ᡰᐼᵋⲴഭ⭫ࡽ䙄” (“The Future of Guohua as We Hope It to Be”). In Ershi shiji zhongguo hua taolun ji Ҽ ॱ ц 㓚 ѝ ഭ ⭫ 䇘 䇪 䳶 (Collection of Essays on 20th Century Chinese Painting), edited by Shao Qi 䛥 et al. 2008, 59–60. Shanghai: Shanghai shuhua chuban she.

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Liu, Ruikuanࡈ⪎ᇭ. 2002. “Zhongguo meishu de xiandaihua: meishu qikan yu meizhan huodong de fenxi (1911–1937) ѝഭ㖾ᵟⲴ⧠ԓॆ ˖㖾ᵟᵏ࠺о㖾ኅ⍫ࣘⲴ࠶᷀ (1911–1937)” (“Modernisation of Chinese Art: An Analysis of Art Journals and Exhibitions (1911– 1937)”). PhD diss., National Taiwan Normal University. Shen, Kuiyi. 1997. “On the Reform of Chinese Painting in Early Republican China.” In Ershi shiji zhongguo hua »chuantong de yanxu yu yanjin« guoji xueshu taolunhui lunwenji 20 ц㓚ѝഭ⭫“Ր㔏Ⲵᔦ 㔝 о ╄ 䘋 ” ഭ 䱵 ᆖ ᵟ ⹄ 䇘 Պ 䇪 ᮷ 䳶 (Chinese Painting and the Twentieth Century: Creativity in the Aftermath of Tradition), edited by Cao Yiqiang ᴩ᜿ᕧ, 602–21. Hangzhou: Zhejiang renmin meishu chuban she. Sullivan, Michael. 1989. The Meeting of Eastern and Western Art. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. ––. 1996. Art and Artists of Twentieth-Century China. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. Vampelj Suhadolnik, Nataša. 2011. “Introduction.” In Chinese Art between Tradition and Modernity, edited by Nataša Vampelj Suhadolnik, v–x. Asian and African studies 15(1). Wang, Yulu ⦻⦹䐟, and Chen Huijuan 䱸ភ၏. eds. 2006. Zhonghua minguo quanguo meishu zhanlanhui gailan. 1929–2005. ѝॾ≁ഭ‫ޘ‬ ഭ 㖾 ᵟ ኅ 㿸 ᾲ 㿸 . 1929–2005 (An Overview of the National Art Exhibition of the Republic of China 1929–2005), Vol. 1. Taipei: Yishuguan. Wong, Aida Yuen. 2000. “A New Life for Literati Painting in the Early Twentieth Century: Eastern Art and Modernity, a Transcultural Narrative?” Artibus Asiae 60(2): 297–326. ––. 2006. Parting the Mists: Discovering Japan and the Rise of NationalStyle Painting in Modern china. Honolulu: Association for Asian Studies and University of Hawaii Press. Xu, Beihong. 1929. “Doubts.” Meizhan huikan 㖾ኅ≷࠺ 5, April 22: 1–2. Yang, Xin. 1997. “Approaches to Chinese Painting”. In Three Thousands Years of Chinese Painting, edited by Richard M. Barnhart et al., 1–4. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, Beijing: Foreign Language Press.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN AI WEIWEI, THE INTERNET, AND THE IMPORTANCE OF PUBLIC SPACE TANIA BECKER

Prologue On 3 April, 2011 artist and civil rights campaigner Ai Weiwei 㢮ᵚᵚ (b. 1957) was arrested and detained at an unknown location. Almost three months later, on 22 June, he was temporarily released, and at the time of this writing (January, 2012) his movements remain severely restricted, and he is banned from traveling or speaking freely (Bei 2011). This was the official reaction to Ai Weiwei’s art, which is directed demonstratively and provocatively at the Chinese authorities. Confident, challenging and polemical, his artworks and actions made dents in the polished surface of the officially prescribed “harmonious society”, questioning it openly through innovative art forms and inventive ideas. Any hopes that Ai’s prominence and international recognition would protect him from persecution were to be disappointed. The government covered up Ai Weiwei’s arrest, which was the result of his overt political and artistic unruliness, on the pretext of tax evasion, along with charges of bigamy and disseminating pornography online (Manhire 2011; Tsao 2011). The demands of civil rights activists and foreign governments for Ai Weiwei’s release met with the usual rhetoric: such requests were merely the expression of an arrant disregard for Chinese sovereignty. The government would tolerate no outside interference (hjf and dpa and AFP 2011; Huanqiu 2011). After this incident, Ai Weiwei seems to be more present in the West and on the Chinese internet than ever before. Not only newspaper and television reports, but demonstrations, actions, petitions and numerous exhibitions took place in many Western cities during the three months of his detention, while Chinese internet activists created a kind of homonym

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as a handle for Ai Weiwei’s name: Ai Weilai ⡡ᵚᶕ, “loving the future”, a code which netizens have adopted in order to be able to talk about the artist on the internet without fear of censorship (Ramzy 2011). As testimony to Ai’s popularity, since November, 2011 there has been a subversive fund-raising campaign on his behalf, in what is an unprecedented act of solidarity with a political dissident in recent Chinese history. When the Chinese authorities ordered his agency FAKE Design1 to pay ca. 1.8 million Euro in back taxes on 1 November, 2011, there was no decline in public support for the artist. In the following days, more than 20,000 people transferred money to his account, details of which were posted on the net. Each of these donors received an IOU from Ai Weiwei because it is illegal in China to collect donations without official permission. Supporters who wished to remain anonymous threw 100 yuan notes (about 13 euro) over his gate in the form of paper aeroplanes (Fend 2011, 1). This unusual support, which bordered on civil disobedience, enabled Ai Weiwei to quickly pay the equivalent of almost one million Euro into a tax bureau bank account, as well as lodge an official appeal against the tax evasion charges. Shortly afterwards, in a rare officially prohibited interview, Ai Weiwei said he had underestimated the Chinese and, in doing so, emphasised the crucial role of the internet in the formation of political opinion: Yes, I did. I should be ashamed of myself. In recent history, the Chinese have been like separate grains of sand, never really close together. But now we have the internet. We don’t have to come together physically, we can be individuals with our own set of values and still join with others to fight for a common cause. There’s nothing more powerful than that. On the internet people don’t know each other, they don’t have a common leader, they often don’t even have a common political goal. But they can come together for a special cause. It’s a miracle, there’s never been anything like it before. Without the net, I wouldn’t be Ai Weiwei today. I would just be an artist, putting on my exhibitions somewhere,. (Spiegel-Gespräch 2011, 103)

Since his arrest and detention, Ai Weiwei has become something of a political issue, both as an icon of the oppressed and a rallying point against the censorship of free and artistic expression in China. Ai Weiwei is an all-around artist in the classic sense who, prior to his arrest, had lived his life publicly as an artwork. Through his actions and 1

“Fake” is pronounced “fuck” in Chinese (Ai and Obrist 2011, 117).

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his art he criticised economic exploitation, corruption, violations of civil rights and environmental pollution in the People’s Republic of China. He thereby exposed himself to great personal risk and tried to keep up the momentum of his socially critical activities, despite severe harassment by the authorities. Following his Citizen Investigation project in mid-2008, a campaign in Wenchuan that started immediately after the major earthquake of that year, there were signs that the artist, along with his team and family, risked being arrested (Ai and Ambrozy 2011, 228f). He nevertheless staged an increasing number of public actions, thereby entering into conflict with the regime. Ai Weiwei’s project Citizen Investigation was aimed at telling the truth to the people who had been affected by the earthquake in Wenchuan. A disproportionate number of children died because school buildings collapsed one after another due to violations of building and safety regulations. The authorities made no attempt to uncover the facts or establish the identity of the children who died: it was not known which school they had attended, what grade they were in, how old they were or whether they were female or male. When Ai Weiwei asked the planning and licensing authorities some unpleasant and critical questions, he received no reply (Ai 2009b, 8). He then began to make his own investigations, with the help of at least two hundred volunteers, going from door-to-door to talk to the bereaved parents. They gathered facts, figures, and evidence, tracing the names of over 5000 children who had lost their lives in the so-called “tofu schools”, together with their ages, dates of birth, the exact place where they had died, and pointed to the construction errors that had caused schools to collapse. Ai Weiwei says this about his civic engagement: The volunteers got arrested over 30 times by local police, they took their fingerprints and photos. But the volunteers kept diaries of everything, which I posted on the internet. This investigation will be remembered for generations as the first civil rights activity in China. So to me, that is art. It directly affects people’s feelings and their living conditions, their freedom and how they look at the world. That’s very important. (Ai and Wellner 2009, 9)

In early August, 2009, shortly before the opening of his exhibition “So sorry!” in Munich and after his efforts to investigate the Sichuan earthquake, Ai Weiwei was about to testify in court in defence of his fellow-campaigner, author and activist Tan Zuoren 䉝֌Ӫ (b. 1954). The police raided his hotel room and held him and his volunteers for eleven

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hours––until the trial was over (Ai 2009b, 8). A photograph Disturbing the Peace, taken during this incident, was immediately published on the internet and circulated widely, becoming an iconic symbol of political repression and human rights violations in present-day China. When his hotel room was stormed, Ai Weiwei received a severe blow to the head that later resulted in a life-threatening brain hemorrhage. He commented on his Wenchuan project as follows: To use our skill or craftsmanship to expose injustice, make it visible and evident, is an act that an artist can do well. And it educated the entire nation. Everybody started thinking and questioning their own positions, examining their means and what could be within their power. That represented the first act of the civil movement. (Ai and Wellner 2009, 13)

Apart from these and similar activities aimed at the authorities, Ai Weiwei uses all categories of the visual arts and has devised an ingenious strategy to turn them into artistic provocations that criticise the state of China’s society and political reality. Chinese traditions play a significant role in all this. He uses traditional objects, changes them with the help of contemporary forms of presentation and manages to create new art with an entirely new message. Antique Chinese urns, Han dynasty vessels, Ming vases and Qing furniture are recontextualised, modernised and thus made into political issues through creative alienation. Architectural projects, photography, performance, film, environments, objets trouvés, works in progress, concept art and “social sculpture” are created in a provocative and highly innovative way and crafted into political statements. Mobile internet usage, the speed and reach of which in the real time of the worldwide web permits fast reactions and immediate reproduction, provides additional feedback and input to the formulation of Ai Weiwei’s artistic statements. The present article introduces some of Ai Weiwei’s internet activities as well as the Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads, his first installation in an urban public space. It seeks to shed light on the highly charged conflict between Ai’s artistic expression and his political provocation, as well as on the effects this provocation has had. Against this background I go on to assess the significance of the artist, internet activist and civil rights campaigner Ai Weiwei, in his challenging of political power structures in present-day China. The second part of the article examines the roots of his art in the history of Chinese art and cultural history, using the example of his installation Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads. It also considers Ai

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Weiwei’s unique position as mediator between contemporary art and the Chinese penchant for traditional craftsmanship.

Curriculum vitae Ai Weiwei was born in 1957. His father, Ai Qing 㢮䶂 (1910–1996), was one of the most renowned communist poets in the early years of the People’s Republic of China. He was banished to the provinces in 1958 and raised his son in Manchuria and Xinjiang. In 1979 the family returned to the capital where Ai enrolled in the Beijing Film Academy and helped organise The Star group, Xingxing huahui ᱏ ᱏ ⭫ Պ , the first artist collective to present avant-garde art in China. Between 1981 and 1993 he lived and worked in New York, where he immersed himself in contemporary Western art forms and encountered performance, photography and conceptual art. Influenced by Dadaism and Fluxus through Andy Warhol and the East Village scene, he started to incorporate these ideas into his work. When his father fell ill, Ai Weiwei returned to Beijing in 1993. He soon became a central figure in Beijing’s East Village, publishing a series of texts2 that featured interviews and articles by the artists of this mostly underground scene. In 1997 he co-founded China Art & Archives Warehouse, Yishu wenjian cangku 㢪ᵟ᮷Ԧԃᓃ, the first non-commercial gallery in China to showcase conceptual art projects and cutting-edge young Chinese artists. On the occasion of the 2000 Shanghai Biennial, Ai Weiwei realised his most notorious curatorial project, “Fuck Off!”, Bu hezuo de fangshi нਸ֌Ⲵᯩᔿ, a satellite show packed with critical and disturbing art works that received as much attention as the Biennial itself (Grosenick and Schübbe 2007, 27). In 1999, Ai Weiwei set up his own studio in the North of Beijing, inspired by a book about the house which the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) had designed and built for his sister in Vienna in the late 1920s. Ai Weiwei’s studio received considerable attention on account of its simple structures and the conscious use of local materials. After this he directed at least 50 architectural projects, including the Beijing Olympic stadium in 2008, in collaboration with the Swiss architects Herzog & Meuron, which made him one of China’s best known architects. (Ai and Obrist 2011, 8)

2 Collected in Black Cover Book (1994), White Cover Book (1995) and Grey Cover Book (1997).

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Caonima: Obscenity as Strategy Alongside Ai Weiwei’s architectural projects and conventional art objects, such as Table with Three Legs, 2006; Stools, 1997; Grapes, 2008; Profile Duchamp, 1985; Forever Bicycles, 2006; Table and Pillar, 2002; Two Joined Square Tables, 2005; Colored Vases, 2005, 2006, 2008; Han Dynasty Urn with Coca-Cola Logo, 1994, there are his activities in hyperspace. Digital pictures and messages such as emails, blogs and particularly commentaries posted on Twitter or the Chinese equivalent, the microblog site Weibo ᗞঊ or Fan Fou 依੖, soon became indispensable components of the artist’s direct engagement and political activism until his imprisonment. In 2006, the Chinese telecommunications company Sina.com offered Ai Weiwei a blogging platform along with technical support. His blog soon became a kind of daily letter and he used it to post thousands of photographs and document both his artistic activities and his personal life. Prior to his arrest, Ai Weiwei said he had devoted ninety per cent of his energy to the internet, which he regards as one of the most powerful vehicles for social change (Ai and Ambrozy 2011, xvii), and through his work in this medium he had discovered a passion for writing: “Writing is my favourite activity. For me writing is the most fascinating of all human activities, because it concerns everyone and because everyone can understand it” (Ai and Ambrozy 2011, 109). As a blogger, Ai Weiwei became an internet star of the first order. He spoke frequently about the political situation in China and the country’s social problems and had as many as a hundred thousand readers every day, all of whom became part of the “social sculpture” in Ai’s blog concept (Ai and Obrist 2011, 17f). His blog, which consisted of some three thousand entries, thousands of photographs and millions of readers’ comments (Ai and Ambrozy 2011, xvii), was banned along with many others in the internet cleanup on 28 May, 2009 (Ai and Ambrozy 2011, xiii). However, many of his blog entries had been stored and a selection was published–– paradoxically in standard book form––in early 2011, entitled Ai Weiwei’s Blog (Ai and Ambrozy 2011). Critical and candid web users were Ai’s main audience, his harshest critics and his staunchest supporters. Through the massive spread of digital media, the interaction between the individual and the collective is in the process of being redefined in China as well, and this is inevitably creating a new consciousness in the digital public sphere. People are claiming their

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fundamental right to be allowed to question things without fear of reprisals. And here lies the key to individual and collective freedom. However, a public and controversial discussion of this and many other politically contentious topics is not in the interest of the Chinese government and administration, obsessed as they are with control. On the contrary, the slogan for China’s official course since 2004 (Wacker and Kaiser 2008, 7) has been “Harmonious society”, hexie shehui ઼䉀⽮Պ. The communist party cites Confucius and a distorted understanding of the classical notion of harmony as “principal witnesses” for an allegedly autochthonous Chinese relationship between the people and the regime. “It’s so fake!”, says Ai Weiwei, and further: “The Chinese government is in love with Confucianism because it’s about hierarchy and a very strong order (…). This fake Confucianism has come back again, because our society is different now––we have no religion or any other kind of ideology. But it doesn’t work. It’s like trying to bring a dead body back to life. It’s not possible. (Ai and Wellner 2009, 16)

The Chinese leadership is trying to propagate the concept of harmony and a conflict-free co-existence at the international political level as well. Addressing the UN assembly in September, 2005 President Hu Jintao spoke of a “harmonious world”, hexie shijie ઼䉀ц⭼, though without providing any details of what that term meant (Wacker and Kaiser 2008, 9f). Harmony in politics and society, microcosm and macrocosm have become the habitual buzzwords of the official ideological-political canon. And the recognition of religions is also changing in accordance with the political reorientation. They are no longer the “opium of the people”, but a positive force which can contribute to the “harmonious society” (Wacker and Kaiser 2008, 10). Zhang Yimou’s ᕐ 㢪 䈻 (b. 1951) ostentatious opening ceremony for the Beijing Olympics in 2008 was based on the idea of harmony. Obviously, the regime can only enforce its idea of a “harmonious society” against opposition activists by applying the rule of force in ways that are diametrically opposed to the notion of harmony: censorship, surveillance, detention, and unreasonably long prison sentences, such as in the case of Liu Xiaobo ࡈᲃ⌒ (b. 1955). Since the new slogan was introduced, communist propaganda has smothered the country with so much “harmony” that the naked political aim has become all too obvious and its persuasive intentions have misfired. “I’ve been harmonised”, Wo hexie le! ᡁ ઼ 䉀 Ҷ ! is what China’s netizens and bloggers write when one of their internet messages

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has been deleted by the censors or one of their websites shut down. However, they are increasingly forced to use the characters for river crab, hexie ⋣㸩, after even the word harmony fell victim to censorship. This word is thus becoming synonymous with censorship and, at the same time, as a result of a dialectical irony brought about by a boundless obsession with control, its victim (Bork 2010, 13). Not only is there an increasing use of wordplay on river crab-harmonycensorship by leading Chinese netizens, but pseudo-mythical creatures and internet memes 3 (Baidu 2011) are appearing more and more as neologisms. These puns, amusing on the surface but with obscene connotations, are an indicator of the subversive creativity of the internet community. In early 2009, in response to the recent pro-democracy movement and the publication on the internet of Charta 08 4 , the government launched a campaign which officially targeted pornographic and vulgar content on the internet––and subliminally all other forms of political deviation. By mid-February, 2009 the censors had shut down some two thousand websites and 250 blogs: not only pornographic sites but also online discussion forums, instant messaging groups and other text message platforms which hosted political and other sensitive topics disappeared from the net (Wines 2009). Despite the huge presence of the Chinese internet police (Zellmer 2011, 81–91), the effectiveness of the censors’ cleanup measures was short-lived. The banned sites soon reappeared with a new web address. Chinese users are still able to receive uncensored information, exchange opinions and give voice to their defiant protest through the creation of a digital bestiary of mythical web creatures of dubious provenance. The best example is the grass-mud horse, caonima ⲡ Ἶ 樔 , a cute alpaca whose name sounds like a common obscenity (Wagner 2011, 74f)5. In order to evade the filter software of the Chinese censorship machinery, the internet guerilla has come up with ironic vulgar puns that slip the censors’ net while exposing them to ridicule. Thus, the subversive imagination created the original grass-mud horse, which made its first appearance in the online encyclopedia Baidu Baike ⲮᓖⲮ、 shortly after the internet cleanup campaign started in January 2009 (Baidu 3

An “internet meme” is an idea that spreads via the internet. It is derived from the term “meme”, which Richard Dawkins coined to describe the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena (Dawkins 2001, 309f). 4 Charta 08 is a manifesto signed by thousands of Chinese intellectuals and human rights activists for the democratisation of China (Boxun 2008; Charta 08 2010). 5 Fuck your mother! Cao ni ma 㚿֐ྸ.

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Baike 2009). Initially a sort of zebra, the animal soon metamorphosed into a cute alpaca as it was credited with more and more virtues. Chat forums, videos, animated cartoons, fake documentaries, songs and even the sale of cuddly toy alpacas and T-shirts have rapidly made Caonima a cult phenomenon, triggering a still ongoing internet movement that deploys obscenity as a strategy in the battle with censorship (CDT 2010). The simple and rather dull story about the struggle of the grass-mud horse to protect its habitat against the invading river crabs reflects the situation outside of cyberspace. It is recounted in several YouTube videos in the guise of rap, a children’s song, a pop song and even a documentary. The story is as follows: the spirited, intelligent and tenacious grass-mud horses, loved by all, live and flourish in the Male Gebi desert 傜ंᠸ໱ (again an extremely vulgar play on words). One day, their existence is threatened by the destructive river crabs who lay claim to the grassland that is the horses’ food source. A bitter struggle ensues between Good (Caonima alias the web users) and Evil (river crabs alias censorship), which culminates in a happy ending with the Good victorious and Evil forced to beat a hasty retreat. The protest wave of creative language on the Chinese internet has produced many other mythical creatures, such as the French-Croatian octopus Fake You ⌅‫ݻ‬劯, the Jiba cat Jiba Mao ਹ䏻⥛, or the Dafei hen, Dafei Ji ㎹⳼淉, all of them obscene puns which have become widely used internet memes and a source of great amusement to the internet community. But the most popular of all is the cute alpaca, which has become the hallmark of the movement. Despite their subversive origins, some of these terms have become so well known that they have already been included in the Oxford Chinese Dictionary (CDT 2010). Ai Weiwei has used the Caonima pun in several of his video films. In one of these films, entitled Motherland_2 (2009), several people stand before a signboard which reads “Caonima zuguo” 㥹⌕傜⾆ഭ (Grassmud horse fatherland). Each person is then shot close-up as they speak about the characters on the signboard behind them (Ai 2009a). In this video, Ai uses the obscene pun of the popular mythical grass-mud horse to make a serious, clear and anti-nationalist statement. The message of the video is clear and politically unambiguous. China’s independent young art scene refuses to be coopted by an enforced nationalistic consensus in order to stabilise the governing regime. Ai takes the subversive-creative game with the alpaca a step further in a series of photographs from the same year entitled “Grass-mud horse blocks the centre”, Caonima dang zhongyan 㥹⌕傜ᥑѝཞ. The photos

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show the artist––naked and holding a toy grass-mud horse in front of his genitals––leaping into the air. The title is likewise a play on words which derides the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, Dang Zhongyang ‫ފ‬ѝཞ (Art monthly 2011). Ai’s playful leaps contain another indirect message, for they can be taken to mean the leap to freedom. In this and other photographic series taken in his Beijing studio, such as One Tiger Eight Breasts Yi hu ba nai а㱾‫( ྦޛ‬all transmitted via the internet), Ai Weiwei confronts the viewer with a series of nudes. He uses them to poke fun at the norms of public decency and commercial sexualisation permitted by internet censors. Obscenity, and this is the message of the pictures, does not consist in a superficial indignation at the alleged violation of the nudity taboo, but rather in the concealing of “naked facts” by censorship. By targeting and attacking the heart of the People’s Republic of China, the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Part, Ai Weiwei hits at the very core of a system of control, which is what ultimately led to his arrest (Sheridan 2011). China now has more internet users than any other country. At the end of November, 2010, over 450 million people, more than one-third of the total population, were online, an increase of more than 20 per cent over the previous year (Zellmer 2011, 33). The world’s largest blogger community has evolved in China (Yang 2009). This increasingly confident net community is Ai’s main audience, his critic and, up to now, his staunchest supporter. Commenting on the importance of the internet, Ai says: I think we were different people before the arrival of internet technology. Now we can be formed in a very different way. We can also assert our rights via very different channels and exercise power in many ways. This flexibility means that both individual and society are redefined. (…) If transformation means that old structures change and new ones emerge, then China’s situation depends crucially on these new opportunities. We have here a very special situation as regards freedom of expression and freedom of the press. I think that changes are happening at present in all aspects of our daily lives: how we get information, how we handle our knowledge, how we present ourselves––and how we learn to network with other people and exchange views. These views create a political movement which wouldn’t exist without internet technology. (Friedrich-Freksa 2010)

In another interview, Ai Weiwei expands further on his view of the influence of the internet: I think that China is at a very interesting juncture. The power and the centre in general have suddenly disappeared because of the internet, world

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politics and the economy. Internet technology has become an important means of liberating people from old values and systems, something that has never been possible before. (Ai and Obrist 2011, 18)

Ai belongs to the first generation of artists and civil rights activists who, although they grew up without any knowledge of the internet, recognise the potential of the new technology and have explored and continue to explore the artistic and political boundaries of this new medium. The Chinese government’s ban on Ai’s access to the internet is a particularly harsh form of repression, tantamount to a ban on artistic expression (Siemons 2011, 35). Through the creative development of metaphors, new and diverse forms of social opposition are evolving on the Chinese internet. The Caonima movement used the internet as a public space where people could rebel against established power structures and the dominance of the communist party, pouring scorn or criticising them, provided they were familiar with the ever-changing coded language. Today, millions of users identify with the movement, and despite the constant threat of government restrictions they are continually devising novel and ingenious ways of expressing their own disapproval. Consequently, the calls for more information and freedom of expression are becoming increasingly louder and more explicit. With this newly emerging internet language government censors have been beaten at their own game, and the internet guerillas have emerged victorious in the battle of metaphors. By substituting a propaganda expression like “harmonise”, hexie, by the homonymous word “river crab”, thereby “contaminating” it for the censors, the bloggers have succeeded not only in making all the terms and players involved, from the innocent river crab to the state enforced harmony slogans, fall prey to the censor, but have also exposed the censors to ridicule and made them the laughing stock of the net community. Obscenity as part of a subversive strategy takes on another connotation in this context. With the provocative use of vulgar expressions, netizens – most of whom are part of that generation that grew up with the internet - attack established power structures and the rigid political elite. With their explicit sexuality they offend the prudery of a society which permanently seeks to control them. That said, we should not overestimate the effects of the Caonima movement. For now, the internet activists do not represent a danger offline to the present political regime: they are not organised and they do not take part in actions that could seriously challenge the communist party. The

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grass-mud horse movement is far from being a Jasmin revolution comparable with the 2011 Arab Spring or even the Democracy movement of 1989. For China’s young people, political provocation on the internet is the thing to do, but that is where it differs from genuine political dissidence. The organisational forms on the internet are flexible and noncommittal––they are more like trends of opinion and fashion than democratisation endeavours. Serious opposition to basic grievances needs to be much more rational in its arguments, and dissidents who genuinely fear political persecution normally have to keep a much lower profile (Yang 2009). It is in this sense that Ai Weiwei’s political and artistic activities differ from those of the Caonima movement. Although he participates actively, using and further developing the language of the movement, his attacks on the political regime in the People’s Republic of China are direct and open. In his protests, blogs and twitter entries, public statements and interviews, Ai Weiwei does not try to hide behind a wall of non-committal declarations, but instead takes a serious stand against official abuses of power. He is definitely aware of the consequences and repression he faces. In his last blog entry of 28 May, 2009 he wrote: I’m ready. Or rather, there’s nothing to get ready for. One person. That is all I am, it is all that someone might possibly gain and everything that I can dedicate to this cause. I won’t hesitate in time of need, and I won’t be vague. If there were something to be nostalgic about, that would be one of the wonders that life brings. These wonders are the same for each and every one of us, a game where everyone is equal, together with the illusions and freedom that come with it. I see any threat to any human right as a threat to human dignity and rationality, a threat to life’s potential. I want to learn how to confront this threat.” (Ai and Ambrozy 2011, 230)

In a society like that of the PR China, which is changing so dynamically, centralised governments are always “behind the curve” when trying to adequately anticipate the political implications of the new web culture. The massive spread of digital media redefines the relationship between individual and collective, and a new digital community is inevitably leading to a new consciousness in Chinese society. People are now articulating the fundamental right of the individual to challenge decisions that are of public concern, without fear of repression. And precisely here lies the key to the exercise of freedom, at both the individual and collective level.

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Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads–– The Importance of Public Space The installation Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads was shown contemporaneously in public spaces in London and New York during Ai Weiwei’s imprisonment. Although less provocative than many of his other works, it aroused much political and public interest because of the fact that Ai’s whereabouts were unknown (YouTube 2011b).6 Ai was inspired by an 18th century water clock, louhu ┿༦, which was part of a fountain at the Old Summer palace, Yuanming Yuan ശ᰾ഝ, in Peking (Wong 2001, 63f). He created huge replicas of the twelve bronze heads of the Chinese Zodiac animals as they existed at the original site. In a new interpretation of the old fountain, Ai incorporated the 350kg bronze heads into an existing public water display. Each animal head stands on a slender spiral pole, which seems to grow out of a round plinth and, together with its foundation, is about three meters high. The history of the water clock, and that of the entire Old Summer Palace complex, has been a source of dissension between China and the West up to this day. The fountain was built ca. 1760 by two Jesuits who were in the employ of Emperor Qianlong Ү 䲶 (1711–1799): Michel Benoist (1715–1774), who was the court astronomer, and Giuseppe Castiglione (1688–1766), the court painter and architect. It was originally constructed in the Calm Sea Hall, Haiyantang ⎧᱿า, in the northeast section of the Old Summer Palace (Wong 2001, 60; 63f). Although the emperor greatly admired the architecture of Versailles with its fountains and water displays, the etiquette of the Qing court did not permit the allegorical depiction of human nudes common in European Baroque art. Therefore, Benoist and Castiglione created a Klepsydra in the form of the twelve Chinese Zodiac signs. Each bronze head showed the approximate time of day at two-hour intervals by spouting a jet of water; at midday all twelve fountains were active. Because the structure utilised what was an extremely complex technology for the time, the specially designed pumps soon broke down and the fountain ceased to function (Meiguoxing). During the Second Opium War in 1860, the Old Summer Palace was completely destroyed by French and British troops in a demonstrative act of vengeance. Many works of art were pillaged or destroyed, with a certain 6

Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads: 2 May, 2011– 15 July, 2011: New York City, Pulitzer Fountain, Grand Army Plaza, Central Park; 23 May, 2011– 26 June, 2011 London, Somerset House.

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number of these turning up later in Europe. The Zodiac heads were distributed as war trophies (Wong 2001, 138–53). Today, seven heads are known to exist and some have been sold in auctions, while there is no trace of the remaining five. The fascinating story of the Zodiac heads continues into the 21st century. After the death of the fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent (1936– 2008), his and his partner’s (Pierre Bergés, b. 1930) rich art collection was auctioned at Christie’s in Paris, for unprecedented sums. Among the precious items in the collection were two of the original animal heads from the Old Summer Palace, the rabbit and the rat. The auction triggered a wave of protest in China, which still regards the Opium Wars and the resulting destruction of precious cultural artifacts, as a humiliation and a violation of its cultural integrity (Kutcher 2003). The Chinese government demanded their repatriation, but the philanthropist Bergès declared that he would only return the heads if China acknowledged human rights and withdrew from Tibet. The Chinese claim was therefore unsuccessful (Zhang 2009; Ai and Ambrozy 2011, 276f). In his blog entry of 27 February, 2009, Ai Weiwei criticised the Chinese government’s nationalistic stance in the matter, polemically pointing out that in the years of communist rule the government had done everything to destroy its own cultural heritage and that of Tibet. He considered the media uproar about the bronze heads from the Old Summer Palace to be cynical, hypocritical and absurd and provided his own critical commentary on the story by creating the Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads (Ai and Ambrozy 2011, 207f). Ai Weiwei’s fountain raises questions about cultural identity, the fetish of originality and the nature of forgery––central themes in all of his work (Ai and Obrist 2011, 35). The artwork thematises elements of the original that transcend cultural and national boundaries. How can we speak seriously of a Chinese national treasure when it was designed by an Italian and a Frenchman for the Manchurian court, and then dismantled and carried off by European soldiers? Chinese cultural nationalism, which sees the bronze sculptures as symbolic of its own identity, is clearly misconstrued in this case. In contrast to this misbegotten rage, Ai Weiwei’s own concept is to have it replicated symbolically by a Chinese artist and to present it in the West in public spaces, so that it regains some of the many layers of its ambivalent socio-political history. The artist combines reproductions of the five still missing bronze heads with the other seven in order to reconstitute the complete group. For the work in the bronze foundry in Chengdu, Ai insisted that the traditional

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“lost mould” casting method was used (YouTube 2011a). This corresponds to the conceptual approach of alienating historical art objects from the reality they have today and the culture in which they were made. In this extraordinary way, he reminds us of the unsolved problem of the cultural artifacts that have been destroyed, hidden, stolen or sold to the West; in other words, the lack of transparency in the art market. The colossal Zodiac heads create a surreal atmosphere in the public spaces where they are installed. The decapitated creatures on their high pedestals, all grimly looking down on the onlooker, are reminiscent of archaic victory rituals, in which the heads of the defeated enemies were displayed triumphantly. At this point, life and death meet and become a memento mori, from the specific historical to the universal, which prompts the viewer to meditate on the temporary nature of life. The water clock comprising the animal heads of the Chinese Zodiac symbolises man’s constant compulsion to measure time, and thereby to satisfy his need to give order to the world according to cosmic principles, and thus see himself as part of the universe. As the information accompanying the exhibition pointed out (Press Release 2011), it was the artist’s intention that every adult and child who entered the public space in which the Zodiac Heads were on display, should immediately understand the meaning of the work. In London and New York, visitors routinely first searched for their own zodiac sign in order to be photographed with it, creating a relaxed and lively atmosphere. The viewers become as much an essential part of the installation as the bronze objects themselves. The artist is convinced that there is an elemental force in this equality between the viewer and the object, and in the atmosphere of freedom that results. It is precisely because the artwork is presented in a public space to which everyone has access, combining the come and go of passers-by with the flow of water in a continuous stream of all elements, earthly and heavenly, that ultimately creates a sense of deeply felt unity. I’m fascinated by making public art. “Public” does not just refer to the museum public; it’s for people passing by and using common spaces. I think the public deserve the best. In the past, only a pope or an emperor had access to the artworks they commissioned. I want my work to be accessible to everyone. (Artswrap 2011)

By making sculptures previously only seen by a privileged group in a hierarchical society accessible to the public, the artist succeeded not only

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in questioning the fetishisation of the Yuanming Yuan Zodiac Bronze Heads as icons of national history by official Chinese cultural propaganda, and the relevance of China’s colonial history and national consciousness, but also raised universal issues of tolerance and freedom of thought. As Ai’s first monumental installation in a public space, the Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads was an essential contribution to China’s national consciousness. But it also raised questions concerning the fundamental conditions for a democratic political order, demonstrating that art defines itself not only as an artifact, but as an essential part of the process through which society finds its identity.

Epilogue Ai Weiwei’s art and public actions can be seen as unequivocal reactions to and critical commentaries on the political and social situation in China. His art is truly autonomous––he is not influenced by the Western avant-garde. His use of traditional craftsmanship and techniques handed down in his native cultural area suggests a desire for direct expression rather than for intellectual sublimation. In the tension between being rooted in his own culture and society and taking a clear stand on China’s political malaise, Ai Weiwei’s artworks pave the way for a contemporary Chinese art that is politically engaged, re-defined, freethinking and creative. Given that his art and his life are grounded in a radical desire for self-determination, his artworks convey an uncompromised sense of the vital importance of political and artistic freedom. Ai Weiwei’s understanding of the word “freedom” has become increasingly topical due to his recent arrest and ban from speaking publicly. For Ai, freedom means the unfaltering autonomy of the artist in the service of humanity, social transformation and democracy. Without individual voices or the free exchange of information, neither the People nor the proletariat can exist, and there can be no common interests for humanity; you cannot exist. Authentic societal transformation can never be achieved in such a place, because the first step in social transformation is to regain the power of freedom of speech. A society lacking in freedom of speech is a dark, bottomless pit. When it’s this dark, everything begins to look bright. (Ai and Ambrozy 2011, 226)

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DIALOGUES WITH THE WEST IN CHINESE ACADEMIC WORLD

CHAPTER FOURTEEN QUNXUE OR SHEHUIXUE: FIRST STEPS IN THE INTRODUCTION OF SOCIOLOGY INTO CHINA AND THE FORMATION OF THE SOCIOLOGICAL LEXICON MARIAROSARIA GIANNINOTO

Introduction In considering the formative period of sociology and the sociological lexicon in China, we would do well to situate them in the wider context of China’s unfolding encounter with the modern West. The migration of knowledge and the introduction of the modern sciences into China after the Opium wars (1839–42; 1856–60) resulted in an impressive renewal and modification of the Chinese lexicon. Lackner, Amelung and Kurtz (2001, 2) underscore this process: Within less than one hundred years, the Chinese language absorbed, or indeed “devoured” the nomenclatures of the most diverse branches of Western knowledge, the formation of which had taken millennia–– including several periods of cross-cultural translation––in the occident. In the climatic decades around 1900, the Chinese scientific and political lexicons were almost completely displaced by new terms, many of which denoted ideas which were entirely or at least partly novel ideas.

This period witnessed the rapid growth and evolution of the Chinese lexicon, with a massive introduction and adaptation of new concepts and terms. This influence could be retraced from a semantic as well as from a morphological point of view. Tai and Chan (1999, 235) claim that the vocabulary increase after the Opium Wars was due to borrowings from Western concepts and to the phenomenon of European-inspired affixation.

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The first steps of the introduction of sociology in China can be traced to the end of the 19th century and the reformist (weixinpai 㔤 ᯠ ⍮ ) intellectuals who played a pivotal role in this process. This period was characterised by an intense interest in the political and social aspects of Western knowledge, as opposed to scientific and technological, or economic elements, as instead found, respectively, in the ziqiang 㠚ᕪ (Self-strengthening) and fuqiang ᇼᕪ (Wealth and Strength) phases of the yangwu ⌻࣑ movement (Hsü 1970, 342). Reformist intellectuals tried to introduce forms of social organisation, institutions and political ideas from the West, going beyond the yangwu dichotomy between the Chinese ethical and political basis and Western-inspired practical instruments to modernise the country (Coccia 1998, 494). Western political thought and its social sciences were generally regarded as valuable tools for China’s political and social modernisation. In fact, there was a sharp increase in the translation of works in this field, and of the 533 works translated between 1902 and 1904, 264 have been identified as being in the area of the social sciences (Tsien 1954, 327). It was in this context that the essential notions of sociological thought were introduced and a large number of terms of the sociological lexicon were coined. The process of the introduction of sociology into China has already been analysed from a sociological and historical perspective. In this regard, we can cite studies of sociological historiography by Zheng Hansheng (2000), Yang Yabin (2001), Georges-Marie Schmutz (1993), and Bettina Gransow (1992). However, even though different studies have analysed the evolution of the Chinese lexicon at the end of the Qing dynasty (e.g., Masini 1993) and the introduction of crucial notions and terms in specific fields, such as political economy, international law and physics (Lackner et al. 2001; Lackner and Vittinghoff 2004), the evolution of the sociological lexicon and its formative period has received far less attention, and merits further investigation. Hence, as an initial response to this need, this paper will focus on the different first terms chosen to translate the notion of sociology into Chinese, and try to verify and describe their first occurrences, etymologies and semantic implications.

Qunxue 㗔ᆖ and qun 㗔 Qunxue 㗔ᆖ was the term adopted to translate the word “sociology” by the translator and essayist Yan Fu ѕ ༽ (1853–1921). Yan Fu’s

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translations of The Study of Sociology by Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) and Evolution and Ethics by Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) are generally regarded as the point of departure for the history of this discipline in China. Although the work of the zoologist Huxley cannot be strictly regarded as a sociology text, Yan Fu’s translation of Evolution and ethics (Tianyanlun ཙ ╄ 䇪 ) published in 1898, is still considered an integral part of the history of sociology in China due to the frequent references to Spencer’s theories and the numerous commentaries adjoined by Yan Fu (introduced by the locution Fu an ༽ Ṹ (Yan), i.e. “Fu glosses”). In fact, Yan Fu’s texts appear more as adaptations of Western works, rather than mere translations. As Benjamin Schwartz (1964, 90) emphasised: Yen Fu’s fame rests primarily on his role as a translator and commentator. The latter role should be stressed, for most of the translations are interlaced with Yen Fu’s commentaries, and the commentaries definitely excited quite as much interest as the texts themselves.

Yan Fu’s works had a profound influence on reformist circles, for evolutionism denied the immutability of political and social institutions, thereby legitimatising reforms and social improvement, in opposition to the Confucian ideal of historical regression (Guildin 1994). Another innovative point was that Yan Fu’s translations were among the first to be done entirely by a Chinese man of letters. In fact, during the first period of the massive introduction of Western culture into China, i.e. in the 17th and 18th centuries, most Western works were translated by foreigners (especially missionaries) with the help of Chinese literati. They followed a two-step process of translation (Tsien 1954, 307), by which the kouyi ਓ 䈁 or shou ᦸ (explanation of the subject in Chinese by foreigners) was followed by the bishou ㅄਇ or yan ╄ (elaboration of the subject in written Chinese by native scholars). This process has been qualified as “Western enterprises with Chinese assistance” by Viviane Alleton (2001, 29) and was similar to the one used for the translation of Buddhist works into Chinese (Zürcher 1972, 31) Yan Fu was the first scholar to adopt the term qunxue 㗔ᆖ (lit. “study of groups” or “study of grouping”) for “sociology” in the essay Yuan Qiang ৏ ᕪ (On Strength), published in the review Zhibao ⴤᣕ, in 1895. In this essay, he clarified the choice of the term qunxue, citing the thought of Xunzi (Xun Qing 㥰য) (Yan 1996, 8): “㗔ᆖ”㘵օ˛㥰যᆀᴹ䀰˖ “ ӪѻᡰԕᔲҾ⿭ޭ㘵ˈԕަ㜭㗔ҏDŽ”“What is ‘sociology’? Xunzi

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said: What distinguishes man from beasts is the capacity of grouping.” This attempt to combine Western knowledge and Confucian thought is regarded by Chinese sociologists as shehuixue bentuhua changshi ⽮Պᆖ ᵜ൏ॆቍ䈅 (“an attempt to nativise sociology”) (Zheng and Wang 2000, 106). In 1902, the complete translation of The Study of Sociology appeared under the title Qunxue yiyan 㗔ᆖ㚴䀰. In the preface, Yan Fu tried to explain the term qunxue and the nature of sociology (Yan 1981, vii): “㗔 ᆖօ ? ⭘、ᆖѻᖻԔ ሏ≁㗔ѻਈㄟ ԕ᰾ᰒᖰ ⍻ᯩᶕҏDŽ” “What is sociology? It is the observation of the changes of the people, by means of scientific rules, to elucidate the past and predict the future.” Actually, the term qunxue was already widely used in reformist circles in this period. During the last decade of the 19th century, classes of qunxue were taught by Kang Youwei ᓧᴹѪ at the Changxing xueshe 䮯‫ޤ‬ᆖ⽮, the academy he founded in Canton (Lu 2000, 38), though it is still a matter of debate whether these classes can be considered as the teaching of sociology (Zheng 2000, 57; Yang 2001). The classes of the Changxing academy combined elements taken from the Chinese tradition, such as Confucianism (ruxue ݂ᆖ), Buddhism (foxue ֋ᆖ), Song and Ming dynasty Chinese thought (songmingxue ᆻ᰾ᆖ), e.g. neo-Confucianism, together with elements of Western thought, such as wanguo shixue зഭਢ ᆖ (history of foreign countries) and jing shi zhi xue 㓿цѻᆖ (art of governing a country) (Zheng 2000, 57; Yang 2001, 26). This last category included different courses, such as zhengzhi yuanlixue ᭯ ⋫ ৏ ⨶ ᆖ (“political principles” or “political sciences”), zhengzhi yingyongxue ᭯⋫ ᓄ⭘ᆖ (“applied politics”), wanguo zhengzhi yange deshi зഭ᭯⋫⋯Ṭ ᗇཡ (“history of the evolution and political events of China and foreign countries”) and finally qunxue 㗔ᆖ. Within this context, this specific term was interpreted in different ways. According to Yang (2001, 26), the term could be understood as shehuixue ji shehui sixiang “⽮Պᆖ৺⽮Պᙍᜣ” (“sociology and social thought”). Han Mingmo 丙᰾䉏 (cited by Zheng 2000, 59) claims that the term had to be interpreted as qunshu 㗔ᵟ “the art of unifying and ruling”, with the term qun 㗔 referring to the idea of national unification. Ding Yi б҉ (Zheng 2000, 58) argues that the Changxing classes taught Chinese reformist theories rather than Western sociology and stresses that Kang Youwei and other reformist intellectuals que you tamen de yi tao ‘qunxue’ lilun “ ⺞ ᴹ Ԇ Ԝ Ⲵ а ྇ ‘ 㗔 ᆖ ’ ⨶ 䇪 ” (“had their own theory of ‘sociology’”).

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The term qunxue thus covered a broad spectrum of meanings at the beginning of the last century. In his 1901 essay Xuetang jiaokelun ᆖาᮉ 䈮 䇪 On Schools and Education, Cai Yuanpei 㭑 ‫ ݳ‬ษ (1868–1940) included different disciplines in the field of qunxue 㗔ᆖ, such as faxue ⌅ ᆖ (law), jiaoyuxue ᮉ㛢ᆖ (pedagogy), wenxue ᮷ᆖ (literature) and waijiaoxue ཆӔᆖ (diplomacy) (Cai 1993, 9). We could therefore argue that in Cai’s essay qunxue should be interpreted as human and social sciences. We also find the word qunxue in the essay Jinhualun gemingzhe Jiede zhi xueshuo 䘋ॆ䇪䶙ભ㘵亹ᗧѻᆖ䈤 (The Theory of the Revolutionary Evolutionist Benjamin Kidd), compiled in 1902 by Liang Qichao ằ੟䎵 (1873–1929), where a distinction is made between qunxuejia 㗔ᆖᇦ and zhengzhixuejia ᭯⋫ᆖᇦ (Liang 1960, 346). In the same essay, Liang described Darwin’s influence on different fields of knowledge and disciplines, listing shixue ਢᆖ (“history”), zhengzhixue ᭯⋫ᆖ (“political science”), zongjiaoxue ᇇᮉᆖ (“religion”), lunli daodexue Ֆ⨶䚃ᗧᆖ (“ethics”) and renqunxue Ӫ 㗔 ᆖ (Liang 1960, 346), presumably “sociology”. Renqunxue was a synonym of qunxue. The semantic oscillation and polysemy of the term qunxue is strictly linked to the polysemy and complexity of the word qun at the end of the Qing dynasty. The term qun 㗔 (lit. “group”, “grouping”, “community”) should be considered as one of the keywords of the period, in accordance with Raymond William’s definition (1985, 15): “[keywords] are significant, binding words in certain activities and their interpretation; they are significant, indicative words in certain forms of thought.” Anne Cheng emphasises that the word qun, which etymologically designates herds of animals, was positively connoted in Confucius’ thought, as opposite to dang ‫“( ފ‬faction”) (Cheng 1997, 587). For this reason, this word was chosen to designate “les groupements (…) qui cherchaient à faire entendre leur voix en matière politique” (“groups (…) seeking to have their voices heard in political matters”) (Cheng 1997, 587). In fact, the term qun was largely used in reformist circles, with different meanings and collocations, and “accumulated a whole series of levels of meaning”, to use Schwartz’ words (1964, 92). Yan Fu adopted the term qun also to translate the notion of “political nature” as qunxing 㗔ᙗ (Yan 1981, 85) in Tian yan lun ཙ╄䇪, his translation of Evolution and Ethics. As Chang Hao wrote (1987, 110):

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Furthermore, Liang Qichao adopted the character qun for the title of the essay Shuoqun 䈤㗔. According to Anne Cheng (1997, 596), this title is best understood as De la communauté (socio-politique) (On the (sociopolitical) community). This translation stresses the peculiar connotations of the word qun in that period, designating community, society or sociopolitical character. The word qun also denoted “people”, as seen in another famous essay by Liang Qichao, Lun xiaoshuo yu qunzhi zhi guanxi 䇪ሿ䈤о㗔⋫ѻ‫ޣ‬ ㌫ (On the Relationship between Fiction and the Government of the People), following Gek Nai Cheng’s translation (1996, 74). Some scholars like Anne Cheng (1997, 600) and Chang Hao (1987, 111) claim the word qun also had an anti-Manchu connotation. In fact, Cheng sees this meaning as pivotal during this period, arguing “le débat autour de la notion de qun tourne à l’offensive contre les Mandchous” (Cheng 1997, 600) (“the discussion on the notion of qun revolves around the anti-Manchu offensive”). The anti-Manchuist connotation of the word could also be found in the political thought of the translator and essayist Zhang Taiyan ㄐ ཚ ⚾ (1869–1936), who played an essential role in the introduction of sociology into China (see infra). As Chang Hao puts it (1987, 110–12): Hsün Tzu’s idea of social integration and organisation, centered around the idea of ch’ün (grouping), became the point of departure for his social and political thinking. Chang’s appropriation of Hsün Tzu’s idea of ch’ün must be also seen as a response to the intellectual crisis. But, in responding to this crisis, Chang again found Hsün Tzu’s thought converging with some of the Western thought he was studying, especially with the kind of Social Darwinism he was absorbing from Yen Fu’s writing. Indeed, on the surface at least, anti-Manchuism had become the most striking characteristic of his concept of ch’ün. He felt that the Chinese people had a cultural distinctiveness that was biologically rooted and geographically conditioned.

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Let’s compare the different connotations of qun with the meanings listed in the vast Modern Chinese Scientific Terminologies (MCST) database (Lackner et al. 2001). The meaning of “group” is listed, as attested by the dictionary Xin Eryaᯠቄ䳵 (New Erya) by Wang Rongbao ứ匋ᐆ and Ye Lan ྔ㽄, published in 1903. The database also lists the meaning of herd for qun, as attested by the Zhexue cidian ଢ ᆖ 䗎 ި (Dictionary of philosophy), compiled in 1926 by Fan Bingqing ›⛣␵. The word qun 㗔 could be found in a list of collocations, essentially with the meanings of “mass” and “group”. For example, qun xingwei 㗔㹼Ѫ (“mass behaviour”), qun lilun 㗔⨶ 䄆 (“theory of the masses”), renqun Ӫ 㗔 (“mass”), qunxing 㗔 ᙗ (“characteristics of a group”), qunze 㗔ࡷ (“principles of a group”). The meaning community is also attested, as in the collocation qunqi 㗔ἢ (“live in a community”). All these entries are based on the Xin Erya dictionary. We can also find qun with the meaning of social or society, such as in the locutions qunjue 㗔 㿪 (“social consciousness”) and qunxin 㗔 ᗳ (“social mind” or “collective mind”) (both attested in Karl E. G. Hemeling’s English-Chinese Dictionary of the Standard Chinese Spoken Language and Handbook for Translators, published in 1916). In the Modern Chinese Scientific Terminologies database (Lackner, Amelung, Kurtz 2001), the term qunxue 㗔ᆨ for “sociology” is also listed, as well as a long series of collocations and expressions: qunxue yanjiufa 㗔ᆨ⹄ウ⌅ (“sociological research methodology”), qunxue zhi duixiang 㗔ᆨѻሽ䊑 (“subject matter of sociology”), qunxue zhi wenti㗔 ᆨѻ୿乼 (“sociological problems”), shili qunxue ሖ⨶㗔ᆨ (“practical and theoretical sociology”); eryuanlun qunxue Ҽ‫ݳ‬䄆㗔ᆨ (“dualistic sociology”), weiwulun qunxue ୟ⢙䄆㗔ᆨ (“materialistic sociology”), jing qunxue 䶌㗔ᆨ (“static sociology”). Most of these entries are based on the Xin Erya dictionary. The term qunxue for sociology gradually fell into disuse at the beginning of the 19th century, and was replaced by the word shehuixue. We can also check the occurrences of qunxue on Google and confirm that this word is still very present in the Chinese language, with 329,000,000 results (Google 2012). Some of these results are related to the history of sociology in China. One homepage (qunxue.net 2012) states that this is “ањԕ⽮ՊᆖѪѫ ˈ ަԆ 㢪ᵟǃ Ӫ᮷ ⽮Պ、 ᆖѪ 䖵Ⲵ㓟 ᆖᵟ ᙗ㖁ㄉ ” (“an academic

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website mainly dedicated to sociology, but also to other human and social sciences and the arts”). Another interesting home page is that of the Shanghai university-based academic group, qunxueshe 㗔ᆖ⽮, founded a few years ago (Hudong 2012; Douban 2012). The meaning “group”, “community” can also still be found on the web. For example, the learning website qunxuewang 㗔ᆖ㖁, conceived by the Pathfinder Lab of the National University of Tainan (Pathfinder Lab 2008), has the English subtitle “learning community of practice”. However, this connotation is quite rare. Today, the term qunxue is employed essentially with the meaning of sociology or social sciences in titles, names of institutions, and so forth.

Shehuixue ⽮Պᆖ and shehui ⽮Պ The term shehuixue ⽮Պᆖ (lit. “science of society”) for “sociology” was introduced into China as a graphic loan from Japanese (Masini 1993, 195; Gao and Liu 1984, 311). This term was adopted for the first time systematically in Shehuixue ⽮ Պᆖ (Sociology), Zhang Taiyan’s translation of Shakaigaku ⽮Պᆖ by Kishimoto Tadashi የᵜ㜭↖ཚ, published in 1902. In this early phase of the introduction of sociology into China, the history of sociology is essentially the history of the translation of sociological works into Chinese. Because this work was translated from Japanese, the choice of the term shehuixue was certainly due to the influence of the Japanese language. In fact, Japan and the Japanese language played a crucial role as a medium for the introduction of Western knowledge into China, and a majority scientific terminology was introduced via Japanese (Masini 1993, 104). However, we should recall that the term qun had already become a key-term in the political thought of the translator Zhang Taiyan, where it had a strong anti-Manchu connotation. More generally, Zheng and Wang (2000, 111) stress that: “㗔”а䇽о㾯ᯩ⽮Պᆖᡰ֯⭘Ⲵ “⽮Պ”ਜ਼ѹкᆈ൘⵰аᇊᐞᔲˈ ᭵ “ 㗔ᆖ”а䇽㠚❦䳮ԕ⍱㹼ᔰᶕ Consistent differences existed between the implications of the word qun and the word “society”, as used in Western sociology. For this reason, the word qunxue naturally encountered difficulties in its diffusion.

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The form shehuixue ⽮Պᆖ was already attested in Chinese. In Renxue ӱᆖ (A Study of Benevolence) by Tan Sitong 䉝ఓ਼ (1865–1898), which appeared in 1896, it is given high priority: ࠑѪӱᆖ㘵(...)Ҿ㾯Җᖃ䙊ᯠ㓖৺㇇ᆖṬ㠤⽮ՊᆖѻҖ. All those who study in order to attain benevolence (…) must master Western books, the New Testament, mathematics, and works of the natural and social sciences (Chan 1984, 64)

The term shehuixue ⽮Պᆖ is generally interpreted in this context as referring to the social sciences or socio-political thought. If we discount the Changxing Academy’s classes of qunxue, which remain open to debate, we can consider the first true courses of sociology in China to be those of the Jingshi fazheng xuetang Ӝ ᐸ ⌅ ᭯ ᆖ า (Metropolitan school of law and politics), inaugurated in 1906. In 1908, classes of shehuixue were established in the missionary St. John University in Shanghai (Sheng Yuehan daxue ൓㓖㘠བྷᆖ). The teacher was the American Arthur Monn. The first Chinese professor of sociology was Kang Xinfu ᓧᗳᆊ (1884–1917), who was Zhang Taiyan’s student. He taught sociology at Beijing daxue े Ӝ བྷ ᆖ (Peking University) from 1916 (Zheng and Wang 2000, 104). The word shehuixue began to be widely adopted in academic circles, institutions and academic writings in the first two decades of the 20th century. However, different competing translations still existed in this period. For example, in their dictionary of loanwords, Gao and Liu (1984, 330) quote the phonetic loan suoxiuluozhi ଶՁ㖇᭟. The Modern Chinese Scientific Terminology database (Lackner et al. 2001) also lists shehuizhuyi ⽮ Պ ѫ ѹ ––, which today is normally used to refer to “socialism”, while the form jizhu shehuizhuyi 䇠䘠⽮Պѫѹ (“descriptive sociology”) was attested in the Chinese New Terms and Expressions by Evan Morgan, published in 1913. In any case, the term qunxue still enjoyed widespread usage in the early 20th century, and the stabilisation of the word shehuixue for sociology would require some years. The evolution and diffusion of the word was tied to the history of the term shehui for “society”, another loanword from Japanese (Masini 1993, 195). The word was already being used in Chinese: Gao and Liu (1984, 310) quote a passage from the Song Dynasty Dongjing menghua lu ьӜ Ỗॾᖅ (“A Record of Dreams in the Eastern Capital”) by Meng Yuanlao ᆏ‫ݳ‬㘱, as its first occurrence, but the meaning was extended to include

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the connotation of society at the start of the Meiji era in Japan, and only arrived in China in the early 20th century (Masini 1993, 195) As Wolfgang Lippert (1997, 64) emphasises: “As the Japanese term shakai ⽮ᴳ ‘society’, Ch. shehui, was incomprehensible for the Chinese reading public, Liang explained: ‘Shehui, i.e. renqun Ӫ㗔 (group of men)’”. In fact, in the above cited essay Jinhualun gemingzhe Jiede zhi xueshuo 䘋ॆ䇪䶙ભ㘵亹ᗧѻᆖ䈤, Liang Qichao (1960, 346) several times adopted the term shehui for society, writing about shehuilun ⽮Պ䇪 (“theory of society”) and guojialun ഭᇦ䇪 (“theory of the nation”), but had to explain the first occurrence (1960, 341): ⽮Պ(ণӪ㗔) (“shehui, e.g. renqun”). The concept of social evolution was translated into Chinese as renqun jinhua lun Ӫ 㗔 䘋 ॆ 䇪 . Jinhua 䘋 ॆ , the word that had replaced tianyan ཙ╄ for “evolution”, was also borrowed from Japanese. Thus, Liang’s essay is emblematic of a phase of transition in the introduction and diffusion of the new terminology coming from Japan. The term shehui was adopted by Yan Fu with the meaning of society, and he translated A History of Politics by Edward Jenks into Chinese as Shehui tongquan ⽮Պ䙊䈐. This title has been retranslated into English as A Full Account of Society by David Wright (2001, 237). Yan also adopted the word shehui and translates the concept of social control as shehui zhi jiezhi ⽮ Պ ѻ 㢲 ࡦ in Qunji quanjie lun 㗔 ᐡ ‫ ⭼ ޘ‬䇪 (1981, 7), his translation of J. S. Mill’s classic On Liberty. The term shehui was also used with the connotation of “community”, and the Modern Chinese Scientific Terminology database (Lackner et al. 2001) cites this meaning in the Tetsugaku jii ଢᆖᆇ≷ (Vocabulary of Philosophy) by Inoue Tetsujirô Ӆкଢ⅑䛾 and Ariga Hisaoᴹ䋰䮧䳴, published in Tokyo in 1884, and in the English-Chinese Dictionary of the Standard Chinese Spoken Language (1916) by K.E.G. Hemeling. Thus, the word shehui was characterised by a complex stratification of meanings and connotations. The concepts of “society” and “community” were spoken and written about in different ways in this period. It took several years to fix a clear demarcation-line between the two concepts and terms, based on the etymology explained by the famous Chinese sociologist and anthropologist Fei Xiaotong 䍩 ᆍ 䙊 , one of main exponents of the shequ xuepai (“school of community studies”) (Zheng 2003, 134): ᴰࡍ community 䘉њᆇӻ㓽ࡠѝഭᶕⲴᰦ‫ˈى‬䛓ᰦⲴ㘫⌅ᱟ⭘ “ൠᯩ ⽮Պ”㘼нᱟ”⽮४”DŽᖃᡁԜ㘫䈁 Park Ⲵ community઼ society єњн

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ৠⱘὖᗉᯊˈ䴶ᇍ “co” ϡᰃ “so” ៤њহ㞾⶯Ⳓⱘϡ䗖П䇁 DŽ಴ℸˈ ៥Ӏᓔྟᛳࠄ ഄᮍ⼒Ӯϔ䆡ⱘϡᙄᔧDŽ䙷ᯊˈ៥Ӏ䖬೼➩Ҁ໻ᄺ䇏 кˈ໻ᆊ䇜ࠄབԩᡒϔϾ䌈ߛⱘ㗏⊩ˈ ‫✊ي‬䯈 ˈ ៥ህᛇࠄњ“⼒ऎ” 䖭МϸϾᄫḋ DŽৢᴹ໻ᆊ䞛⫼њˈ᜶᜶⌕㸠DŽ䖭ᰃ⼒ऎϔ䆡ⱘᴹ⬅ DŽϔϾᮄৡ䆡ⱘ䞛⫼ҷ㸼ϔ⾡ᮄⱘὖᗉ੠ᮄⱘⷨおDŽ(Fei 1999, 530) When the word “community” was introduced into China, the current translation was not shequ, but difang shehui ഄ ᮍ ⼒ Ӯ (lit. “local society”). When we had to translate Park’s two different concepts of community and society, the opposition “co” versus “so” sounded incongruous and inappropriate in the sentences. Thus, we start perceiving that the locution difang shehui was not adequate. At that time, we were at Yanjing university, and there was much debate on what was a suitable translation. Fortuitously, I thought of the form shequ ⼒ऎ. Afterward, everybody adopted it, and the word spread progressively. This is the etymology of the word shequ. The adoption of a new term represents a new concept and a new research.

The relationship between shehui and shequ and the different connotations of the word shequ merits additional research, which goes beyond the aims of the present paper. However, the examples cited below show the complexity of the process of stabilisation and standardisation of the two keywords, shehui and shehuixue.

Conclusions The analysis of the terms qun, qunxue, shehui, and shehuixue––in a corpus composed of the first translations of sociological works into Chinese and selected essays by Chinese authors––, helps highlight the different meanings of these words in different contexts. We can thus try to retrace the historical evolution of the terms and “contrast the ways meanings are worded”, to use Fairclough’s definition (1992, 236). On the one hand, it is possible to emphasise how the etymology and evolution of the terms qunxue and shehuixue are linked to the stratification of the connotations of the words qun and shehui; on the other, we can see evidence that the history of the two terms is strictly linked to the evolution of the concepts of society and community in Chinese reformist thought and in Chinese sociological studies. In fact, the words qun and qunxue were central to the first steps of the introduction of sociology into China, and strictly connected to the reformist socio-political thought.

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The Japanese influence on the Chinese lexicon is evidenced by the very gradual substitution of the words qun and qunxue with shehui and shehuixue, which implied a complete redefinition of word collocations, patterns and synonyms. This analysis could be extended to other keywords of the sociological and sociopolitical lexicon. The evolution of a number of keywords, such as community, evolution, socialisation, functionalism and so on, deserves further studies. The introduction of sociology into China and the development of the sociological lexicon can be regarded as an emblematic example of the introduction and nativisation (Zheng and Wang 2000, 103) of Western knowledge into the Chinese cultural and linguistic context. The nature and magnitude of this kind of transplantation is highly significant in terms of both the history of ideas and historical semantics.

Bibliography Alleton, Viviane. 2001. “Chinese Terminologies: On preconceptions.” In New Terms for New Ideas. Western Knowledge and Lexical Change in Late Imperial China, edited by Michael Lackner, Iwo Amelung and Joachim Kurtz, 15–34. Leiden: Brill. Cai, Yuanpei 㫵‫ܗ‬෍. 1993 (1901) “Xuetang jiaokelun ᄺූᬭ䇒䆎” (“On Schools and Education”). In Cai yuanpei xuanji 㫵‫ܗ‬෍䗝䲚 (Selected Works of Cai Yuanpei). Hangzhou: Zhejiang chubanshe. Chan, Sin-wai, trans. 1984. An Exposition of Benevolence. The Jen-hsüeh of Tan Ssu-t’ung. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press. Cheng, Anne.1997. Histoire de la pensée chinoise. Paris: Seuil. Coccia, Filippo. 1998. “La conoscenza delle scienze occidentali ed il pensiero riformista nella Cina di fine ’800.” In Sulla Cina (1958–97), edited by Giorgio Mantici, Paola Paderni and Valeria Varriano, 491– 506. Napoli: Istituto Universitario Orientale, Dipartimento di Studi Asiatici, Series Minor LV. Douban. Accessed January 2012. www.douban.com/group/outsidersofshu/ Fairclough, Norman.1992. Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press. Fei, Xiaotong 䌍ᄱ䗮. 1999 (1948). “Ershinian lai zhi Zhongguo shequ yanjiu ѠकᑈᴹПЁ೑⼒ऎⷨ” (“The Community Studies in China in the Last Two decades”). In Fei Xiaotong wenji 䌍 ᄱ 䗮 ᭛ 䲚 (Collected Works of Fei Xiaotong), vol. V, 530–31. Beijing: Qunyan chubanshe.

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Gao, Mingkai 催ৡ߃, and Liu Zhengtan ߬ℷෂ. 1984. Hanyu wailaici cidian ∝ 䇁 ໪ ᴹ 䆡 䆡 ‫( ݌‬Dictionary of Chinese Foreign Loans), Shanghai: Shanghai cishu chubanshe. Google.com.cn. Accessed January 2012. http://www.google.cn/ Gransow, Bettina. 1992. Geschichte der chinesischen Soziologie, Frankfurt, New York: Campus Verlag. Guildin, Gregory Eliyu. 1994. The Saga of Anthropology in China: from Malinowski to Moscow to Mao. Armonk, New-York: M.E.Sharpe. Hsü, Immanuel. 1970. The Rise of Modern China. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hudong. Accessed January 2012. www.hudong.com/wiki/Ϟ⍋໻ᄺ㕸ᄺ ⼒ Lackner, Michael, Iwo Amelung, and Joachim Kurtz. 2001. “Introduction.” In New Terms for New Ideas: Western Knowledge and Lexical Change in Late Imperial China. Leiden: Brill. Lackner, Michael, Iwo Amelung, and Joachim Kurtz. “Modern Chinese Scientific Terminology (MCTS).” Last modified 2001. Accessed January 2012. http://mcst.uni-hd.de/search/searchMCST_short.lasso Lackner, Michael, and Natascha Vittinghoff, eds. 2004. Mapping Meanings: the Fields of New Learning in Late Qing China. Leiden: Brill. Liang, Qichao ṕ ਃ 䍙 . 1960 (1902). “Jinhualun gemingzhe Jiede zhi xueshuo 䖯 ࣪ 䆎 䴽 ੑ 㗙 九 ᖋ П ᄺ 䇈 ” (“The Theory of the Revolutionary Evolutionist Benjamin Kidd”). In Yinbingshi wenji 佂‫ބ‬ ᅸ᭛䲚 (Collected Works from the Ice Drinker Studio), vol. I, 252–59. Taipei: Zhonghua shuju. ––. 1996 (1902). “On the Relationship between Fiction and the Government of the People.” Translated by Gek Nai Cheng. In Modern Chinese Literary Thought. Writing on Literature 1893–1945, edited by Kirk A. Denton, 74–81. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Lippert, Wolfgang. 2004. “The Formation and development of the Term ‘Political Economy’ in Chinese and Japanese.” In Mapping Meanings: the Fields of New Learning in Late Qing China, edited by Mickael Lackner and Natascha Vittinghoff, 119–28. Leiden: Brill. Lu, Xueyi 䰚ᄺ㡎. 2000. “Xin Zhongguo shehuixue wushinian ᮄЁ೑⼒ ӮᄺѨकᑈ”. Zhongguo shehuixue nianjian 1995.7–1998 Ё೑⼒Ӯᄺ ᑈ䡈 1995.7–1998 (China Yearbook of Sociology 1995.7–1998): 37– 84. Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe. Masini, Federico.1993. The Formation of the Modern Chinese Lexicon and its Evolution Towards a National Language: the Period from 1840

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to 1898. Journal of Chinese Linguistics. Monograph Series VI. Berkeley. Pathfinder Lab, Department of Information and Learning Technology, National University of Tainan. 2008. Accessed January 2012. http://cop.linc.hinet.net/ Qunxue.net. Copyright 2007–2008. Accessed January 2012. www.qunxue.net Schmutz, Georges-Marie. 1993. La sociologie de la Chine: matériaux pour une histoire, 1748–1989. Berne: Peter Lang. Schwartz, Benjamin. 1964. In Search of Wealth and Power: Yen Fu and the West (Harvard East Asian Series. 16.) Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Tai, James H.-Y., and Marjorie K.M. Chan. 1999. “Some Reflections on the Periodisation of the Chinese Language.” In Studies in Chinese Historical Syntax and Morphology: Linguistics Essays in Honor of Mei Tsu Lin, edited by Alain Peyraube and Sun Chaofen, 223–39. Paris: Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. Tan, Sitong 䈁ஷৠ. 2002 (1896). Renxue ҕᄺ (A Study of Benevolence). Bejing: Huaxia chubanshe. Tsien, Tsuen-hsuin. 1954. “Western Impact on China through Translations.” Far Eastern Quaterly 13(3): 305–27. Williams, Raymond. 1985. Keywords: a Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wright, David. 2001. “Yan Fu and the Task of Translator.” In New Terms for New Ideas. Western Knowledge and Lexical Change in Late Imperial China, edited by Michael Lackner, Iwo Amelung and Joachim Kurtz, 235–56. Leiden: Brill. Yan, Fu Ϲ໡, trans. 1981 (1903). Qunxue yiyan 㕸ᄺ㙘㿔 (The Study of Sociology). Beijing: Shangwu yinshuguan. ––. trans. 1981 (1898). Tianyanlun ໽ ⓨ 䆎 (Evolution and Ethics). Beijing: Shangwu yinshuguan. ––. trans. 1981 (1903). Qunji quanjie lun 㕸 Ꮕ ܼ ⬠ 䆎 (On Liberty). Beijing: Shangwu yingshuguan. ––. 1996 (1895). “Yuan qiang ॳᔎ” (“On Strength”). In Yan Fu wenxuan Ϲ໡᭛䗝 (Anthology of Yan Fu), edited by Lu Yunkun शѥᯚ, 7–43. Shanghai: Shanghai yuandong chubanshe. Yang, Yabin ᴼ䲙ᕀ. 2001. Jindai Zhongguo shehuixueshi 䖥ҷЁ೑⼒Ӯ ᄺ৆ (History of Modern Chinese Sociology). Bejing: Xinhua shuju. Zhang, Taiyan ゴ ໾ ♢ , trans. 1902. Shehuixue ⼒ Ӯ ᄺ (Sociology). Shanghai: Shanghai Guangzhi shuju.

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Zheng, Hangsheng 䚥ᵁ⫳. 2000. Zhongguo shehuixueshi xinbian Ё೑⼒ Ӯᄺ৆ᮄ㆛ (A New History of Chinese Sociology). Bejing: Gaodeng jiaoyu chubanshe. Zheng, Hangsheng 䚥ᵁ⫳, and Wang Wanjun ⥟ϛ֞. 2000. Shehuixue bentuhua ⼒ Ӯ ᄺ ᴀ ೳ ࣪ (The Nativisation of Sociology). Hebei: Dangjian duwu chubanshe. Zürcher, Erik.1972. The Buddhist Conquest of China: the Spread and Adaptation of Buddhism in Early Medieval China (Sinica Leidensia). Leiden: Brill.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN CHINESE-ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF NEOLOGISMS IN ONLINE DICTIONARIES MATEJA PETROVI

Introduction The recent rapid socio-economic development in China has brought about many changes in every area of society and knowledge, ranging from economics, politics, science and technology, culture, education, medical care, information technology, everyday life etc. Language as the primary communications tool meets the needs of its speakers; it therefore has to constantly change as well in order to reflect new situations and tendencies in life. While social changes may effect grammar, they are reflected most intensely in vocabulary. As Wang (2011, 1) notes, “New words are a social barometer, they mirror the changes in society. Whenever there is a change in the society, new words will appear to describe it.” Chinese neologisms vividly reveal the changes that China has undergone over the past decades. It is very important to translate these neologisms into everyday English, to enable foreign readers to sense today’s China through new expressions. Liu (2007) claims that the translation of neologisms does not seem to have attracted much attention among Chinese translation theorists and translators. However, several recent studies may prove the contrary. Bilingual dictionaries are very valuable resources for translations, and this study examines a list of Chinese neologisms that first appeared in online dictionaries in the year 2006. The aim is to determine to what degree the selected neologisms are included in dictionaries, whether they are translated into English and what translation strategies are used. The decision to examine neologisms in 2006, but not those from more recent

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years, is related to the time needed for updating databases and providing more translations in dictionaries.

Definition(s) of Neologism At first glance, defining “neologism” seems to be an easy task. Based on Sayadi’s (2011) rather loose definition, a neologism is “a word that expresses a novel concept either by coining a new vocabulary item or by attaching a new meaning to an already existing one”. These features are evident in definitions in dictionaries and studies on neologisms. At the same time, however, several recent studies on neologisms note that there is still no exact definition of that term. (Janssen 2005; Liu 2007; Zhu 2011; among others) In order to sketch the complexity of defining neologisms, let us briefly survey a classification of definitions discussed in Janssen (2005). A psychological definition treats neologism as a word that is perceived as new by the language community at a given moment in time. The main problem is that new is a relative notion, and newness is difficult to test, given that language is a continuum without well-defined stages. A lexicographic approach considers a neologism to be any word that does not appear in a dictionary. This principle of exclusiveness does not define what new words are, but defines words that are not well established enough to be included in dictionaries. Since dictionaries cannot include all the existing words in a language, non-neologisms might also be seen as neologisms. A diachronic (or corpus) approach considers a direct relation between the definition of a neologism and a notion of newness. In this view, a neologism is any word-form which appears in a recent general language text, but does not appear in an established reference corpus of that language. Another approach highlights formal or semantic instability. A threshold period during which new words can be considered as neologistic is an arbitrary notion, but 3 years seems to be the standard period. All of these approaches are incomplete, and present both advantages and disadvantages. Janssen (2005) thus proposes a hybrid, an extended lexicographic diachronic definition of a neologism. In his definition, a neologism is “any word that does not occur in the morphological database derived from the dictionary because of its recentness”. However, he notes that even this definition is limited only to orthographic neologisms and cannot trace formal neologisms (i.e. homographic). All of these approaches lack semantic analysis, so new meanings of existing words

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cannot be detected. Regardless of the methodology, the final verification of a given neologism candidate should be executed manually.

Recent Work on Chinese Neologisms According to Wang (2007, 53), since the 1987 reform and opening up of China, more than 50 dictionaries of neologisms have been published, in which new expressions over longer time spans were taken into account. In 2006, a different language and dictionary strategy was employed. Since 2007, yearly dictionaries of neologisms have been published, from the Chinese Neologisms in 2006 to Chinese Neologisms in 2011. On 16 August, 2007 the State Language Commission at the Ministry of Education issued the paper, The Language Situation in China (2006) 1 , which listed 171 neologisms from 2006. The new words were the initial result of a research project in which a group of nearly 20 scholars examined more then 30 different types of periodicals and online media, covering many different fields. Texts were first examined manually, and the neologism-candidates were then tested with Baidu, Google, iAsk and other search engines to trace the earliest appearance and status of candidates. After 14 months the researchers had collected more than a thousand potential neologisms, and isolated about 300 expressions from the year 2006, and an additional 300 expressions from the previous three years. Afterwards, the selected expressions were validated in the Dynamic Circulating Corpus (DCC) developed by the Chinese National Language Resources Monitoring and Research Center (CNLR) and re-evaluated by several experts on lexicology and lexicography. In this phase, vulgar words and words used only occasionally or by specific individuals were deleted. The remaining 171 expressions were then officially recognised as neologisms from the year 2006. The final result of the research project, the book Chinese Neologisms in 2006, included nearly 300 new expressions from 2006 (including some entries that are not listed in the Green Paper) and 300 expressions from the three years prior to 2006. (Wang 2007, 52) Unlike the period of the May Fourth Movement, when language changes were introduced and promoted mainly by intellectuals and scholars, these neologisms were created by society as a whole. Wang’s observation (2007, 53) that the Green Paper series attracted public 1

lj Ё ೑ 䇁 㿔 ⫳ ⌏ ⢊ ‫ މ‬᡹ ਞ ˄ 2006 ˅ NJ , also entitled Green Paper on the Langage Situation in ChinaljЁ೑䇁㿔⫳⌏㓓Ⲃк 2006NJor briefly Green Paper lj㓓ⲂкNJ. See Wang 2007, Li 2007.

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attention, whereas previous dictionaries of new expressions were of interest only to academics, is perhaps a reflection of this fact. Some of these neologisms became well-known words, whiles others have already fallen into disuse, especially those denoting specific events of the year 2006. However, dictionaries should provide information for these words, regardless of their current status. As Wang (2007, 53) explains, if new expressions are not recorded properly before they disappear, a valuable part of language history will be lost. Some expressions may reappear after a certain period of time, and their interpretation might then be incomplete or mistaken. Wang (2007, 53) also stresses that the official publication of neologisms does not mean that the State Language Commission regulates the proper use of language, but is instead an attempt to record changes in language and social life. Although the future of newly created expressions is uncertain, and there is no guarantee that these words will become a standard part of the vocabulary, their inclusion in glossaries, dictionaries and corpora already indicates a certain degree of stability. In fact, except for four words (dao Bian ‫צ‬᠕ 2 , guoji gaokao yimin ೑䰙催㗗⿏⇥, Jiang xuan ∳䗝 and zuobike ԰ ᓞ ‫) ܟ‬, all the other neologisms from 2006 are at present available on the website encyclopedia Baidu Baike, where they are generally defined in detail. Although the trial period of neologisms was much shorter than three years before entering the first dictionary, and while a part of these neologisms have probably already forgotten, this study examines all 171 neologisms in six bilingual online dictionaries.3

Classification of Chinese Neologisms In recent years, Chinese neologisms have attracted numerous scholars, using a variety of approaches (Wang, 2007; Zhou, 2009; Wang, 2011; to name just a few). Some focus on neologisms in strictly linguistic terms, providing very specific and detailed information (Ceccagno and Basciano, 2007; Zeng, 2009; Duan and Zeng, 2010; Zhou, 2010). Other researchers discuss translation strategies (Fang, 2006; Liu, 2007; Zeng, 2008; Zhu, 2011; among others), teaching approaches (Tang 2000) and similar issues, while almost all examine the sources of the new expressions and classify 2

All neologisms of the year 2006 are listed in the Appendix, together with the most appropriate translations. 3 Selected dictionaries are described in “Outline of Selected Online Dictionaries”.

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301

them according to the fields that seem most appropriate. For example, Liu (2007) classifies Chinese neologisms in six categories: politics and economics, science and technology, education, cyber-culture, health and medicine, and other aspects of social culture. Zeng (2008) groups Chinese neologisms into five clusters: politics, economics and commerce; culture, education and entertainment; science, technology and military; health, medicine and sports, and finally, skills, work and the environment. Language is definitely a mirror of society, and its vocabulary vividly reflects changes in economics, politics, culture, etc. Given the impact digital technology has had on contemporary society, it is not surprising that lexicographers have found that science and technology are by far the most prolific sources of recent neologisms (Sayadi, 2011). It would be very interesting to analyse neologisms from this perspective. However, for our purposes, it is more relevant to focus on the formation principles of neologisms and their translation strategies. Since differences in the origins of neologisms are partly reflected in their translations, we will now consider their formation principles. Based on different classifications in various research papers, we can identify four categories of sources or formation principles of Chinese neologisms: 1) loanwords, 2) words and expressions from dialects from mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, 3) newly-invented words and expressions and 4) adding new meanings to existing words and expressions.

Loanwords Loanwords, words of foreign origin or borrowings are words imported from another language. While loanwords can be understood in the strict sense of phonetically translated or transliterated words, we prefer to take the broader view and include all expressions that enter the language because of new concepts, findings, relations etc. which have been introduced from another language. In Chinese, most loanwords derive from English and are used to express ideas when no equivalent term in the native language can be found (Liu, 2007). They are less common than other neologisms, but are frequently used in cross-cultural communication, where a borrowing has an indispensable function. Neologisms from English compose the core of loanwords in Chinese. However, that said, I agree with Wang’s (2007) view that neologisms are in their essence new and different. To attract attention and achieve maximum effect, some new expressions are very vivid. Playing with the English origin may also be a matter of fashion. For example, if one is just

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looking for an equivalent term in the native language, there is no need for new words like xuepin 㸔ᣐ (“shopping”), shai ᰦ (“share”) etc., since these concepts and their expressions already exist in the Chinese vocabulary. However, such words are very vivid, fashionable and easy to use. Some other 2006 neologisms include the following loanwords: abbreviation EMBA, baobaotuan ᢅ ᢅ ಶ (“Free Hugs Campaign”), daobandang ⲫ⠜‫“( ܮ‬Pirate Party”), dingchong jiating ϕᅴᆊᒁ (“petsonly DINK family”), feiteng kele ⊌ 㝒 ৃ Ф (“Coke and Mentos eruption”), Guge 䈋℠ (“Google”), lehuozu Ф⌏ᮣ (“LOHAS”), mika 䗋 व (“mini Card”), M-xing shehui Mൟ⼒Ӯ (“M-Form Society”), Nuoya guize 䇎Ѯ㾘߭ (“Noah Rules”), zhongbao ӫࣙ (“Crowdsourcing”) etc.

Words and Expressions from Dialects from Mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong Scholars frequently consider words from Hong Kong and Taiwan as a special group of neologisms (Tang, 2000; Zhou, 2009; Zhang, 2010; among others), or classify them as loanwords, together with expressions with English origins (Liu, 2007). Since the language of these two regions is Chinese, and by definition a distinct form of a language spoken in a specific geographical area is known as a regional dialect, neologisms that come from dialects from mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong can be considered as one category (Zhang L., 2010). Other 2006 neologisms originating in Taiwan include feitong ᑳ㒳 (“abandonment of reunification”), dao Bian ‫ צ‬᠕ (“Chen Shui-bian Case”), hailan duanwang ⍋㓚ᮁ㔥 (“Internet failure of the sea plough system”) and dongrong ‫ޏ‬ᆍ4 (“youth freezing”).

Newly-invented Words and Expressions The most productive way of creating neologisms is to coin new words and expressions according to the characteristics of the Chinese language. Derived words are therefore the core of new Chinese vocabulary. Affixation has become a trend in creating new Chinese terms. Recently, some Chinese characters have been used together with the existing terms, 4

The term Cyron babies originates with Harper’s Bazaar magazine, but was translated into Chinese as dongrong shidai ‫ޏ‬ᆍϪҷ by Taiwan media. Hence, I have listed this expression here.

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and this kind of combination produces many new words and expressions. These characters can be regarded as emerging affixes, some serving as prefixes and others as suffixes. Abbreviations constitute another very productive group of neologisms. Shortening phrases into two or three Chinese characters is an effective and commonplace process in Chinese. Moreover, for the sake of brevity, such shortened terms are the first choice for journalists. Information loaded word phrases are routinely created by means of acronyms and abbreviated terms. Liu (2007, 13) suggests that the growing number of abbreviations is closely linked to modern society and the rapid development of science and technology, where a fast-paced lifestyle requires words that are concise and easily remembered. Some derived words from 2006 include benbenzu ༨༨ᮣ (“rushing clan”), diaopingzu ৞⫊ᮣ (“infusion clan”), feiyuzu 亲剐ᮣ (“flying fish family”), peipinzu 䰾ᣐᮣ (“shopping companion”); bainu ⱑ཈ (“whitecollar slave”), chenu 䔺཈ (“car slave”), fangnu ᠓཈ (“mortgage slave”), zhengnu 䆕཈ “slave of certificates”; huanke ᤶᅶ “swapper”, jueke ᥬᅶ (“digger”), shaike ᰦᅶ (sharer”) etc. Several morphemes, such as ke ᅶ (“person”), men 䮼 (“scandal”), nu ཈ (“slave”), ti ᳓ (“substitute”), zu ᮣ (“clan”) etc. continue to be productive. Chinese acronyms from 2006 include Jiang xuan ∳ 䗝 (“Selected Works of Jiang Zemin”), shiwu xize क Ѩ 㒚 ߭ (“Fifteen rules and regulations”), guo liu tiao ೑݁ᴵ (“State Council Six Measures”), guo shi tiao ೑कᴵ (“State Council Ten Measures”), barong-bachi ܿ㤷ܿ㘏 (“Eight Do’s and Don’ts”).

Existing Words with New Meanings Sometimes words and expressions acquire new meanings or connotations to meet new needs. The original meaning of a word or an expression may expand, contract or shift to different meanings. In some cases, only the emotional coloring of an expression changes, which can result in derogatory or commendatory, weaker or stronger connotations. These changes are very difficult to track, and such neologisms may very easily be overlooked. The original meaning of kongtiao ぎ䇗 is the noun “air-conditioning”. As a neologism, this word functions as a verb, meaning “to fail to implement several real estate regulations and policies due to boycott” (Zhou 2009, 464). This new meaning cannot be found in any of the dictionaries cited in this study.

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Translation Strategies and their Application for Neologisms Sayadi (2011) points out that “the problem of the translation of new words ranks high on the list of challenges facing translators because such words are not readily found in ordinary dictionaries and even in the newest specialised dictionaries”. Discussions of translation strategies often argue that the translator should keep to the criteria of “faithfulness”, “expressiveness” and “closeness”, so as to fully render the meaning of neologisms. “Faithfulness” means to faithfully transfer the meaning of the original on the basis of a correct comprehension of it. “Expressiveness” means that the translation should be as smooth and easy to understand as the original, while “closeness” means the style of the translation should be as close as possible to that of the original, irrespective of whether it’s elegant or vulgar. These criteria should be taken into account not only in the process of translating specific texts, but also when translating neologisms for dictionaries. Although ordinary and specialised dictionaries are more authoritative in terms of the information they provide, we should not ignore online dictionaries, which represent a more flexible, though not necessarily as relevant and/or completely reliable source of translated terms. Recent studies of Chinese-English translation strategies classify them according to various frameworks. Zhu (2011) divides translation strategies into five groups: literal translation and literal translation plus interpretation; transliteration; free translation and free translation plus interpretation; back translation; skillful affixation and derivation. Liu (2007) sums up six methods of neologism translation: back translation; literal translation; literal translation plus explanation; free translation; diversified translation; transliteration. Fang (2006) arranges translation strategies into seven groups: equivalent translation and near-equivalent translation; back translation; literal translation; free translation; transliteration; explanatory translation; bilingual hybrid translation. Zeng (2008) describes eight strategies for translating Chinese neologisms: back translation; equivalent translation and near equivalent translation; literal translation; free translation; interpretation and literal translation plus interpretation; transliteration and transliteration with interpretation; affixation; and translation skills regarding neologisms containing numbers. All of these frameworks mention the same basic methods, but differ in their breakdown of everyday translation work. Let us briefly summarise these basic methods.

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Back Translation Back translation is translating what has already been translated into a foreign language back to the original language. Loanwords, understood in a broad sense, are words imported from another language; therefore translating neologisms of this kind should not be a problem. Although loanwords from a foreign language may reflect different translation strategies, the original already exists. See section “Loanwords”.

Transliteration Transliteration is the most simple translation method, and its biggest advantage is to keep the original concept untouched, even if not fully understood. It is useful for translating words in Chinese (EMBA), as well as from Chinese (咾Ề fengshui, 佱 yuan, Ṃ㢜 wushu, etc.). As can be observed in online dictionaries, this method is still used, with some modifications, as in “Huanker” (iCIBA), guxing (iCIBA), Lihua style (iCIBA), Li Ya’s somersault (iCIBA).

Literal Translation Literal translation is a method that seeks to render the meaning of Chinese neologisms with only minor changes to their original images. Individual source language words are replaced with individual target language words wherever possible, and adhere as closely as possible to the source language word order in the target language. Since literal translation does not change Chinese images, it helps introduce Chinese culture to English readers and disseminate the relevant Chinese cultural connotations. In other words, literal translation means trying to make the target text identical or similar to the source text in lexical meaning and structure. Ideally, it should reflect an equivalence in meaning and style. In 2006, literally translated neologisms included barong-bachi ܿ㤷ܿ 㘏 , translated as “Eight Honors and Eight Shames”, fangmo ᠓ 儨 (“housing devil”), feiyuzu 亲剐ᮣ (“flying fish family”), huise jineng ♄㡆 ᡔ㛑 (“grey skills”), miyue baomu 㳰ֱ᳜ྚ (“honeymoon housemaid”), 7 shidai 7 ᯊҷ (“The Age of Seven”) etc.

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Free Translation Free translation is a method that renders the connotative meaning and cultural meaning of the Chinese neologism without trying to keep its original image. Free translation is generally considered the most important and efficient technique in neologism translation. Typical examples of free translations from the 2006 corpus of neologisms are: baituo ⱑᠬ (“daytime care service”) (lit. white-trust), bantang fuqi ञ㊪໿ྏ (“weekend couple”) (lit. half-sugar-husband-wife), hancu ᆦ֗ (“off-season promotion”) (lit. cold-urge), qiongrenpao かҎ䎥 (“cheap, domestically produced sports car”) (lit. poor-people-run), sanshi ϝ༅ (“unemployed school-leavers without adult supervision”) (lit. threelose), yangpiaozu ⋟ⓖᮣ (“job-hopping foreigner”) (lit. ocean-driftingclan) etc.

Any Method Plus Annotation Annotation means to add some proper explanation to a translated neologism. An annotation is intended to help the reader understand the translation by providing some background knowledge of the source language. This addition of explanatory comments after the translated expression is a very effective way to avoid misunderstanding. A few examples from the 2006 neologisms are shengnü ࠽ཇ (“3S women - referring to women born in the 1970s, well educated, in well-paid jobs, but with difficulty getting married; 3S, shorthand for single, 70s, and stuck”), weixiaoquan ᖂュ೜ (“Smile Wristband - designed for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Volunteers, featuring ‘Volunteers Smile––Beijing’s Image’”), xueshu chaonan ᄺᴃ䍙⬋ (“academic superstar - academics who have gained notoriety among the general public due to television appearances and their being entertaining and informative on a range of subjects, especially ancient Chinese history and philosophy”) etc.

Chinese Neologisms in Online Dictionaries As stated, this study examines Chinese neologisms in six online dictionaries from 2006. The aim is to determine to what degree the selected neologisms are included in dictionaries, whether they are translated to English and what translation methods are used. Examined

Chinese-English Translations of Neologisms in Online Dictionaries

307

dictionaries include Dict.cn, DictALL, ICIBA, MDBG/Yellowbridge 5 , Nciku and Yahoozidian.

Profiles of Select Online Dictionaries Dict.cn was constructed by a group of Chinese (from China) studying in the USA, and went online in 2003. (Blogger Digest) It was the first Chinese online dictionary. Since 2006 Dict.cn has offered its services also to NetEase’s Youdao cidian, Baidu cidian, QQ’s Soso cidian etc., and is the Chinese internet’s 6 leading dictionary producer. (Dict.cn 2012). DictALL was registered in 2008 by HiChina Zhicheng Technology Ltd. in Beijing. (PandaStats 2012) iCIBA was launched by Kingsoft, a leading software developer, distributor and service provider in China. iCIBA is considered the most popular domestic online English learning website. MDBG was launched in 2008. The word dictionary on this website is based on CC-CEDICT, which is a continuation of the CEDICT project from 1997, aimed at providing a complete, downloadable Chinese-toEnglish dictionary, with pronunciation in pinyin for the Chinese characters. This website allows users to add new entries or correct existing entries in CC-CEDICT. Submitted entries are said to be checked before being released for download.7 Yellowbridge is also based on CEDICT and its query results are thus basically identical to MDBG. Nciku was founded in 2007 by a Korean Lee Sungwon, and now belongs to Beijing DFHL Co. Ltd (࣫Ҁϰᮍ᜻♉⾥ᡔথሩ᳝䰤݀ৌ). According to Blogger Digest, Dict.cn and Yahoo Dictionary are the most popular English-Chinese and Chinese-English dictionaries. Yahoo Dictionary offers similar features to that of Dict.cn, if Dict.cn is unavailable. Yahoo Dictionary may be the substitute or vice-versa.

Analysis Neologisms are new expressions which may or may not become a lasting or consistent part of the vocabulary of a language. The first task was to verify the degree to which the 2006 neologisms are still active in today’s Chinese. For each neologism, I counted the approximate number 5

MDBG and Yellowbridge appear to acquire data from the same database, since the results of queries were always identical. 6 Ё೑Ѧ㘨㔥 7 https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kkmlkkjojmombglmlpbpapmhcaljjkde

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of pages found with Baidu, China’s most popular search engine. (Mandarinportal 2012) Since search engine results reflect the situation at the time of access, the following data have doubtless changed since March 2012. Nevertheless, the results can still give an accurate idea of the distribution of neologisms at a given time. 60

56

50 40

35 27

30 20

16

11

9

10

11 6

0 A (9-50.000) B (50-100.000)

C (100500.000)

D (0,5-1 mio.)

E (1-5 mio.)

F (5-10 mio.) G (10-50 mio.) H (>100 mio.)

Figure 15-1: Number of neologisms with similar distribution per websites

Based on Figure 15-1, 56 neologisms from 2006 are rarely used because they only appear in 9,000 to 50,000 sites (see Group A). 16 neologisms with label B appeared 50,000 to 100,000 times. Though a bit more frequent, this is still quite rare. The maximum number of results provided by Baidu for a query is 100 million pages; only 6 neologisms in the sample belong to this category. Although these results might not seem very informative, a sample testing with 15 native speakers resulted in a similar distribution. Appendix A indicates to which group a neologism belongs, i.e. from Group A (rarely used words) to group H (still frequently used words). Table 15-1 shows how many of the 171 neologisms are defined in different online resources. I took into account only exact query results. For example, if the phrase weixiao Beijing (ᖂュ࣫Ҁ) was not recognised and explained as one unit, but separately as weixiao plus Beijing, such results were disregarded.

Chinese-English Translations of Neologisms in Online Dictionaries

Results (of total: 171) 167 148 81 53 30 29 19

Baidu baike iCIBA Dict.cn MDBG Nciku DictALL Yahoozidian

309

% 97.7 86.5 47.4 31.0 17.5 17.0 11.1

Table 15-1: Inclusion of neologisms in online resources Although Baidu Baike is an encyclopedia rather than a dictionary, it is a valuable resource with almost all of the 171 neologisms (97.7%) listed and explained in detail, indicating that these expressions are not entirely forgotten. The dictionary with the most entries (86.5%) is iCIBA, followed by Dict.cn (47.4%) and then MDBG (31.0%). neologism is not defined in any dictionary neologism is defined in 1/6 dictionaries neologism is defined in 2/6 dictionaries neologism is defined in 3/6 dictionaries neologism is defined in 4/6 dictionaries neologism is defined in 5/6 dictionaries neologism is defined in all dictionaries 0

10

20

30

40

50

60

Figure 15-2: Translation of neologisms in the six dictionaries

Table 15-1 and Figure 15-2 provide a general overview of the inclusion of neologisms in online resources. However, we should bear in mind that the quality of translations is not the same in all dictionaries. While one part of a proposed translation can be very informative and reliable, another can be of poor quality or clearly mistaken, as is often the case with automatic

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or program-generated translation. This can be illustrated by the following examples: shengnü (࠽ ࠽ཇ ) Dict.cn DictALL iCIBA

MDBG Nciku

Yahoozidian

woman of excess Shelved ladies 3S lady˗“࠽ཇ”ᰃᣛ䙷ѯ⫳Ѣ 70 ᑈҷⱘ໻啘ཇ䴦ᑈ, ϔ㕸೼ီ࿏Ϟᕫϡࠄ⧚ᛇᔦᆓⱘ催ᄺग़ǃ催ᬊܹⱘ ໻啘ཇ䴦ᑈDŽཌྷӀг㹿⿄Ў“3S ཇҎ”:Single, Seventies, Stuck DŽ䖭ѯҎϔ㠀⫳⌏⣀ゟ,ᴵӊ↨䕗Ӭ 䍞DŽ leftover woman (successful career woman who has remained single) (Literally) leftover females, it refers to unmarried mature females with high education levels and high salaries; single career women 3S women (referring to women born in the 1970s, well educated, in well-paid jobs, but with difficulty getting married; 3S, shorthand for single, 70s, and stuck)

Table 15-2: Translation of shengnü in online dictionaries Following the literal translation method, the neologism shengnü is translated as “leftover woman” in MDBG. Yahoozidian, Nciku and iCIBA provide free translations, which result in “3S lady”, “3S women” or “single career women”. All these dictionaries are annotations capable, although iCIBA’s explanation is in Chinese. Despite differences, all of these descriptions are informative enough to understand the meaning of shengnü. On the contrary, translations in Dict.cn and DictALL provide no useful or relevant information.

Chinese-English Translations of Neologisms in Online Dictionaries

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luokao (㻌 㻌㗗) Dict.cn DictALL iCIBA MDBG Nciku Yahoozidian

Naked examination Naked examination non-extra-mark examination to take an exam without any extra points, etc. -

Table 15-3: Translation of luokao in online dictionaries Because literal translation adheres closely to the original images, it is believed to be very helpful in introducing Chinese culture to English readers. However, when such translations are taken out of context––as dictionaries always do ––, they provide insufficient relevant information. Therefore, in many cases similar to “naked examination”, Dict.cn and DictALL are not the best choices for neologisms. Free translations in iCIBA and Nciku are better, but would be even more informative with annotations added. For example, “non-extra-mark examination/pure examination” (refers to exams in which no special consideration is given, such as additional points on academic exams due to one’s artistic or athletic abilities).

Dict.cn DictALL iCIBA MDBG Nciku Yahoozidian

weixiaoquan (ᖂ ᖂュ೜) smiling circle the Smile Ring 1. noun a kind of plastic hand ring worn by the Olympics volunteers Smile Wristband (designed for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Volunteers, featuring “Volunteers Smile–– Beijing’s Image”)

Table 15-4: Translation of weixaoquan in online dictionaries

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If we consider the word weixiaoquan (see Table 15-4), “smiling circle” and “the Smile Ring” are erroneous translations. Nciku’s translation is more accurate, but not as good as Yahoozidian’s translation. Let us consider Table 15-1 again, focusing just on the relevant translations. The lefthand column (+) represents the number of very good and informative translations in a dictionary, Translations that are useful but not very informative are shown in the middle column (0). Entries that do not provide new meanings of existing words are also listed in this column. The righthand column (–) shows the total of inappropriate translations that are either meaningless or lead to misreadings. Results (of 171 total:) iCIBA Dict.cn MDBG DictALL Nciku Yahoozidian

148 81 53 30 29 19

Relevant information (of 171 total)

62 17 46 5 20 11

+ 41.9% 21.0% 86.8% 17.2% 66.7% 57.9%

72 24 4 14 8 8

0 48.6% 29.6% 7.5% 48.3% 26.7% 42.1%

– 14 40 3 10 2 0

9.5% 49.4% 5.7% 34.5% 6.7% 0.0%

Table 15-5: Quality of translated neologisms We can see that the best and most informative translations are provided by MDBG, although MDBG does not include as many neologisms as iCIBA and Dict.cn. It is interesting to note that the first forty entries are excellent, i.e. neologisms from letter A to F, but from F to Z only a few neologisms appear. It seems they started to translate the 171 neologisms from 2006, but only managed to translate the first few letters (in pinyin). This is not impossible, since this website allows users to add new entries or correct existing ones in CC-CEDICT (see “Outline of Selected Online Dictionaries”). iCIBA has just 8.8 percent of inappropriate translations and is thus the most useful dictionary. However, iCIBA’s translations do not include as many annotations and the results are not as informative as those of MDBG.

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Finally, Yahoozidian does not provide inappropriate translations of the 171 neologisms, but in general it includes just a few new words.

Conclusion Although language is a communication tool, it is also a vital source of information for history and a cultural heritage. A sample of Chinese neologisms from 2006 reflects some new characteristics of the recent situation in China and abroad. They reflect changes and developments in politics (e.g. barong-bachi ܿ 㤷 ܿ 㘏 , daobandang ⲫ ⠜ ‫ ;) ܮ‬the entertainment industry (e.g. biti ヨ᳓, luoti 㻌᳓, zhifen 㘠㉝); social life (e.g. bowen म᭛, yisu ए䆝, fangnu ᠓཈); the real estate situation (e.g. cunzhengfang ᴥ䆕᠓, wupan xishou ᤖⲬᚰଂ, dunfang wupan ಸ᠓ᤖⲬ , fangmo ᠓儨) etc. On the other hand, despite the rapid development of science and technology, and contrary to Wang’s (2011, 1) view that “since the 20th century, especially the latter part of it, science and technology have developed rapidly, resulting in a boom of neologisms in transient cultures”, there are not as many new words in this area as one would expect from this generalisation. Among the few exceptions are mika 䗋व and haimianlu ⍋㓉䏃. Annual dictionaries of neologisms are also a valuable reminder of important events, though such words may frequently be used for just a short time and then quickly forgotten (e.g. jieshuomen 㾷䇈䮼, jiaohuanji 㛮⦃叵, Honglou xuanxiu 㑶ὐ䗝⾔, Hanxin zaojia shijian ∝㢃䗴‫؛‬џӊ). Generally speaking, we can conclude that online dictionaries provide good Chinese-English translations for neologisms. Based on results for neologisms from 2006, the most useful and reliable online dictionary is iCIBA, although its translations are not as informative as those from MDBG. We can also conclude that among the different translation principles and strategies available, the most appropriate for dictionaries of this kind are those that include annotations. Neologisms themselves are inherently difficult to understand properly, and without the cultural background and additional information this task is made even more difficult. It should be noted that none of the selected dictionaries provides information on collocations and the extended meanings of neologisms, a very important part of living language. For example, the verb shai ᰦ primarily means “to dry in the sun/to sunbathe”, but now functions as a loanword “to share”. The new meaning gained several collocations, e.g., shai zhaopian ᰦ✻⠛ “to share photos”, shai yinsi ᰦ䱤⾕ “to share

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secrets”, shai gongzi ᰦᎹ䌘 “to share wages”, shai laogong ᰦ㗕݀ “to share husband”. However, while sharing photos and sharing secrets do not require any additional explanation, sharing wages and sharing husband might be misunderstood as “to give a part of one’s income to someone else” or for a woman “to share her husband with another woman”. The actual meaning of sharing wages/husband is “to boast about someone’s excellent salary or husband”.

Bibliography Baidu Baike ⱒᑺⱒ⾥. http://baike.baidu.com/ Baidu ⱒᑺ. http://www.baidu.com/ Baidu cidian ⱒᑺ䆡‫݌‬. http://dict.baidu.com/ Chinese Neologisms in 2006 (2006 ∝䇁ᮄ䆡䇁). Shangwu yinshuguan. 2007. Chinese Neologisms in 2011 (2011 ∝䇁ᮄ䆡䇁). Shangwu yinshuguan. 2012. Blogger Digest. October 16, 2006. Online English Chinese Dictionary. Accessed January, 2012. http://bloggerdigest.blogspot.com/2006/10/online-english-chinesedictionary.html Ceccagno, Antonella, and Bianca Basciano. 2007. “Compound Headedness in Chinese: An Analysis of Neologisms.” Morphology 17: 207–31. Dict.cn (⍋䆡㔥), http://dict.cn/ DictALL (䆡䛑), http://www.dictall.com/ Duan, Caolin, and Zeng Cuimei. 2010. “171 ᴵᮄ䆡䇁"ᵘ䆡ǃ⫼䆡ⱘᅮ 䞣ߚᵤ” (“A Qualitative Analysis of the Formation and Uses of ‘171 New Lexemes’”). Journal of Hainan Normal University (Social Sciences) 23: 137–44. Fang, Saifan ᮍ 䌯 㐕 . 2006. “ ᮄ 䆡 Ϣ 㗏 䆥 ” (“Neologisms and Translation”). Unpublished MA Thesis. Hanyu xinci xinyi xilie––N ∝䇁ᮄ䆡ᮄ䆥㋏߫-N. Accessed January, 2012. http://wenku.baidu.com/view/37242a8271fe910ef12df848.html iCIBA (⠅䆡䴌), http://www.iCIBA.com/ Janssen, Maarten. 2005. “Orthographic Neologisms. Selection Criteria and Semi-Automatic Detection.” Accessed March, 2012. http://maarten.janssenweb.net/publications. Li, Yuming ᴢᅛᯢ. 2007. “Guanyu ljZhongguo yuyan shenghuo lü pi shuNJ䮰ᮐljЁ೟䁲㿔⫳⌏㍴Ⲃ᳌NJ” (“On the Green Paper on the

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Language Situation in China”). Yuyan Wenzi Yingyong 䇁㿔᭛ᄫᑨ⫼ (Applied Linguistics) 1: 12–19. Liu, Xiongyou ߬䲘ট. 2007. “Kua wenhua jiaoji shijiao xia hanyu xin ci de ying yi 䎼᭛࣪Ѹ䰙㾚㾦ϟ∝䇁ᮄ䆡ⱘ㣅䆥” (“On the English Translation of Chinese Neologisms: A Cross-cultural Perspective”). MA Thesis. Unpublished. Mandarinportal.com, Chinese search engines ( ᧰ ㋶ ᓩ ᪢ ). Accessed January, 2012. http://mandarinportal.com/chinesesearchengines.php McDonald, Lucinda. 2005. THE MEANING OF “e-”: Neologisms as Markers of Culture and Technology. Accessed March, 2012. http://startrek.ccs.yorku.ca/~topia/docs/conference/McDonald.pdf. MDBG. http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php Nciku n䆡ᑧ. http://www.nciku.com/ NetEase Youdao cidian 㔥ᯧ᳝䘧䆡‫݌‬. http://dict.youdao.com/ PandaStats. Accessed January, 2012. http://dictall.com.pandastats.net/ QQ Soso cidian 㝒䆃᧰᧰䆡‫݌‬. http://dict.soso.com/ Sayadi, Forough. 2011. “The Translation of Neologisms”. Translation Journal. Accessed January, 2012. http://translationjournal.net/journal/56neologisms.htm Shanghai Daily’s much acclaimed buzzwords. Accessed January, 2012. http://buzzword.shanghaidaily.com/ Tang, Zhixiang ∸ᖫ⼹. 2000. “Hanyu xinciyu he duiwai Hanyu jiaoxue ∝䇁ᮄ䆡䇁੠ᇍ໪∝䇁ᬭᄺ” (“Chinese Neologisms and Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language”). 2000 nian Hanyu jiaoxue yantaohui 2000 ᑈ∝䇁ᬭᄺⷨ䅼Ӯ (Conference on Chinese Language Teaching in 2000). Xianggang keji daxue & Qinghua daxue. Wang, Hongxia ⥟㑶䳲 2011. “A Contrastive Analysis of English and Chinese Neologism from the Perspective of Memetics.” Unpublished MA Thesis. Wang, Mingyu ⥟䫁ᅛ. 2007. “Yanzhi yu sikao: 2006 Hanyu xinciyu. ⷨ ࠊ Ϣ ᗱ 㗗 ˖ 2006 ᑈ ∝䇁ᮄ 䆡 䇁 ” (“Development and Reflection: Chinese Neologisms in 2006”). Yuwen jianshe 䇁᭛ᓎ䆒 (Language Construction). 10: 52–53. Yahoozidian (Yahoo!༛ᨽᄫ‫)݌‬. http://tw.dictionary.yahoo.com/ YellowBridge 咘 ḹ . http://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/chinesedictionary.php Xinci jiayi (3) ᮄ䆡Շ䆥˄ϝ˅ (Translation of Neologisms) Accessed January, 2012. http://wenku.baidu.com/view/28bb110302020740be1e9b9e.html Xinci jiayi (4) ᮄ䆡Շ䆥˄ಯ˅ Accessed January, 2012.

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http://wenku.baidu.com/view/78731d1a10a6f524ccbf859e.html Xinci jiayi (5) ᮄ䆡Շ䆥˄Ѩ˅Accessed January, 2012. http://wenku.baidu.com/view/92b43b77a417866fb84a8e9e.html Xinci jiayi (6) ᮄ䆡Շ䆥˄݁˅Accessed January, 2012. http://wenku.baidu.com/view/c9a17f69af1ffc4ffe47ac9e.html Xinci jiayi (7) ᮄ䆡Շ䆥˄ϗ˅Accessed January, 2012. http://wenku.baidu.com/view/a89ea07301f69e314332949e.html Xinci jiayi (8) ᮄ䆡Շ䆥˄ܿ˅Accessed January, 2012. http://wenku.baidu.com/view/a0f06dc72cc58bd63186bd9e.html Xinci jiayi (9) ᮄ䆡Շ䆥˄б˅Accessed January, 2012. http://wenku.baidu.com/view/3ff0ec5377232f60ddcca19e.html Zeng, Lingzhi ᳒Ҹᖫ. 2008. “Hanyu xinciyu ji qi yingyi ∝䇁ᮄ䆡䇁ঞ ݊㣅䆥” (“On Chinese Neologisms and Their English Translations”). Unpublished MA Thesis. Zeng, Zhu ᳒᷅. 2009. “Xin ciyu xinyi wei de biaoxian xingshi chu tan ᮄ 䆡䇁ᮄНԡⱘ㸼⦄ᔶᓣ߱᥶” (“Comments on Manifestation Patterns of the New Sememe of New Words: A Case Study of 2006 Chinese New Words”. Journal of Shijiazhuang University 11(4): 56–69. Zhang, Liqun ᓴゟ㕸. 2010. “Xiandai Hanyu xinciyu de chansheng tujing ji fenlei ⦄ҷ∝䇁ᮄ䆡䇁ⱘѻ⫳䗨ᕘঞߚ㉏” (Ways of Forming and Classification of Modern Chinese Neologisms). Journal of Inner Mongolia Radio & TV University 1: 47–49. Zhang, Yabing ᓴѮ‫ބ‬. 2010. “Hanyu xinciyu fenxi fa tanxi ∝䇁ᮄ䆡䇁 ߚᵤ⊩᥶ᵤ” (“Analytical Methods of Chinese New Words”). Journal of Eastern Liaoning University (Social Sciences) 12(3): 88–94. Zhongwen liuxing cihui Yingwen yifa (liu) Ё᭛⌕㸠䆡∛㣅᭛䆥⊩˄݁˅. Accessed January, 2012. http://tr.hjenglish.com/page/44468/ Zhou, Jing ਼䴭. 2009. “2006 nian Hanyu xinciyu xiaoyi. 2006 ᑈ∝䇁ᮄ 䆡䇁ᇣ䆂” . Keji xinxi 464. ––. 2010. “2007 nian Hanyu xinciyu de tedian fenxi 2007 ᑈ∝䇁ᮄ䆡䇁 ⱘ⡍⚍ߚᵤ” . Economic Research Guide 12: 216–17. Zhu, Xiangjun ᴅ␬৯. 2011. “Qianxi hanyu xinci de yingyi ⌙ᵤ∝䇁ᮄ 䆡 ⱘ 㣅 䆥 ” (“A Preliminary Study on the English Translation of Chinese Neologisms”). Unpublished MA Thesis.

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Appendix A List of 117 Neologisms (2006) with Selected or Proposed Translations Neologism

Pinyin

Translation8

Source9

BD10

ܿ㤷ܿ㘏

bróng-bch

Eight Do’s and Don’ts; Eight Honors and Eight Shames (PRC official moral guidelines)

iCIBA, MDBG

F

ⱑ཈

báinú

white-collar slave (office worker who is overworked and exploited) (Someone who becomes a slave to house, car, luxuries or even ambitions far beyond one’s station.)

Xinci jiayi 5 MDBG

C

ⱑᠬ

báitu

1. daytime care service (Refers to a government project aimed at improving community care for senior citizens. The community center serves the elderly lunches and dinners and organises recreational activities during the day.) 2. to be blinded by greed 3. swindler (homonym of ᢰ 㿫̘ᢰᠬ)

Xinci jiayi 7 MDBG

C

ⱑ䫊к

báiyínsh

ornately printed book meant as a collector’s item rather than for reading (synonymous with corruption)

MDBG

A

8

These are the most appropriate translations from different online dictionaries or resources. 9 When more than one dictionary is listed, they are arranged by relevance for specific entry. 10 Categorisation by query results in Baidu search engine. Data gathered in March 2012.

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ञ㊪໿ྏ

Pinyin bàntáng f q

Translation8 weekend couple / weekend spouse / relationship involving a sugar-daddy (married couple, financially independent of each other, cohabiting only on weekends)

Source9 iCIBA, MDBG

BD10 A

ᢅᢅಶ

bàobàotuán

Free Hugs Campaign (A social movement involving individuals who offer hugs to strangers in public places.)

MDBG

D

ᢅᢅ㺙

bàobàozhung

“hug shirt” worn by members of the Free Hugs Campaign (see ࣙࣙಶ)

MDBG

A

༨༨ᮣ

b nb nzú

[netspeak] Rushing Clan (generation born between 1975–1985, China’s most hedonistic and hardworking social group)

MDBG

C

ヨ᳓

btì

substitute calligrapher (a calligrapher who substitutes an actor in films)

MDBG

C

म᭫

bódòu

[netspeak] blog tussle (to fight or argue on a blogging site)

MDBG

E

मᅶ䆱࠻

bókè huàjù

[netspeak] blog drama

MDBG

C

म᭛

bówén

[netspeak] blog article / to write a blog article

MDBG

H

㤝ḍ㔥⇥

c og n w ngmín

[netspeak] grassroots netizen

iCIBA, MDBG

C

䔺཈

ch nú

car slave (sb. forced to sacrifice quality of life to buy or maintain a car)

MDBG

E

៤㗗⿏⇥

chéngk o yímín

college exam immigrants

MDBG

A

Neologism

Chinese-English Translations of Neologisms in Online Dictionaries

319

ජᏖձ䌪 ⮛

Pinyin chéngshì ylàizhèng

Translation8 city addiction (people who refuse to live outside cities because they are used to the colorful and convenient life. They would rather live in cities with no jobs than live in suburban areas with good opportunities.)

Source9 Shanghai Daily

BD10 A

ᴥ䆕᠓

c nzhèngfáng

village-certificated house (residence supposedly only transferable to other village residents but often sold on the open market)

MDBG

B

໻㙮ᄤ㒣 ⌢

dà dùzi jngjì

pregnancy economy (Pregnant women have become a force in propelling today's economy as a result of a new baby boom in China. The pregnancy economy consists of child care products, maternity clothing, yoga or health care courses designed for mothers-to-be and particular support services during maternal confinement.)

Shanghai Daily, Xinci jiayi 8, MDBG

A

‫צ‬᠕

dào Bi n

Chen Shui-bian Case (Taiwan political movement aimed at forcing the resignation of President Chen Shui-bian 䰜∈᠕ due to corruption allegations)

MDBG

C

ⲫ⠜‫ܮ‬

dàob nd ng

Pirate Party (political movement whose main goal is to reform copyright law in conformity with the Internet Era)

MDBG

B

Neologism

320

Chapter Fifteen

ㄝ乱䜡↨ ෎䞥

Pinyin dngé pèib jjn

Translation8 Equality Ratio Fund (a project at Zhejiang University)

Source9 iCIBA

BD10 A

⬉䆱䮼

diànhuà mén

Phone Gate (corruption scandal uncovered through telephone records)

MDBG

F

⬉ᄤ⦃ֱ ҁ

diànzi huánb o tíng

electrical junk center (site for re-processing old electrical and electronic equipment)

MDBG

A

৞⫊ᮣ

diàopíngzú

infusion clan (patients who prefer medication by drip rather than orally or by injection etc.)

MDBG

A

ϕᅴᆊᒁ

dngchng jitíng

pets-only DINK family (DINK (double incomes no kids) and pets-only families. Such families prefer to have pets rather than children.) See also ϕ ‫ܟ‬ᮣ.

MDBG, iCIBA

A

ࡼ㛑䔺

dòngnéngch

non-petrol vehicle (e.g. hydrogen powered etc)

MDBG

A

‫ޏ‬ᆍ

dòngróng

youth freezing, freeze one’s youth (some beautyconscious young women in their early 20s who use anti-aging tonics and exercise in an attempt to keep their youthful looks for as long as possible.)

Shanghai Daily, MDBG

C

⣀Ѡҷ

dú’èrdài

second generation only child (parents of an only child who themselves were only children)

MDBG, Nciku

D

ᮁ㚠

duànbèi

[Slang] a homosexual person, refers to Ang Lee’s “Brokeback Mountain”, 2. [Slang] homosexual relations

Nciku, MDBG

F

Neologism

Chinese-English Translations of Neologisms in Online Dictionaries

321

Neologism EMBA

Pinyin EMBA

Translation8 1. Executive Master of Business Administration; 2. Executive Office(r); 3. Executive Order; 4. Executive Training Program

Source9 Nciku, iCIBA, Dict.cn

BD10 G

2 ᯊℛϮ Ҹ

èrshí xi yè lìng

2AM Closing Time Regulation; close-at-two regulation

(none)

A

Ѡཊϧᆊ

èrn i zhunji

pseudo-scholar; mercenary expert (a person who is supposedly an independent expert, but instead receives payment for making comments favorable to a particular entity)

MDBG

A

⊩ଚ

f shng

Legal Quotient (LQ), standard reflecting a lawyer’s legal ability based on the four tenets of legal knowledge, situational assessment, conduct and integrity

MDBG, Yahoozidian

F

䖨ࠌ咘⠯

f nquàn huángniú

shopping coupon scalper (Some shopping malls give coupons to customers as discounts during promotions. If customers don’t want to use the coupons, scalpers profit by selling or buying them.)

Shanghai Daily, MDBG

A

佁᳓

fàntì

substitute eater (a person who substitutes an actor for eating scenes in a film)

᠓儨

fángmó

housing devil (real estate developer or realtor accused of manipulating the property market in their favor)

B

MDBG, iCIBA

D

322

Chapter Fifteen

᠓཈

Pinyin fángnú

Translation8 mortgage slave, mortgage burden; a slave to one’s mortgage (the person who works to pay off the loan used to buy a house)

Source9 iCIBA, MDBG, Yahoozidian

BD10 G

亲剐ᮣ

f iyúzú

flying fish family (family that sacrifices everything to send their children abroad to study; Chinese who give up their achievements at home and go abroad to study in prestigious universities)

MDBG, Nciku

A

ᑳ㒳

fèitng

abandonment of reunification (abolition of the cross-straits reunification committee)

MDBG

C

⊌㝒ৃФ

fèiténg klè

Coke and Mentos eruption, Soda and Candy eruption (reaction of a carbonated beverage and Mentos candies, resulting in copious amounts of foam.)

(none)

A

ߚ᠟ҷ⧚

f nshu dàil

break-up agent (person who acts for sb. who wishes to terminate a relationship but does not have the heart to do so)

MDBG

B

⽣߽㜤䋹

fúlì-fbài

welfare-labeled corruption (special welfare enjoyed by those work in a certain sector (usually a public sector) but denied to others. For example, employees of an electrical power company can enjoy free electricity, while those of a bus company are entitled to take free bus rides.)

Shanghai Daily, iCIBA

B

Neologism

Chinese-English Translations of Neologisms in Online Dictionaries

323

Translation8 Amazonian snail infection (giant Amazon snail which, if eaten, may cause infection with lungworm parasite, with risk of meningitis)

Source9

⽣ᇓ㶎ᙷ 㗙

Pinyin fúshòuluó huànzh

BD10 A

໡সᄺූ

fùg xuétáng

back-to-the-ancients school (new kind of privately operated school, imitating ancient schools)

iCIBA

A

ᛳᘽ㑶ࣙ

g n’ n hóngbo

gratitude envelope (for the teachers)

催㭾䏇㱸

goxn tiàoz o

high-salary job hopper (literally a “high-salary flea.” Since a flea can “hop” very “high”, the term is used to describe highly paid job hoppers.)

Shanghai Daily, iCIBA

D

᧲ュ

g oxiào

amuse; make people laugh; provoke laughter

iCIBA

H

݀ৌ偏㰿

g ngs zhùchóng

firm sticker, resident office worker (refers to office workers, especially in the fields of IT, art design and media, between ages of 25-45 who work, eat, entertain, exercise and even live, in their offices or nearby facilities. This is either because they are too busy to return home after work or because they want to save on living costs as a young career starter with too many things e.g. apartment, car, to buy.)

Xinci jiayi 3 iCIBA, Dict.cn

A

䈋℠

Gg

Google

MDBG

H

偼ᗻ

gúxìng

moral fortitude and personal character

iCIBA

F

೑䰙催㗗 ⿏⇥

guójì gok o yímín

immigrants for NCEE

iCIBA

A

Neologism

A

324

Chapter Fifteen

೑݁ᴵ

Pinyin guó liù tiáo

Translation8 State Council Six Measures (Real Estate Control Measures)

೑कᴵ

guó shí tiáo

State Council Ten Measures (New Real Estate Control Measures)

⍋㓚ᮁ㔥

h il n duànw ng

Internet failure of the sea plough system

iCIBA

A

⍋㓉䏃

h imiánlù

sponge road (road surface that is designed to absorb water like a sponge; can help prevent traffic accidents on rainy days.)

DictALL, Xinci jiayi 5

A

⍋ୌ䷇

h ixiàoyn

World Cup Commentary 2006 Incident

iCIBA

B

ᆦ֗

háncù

off-season promotion, winter promotion (refers to sales promotions initiated by IT firms during winter vacation or Chinese Lunar New Year holiday season)

Xinci jiayi 8 iCIBA

E

∝㢃䗴‫؛‬ џӊ

Hànxn zàoji shìjiàn

Hanxin fraud case

ড়ৗᮣ

héchzú

joint eaters (a restaurant social gathering, esp. organised online among strangers)

MDBG

A

㑶ὐ䗝⾔

Hónglóu xu nxiù

the Red Mansion’s casting competition

iCIBA

C

㑶㸿‫ݯ‬

hóngshnj n

red-shirted protesters (related to Thailand, England or Taiwan)

E

ᤶᅶ

huànkè

swapper, Huanker (people who exchange things they rarely use)

E

Neologism

Source9

BD10 D

E

B

Chinese-English Translations of Neologisms in Online Dictionaries

325

♄㡆ᡔ㛑

Pinyin husè jìnéng

Translation8 grey skills (Social skills like drinking, dancing and playing cards or mahjong. Some companies now require that their employees have these “grey skills”, as well as the basic skills they need for their jobs.)

Source9 iCIBA

BD10 C

ಲ䌁ഄ

huígòudì

buy-back land

iCIBA

A

Ӯ䆂໻Փ

huìyì dàsh

convention ambassador (As a lucrative industry, M.I.C.E. (Meeting, Incentive, Congress and Events) brings host cities revenue, fame, tourism and hotel business. Many Chinese cities have named prominent business people and professionals as their “convention ambassadors” to help attract more international meetings and events.)

iCIBA Xinci jiayi 5

A

ီ႕໻ᑈ

h njià dànián

wedding year

iCIBA

D

ᗹီᮣ

jíh nzú

wedding rusher, hasty marriage clan (refers to those who marry hastily, mostly under pressure from work or family or after waiting too long to find the right partner)

Xinci jiayi 8

A

ⲥ᥻䮼

jinkòng mén

monitoring gate (scandal)

iCIBA

D

∳䗝

Jingxu n

Selected Works of Jiang Zemin

Neologism

B

326

Chapter Fifteen

༪偮ᡄ

Pinyin ji ng sor o

Translation8 award harassment, prize harassment (Many companies receive phone calls, faxes, letters or even short messages claiming they have just won a prize or honorary title for their products, services or outstanding managers. However, they must pay for these awards.)

Source9 iCIBA Xinci jiayi 5

BD10 A

Ѹᔎ䰽

jioqiángxi n

mandatory vehicle insurance

Shanghai Daily, iCIBA

G

㛮⦃叵

ji ohuánj

ring-tagged chicken

iCIBA

A

㡖཈

jiénú

festival slave (Refers to people overwhelmed by the pressure of socialising and giving away gifts during major Chinese traditional festivals, such as Lunar New Year. Some people may end up spending several months’ salary during a festival break.)

Shanghai Daily, iCIBA

C

㾷䇈䮼

jishu mén

Explanation Scandal

iCIBA

C

⽕⬉

jìn diàn

prohibition of electric bicycles

iCIBA

E

ᥬᅶ

juékè

digger, digg (social news website)

iCIBA

E

व⼲

k shén

cardman, card manipulator (the opposite to “card slave”, people who borrow from one credit card to pay off debts on another credit card and live on the verge of bankruptcy. Card veterans who make the most of their credit cards or membership cards to earn points and benefits.)

Xinci jiayi 8 iCIBA

D

Neologism

Chinese-English Translations of Neologisms in Online Dictionaries

327

㗗䴌

Pinyin k obà

Translation8 master examinee

Source9 iCIBA

BD10 C

⾥ⷨࣙᎹ ༈

k yán bog ngtóu

labor contractors in scientific areas

iCIBA

B

ଗộᮣ

knyzú

chair sticker, seat squatter (refers to people who occupy a chair or table in fast-food restaurants and spend several hours there reading books, surfing on the Internet or chatting with friends regardless of other customers’ need for a seat)

Xinci jiayi 3 iCIBA

A

ぎ䇗

k ngtiáo

n. air-conditioning; v. fail to implement policies and regulations (refers to Chinese government that failed to implement several real estate regulations and policies due to boycott)

iCIBA

H

傋備䮼

k lóumén

The German “skull door” incident

iCIBA

B

䌪᷵ᮣ

làixiàozú

[slang] campus dwellers (graduates who cannot break away from campus life)

MDBG

A

Ф⌏ᮣ

lèhuózú

LOHAS (acronym of “lifestyles of health and sustainability”, refers to people who are optimistic, understanding, concerned about the environment and their health and wellbeing)

Dict.cn

E

Ṽ㢅ԧ

líhut

Lihua style

iCIBA

D

ᴢ࿙ぎ㗏

L Yà k ngfn

[Olympics] Li Ya’s somersault

iCIBA

A

ϸӮमᅶ

li ng huì bókè

blogs for NPC &CPPCC

iCIBA

C

Neologism

328

Chapter Fifteen

Neologism

Pinyin

Translation8

Source9

BD10

൘཈

lngnú

monopoly slave (refers to consumers of services or products from monopoly companies who must accept the service providers’ conditions no matter how unfair they may be)

Xinci jiayi 9

E

㓓㡆ѻ᠓

lsè ch nfáng

environment-friendly buildings (buildings made of environmentally friendly materials)

㻌㗗

luk o

non-extra-mark examination / pure test (refers to exams without preferential treatment, such as extra points for artistic or athletic abilities).

Hanyu xinci xinyi xilie – N

E

㻌᳓

lutì

[film industry] body double; nude stand-in; naked body double (refers to those who substitute stars in movies for nude scenes)

Hanyu xinci xinyi xilie N

E

Mൟ⼒Ӯ

M-xíng shèhuì

[economy] M-Form Society (a term coined by Japanese economist Kenichi Ohmae; refers to a polarised society with only the very rich and very poor)

᜶⌏ᮣ

mànhuózú

persons with slow-paced life; slow walker

A

C

Yahoozidian

A

Chinese-English Translations of Neologisms in Online Dictionaries

329

Neologism

Pinyin

Translation8

Source9

BD10

㕢Бൗഒ

milì làjí

Beautiful rubbish, beautiful garbage (refers to extravagant gift packaging made of materials such as metal, glass, silk or even rosewood. Despite beautiful appearance, people usually throw it away after unpacking, causing a big waste.)

Xinci jiayi 7 iCIBA

B

䗋व

mík

mini card (Refers to portable digital input cards with handwriting functions, usually the size of a name card. Very helpful alternative to keying text into phones or other electronic devices.)

Xinci jiayi 7 iCIBA

E

㳰ֱ᳜ྚ

mìyuè b om

honeymoon housemaid (They not only work as normal housekeepers, but also train newlyweds in housekeeping tasks. Very popular as many young people born in 1980s and of marriage age have little experience in household chores.)

Xinci jiayi 5

E

⾦ᴔ

mi osh

1. verb [Games] instant kill (defeating the enemy in seconds), 2. verb (online goods) to be sold out in instant

Shanghai Daily

H

330

Chapter Fifteen

Neologism

Pinyin

Translation8

Source9

BD10

ᯢ᯳ᵾ᠟

míngxng qingshu

star promoter, star ghost (people or companies that help promote a pop star in varied ways.)

Shanghai Daily

A

๧ѻ㒣⌢

mùch n jngjì

funeral-related economy

iCIBA

A

๧཈

mùnú

grave slave

iCIBA

C

ᑈৢ佁

niánhòufàn

dining together after the Lunar New Year’s Eve

iCIBA

B

ᱪᎶㅵᆊ

nu ncháo gu nji

empty-nest servant (A servant offering home services to older citizens whose children have moved out. Empty nest is a term commonly used for families where the children have grown up and moved away, leaving behind their aging parents.)

Shanghai Daily

A

䇎Ѯ㾘߭

Nuòyà guzé

Noah Principle (It refers to the theory that the world should join hands in reining in the trend of global warming before it is too late.)

Shanghai Daily

A

䎥䝋

p okù

cool runner, parkour (French sport invented by David Belle in 1980s, with aim of efficiently overcoming obstacles in the environment)

MDBG, iCIBA

G

Chinese-English Translations of Neologisms in Online Dictionaries

331

Neologism

Pinyin

Translation8

Source9

BD10

䰾ᣐᮣ

péipnzú

shopping companion (boyfriend or husband of young women who are in the mood to shop has to keep her company all the way round.)

Shanghai Daily, Xinci jiayi 4

A

᤻䔺ᮣ

pngch zú

car grooms (Some young car owners refrain from using their vehicles whenever a bicycle will do or public transport works just as well. They make the best use of their car rather than abusing them.)

Shanghai Daily

A

ᣐव

pnk

card partaking

iCIBA

C

ᣐᅶ

pnkè

mass bargainer, partaker

iCIBA

E

7 ᯊҷ

7 shídài

The Age of Seven (the exchange rate between RMB and US dollar ranging from 7.00 to 7.99)

Xinci jiayi 5

C

᪦Ҏ㡖

qínrénjié

Bachelors’ Valentine’s Day (This term, meaning literally “People Grabbing Day,” sounds the same as the Valentine’s Day in Chinese. It is used to describe parties and gatherings of single people on the lovers’ holiday to provide them an opportunity to find their ideal partners.)

Shanghai Daily

B

332

Chapter Fifteen

Neologism

Pinyin

Translation8

Source9

BD10

䕏❳ཇ

qngshóun

young-looking successful woman (women aged 2535 who are both young and attractive, and have the taste, wisdom, salary and social status of a sophisticated, wellestablished older woman)

Xinci jiayi 3

F

かҎ䎥

qióngrénp o

cheap roadster (low-priced sports cars for middleincome people.)

Shanghai Daily

A

∖ᄺ᠓

qiúxuéfáng

school-nearby house, elite school housing (Many parents buy houses near elite schools to guarantee a better education for their children. According to rules in many cities, primary and middle schools are only allowed to enroll local students)

Xinci jiayi 3 iCIBA

A

㕸⾳

qúnz

collective renting (Most migrant workers like to participate in the collective renting program as they cram as many people as possible into a small house in order to cut the share of the rent each has to pay.)

Shanghai Daily

E

䅽⼼ऎ

ràngpiàoq

ticket-transfer zone

ICIBA

C

Chinese-English Translations of Neologisms in Online Dictionaries

333

Neologism

Pinyin

Translation8

Source9

BD10

Ҏ⧗

rénqiú

helpless castaway (lit. “human ball”, refers to needy people for whom no one is willing to provide help. They are kicked around just like a tattered football. The term “little human ball” describes children of divorced parents, with neither parent willing to look after them.)

Xinci jiayi 8

F

ܹ᠋㚆၈ Ꮬ

rùhù yùyngsh

home infants’ nurse

ICIBA

C

⍺⒥㒣⌢

rùnhuá jngjì

lubricating economy

ICIBA

B

ϝ༅

snsh

Young, unemployed school-leavers without adult supervision; three lost young people

ICIBA

E

ϝ᠟⮙

snshubìng

hand-operating ailment (caused by overuse of computers, mobile phones or game consoles)

Yahoozidian

C

ϝ䰤᠓

snxiànfáng

house of “three negative aspects”

ϝᬃϔᡊ

snzh-yfú

three supports and one assistance (…)

ICIBA

F

ᰦ

shài

(of the sun) shine upon; dry in the sun; bask; share, to boast about sth.

ICIBA

H

ᰦᅶ

shàikè

Internet sharer, a person who shares information about him/herself on the Internet that might help or entertain people in some way

Nciku

G

C

334

Chapter Fifteen

Neologism

Pinyin

Translation8

Source9

BD10

Ϟ⍋⼒ֱ ෎䞥Ḝ

Shàngh i shè b ojjn’àn

mismanagement of the Shanghai pension fund

Dict.cn

B

࠽ཇ

shèngn

leftover woman; single career women; 3S women (refers to women born in the 1970s, well educated, in well-paid jobs, but with difficulty getting married; 3S, shorthand for single, 70s, and stuck)

Yahoozidian MDBG, Nciku

G

कѨ㒚߭

shíw xìzé

Fifteen Rules and Regulations

Ϫᅫ

Shìz ng

(ഄৡ)(䶽೑) Sejong; Sejong the Great or Sejong Daewang (1397–1450), reigned 1418–1450 as fourth king of Joseon or Chosun dynasty, during whose reign the hangeul alphabet was invented

MDBG, iCIBA

F

䆩㥃ᮣ

shìyàozú

new-medicine testees, drug-test subject (college students who participate in clinical trials of new drugs to earn money, or also as a livelihood.)

Xinci jiayi 4 iCIBA

A

᠟ᴎᑏ਀ ⮛

shuj huàntngzhèng

ringing phone hallucination (Refers to illusion of a mobile phone ringing or vibrating. Many office workers suffer from this syndrome which is caused by fear of missing phone calls or messages.)

Xinci jiayi 3

A

᠟ᴎ᠟

shujshu

cell-phone-worn hand

iCIBA

G

A

Chinese-English Translations of Neologisms in Online Dictionaries

335

Neologism

Pinyin

Translation8

Source9

BD10

❳ᑈ

shóunián

year of good harvests; bumper year; good year

Nciku, iCIBA

C

ⴵ⳴मᅶ

shuìmián bókè

sleeping blog, dormant blog (Refers to blogs rarely updated by their writers.)

Xinci jiayi 7 iCIBA

C

ཌྷ㒣⌢

tjngjì

she economy (women dominate many consumer markets and business sectors, as compared to men), “she-economy” reflects women’s economic contribution / euphemism for prostitution-based economy

Dict.cn, MDBG

D

⮯ᖿ৻

tòngkuàiba

pressure-venting shop (Refers to shops where a customer pays for venting his or her tension, anger or frustration by violently punching or smashing goods.)

Xinci jiayi 4 iCIBA

E

೒кⓖ⿏

túsh pioyí

book drifting

iCIBA

A

ೳ㜤䋹

tfbài

soil corruption

Dict.cn

A

ಸ᠓ᤖⲬ

dùnfáng wpán

price maintenance in estate

iCIBA

A

ᠬϮ

tu yè

Test of English for International Communication

iCIBA, Nciku

G

㔥㒰ᰦ㸷 ᮣ

w ngluò shàiyzú

Internet clothing shaker

iCIBA

A

336

Chapter Fifteen

Neologism

Pinyin

Translation8

Source9

BD10

࿕ᅶ

w ikè

1. witkey (web-based system where users can exchange and purchase services and information) 2. witkeyer (people who share knowledge/experience on internet to realise their value) 3. [Auto] Kia VQ

Yahoozidian, Nciku

G

ᖂュ࣫Ҁ

wéixiào Bijng

smile in Beijing

iCIBA

C

ᖂュ೜

wéixiàoqun

Smile Wristband (designed for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Volunteers, features “Volunteers Smile––Beijing’s Image”)

Yahoozidian

C

᭛࣪Ԣֱ

wénhuà db o

cultural access initiative (combines the word “culture” and “minimum assurance”, as in minimum social security system, to mean providing disadvantaged groups with basic access to cultural activities, e.g. a county government that each year promises at least one art performance, six movies and one new book per person to villagers living in remote mountainous areas.)

Xinci jiayi 4

C

᭛᳓

wéntì

[film industry] minorscene substitute

iCIBA

E

Ꮏ↦࿗࿗

w dúwáwa

Voodoo doll

Nciku

E

Chinese-English Translations of Neologisms in Online Dictionaries

337

Neologism

Pinyin

Translation8

Source9

BD10

ᤖⲬᚰଂ

wpán xshòu

property hoarding (refers to speculative practice when developers delay sale of a new building project, in hopes of greater profits in the future)

Xinci jiayi 3 iCIBA, Nciku

E

ᮄᯢ᯳ᄺ 㗙

xn míngxng xuézh

new star-scholar: refers to scholars who are often on TV and thus become famous

iCIBA

A

ᮄЁ䯈䰊 ሖ

xn zh ngjin ji céng

new intermediate stratum

iCIBA

B

❞⣿⚻佭

xióngmo shoxing

[Computer Science] Worm.WhBoy.cw / panda joss-stick virus (computer virus that infected many Chinese copies of Windows in 2007)

iCIBA, Nciku

E

♿ᆠ

xuànfù

flaunt wealth (This term refers to the behavior of unashamedly showing off one's wealth to satisfy one’s vanity.)

Shanghai Daily

G

ᄺᴃ䍙⬋

xuéshù chonán

academic superstar (academics who have gained notoriety among general public due to TV appearances and because entertaining and informative on a range of subjects, esp. ancient Chinese history and philosophy.)

Xinci jiayi 3

C

ᄺϮ乘䄺

xuéyè yùjng

school precaution

iCIBA

E

338

Chapter Fifteen

Neologism

Pinyin

Translation8

Source9

BD10

य़⌆

yzh u

pressure continent (homophone of Yazhou “Asia”, a nickname for modern Asia which is under great pressure due to faster pace of life, shortage of raw materials and higher risk of pollution)

Xinci jiayi 6 iCIBA

C

⋟㜤䋹

yángfbài

foreign corruption (Refers to practice of taking various forms of bribes from foreign companies. With more and more foreign companies moving into China, crime is on the rise, and the government is being urged to introduce laws to fight this practice.)

Xinci jiayi 4

A

⋟ⓖᮣ

yángpiozú

job-hopping foreigner, foreign drifter (As China keeps opening up, more foreigners come to invest, work, study or travel in China. But some wander from city to city, to experience different cultures. These are called “foreign drifters”.)

MDBG, iCIBA

A

Chinese-English Translations of Neologisms in Online Dictionaries

339

Neologism

Pinyin

Translation8

Source9

BD10

ए䯍

ynào

medical treatment lawsuit; medical dispute profiteer (Some people nose around for medical disputes and encourage the patient to file a lawsuit against the hospital. They hire more people to pretend to be the relatives of the patient during the legal procedure and claim part of the damage awarded.)

Shanghai Daily

E

ए䆝

ysù

medical treatment lawsuit (see also ༈吜ynào). Ynào is Derogatory, whereas ysù is Commendatory.

Baidu Baike, iCIBA

D

⿏ࡼଚ㸫

yídòng shngji

mobile commercial zone

iCIBA

C

ॄᅶ

yìnkè

inker; self-published writers

iCIBA

C

␌䌓

yóuhuì

tourism bribery

iCIBA

A

␌៣᠟

yóuxìshu

game hands

iCIBA

G

⼼

zápiào

desperate voting, crazy SMS vote, crazy voting (Refers to fans who spend a lot of money voting for one candidate by mobile phone, especially in “starmaking” TV programs which select the winner based on the number of SMS votes.)

Xinci jiayi 4 iCIBA, Yahoozidian

E

ᢽ᷵⿢

zéxiàoshuì

tax on school-choosing fee

iCIBA

A

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Neologism

Pinyin

Translation8

Source9

BD10

䆕཈

zhèngnú

certificate slave (To take all kinds of exams to get as many certificates as possible to improve one's qualifications and get a good job.)

iCIBA

C

㘠㉝

zhífn

professional fans (Refers to professional organiser of fans for popular TV shows featuring singing contests. The organisers post articles in forums, release hot topics and appeal for votes from fans.)

iCIBA

C

㒜㒳

zh ngtng

abandonment of reunification

ӫࣙ

zhòngbo

Crowdsourcing (“Crowd” + “Outsourcing”; it is the practice of companies, business owners or even individuals, making an open call to a broad community of people to help them solve a particular problem.)

MDBG, CIBA, DictALL

E

ԣ᠓⮯㢺 ᣛ᭄

zhùfáng tòngk zhshù

housing index, housing misery index

Dict.cn, iCIBA

A

㺙Ⴝᮣ

zhungnènzú

kidult ("kid+adult"); grups (short for "grown-ups". This term refers to people who are in their 30s or 40s but act like they’re in their 20s.

Shanghai Daily

A

E

Chinese-English Translations of Neologisms in Online Dictionaries

341

Neologism

Pinyin

Translation8

Source9

BD10

԰ᓞ‫ܟ‬

zuòbìkè

anti-cheat sensor (electronic devices to prevent examinees cheating via wireless radio signal receivers.)

Shanghai Daily

C

Table 15-6: List of 117 Neologisms (2006) with Selected or Proposed Translations

ECONOMY, ECOLOGY, AND SOCIAL CHANGE

CHAPTER SIXTEEN A CENTURY OF CHINESE MODERNISATION: FROM REVOLUTION AND IDEOLOGICAL CYCLES TO INTEGRATION INTO THE GLOBAL ECONOMY MITJA SAJE

Historical Challenges and Difficult Modernisation For a better understanding of current Chinese modernisation and economic development one should take into account the country’s very difficult transition from a traditional to a modern society. In the 18th century, China had the world’s largest economy, but due to its extreme isolation it had very few connections with realities outside its borders. With a rich and ancient cultural tradition, the Chinese were convinced of the superiority of their civilisation and, in fact, thought themselves to be the centre of the world. While this worldview eventually allowed for relations with foreign rulers, such relations were contingent upon these external powers embracing Confucian values and accepting a traditional social system. By the time of the European colonial expansion, China was an old, large and rigid empire in decline, dominated by foreign dynastic rulers. The Manchu had a special status and many privileges during the period in which they ruled China. Their language was widely used at the Imperial court and enjoyed equal status with Chinese as the official administrative language. In the 19th century, China declined ever further as an economic power due to the rapid development of industrialised countries. With the ever growing presence of colonial powers on the Asian continent, China was forced to accept a subordinate role. However, outwardly at least, China still appeared to be a compact political unity and succeeded in resisting political intrusion, which ultimately led to a political stalemate. But with

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the growing economic impact of the European powers, especially after opium became the main British export commodity, foreign interference in internal affairs increased. In this context, the reaction of traditional society, which had its own highly refined and unique culture, to the economic dangers and challenge of Western colonialism, is of paramount importance. China had a basically conservative reaction to this challenge and threat, with traditional forces trying to limit the foreign impact by reaffirming traditional values. However, they lacked the necessary vitality and power to do this, and their actions only led to an even more profound social crisis. The British, who had only a very limited presence in China, were applying pressure from outside. The traditional elite which dominated public opinion was not particularly troubled by the unfavourable terms of trade imposed by foreign merchants, which tended to ruin traditional domestic industries. Instead, their opposition was directed at anything modern, such as railways and telegraph, which they saw as a danger to the preservation of their traditional world. The Opium Wars were an exception here, but while the Chinese were united in their opposition, they lacked a broader vision and a coherent policy to successfully protect their interests. The first effort at modernising China after the Opium Wars thus failed, due primarily to the inability to implement new foreign military techniques, while still maintaining a conservative official ideology and outdated traditional institutions. Ultimately, the traditional opposition to the foreign presence in China would manifest itself in irrational movements against foreigners with abortive and ill-planned attempts to defeat outside forces and influence. The Yihetuan Н ੠ ಶ uprising or Boxer rebellion, a fanatic religious movement manipulated by the most conservative elements of the Manchu court, suddenly became the focus of this campaign. After the repression of the reform movement in 1898, the reactionary Manchus gained favour with the empress dowager. Blind to the realities of international politics, as soon as they were restored to the highest court offices they began to advocate a policy of strong resistance to the foreign powers. Strong antiforeign sentiment was present not only at the court, but also among other exponents of traditional order and among the population in general. The gentry, the core of traditional society, were especially xenophobic, since they regarded Christianity as a socially disruptive and delusionary belief. The failure of the newly-converted to show proper respect for idols, to worship Confucius and their ancestors, and to participate in festivals honouring the spirits, greatly irritated the gentry. In this atmosphere of

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growing tensions, the Manchu court, frustrated by its inability to resist foreign interference, decided to support a major anti-foreign movement, the Yihetuan. In May 1900, this group was summoned to Beijing, where their martial skills were already all the rage. Roughly half of the regular army troops soon joined the Yihetuan and the distinction between the two entities disappeared. On 21 June, the court declared war on the foreign powers by launching an attack, as symbolic as it was brutal, on the foreign legations in Beijing. However, the more pragmatic and openminded Chinese provincial leaders in the South did not adhere to the central government’s bellicose campaign and continued to cooperate with foreigners. The European powers viewed the incident as a rebellion and quickly organised an international force to raise the siege, while holding the Manchu government responsible for the safety of the foreign legations. In retrospect, the Yihetuan movement appears as an emotional and chauvinistic outburst against foreign imperialism. (Hsü 1976, 495) Founded on religious beliefs and superstition, the manipulation of this popular movement by traditional leaders demonstrated their total incompetence and inability to deal with new situations. This abortive attempt to turn back the clock thus resulted in a loss of credibility for traditional leaders, who were now relegated to a purely decorative position politically, without any significant role to play in future events. The future belonged to the new, Western-educated intellectuals who were seeking some form of national salvation. After the disaster of the Yihetuan rebellion, a growing number of people began to place their hopes in revolution as the only option for saving the country from disaster. With his call for the violent overthrow of the Manchu dynasty, Dr. Sun Yat-sen, who was once regarded by respectable Chinese as the leader of an outlaw movement not to be taken seriously, now attracted an increasing number of sympathisers and supporters. The image of Dr. Sun Yat-sen changed from one of disloyal rebel to that of a highminded, patriotic revolutionary. All this agitation and confusion greatly accelerated the revolutionary process, leading to the downfall of the Manchu dynasty in 1911. (Hsü 1976, 496) Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s revolution can thus be considered as the next important attempt to modernise China through democracy and republicanism. But his effort to create a government founded on parliamentary rule was crippled by constant military interventions and corruption. (Zhang 1996, 11) The First World War marks another turningpoint in the formation of the nation’s consciousness, due to the disillusionment with the European countries who were responsible for the unprecedented slaughter and

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destruction of the War, and the realisation that there were new emerging powers like the United States and Japan, who were now competing actively with the European nations on the world stage. The example of Japan as a modernised Asian country was especially appealing to Asian intellectuals, encouraging their newly discovered nationalistic sentiments. With their growing awareness of international affairs, the intellectuals calling for a national emancipation began to acquire a clearer understanding of international capitalism, and its role in undermining the national economy and humiliating the Chinese people. In this context, the Russian Revolution with its promise of sweeping social change and Marxist world revolution was a revelatory event that had a strong impact on a part of the intellectual elite. Another important concept in the aftermath of the WWI was Wilson’s Fourteen Points, which included a declaration on the selfdetermination of nations. This aroused many expectations, which were soon dashed when events did not conform to highminded ideals. These were the ingredients of the conceptual framework which determined the final phases of the national salvation movements in China. In the decade following the end of WWI, despite the Beijing government being practically powerless, it still managed to promote the spread of modern schools and guarantee the functioning of the railways, and the telegraph and postal services. The favourable conditions of world markets during the War favoured the growth of the capitalist economies of the coastal cities, which thanks to the foreign presence maintained a privileged position. These cities would, in fact, become first enclaves of the modern economy on Chinese soil. The increasing presence of foreign banks in coastal cities led to the founding of the first Chinese banks and the gradual formation of a modern banking system. The period between the World Wars was not only characterised by the unprecedented flow of ideas, but also by the acceleration of events, with a trend towards the radicalisation of the proposed political and economic solutions to the ever deepening social crisis. This period was especially marked by the May Fourth Movement, an intellectual revolution which shook the philosophical foundations of Chinese society. The movement signified the end of the traditional Sinocentric worldview and led to a large-scale effort to assimilate the learning of the West, while at the same time launching an unprecedented attack on the traditional moral and social order. (Fairbanks 1983, 322) This break with tradition was even more sweeping than the Westernisation which was taking place in India, producing ever more radical concepts of social change. While many new concepts were emerging, ultimately they can be identified with two main

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currents or approaches: the evolutionary approach of Hu Shi 㚵䗖 and the revolutionary approach of Chen Duxiu 䰜 ⣀ ⾔ . In terms of political programs, the former can be identified with the program of the Nationalist Party Guomindang ೑ ⇥ ‫ ܮ‬and the latter with the program of the Communist Party. The antagonism between these two main movements led to open conflict and a long and bitter civil war. Due to the accelerated radicalisation of ideas during that period, the more radical concept of social revolution finally prevailed with the political and military victory of the Chinese Communist Party in mainland China. With the new leadership, China adopted a socialist model of development, immediately introducing drastic measures in order to solve the social problems of the rural population. At the same time, the government introduced a planned economy to encourage the rapid growth of major state-owned enterprises. This economic reconstruction was highly ideological and was accompanied by an intense governmentcontrolled protectionist policy, thus minimising the effects of the world market and foreign trade. However, given that the socialist model was originally a product of the Western tradition, the adoption of this model actually led to a further assimilation of Western standards of life. After the victory of revolution, the economic development of the People’s Republic of China can be divided roughly into two main periods: the first, dating from the establishment of People’s Republic until the death of Mao Zedong ↯ ⋑ ϰ in 1976, or more precisely, until the beginning of reforms two years later; and the second from 1978, when the reform process started, until the present. The first period was marked by great political turmoil and excesses, which critically influenced economic trends. Political struggles and the blind adherence to political goals greatly affected the country’s economic growth, but after the initial successes China entered into a prolonged crisis after the massive experiments of 1958 led to serious setbacks and negative growth.

The Socialist Development Model and Mao Zedong’s Economic Policy Following the inauguration of the People’s Republic, the new regime launched an agrarian reform which solved most of the pending social problems of the rural population. This marked the heroic end of the century-long social crisis, with the political leadership gaining considerable among the vast majority of the predominantly poor rural

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population. However, the problem of the agrarian economy intensified again when the new political leaders began to implement rigid programs of collectivisation. Contemporaneously, inspired by the Soviet five year plans, the government introduced the socialist model of development into industry. The main goal was to bolster the rapid growth of major state enterprises, especially in the areas of infrastructure and heavy industry, with huge concentrations of capital. Given the severe shortage of capital, the necessary funds for the new investments were mainly pumped out of agrarian sector through a system of artificially low prices for agricultural products, enforced by state price controls. The state then reallocated this capital to the construction of major industrial projects. From the very start of the new socialist system, one of the main priorities of the new leadership was emphasising economic development in order to build a strong nation. Though this basic political goal would remain more or less unchanged for many years, economic development actually went through several phases, each with completely different dynamics. The fact that virtually identical political goals resulted in such major differences can be explained by the different methods used to attain those goals. Here we must also include the various political factions, each with their own ideas of economic development, which became part of their strategies for gaining political power. In the turbulent Chinese political climate, radical changes took place whenever different political groups seized power, often resulting in major economic turnabouts and rapid shifts in the dynamics of economic growth. This confirms how important the changing political situation was in determining economic development in the new socialist state. The theoretical certainty that economic crisis was impossible in a socialist planned economy was quickly disproven by economic realities, and socialist countries as well soon had to deal with the problem of cyclical economic development. The planned economies failed not only due to the faulty methods, incompetent technical knowledge and lack of experience of the planners, but mainly because political will had completely obscured any sense of reality. In socialist countries, political decisions were the main factor in determining the speed of economic development, and thus of cyclical economic performance. China was no exception. In short, political will alone could not guarantee the realisation of economic goals. Real economic performance is always a combination of economic policy and actual possibilities, which include many factors, e.g. existing natural resources, infrastructure, quantity and quality of labour,

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accumulation and influx of capital, educational levels, the international situation, and so forth. Political visions of development often underestimate or even denigrate these factors and economic laws, with the result that actual results often fall far short of the proclaimed goals. The discrepancy between a given policy and its realisation was sometimes strikingly large, leading us to conclude that the greater the role of ideology and the stronger the political control of the economy, the greater the shortfall or failure of these policies. After a successful post-war reconstruction, the adoption of the 1st Soviet-model five-year plan led to accelerated capital accumulation and rapid industrialisation, with fairly high rates of economic growth. Despite this relatively successful period of Chinese economic development, capital utilisation was still far from rational. Political priorities demanded high investment in heavy industry, which in a period of scarce capital meant low capital returns, so that ultimately the costs of such forced industrialisation were very high. The capital efficiency was low not only because of the disproportionately high investment in heavy industry, but also because this kind of investment requires a much longer time-frame for capital returns, certainly much longer than investment in labour intensive light industry or agriculture. The high proportion of investment in capital intensive heavy industries was thus not the most rational economic solution for a country with abundant cheap labour and relatively scarce capital reserves. Even after planners began to realise that there were serious drawbacks and flaws in the Soviet model, there was still the general assumption that corrections could be incorporated into the next five-year plan. However, encouraged by the unprecedented success of the 1st five-year plan, the top political authorities opted for even more heavy industry. This was “The Great Leap Forward” which was accompanied by even more extreme political demands that completely ignored or flew in the face of economic laws. The result was unprecedented economic chaos, with enormous losses in terms of labour efficiency, capital, energy, professional skills and the consumption of natural resources. While the statistics for the year 1958 showed huge gains in iron and steel production, which was one of the main political goals, the following years were marked by slow economic growth and eventually contraction. The contraction of agricultural production was especially severe, leading in subsequent years to major food shortages and catastrophic famine in several provinces. The extraordinarily difficult economic situation caused by the disastrous policy of the Great Leap Forward triggered a turnaround in

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economic policy. The new direction was intended to balance the extreme imbalances in the economic system, and a return to some measure of economic normality. The success of this policy led to an economic revival and growth from 1963 to 1965. While these years were marked by some positive structural changes in the Chinese economy, it would be misleading to speak of real economic growth since this was mainly a period of recovery and correcting the mistakes of the previous period. By the mid 1960s, China had simply returned to where it was before the Great Leap Forward. However, just when China had re-established the basic conditions for new economic growth, political turmoil once again shook the whole of Chinese society and its economy. The political adventurism of the Chinese leadership in the Great Cultural Revolution once again neglected economic laws, causing enormous imbalances and creating a scarcely manageable state of affairs. The main difference with the Great Leap Forward was that the tempests of the Cultural Revolution primarily affected the urban economy. Because the countryside was less exposed, there was less damage to the agrarian sector of the economy. However, in the period of Cultural Revolution, we cannot speak of economic setbacks and recession in generalised terms, given that various strategic branches of industry and energy production were the object of protectionist policies. Consequently, high growth rates in coal, crude oil, electricity, iron, and steel production were achieved. And just as the excesses of the Great Leap Forward were followed by corrective measures, so too the first unrestrained years of the Cultural Revolution’s turmoil were followed in the early 70s by a gradual adjustment of imbalances and a partial revival of certain economic activities. One of the major difficulties in describing the economic situation during the first decades of the People’s Republic of China, is the lack of reliable statistical data from that period. Not only are sources missing or incomplete, but changes in statistical methods make comparisons difficult. Statistics were also often adjusted according to political or local needs, such that the numbers do not correspond to the reality. That said, in estimating the economic development of the People’s Republic of China in the first period, from its founding until the start of economic reforms, we can conclude that in its first three decades China had a relatively slow rate of economic growth. By way of example, we can observe that Chinese grain production from 1952 to 1978 grew from 163.42 to 304.77 million tons, or less than double. Given that the population increased from 570 to 960 million in the same period, grain consumption per capita remained

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more or less unchanged. This situation was true for most agricultural products and consumer goods, leading us to conclude that the living standard of an average person did not improve significantly during this entire period. Much more impressive are Chinese achievements in the same period in the field of industrialisation, especially energy production, heavy industry and some strategic areas like nuclear weapons and rockets. For example, from 1952 to 1978 the production of coal increased almost tenfold, iron 18-fold, steel more than 20-fold, electric energy 35-fold. The most impressive result was the increased production of crude oil, which increased from a negligible 140 thousand tons in 1952 to 104 million tons in 1978, while natural gas production increased from 80 thousand tons in 1952 to 137 million tons in 1978. However, the rapid growth of these industrial sectors had little impact on the living standard of ordinary people, with the exception of the increased production of bicycles and sewing machines. On the other hand, the growth of industry and energy was very important for a stronger state economy and its economic potential. However, we must bear in mind that this economy of strong state and poor citizens was burdened with high costs, the wasteful exploitation of natural resources, environmental damage and poor productivity. From a historical point of view, once the basic industrial structure had been established, the model of socialist industrial development began to manifest increasing inefficiency. The deterioration of this model and the loss of competitivity with Western economies were especially disruptive because they were often accompanied by political tensions and turmoil. When the model showed deficiencies or failures there were always political debates and struggles to find a more suitable solution, with the solutions often causing more harm than the original problem. As the model was approaching exhaustion, the search for alternatives increased, leading finally to a set of reforms that radically changed the very substance of development policy.

Economic Reforms and Accelerated Modernisation The process of reforms and opening started with the historic decisions adopted at the famous third plenum of the party’s Central Committee in December, 1978. The reform oriented faction led by the last “helmsman” of China’s old revolutionary guard, Deng Xiaoping, prevailed in China’s top political leadership. This marked the beginning of the last phase of

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Chinese modernisation as well as a major step into global arena. China rapidly increased its participation in the global economy, with the aim of becoming an efficient modern economic power that would play a major global role in the first half of 21st century. The opening of the national economy to the rest of the world brought many new opportunities for the exchange of advanced technologies, access to world markets and greater competitivity among local enterprises, with their necessary restructuring. The overall goal was to achieve stronger business independence and a better position in the modern globalised economy. While these reforms drove a higher economic growth than China had ever experienced before, they also created new imbalances and tensions. The problems caused by the astonishingly rapid growth in the early stages of the reforms, often manifested themselves in political tensions, and ultimately led to the sacrifice of the two main leaders of the reform process: Hu Yaobang 㚵㗔 䙺 and Zhao Ziyang 䍉㋿䰇. Still, the reform process could not be stopped and after a brief hiatus it continued with renewed vigour. Unfortunately, this process remained one-sided, stressing only economic reforms aimed at material growth while neglecting social and political reforms. This drastic turn in Chinese economic policy led to the gradual elimination of a series of accumulated “irrationalities” in the economic system and released a wealth of previously unused economic potential. It marked the transition from a primarily extensive to an ever more intensive economy, from rigid bureaucratic management towards a more relaxed and flexible governance. There was a shift from an economic system where the quality of products was not the main priority, into an increasingly market-oriented production where competition creates a constant incentive and pressure to improve the quality of goods. This process was accompanied by significant changes in the ownership of the means of production, with private ownership gradually assuming a predominant role. Another characteristic of this period, was that China’s gradual integration into the global economy had a growing impact on its economic development, especially with respect to the massive influx of direct foreign investment, which enabled the unprecedented growth of Chinese exports. Completely new methods of economic governance together with the new thought-modes this process involved, triggered enormous structural changes in the functioning of the economy. This second period of Chinese development after the founding of the communist state was much more dynamic than the first, a dynamism which continues today.

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The speed of economic growth since the beginning of the reform policy three decades ago has been frankly astonishing. The average economic growth was 9 percent annually, an extraordinary achievement in historical terms and even more remarkable given that in the same period China also succeeded in reducing its population growth. Per capita income in China continues to grow, such that after almost three decades of generalised poverty, the population is now enjoying a period of relative affluence. On the other hand, this rapid economic growth has accelerated the increase in social inequality. For example, in 2009 the indicator of social inequality, the GINI index, rose to 48 points1, which is more than in Russia or the United States, and far more than even India. In addition to increasing social inequalities, this rapid economic growth has also increased regional differences, with the coastal regions often growing by more than 20 percent. In contrast, in the first two decades of the reform policy, the new dynamic development has hardly affected the cities of the underdeveloped inner provinces, and has left the rural hinterlands virtually untouched. Despite recent government efforts to shift development projects into the inner provinces, the gap between the more prosperous and the less developed regions remains enormous. As a comparison, this gap is even greater than it once was in the former Yugoslavia, where the ratio between developed Slovenia and underdeveloped Kosovo was 8 to 1. This also means that market structures and purchasing power varies from province to province, with no unified national market in China, but several different provincial markets. Exceptional economic growth has also placed enormous pressure on the environment, energy consumption, raw materials and natural resources. Even before the implementation of reforms, the environmental pollution in China had reached dangerous levels due to the population density, and because socialist industrialisation had paid little attention to environmental concerns. The lightning growth after the reforms dramatically increased pollution, so when the political leaders finally became aware of this problem at the end of the last century, the situation was already catastrophic. Since then, the government has focused much more attention on this problem and has achieved good results in areas where there were large scale interventions, such as for water purification and management in the major cities. Of course, these are still only partial solutions and because the rapid economic growth is constantly bringing new ecological pressure to bear, environmental protection will remain a 1

The data are from CIA The World Factbook.

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top priority problem for Chinese society and its political leadership for years to come. Closely connected with the environmental problem is the issue of the increasing exploitation of energy and natural resources. Due to its relatively outdated energy infrastructure, China still relies predominantly on coal as its main energy resource and often uses old-fashioned and dirty technologies. Furthermore, the increasing demand for energy and raw materials in China creates enormous pressure for the uncontrolled exploitation of resources, leading to a series of very negative collateral effects. Because economic growth is marked by structural imbalances, the 9% plus growth rate shows the effects of the overheated economy when domestic energy and raw materials production cannot meet the demand in other fast growing sectors. This leads to inflationary pressure on energy and raw materials with negative effects. In order to compensate for the lack of energy and raw materials domestically, China is turning increasingly to the world market for these materials. Given the massive quantities involved, these imports create a rise in world prices, which consequently brings the inflationary effects back to Chinese market. Rapid economic growth is causing huge social reshuffling. Because of strong state control, which prior to the reforms did not permit the free movement of the population from rural areas to cities, the percentage of rural population over three decades barely changed, remaining at about 85 percent. The reform policy in the 80s has significantly changed these demographics. The current rapid economic expansion is mainly based on the growth of labour intensive branches and services, requiring a much higher number of workers. Under the influence of a more relaxed market economy, and ignoring older restrictions, a massive migration from the countryside to major cities, special economic zones and new cities which sprang up in former rural areas, has taken place. In order to sustain the uncontrolled growth of big cities, the government started to stimulate the growth of small and middle-sized cities during the second decade of the reforms, thereby initiating the gradual urbanisation of Chinese rural areas. In the last decade, the rate of urbanisation was about 1 percent of population per year, which means that roughly 13 million people annually moved from the countryside to cities. This huge demographic flow is changing the structure of Chinese society, though the percentage of rural population is still relatively high: about 53 percent in 2010. For historical reasons, this percentage is about twice as high as in countries with a comparable degree of economic development. This relatively high

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proportion of rural population remains an important characteristic of Chinese society and exerts a strong influence on the Chinese economy. A byproduct of urbanisation is the phenomenon of migrant workers who have illegally left their villages in search of higher income. They are the cheapest labour force without any social security, because unregistered, and are completely subordinated to the will of their employers. According to Chinese estimates, such workers totalled 211 million in 2010. Only after the world financial and economic crisis hit China did the government start to tackle this problem and enact programs to legalise their status and permit them to settle in the cities where they lived. This means that the migrant workers may gradually be included in the process of urbanisation. Three decades of rapid economic growth have completely changed the economic structure of China. The proportion of agriculture as part of GDP has decreased drastically and was only 10.1 percent in 2011. The proportion of services which have been neglected for extended periods is growing quickly and rose to 43.1 percent in 2011. And finally, industrial production which used to produce more than half of the GDP before the reforms continues to be relatively high at 46.8 percent. Especially significant structural changes have occurred in the field of export, where China went from an almost completely closed and autarchic economy into one that is open and export oriented. In the process of reforms and opening it was the exceptionally fast growth of exports which was the main generator of rapid economic growth. From only 2 percent of GDP before the reforms, exports have grown to 27 percent in 2011, making China the world’s number one exporter. Major changes have also taken place in the Chinese domestic market, which was skewed under the old system because of government control and interference, and where supply was always insufficient to meet the internal demand. In these conditions, producers could always sell their products regardless of quality. After the rapid expansion of productive capacity, which led to the saturation of internal demand in the mid 1990s, the Chinese market has been gradually normalising. These changes brought much more competition to the Chinese market and were a strong incentive to improve the quality of goods, while also affecting the formation of prices. Finally, we must bear in mind that China is a huge country implementing gigantic changes, and faced with enormous problems. Many of the deficiencies of the old socialist system, i.e. bureaucracy, lack of a work ethic, environmental neglect, wasteful state financing and widespread corruption, have still not been completely eliminated. At the same time,

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through its reforms, China has also aquired many of the ills of the capitalist system, such as unemployment and a rapid increase in social and economic inequality.

Cyclical Economic Development in the People’s Republic of China If we analyse the relationship between politics and the economy in the PRC, we can see that this factor has always been crucial for economic growth. In the first period of development of the PRC until the beginning of reforms, political decisions were crucial for determining the dynamics of economic growth and fluctuations were almost entirely the result of topdown political decisions. As we have seen, the first 5-year plan produced a cycle of rapid growth (until 1957) which ended with the disaster of the Great Leap Forward and the contraction of the following years. A new cycle of growth began in 1963, but due to the political turnaround of 1965 this growth first slowed and then was followed by a period of contraction in 1967 and 1968. After the military finally managed to bring some order to the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution, economic activity showed a slight revival until 1971, when the economy once more went into decline. After the fall of Lin Biao ᵫᔾ, the situation once again stabilised and a new less explicit cycle began. However, this was interrupted by the turbulent political situation in 1974, when a group of radical politicians who owed their careers to the Cultural Revolution, tried to regain political power. Following their defeat, there was some revival in 1975, but the cycle ended abruptly one year later, due to the political crisis caused by the death of Mao Zedong. In analysing the relation between politics and the economy in these cycles, we find that when the political orientation was more realistic, the economic performance was closer to the political demands, while a less realistic political agenda resulted in much poorer economic performance. A completely different relationship between politics and the economy was established after the implementation of reforms in 1978. Soon after the adoption of the new policy, the reform movement split into two distinct groups which could be labelled “liberal” and “conservative” according to their attitude to the reforms. The liberal group advocated a greater degree of market freedom and faster implementation of reforms, while the conservative group wanted more market control and a more restrained implementation of reforms. The dynamics of this period were

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primarily determined by the power struggle between those two groups, confirming the rule that political decisions have a decisive influence on economic growth. It is also interesting to note that though the power struggle between these two groups took place in the political realm, the consequences of this struggle were mainly felt in the area of the economy and economic policy. The economic cycles defined by this ebb and flow of political influence by the two groups was fairly constant from the start of the reforms until the mid 1990s. The only major turbulence which hit Chinese society during this period was the brutal crackdown on the student demonstrations in Beijing in 1989. Despite this tragic incident and the political reshuffling that followed, economic growth remained relatively high, and it soon became obvious that a return to the older methods of a planned economy was no longer possible and that the only way to save the country from further crises was to continue with the economic reforms. The social situation after this period of turmoil thus stabilised very quickly, as one could now count on the vitality of the economy. We should bear in mind that the economic cycles after the reforms were unfolding in a context of very high rates of economic growth, with periods of exceptionally high economic growth lasting longer than periods of a slight contraction. If we analyse the development of Chinese society from the establishment of the PRC, we see that it actually started on a very realistic basis. Only subsequently did the influence of ideology on society and the economy increase. We can identify a growing trend of reliance on ideology through the first period of development, until it peaked in the turbulent years of the Cultural Revolution. During the reform years which followed, the influence of ideology on social and economic affairs began to decrease until nearly the end of the last century, when ideology gradually disappeared from the political discourse and its influence on economic affairs vanished as well. Hence, after a 50 year ideological cycle, Chinese economic policy had returned to the realistic basis where it had originally begun. This ideological cycle had peaked sometime in the mid 70s, when for the first time it became obvious that the Chinese people were not prepared to blindly follow all the dictates of their political leadership. Many people had reached a higher degree of awareness and had begun to actively participate in politics and publicly express their opinions and their demands for more acceptable political options. The alarming events of those years were decisive for China’s political development. It was a clear

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signal to political leaders that relying on old disproven methods and outdated rhetoric would block the country’s progress. The result was the revision of the political system, with a gradual abolition of exaggerated demands and the attenuation of accumulated tensions. The reform policy was thus able to gain new trust and acquire fresh political capital, finally bringing the ideological cycle to a close and gradually approaching a state of normality. Because economic development depends on the correlation between ideological and economic phenomena, it is obvious that the successfully implemented transition of the economic system signified the end of the ideological cycle. Given the strong correlation between politics and the economy in China, this ideological cycle clearly forms the background to China’s half century of economic development. I have stressed that the course of Chinese economic development was not linear, but cyclical, with more or less distinct oscillations that were caused by political actions. There can be little doubt that there is a strict correlation between the tightening and relaxing of political pressure and the related influence of ideology, and the cycles of the rate of economic growth. Therefore, when analysing the influence of ideology on the dynamics of economic development of the PRC, we cannot simply speak about the regular or normal course of the great ideological cycle, but must also take into account the above-mentioned cyclical movements. Following the course of the great ideological cycle, we can say that in the first half of the cycle, from beginning until the mid 70s, the growing trend of ideological pressure had a negative influence on economic development, while its downward trend in the decades following instead had a stimulating effect on the economy. Another empirical observation is that in the first half of the cycle, the dynamics of economic growth were directly dependent on the course of political actions, which were only partly determined by the situation of the national economy; while in the second half of the cycle, the political debates and struggles were mainly formulated as a reflection of the current economic situation, and only then did they affect the course of economic affairs and the rate of economic growth. After the end of the ideological cycle in the final years of the 20th century, China finally landed on the realistic ground of the economically conscious world determined by the rules and conditions of the global economy. Chinese economic policy has become a very adaptable pragmatic mechanism, no longer burdened with ideological demands. On the contrary, it is now an operational service overseeing the undisturbed

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economic process in accordance with declared development priorities, which are determined by the decisions of the top Party and state authorities. Because of a solid organisational structure and a highly centralised administration, the Chinese political system may reasonably be said to be even more efficient than in some developed countries. For example, when a political decision has been reached, the system has the capacity to mobilise all available means and to ensure the efficient functioning of all hierarchically structured institutions in order to achieve the goal which has been set. The end of the ideological cycle and the gradual integration into the global economy has brought to light a new factor which has decisively influenced the dynamics of the Chinese economy since the end of the last century, i.e. the dependency on the global economy and the actual circumstances of the globalised world. The globalised economy is ever more indifferent to national borders and is dictating its own rhythms to both governments and economic entities of all kinds. The first noticeable influence of the global economy on the dynamics of Chinese economic growth occurred with the Asian financial crisis in the late 90s. The next global turbulence which profoundly impacted China was the global financial and economic crisis of 2008 and 2009. It is evident that its participation in the global economy is one of the most important factors influencing the Chinese economic situation. And while it will play the predominant role also in the future, because of the size of its economy, China will exercise an ever more important role in the economic sphere of the globalised world.

Process and Challenges of Globalisation China is a country of continental proportions and with the world’s largest population. In the last three decades of rapid economic growth it has enormously improved its position in the modern world. Measured on a purchasing power parity (PPP) basis, adjusted for price differences, China has ranked as the second-largest economy in the world after the US for more than a decade. However, its GDP measured at the nominal value of the official exchange rate surpassed Japan in 2010, making it officially the second-largest economy in the world. The differences in the two methods of measuring GDP are significant and must be taken into account when making international comparisons. For comparing the economic potential of countries and the economic circumstances in which their citizens live, the method of purchasing power parity basis is doubtless more appropriate

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because it eliminates the price differences between developed and underdeveloped countries. The method relying on GDP at official exchange rates is more suited for comparing a country’s financial relations and its position in the international marketplace. In both cases, China is confirmed as one of the major players in the global market, where the fate of the global economy will be decided in coming years. We can already detect this trend in the way China’s purchase of crude oil and other raw materials on the world market affects the prices of those commodities. To illustrate China’s present economic power, let us look briefly at some economic data for 2011 from the CIA’s World Factbook. We have already mentioned that China is the world’s number one exporter. The estimated value of its export is $1.898 trillion, nearly 9 percent of the estimated world export in 2011. China has the highest foreign currency reserves, estimated to be $3.236 trillion on 31 December, 2011. China’s foreign debt is fairly low, estimated to be 697.2 billion on 30 September, 2011, which ranks China after Austria as 19th in the world. China is a strong recipient of direct foreign investment, which on 31 December, 2011 totalling $776 billion. In recent years, China has become a major investor abroad, with estimated direct foreign investments on 31 December, 2011 of $322 billion. China is the biggest and fastest growing market in the world with strong potential for further growth in the next 20 years. The size of the country and its economic power give China a huge advantage in the global economy. The main advantage of a large system is the role of a large national market, which offers producers more opportunities for self-sufficiency, with less reliance on foreign trade than is the case in small systems. Put simply, a large system is less sensitive to outside influences and turmoil, and offers more opportunities for investment since a large national market provides more possibilities for the sale of commodities. In addition, thanks to its economic power a large system enables higher protection, as well as special conditions when negotiating with economic partners, thus creating advantages that smaller countries cannot afford. Finally, a large system can accumulate huge amounts of capital for special strategic goals, like a space flight program, which would definitely be out of the question in a small country. Following the policy of reforms and opening, China gradually started to enter the institutional framework of the global economic system. China became a member of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in 1980, and in 1986 began negotiations for membership in GATT, which after its transformation became the World Trade Organisation in 1995. The painstaking negotiations with the USA and other economic partners

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on China’s conditions for entering the WTO continued until 2001 when China finally became a full member. For China, membership in the WTO signified it’s complete incorporation into the international economic framework, opening the door for its normal functioning in the world marketplace. This meant much easier access to the markets, technologies and the capital of the developed countries. One of the perduring problems of national governments in the modern globalised world is that they are forced to deal with a growing number of economic activities over which they have only minimal control and influence. Most global financial and economic activities and transactions are beyond the reach of national governments, and they must therefore follow the rules of world markets. Most of the responsibility for the trend of the global economy in the last few decades lies with the USA, which as a leading economic power imposed the concept of a neoliberal economic system on the rest of the world. This concept was promoted in the 1970s, as a response to the crisis of Keynesian development policy in the developed world, and was designed to bring maximum benefits to the USA and other developed countries, which needed to give fresh impetus to their economies. However, and to the surprise of many, subsequent events revealed that in the new arena of global economic development, China and India turned out to be the most successful players in this global game. Both countries have certain advantages––their products are relatively cheap and competitive in the global market and they have very low labour costs, while their size ensures them a certain stability, as they are less vulnerable to turmoil in the global economy. For the same reason, they can also permit themselves a higher degree of protectionism for their domestic financial market, since the instability of international financial markets is one of the main dangers over which, as a rule, less developed countries have very little influence. Another key factor for the development prospects of China and India is the growth potential of their domestic markets. This enables them to increase their production even in times when an unfavourable situation prevails on the world market. One of the main assumptions of the neoliberal model is the nearly complete liberalisation of financial markets and transactions, where free trade should automatically balance all financial relations in global terms. This supposition was first proved wrong in the Asian financial crisis in 1997, though at that time the developed world did not want to believe that this kind of crisis could occur in the most financially solid countries. It was necessary to wait another decade for the proof of the inadequacy of

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the neoliberal model, as evidenced in the world financial crisis of 2008 which unmasked all the deficiencies in the functioning of the global financial system. The solutions to this crisis were more cosmetic than substantial, addressing only some of the most obvious cases of irresponsible behaviour, without intervening at the root of the problem. Consequently, there is the high probability of repeated financial and economic crises, until the world community finally devises an efficient mechanism to control and balance the global financial and economic system. The problem of balancing the global financial and economic situation is further complicated by the fact that, at present, there are no competent international institutions with the authority to deal with this situation. The UN has no mandate to intervene in the global economy. The World Bank and IMF are outdated institutions created after WWII in order to regulate the post-war economic situation. Because of their inadaptability they are unfit to tackle the contemporary economic problems of global proportions. The WTO mainly regulates the rules for trading in the global market and is not equipped for active interventions in the functioning of economic and financial systems. The organisations best equipped for the task of regulating the world economy and finances are the G8 and the G20. The latter is in an even better position, because it seems to be taking most of the responsibility for world economic affairs since the beginning of the world financial crisis in 2008. These two groups are gaining in importance because of the urgent need for the control and stronger regulation of global finances, but their effectiveness is severely handicapped by the fact that they only represent the interests of a small number of economically powerful nations. The two groups are mainly consultative bodies which lack elaborate regulatory mechanisms; they normally work on the basis of agreements and the coordination of policies among their member states. Because of the different national interests of the member states, it is very difficult to reach any effective consensus for more decisive international action. Though the G20 group has been taking more initiatives in recent years, it is insufficiently institutionalised for the challenges it is facing. Consequently, we cannot expect any substantial intervention from that quarter, which makes the course of the global economy and finances in the next few years very unpredictable. Another aspect of the instability of global economy is the position of the US Dollar as the predominant reserve currency. More than six decades after the USA established its currency as the world monetary standard, the situation of the global economy has drastically changed. The proportion of

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the US economy in the global economy has significantly decreased, such that it can no longer provide the solid economic backing necessary in order to justify the monopolistic position of US Dollar in the international monetary system. Moreover, for the first time in world economic history the world’s strongest economy is not a major creditor country, but on contrary has become the most indebted country in the world. This situation has led to a perpetual uncertainty in the global monetary system, for fear that the US might depreciate the Dollar in order to shift a major part of its debt burden upon countries keeping their foreign currency reserves in US Dollars. The main problem of the international monetary system is that the Euro still cannot play an equally important role to the Dollar, and that China and Japan are not yet ready to take full responsibility for the participation of their currencies in the international monetary system. Were they to do so, they would lose the protection of their local financial sphere and the control over their national currencies, the values of which would be determined by world financial markets. This might also trigger an uncontrolled run of world savings into these Asian currencies, causing their values to rise, with a concommitant decline in the competiveness of their economies. Another option for improving the global monetary system would be to gradually transform the IMF and give a stronger role to SDR in the global monetary system, with the stronger backing of Asian currencies, though this would involve protracted international negotiations. Because of China’s integration into the global financial system, the relation of Chinese currency, the Renminbi, to other currencies is becoming increasingly important. In determining the exchange rate of Renminbi, the Chinese government and the Bank of China are fairly independent, so China can maintain a relatively stable monetary policy. For 11 years prior to July, 2005 the exchange rate of Renminbi was at a fixed rate of 1: 8.28 US Dollars. This signified the Chinese economy was directly exposed to the fluctuations of the US economy, as reflected in the fluctuations of the Dollar’s value. At the same time, this fixed relation enabled unchanging conditions for Chinese exports into the American market, regardless of the changes of the Dollar’s value. Because of the sharp fluctuations in the Dollar’s value in the first years of the 21st century, this fixed relation of the Chinese currency to the US Dollar became impractical and even disturbing. As a result, on 21 July 2005 the Bank of China switched to a floating rate in order to determine the value of Renminbi in relation to the value of several important world currencies. At the same time, the Bank of China revaluated the Renminbi by 2.1 percent, declaring that with respect to financial markets, it could float up to 0.3

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percent from declared value. This system gives China slightly more flexibility in conducting its exchange rate policy, allowing it to determine the value of its currency based on the interrelated fluctuations of the Dollar, Euro and Japanese Yen on the global financial markets. The economic and financial relations between China and the US is of utmost importance for the stability of the global economy since the two economies are highly interdependent, given the amount of US offshore production on Chinese territory, the value of Chinese exports to the US, and the level of China’s financing of US external debt. The Chinese foreign currency reserves have grown rapidly in recent years, totalling $3.236 trillion on 31 December, 2011. A large part of these reserves is invested in US government bonds, making China an important creditor of the US. This situation is clearly paradoxical, given that a relatively less developed China is supporting the economy of the richest country in the world. By investing in US government bonds, China helped to maintain a high rate of growth in the US for several years, while guaranteeing its exports stable access to US market. This continuing relationship has created a fragile relation of mutual dependency, adding the potential instability of the global economy.

The Situation after the World Financial Crisis The sudden outbreak of the world financial crisis in 2008 intensified existing antagonisms in the global economy and functioning of financial mechanisms, strengthening certain trends which had already been identified before the crisis. Despite the fact that, since the 1990s, the development of Chinese economy has been increasingly determined by the world market, China was less vulnerable to the negative effects of the financial crisis due to the nature of its economy and the lessons learned from its successful handling of the earlier Asian financial crisis. China was in a much more favorable position to resist the crisis due to its economic strength, high economic growth, specific economic structure, huge amount of foreign currency reserves and the safeguards of the national financial system. The latter two reasons explain why China did not suffer serious consequences during the first wave of the world crisis, which effected the financial markets, but only during a second phase, when the crisis began to impact on the real economy due to shrinking export markets in the developed world. The crisis has mainly affected the export branches, specifically the foreign owned offshore firms located in special economic zones around

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Canton, which produce exclusively for export into developed countries. Approximately 25 million people, mainly migrant workers, lost their jobs in those firms and they consequently returned to their homes in the hinterland where they apparently found other means of livelihood, given that there was no large scale social unrest. To compensate for the decline in the export sector, the government worked to increase local demand, mainly by state investments in transport infrastructure and new housing construction. At the same time, it stimulated the private sector by increasing the money supply and easing the terms for available credit. Relying on these measures and supported by huge foreign currency reserves, the government succeeded in maintaining relatively high rates of economic growth (above 8 percent) during the two worst years of the crisis. Because of the delay in reaching China, the worst year of the crisis was 2009. But in 2010 and 2011, China regained momentum and the growth rate rose again above 9 percent. One of the consequences of monetary interventions and the easy money policy was that it was partly consumed by higher inflation and the bursting of the real estate bubble. This is a growing problem for the Chinese national economy, affecting the living standard of the poorer classes and increasing social tensions. It is currently slowing the economic growth rate in 2012, preluding perhaps even slimmer prospects in coming years. In China, the world crisis intensified the need for restructuring the export industries. This structure has actually been changing since the beginning of the reforms, so that the labour intensive branches that were the most significant for rapid growth in the first two decades are no longer the only important export industries. In recent years, the scope of export industries has been expanding, with technologically more sophisticated branches gaining in importance, so China is becoming more competitive in these fields as well. The influx of the cheapest labour force has dramatically decreased, so the economically successful coastal provinces are facing a shortage of cheap workers. This problem became evident in the last two years, after the revival of production in coastal cities, and is due to the fact that the migrant workers that left during the crisis do not want to return under previous conditions. The process of restructuring export industries as a by-product of rapid economic growth is invariably leading towards higher salaries. After the possibilities of hiring the cheapest labour have been exploited, the expansion of technologically more sophisticated production with higher salary levels becomes imperative for continued successful development. As the importance of new, technologically more advanced industries

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increases, the competitiveness of ordinary labour intensive industries is decreasing. In recent years, China has already reached the critical point when further growth of its exports will rely on the capability to increase the proportion of technologically more advanced export industries. Under the present global economic order, this implies an accelerated movement of the most labour intensive industries into more competitive environments with cheaper labour like India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Indonesia, etc. Apart from the possibilities of a sustained presence in export markets, the structure of domestic consumption and the conditions of the national market will be of utmost importance for the stable and sustainable future development of the Chinese economy. The problem is that the trends in recent years do not conform with the declared political goals of reducing social inequalities and creating a broader, consumption-oriented middle class. Though the programs for these goals aimed at more balanced and socially oriented growth, with the annual growth rates not exceeding 8 percent, the first decade of this century saw mostly higher rates. This meets the criteria of an overheated economy, when the economic policy adopted could not bring the growth rate down to the desired level. This situation reflects the strong inner dynamics of an economy in an expansionist phase, when investors are optimistic about future growth. The investors are thus mainly following their own assumptions, rendering government measures ineffective. The high economic growth rate in the last decade has been in great part fueled by an unusually high investment rate, more than 40 percent since 2003, 48 percent in 2010 and an astonishing 54 percent of GDP in 2011 due to the government’s stimulation policy. An investment rate of this magnitude is made possible, in part, by the less responsible policy of Chinese banks which, in a climate of high expectations, offer credit to all and sundry investment projects. Often the banks are under political pressure from local authorities to support local government projects, thus increasing the debt of local governments and municipalities. This is a major problem, but very difficult to evaluate due to a lack of transparency. In this growth situation, psychological factors can play a decisive role in influencing the behaviour of investors who are likely to overestimate the market potential in a generally optimistic climate. Even some Chinese experts are concerned that over-investment might lead to greater structural imbalances. 2 This huge of amount of investment is putting increasing 2

Zhang Xiaoji, researcher in the Chinese Government Research Centre for Economic Development

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pressure on the prices of energy and raw materials, especially since statistically China has fewer natural resources per capita than the world average. Moreover, such investment also impacts negatively on the environment and given the size of the country, all these problems also have global implications. The danger of psychological factors is that some unforeseeable cause may change the mood of investors, triggering an abrupt drop in investment, which could result in economic recession and a substantial slowdown of economic growth. In China, the consequences of such a scenario could be even more unpredictable due to the continuing political influence on banks to offer excessive credit for politically opportune projects. Chinese banks may be vulnerable to heavy losses, and the insolvency of the major state controlled banks could cause a financial crisis with a wideranging impact, including the possibility of serious social tensions and unrest. This implies that the dynamics of investment, especially in fields where there are already signs of over-capacity, should be intentionally cooled down. And while investment in energy and transport infrastructure should continue, this should be at a slightly more modest rate in order to sustain necessary domestic consumption. It is likewise important to increase the purchasing power in the domestic market, in order to bolster the personal consumption of the Chinese population. An essential increase of the proportion of personal consumption in GDP is of crucial importance if China wants to restructure from an export to a consumption driven economy, in order to guarantee sustainable long term economic growth. Due to the current level of investment in China, the production capacities for various consumer goods may soon be higher than the purchasing power of the Chinese population. Consequently, the coordination of the market situation in China will become an essential condition for undisturbed economic growth. For example, the constantly increasing capacities in the automobile industry are exceeding the sales outlooks in foreign markets in the coming years, so cars may become a more important part of domestic consumption. To achieve this goal, an increase of domestic purchase power will be essential, but here China is facing a twofold problem. First, the increase of the salaries for wider strata of the Chinese population, including workers, affects the cost of labour in the very area where cheap labour is still the driving force of a huge part of export industries, which may then face difficulties and an urgent need to restructure. Second, there is currently the need for a comprehensive social security system, which means that increases in salaries would not

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automatically end up in savings. The construction of a welfare system with health and retirement security is essential for creating a broader middle class of reliable consumers, but this is a long term process that cannot be achieved in only a few years. Alongside the very rich in presentday China, there is a class of well-paid, highly educated professionals which can match the members of the middle class in developed countries and which has fueled the domestic consumer market over the last decade. But future growth of the domestic market will require the participation of ever wider strata of the population, implying the replacement of several labour intensive export industries with technologically more advanced production. While it appears that the transformation of China into a consumption driven economy will likely be a very difficult and complex process, this transformation is absolutely imperative if China wishes to secure a successful transition into the next phase of its economic development. We are familiar with this kind of development model from the economic history of developed countries and, in more recent times, in the cases of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. The only difference in the case of China is that this process is evolving in a country of enormous proportions, with almost one fifth of the world’s population, and one with a strong impact on the fragile global economic situation in the current period of great uncertainty. To date, China has already solved various problems inherent to an underdeveloped country, but has also left some critical problems to be resolved in the next stage. Hopefully, China will show the same vigour in solving these new problems, as it showed in dealing with those of a semi-developed country. The rapid economic growth achieved until now is no guarantee that the problems of the future will be solved, since the growth model based on the rapid and rather irrational expansion of consumption often intensifies existing problems, while creating new ones. Even with the necessary structural changes, maintaining unimpeded development and sustainable economic growth will be a difficult task because of the necessity to regulate the pressure on energy and raw materials exploitation, exercise sufficient environmental protection, balance social inequalities, as well as maintaining a favourable business climate and the smooth functioning of the financial system. Nevertheless, in the next development phase, China may benefit from its enormous market potential, though successful future development will require political stability without particular tensions and crises, which could cause economic turmoil and endanger stable growth. Because of the still very strong interdependence of politics and the economy, the opposite scenario might also be possible. Past experience

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shows that a failure to deal with economic problems or a substantial breakdown in domestic or foreign markets could trigger a recession, which in the case of China could be followed by a political crisis with completely unpredictable consequences.

Bibliography CIA The World Factbook. Accessed September 18, 2011. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ch. html. Fairbank, John K. 1983. The Cambridge History of China: Republican China 1912–1949, Part 1. Vol. 12. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hsü, Immanuel C.Y. 1975. The Rise of Modern China. New York: Oxford University Press. Saje, Mitja. 2001. “Similarities and Differences in the Process of Modernisation in India and China.” Azijske in afriške študije 5(1–2): 64–73. Saje, Mitja et al. 2006. Sodobna Kitajska: politiþni in gospodarski razvoj. (Razprave Filozofske fakultete). Ljubljana: Znanstvenoraziskovalni inštitut Filozofske fakultete. Zhang, Wei-Wei. 1996. Ideology and Economic Reform under Deng Xiaoping, 1978–1993. London and New York: Kegan Paul International.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN MODERNISATION FUELED BY COAL: THE CHALLENGES FACING CHINA’S ENERGY SECTOR AND GLOBAL CLIMATE PROTECTION EVA STERNFELD

In the past decade, China’s impressive economic performance has been accompanied by an unprecedented growth in the consumption of primary energy resources. When it joined the WTO in 2001 the country’s energy demand was only half that of the USA, and only ten years later it had become the world’s leading energy consumer. 1 Moreover, in view of ongoing urbanisation,2 industrialisation, and rising standards of living, it is likely its appetite for energy is going to continue to grow.3

Heavy Reliance on Coal Coal is the principal fuel that powers China’s booming economy today, enabling it to be the world’s leading export nation. Almost 70 percent of its primary energy is supplied by this fossil fuel. 4 The rapid growth in energy production has mainly been accomplished by a massive expansion

1

Between 2000 and 2011, China’s primary energy consumption increased from 1,038 million tons to 2,613 million tons oil equivalent (toe) (BP 2012, 40). 2 The share of the urban population increased from 36.2 percent in 2000 to 46.6 percent in 2009 (National Bureau of Statistics of China 2010, 95). 3 According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), China’s demand for energy will grow by 75 percent until 2035 (compared to 2010) and China’s share of the global demand for energy will rise to 22 percent in same period (IEA 2010,6. See also BP2011b). 4 See National Bureau of Statistics of China 2010, 269. The Chinese energy mix clearly differs from the global average, with a share of 39 percent for coal and 33.5 percent for oil (BP 2011a, 41).

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in coal mining; in 2010 China accounted for almost half of the world’s coal production and consumption.5 1980

1990

2000

2010

Germany

535

534

270

255

USA

703

904

1,084

1,048

China

647

1,124

1,239

3,695

Table 17-1: Development of coal consumption in selected countries (in million short tons) (After: EIA 2011b) This development is reflected in the electricity generation mix, 80 percent of which is based on coal-fired power generation. Within ten years, China’s gross electricity production increased from 1,368 to 4,206 terawatt-hours (TWh) (BP 2011c). 1980

1990

2000

2010

Germany

467

549

564

621

USA

2,354

3,185

3,390

4,325

China

300

621

1,368

4,206

Table 17-2: Gross electricity generation (in TWh) (After: BP 2011c) In the medium term economic growth is expected to continue and thus the demand for energy to increase, such that no shift away from coal as the dominant fuel is in sight. For the foreseeable future there is no need for China to be afraid of suffering coal shortages, although its oil and gas resources are clearly limited. Basically, the country’s own resources will be sufficient to meet rising demand over the next few decades.6

5

See BP2012, 32–33, for example. China has some of the largest coal reserves in the world, along with Russia and the United States; about 13 percent of today’s known coal reserves are located there. At present, China’s recoverable resources are estimated at 1,021 gigatons (GT), 189 of which are known reserves, sufficient to meet China’s demand for at least 35 years (OECD and IEA 2009, 321; see also BP 2012, 30). 6

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China is already paying a high price for its heavy reliance on coal. The gigantic consumption of this natural resource has had a drastic impact on environmental quality, public health, and the country’s transport infrastructure. For a number of years many Chinese cities have been listed in the World Bank’s ranking of the cities with the worst air quality in the world. 7 It has been observed that the occurrence of diseases of the respiratory system and premature deaths related to these illnesses is more frequent in cities with severe air pollution than in those with better environmental quality. A recent study published by the World Bank estimated the economic losses caused by air pollution to be around 3.3 percent of China’s GDP. 8 In the health sector alone, the cost of health impacts and premature deaths caused by air pollution was calculated to be around 700 billion RMB (about 84 billion €) (Wheeler 2011). Other environmental costs caused by coal mining have to be added to this figure as well. The Chinese government estimates 30 billion RMB (about 3.6 billion €) are needed annually to cover the cost of environmental pollution caused by coal mining and landscape destruction caused by coal mines.9 The country’s infrastructure is severely affected by the shipping of coal from the mining districts in central China to the energy hungry east coast. Almost half of the railroad’s freight capacity is used for shipping coal (OECD and IEA 2009, 48). The situation in the harbours and on the roads is no better. On highways there are routinely huge traffic jams caused by

7 Almost half of the 341 Chinese cities that publish regular data on air quality have registered an average annual dust (PM10) pollution figure of 100 µg/m3, almost double the maximum concentration recommended by US environmental authorities, for example. 21 percent of Chinese cities (including the capital, Beijing) have an average annual PM10 concentration exceeding 150 µg/m3. 20 percent of cities recorded an average annual concentration for sulfur dioxide (SO2) of 100 µg/m3 or higher. (The World Bank, State Environmental Protection Administration 2007, 21–22. See also Yale Centre for Environmental Law and Policy 201, 24–28, and World Pollution Data Sheet 2011). Until recently Chinese environmental authorities did not publish any data on PM2.5 concentration. Measurements by the Environmental Department of the US embassy in Beijing suggest a serious, if not unhealthy PM2.5 pollution for Beijing (see Shi Jiangtao 12/12/2011, Caixin online 12/10/2011). 8 For the year 2009. 9 About 45,000 km2 are affected by waste from coal mining. Spoil from coal mines covers an area of 16,000 km2 (comparable to the total area of Beijing) (OECD and IEA 2009, 46).

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endless convoys of coal trucks. 10 Whenever important transportation routes are interrupted, local power plants tend to run out of coal within a few days. In January 2008 following an unusually cold spell and snowfall in southern China, the country’s most important economic centres quickly found themselves risking a total blackout.11 China’s coal mines have the reputation of being the most dangerous in the world. According to official statistics, at least 47,676 miners died in mining accidents between the year 2000 and 2010 (Moore 2011). Although safety and rescue measures have been improved in recent years and the number of fatal accidents has been reduced in relation to productivity, every accident that occurs causes a public outcry. According to estimates, around 600,000 former miners are suffering from pneumoconiosis (black lung), and treatment costs are estimated at 1.75 billion RMB (about 211 million €) a year. These numbers no doubt conservative inasmuch as they are drawn from official statistics that only include employees of state-owned coal mines in their counts (OECD and IEA 2009, 45).

Impacts on Climate Change The rapid growth of coal combustion has made China the world’s leading emitter of CO2, one of the main greenhouse gases. Country

1980

1990

2000

2005

2010

USA

1,434

1,799

2,144

2,162

1,985

China

1,173

1,928

2,273

4,448

6,946

World

6,581

8,409

8,856

11,511

14,231

Table 17-3: Increase in CO2 emissions caused by coal combustion (in millions of tons of CO2) (After: EIA 2011b)

10

In summer 2010, for example, the media reported a record traffic jam more than 100 kilometres long. Coal trucks blocked the highway from Inner Mongolia to Beijing for more than a week (see Hillenbrand 2010). 11 See, for example, “Coal shortage, electricity rationing continue in China as cold weather lingers” and “President Hu calls on coal mines, ports to safeguard supplies,” 1/31/2008, http://www.chinaview.cn; Hou 2009, 4.

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In 2011, China’s contribution to global CO2 emissions amounted to 26.4 percent, according to BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy (BP 2011c). Therefore, the future development of China’s energy sector will be crucial for the success or failure of international efforts to achieve climate protection. If policy changes and interventions fail to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, the grim scenarios predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are likely to become a self-fulfilling prophecy, with China as one of the countries that needs to be prepared for severe environmental, economic, and social impacts. With an expected rise of 2°C in the annual mean temperature by 2020 (as compared to the annual mean temperature between 1961 and 1990), the country will suffer from more frequent and intense weather extremes, such as droughts in northern China and typhoons in the southern regions (IPCC 2007, 476). Of particular concern is the predicted decrease in agricultural productivity in China and the implications this will have for the global food supply.12 The Tibetan Plateau, the source of almost all of the major Asian rivers, is being massively affected by global warming. Over the past 40 years, the glaciers have steadily retreated, with approximately 3,790 km2 of ice melting—or about 7 percent of the total area on the Plateau. Climatologists expect this trend to accelerate and up to 27 percent of today’s known glaciers to disappear by 2050. In the short term, glacier meltdown creates the danger of flooding, while in the long term the runoff from the large rivers will decrease and lead to temperature rises and droughts. Moreover, Chinese scientists predict that the glacier meltdown in northwestern China will cause a radical change in the water supply systems in this region. In the arid northwestern regions a number of oases supplied with fresh water by glacier-fed rivers may not survive (Piao 2010, 48). The consequence will be that millions of people living in these regions will be forced to migrate to other parts of China. In addition, the 4th IPCC report forecasts a rise in sea level of up to 60 cm by 2100 for China’s coastal regions. This could severely affect the most productive economic zones around Shanghai and the Pearl River Delta (IPCC 2007, 481).

12

For 2020, scenarios forecast a reduction in crops of up to 18 percent for rice, up to 22 percent for wheat, and up to 30 percent for maize (Piao 2010).

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China’s Energy and Climate Policy China under the present scheme of the Kyoto Protocol is a non-Annex 1 country and does not have any quantitative obligations to meet by reducing its greenhouse gas emissions. In view of its recent increase in carbon emissions, China has come under international pressure to join a binding scheme with the aim of achieving measurable emission reductions. To date Chinese representatives at the UN Climate Change Conference have rejected all of these advances. They have pointed out the historical responsibility that Western industrialised nations have in this respect, and insist that emerging countries also have a right to develop their own economies. In Europe, especially after the 15th Conference of Parties (COP 15) in Copenhagen in 2009, it was widely felt that China was blocking any effort by the international community to protect the world’s climate (see Lynas 2009, for example). China signalled it might only agree to some commitments in a post-Kyoto scheme at the recent UN Climate Conference in Durban (in 2011), although this announcement was still rather vague and open to considerable interpretation (Spiegel Online 2011). While the official position on an active climate-protection policy has remained essentially unchanged, China’s position on domestic climateprotection policy has become more reactive in recent years. This has been particularly evident since 2007, when the first national Climate Change Report was published. Like the IPCC’s report, this predicted that China would experience severe impacts from climate change. Since 2007, a number of provisions aiming at energy security have been enacted, which are also relevant in terms of reducing environmental pollution and boosting climate protection. These include measures for improving energy efficiency, reducing emissions caused by coal combustion, as well as adopting environment- and climate-friendly alternatives to coal. The 11th Five-Year Plan (2006–2010) actually included a quantified goal for improving energy efficiency by 20 percent per unit GDP along with targets for developing renewable energy sources. 13 The Law for 13 By January 2011, the National Reform and Development Commission (NDRC) declared that the efforts undertaken to achieve greater energy efficiency “could basically meet its goal” (http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/01/06/us-chinaenergy-intensity-idUSTRE7051OE20110106, accessed on Feb. 18, 2011). However, according to a circular issued by the State Council in August 2011, during the phase of the 11th Five-Year Plan, energy efficiency was improved by 19 percent per unit GDP, just missing the set target of 20 percent. While some

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Promotion of Renewable Energy came into effect in 2006. In 2007, a National Action Plan for Climate Protection was also issued, and the Middle- and Long-term Plan for Development of Renewable Energy was introduced the same year. Since 2009, the improvement in energy efficiency has also been directly assessed with respect to is ability to reduce CO2 emissions. China announced that it was working to reduce the CO2 intensity per unit GDP by up to 45 percent by 2020 (compared with 2005, the baseline) (NDRC 2009, 1). The present 12th Five-Year Plan (2011–2015) includes targets for energy efficiency and climate intensity as well: within the five-year period, the PRC aims to improve its energy efficiency by 16 percent per unit GDP and reduce its CO2 intensity by 17 percent. The plan also aims to increase the share of non-fossil energy sources in its mix of primary energy sources from the present level of 8.3 percent to 11.4 percent by 2015.14 In August 2011, the State Council issued the Energy Conservation and Emission Reduction Work Plan for the 12th Five-Year Plan, which provides more precise information about the implementation of these targets. This document differentiates the requirements for energy efficiency and emission of air pollutants for the various provinces according to their respective economic performance and their energy demand (NDRC 2011, Finamore 2011c). A similar plan is expected to be issued for CO2 efficiency, but remains forthcoming (Lan 2011). Differentiated targets for CO2 intensity went into effect beginning in 2012 for seven selected pilot cities and provinces, namely Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Chongqing, Shenzhen, and the provinces of Hubei and Guangdong (Reuters 2012).15

provinces such as Beijing had been able to improve their efficiency rates by well over 20 percent, southern boom regions such as Guangdong and Fujian had clearly missed their targets—Guangdong’s efficiency rate was 16.4 percent, and Fujian’s was 16 percent (see NDRC 2011, appendix A.) 14 See “Key Targets of China’s 12th Five-Year Plan” and Finamore 2011a, b. 15 For example, the target for Guangdong province was set at a 20-percent share of non-fossil energy and a reduction in CO2 intensity by 19.5 percent (Reuters 2012).

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10%

15%

16%

17%

18%

Hainan

Gansu

Anhui

Beijing

Guangdong

Qinghai

Guangxi

Chongqing

Hebei

Jiangsu

Tibet

Guizhou

Fujian

Liaoning

Shanghai

Xinjiang

Inner

Heilongjiang

Shandong

Tianjin

Mongolia Ningxia

Henan

Yunnan

Hubei

Zhejiang

Hunan Jiangxi Jilin Shaanxi Shaanxi Sichuan Table 17-4: 12th Five-Year Plan targets for improving energy efficiency per unit of GDP (After: Finamore 2011c, NDRC 2011)

The Promotion of Renewable Energy China has actually been promoting the contemporaneous development of renewable energy and nuclear power. It plans to increase the share of non-fossil energy resources in its primary energy mix to 15 percent by 2020, the share in 2011 being 9.9 percent. Its commitment to reach this self-set target, can be judged from the volume of investments being made in this sector. In 2009, the year of the global financial crisis, China announced the world’s largest investment program ever for promoting renewable energy and nuclear power, with a projected investment of 600 billion US$ (450 billion €) in this sector by 2020 (Finamore 2010 ). Recent data indicates that this goal will be met. For example, in 2011, 47.4 billion US$ (36 billion €) were invested in the development of “clean energy sources” in China (Environmental Leader 2012). The yields from these financial incentives and overt political promotion are already visible.

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Within less than five years China’s renewable energy sector has not only caught up, but in fact reached world-class levels in some areas in terms of installed capacity and technological development. China has been the world leader in hydropower for many years now. It was Chinese engineers who built the Three Gorges Dam—with an installed capacity of 22 GW, the largest hydroelectric power project in the world—but they have also constructed many other power plants elsewhere. China is also the world leader in small hydropower facilities with a capacity of up to 50 MW.16 Some 44,000 units in this category, or 70 percent of the small hydropower stations worldwide, are now in operation in China. With a total installed capacity of 55 GW, small hydroelectric power stations make a considerable contribution to the electrification of rural areas (National Bureau of Statistics 2010, 475). The development of wind energy is another success story in modernday Chinese engineering. Starting virtually from scratch, over the last five years China has overtaken Germany and the US to become the world’s leading wind energy nation (World Energy Association 2011). No other country has experienced such a rapid development in this field over so few years. This extraordinary speed was not anticipated by anyone at the time in any energy scenario. For example, the National Development and Reform Commission in 2007 submitted The Middle- and Long-Term Plan for the Promotion of Renewable Energy. It set the goal of generating 30 GW of power using wind turbines by 2020, and in 2011 the installed capacity was already 63 GW (Roney 2012). In view of this rapid development, it is expected Chinese wind farms could reach capacities of 200–250 GW by 2020 and as much as 400–513 GW by 2030 (World Wind Energy Council 2010, 19; IEA/Energy Research Institute 2011, 7). By 2020 wind energy could account for about 10 percent of China’s electricity production and up to 16 percent by 2030 (Li 2010, 83). Chinese wind-energy manufacturers until recently were considered “technology followers” with products that were mainly based on licensed technology obtained from Western companies. 17 This technology was often outdated, but Chinese manufacturers are now catching up in terms of innovative technology. While a few years ago the majority of wind 16

According to the Chinese definition, hydro power stations with an installed capacity of up to 50 MW are defined as small hydro power projects (see National Bureau of Statistics of China 2010, 474). 17 Goldwind, for example, obtains licenses from three German companies: Jacobs, Re-Power, and Venys (Lewis 2007, 222; Lewis 2011, 286).

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turbines installed in China were manufactured by international companies such as Vestas and Re-Power, currently around 60 percent of the wind farms are equipped with turbines produced by three Chinese manufacturers, viz., Sinovel, Goldwind, and Dongfang. These companies now rank among the top ten manufacturers in the world (Ng 2010). Meanwhile, the German company Re-Power has announced it is going to sell all its shares in wind-turbine production to China due to increasing competition with Chinese companies (Hook 2011). Although 70 percent of China’s territory enjoys 2,200 hours or more of sunshine per year, offering ideal conditions for solar power, up to now it has only played a marginal role in electricity production.18 Solar power for many years was introduced exclusively in remote off-grid areas (for example, in rural areas of Tibet, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia). Nevertheless, China is the world leader in terms of the number of solar water heaters installed in domestic households. It is estimated that about 10 percent of Chinese households use solar power for water heating (Martin 2009, 12). Grid-connected Photovoltaics (PV), in contrast, is still not common. In 2010, the installed capacity of PV was 893 MW, 370 MW of which had been newly installed that year (Schwarzburger 2011, 80).19 Although its domestic market is only nascent, China is already a leading producer and exporter of solar technology. In 2011, the country accounted for around half of the world’s panel and module production. The seven biggest Chinese manufacturers achieved an annual production output of over 6 GW (Schwarzburger 2011, 76). Recently, the Chinese government introduced financial incentives to promote the domestic market for grid-connected PV as well. Its aim is for China by 2015 to attain an installed capacity of 15 GW for solar energy (Clifford 2012). China’s deserts possess great potential for developing large-scale solar thermal power plants comparable to the European DESERTEC project.20 In theory, by covering approximately 5 percent of China’s deserts with solar thermal power stations, a total installed capacity of 5,000 GW could be achieved, sufficient to meet the total electricity demand estimated for 18

In comparison, Germany—at present the world leader in terms of installed PV capacity—has an annual average of 1100 hours of sunshine and far less favourable conditions for the utilisation of solar power. 19 In comparison, the installed capacity in Germany amounted to 17.3 GW (or 11,693 GWh) in 2010 (Bundesministerium für Umwelt, Naturschutz und Reaktorsicherheit 2011, 11–12). 20 DESERTEC plans to create an electricity network for Europe supplied by large solar thermal power plants based in North African desert regions.

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2015 (Banzhaf 2011). In northwest China, a number of these large-scale thermal power plants are already under construction, including one plant in Qinghai province planned to produce a total capacity of 1 GW (NNN 2012).

Nuclear Energy In order to improve its energy security and environmental protection, China aims to extensively develop the nuclear power sector. Nuclear power is often mentioned in the same breath as renewable energy and in fact is promoted as “clean energy.” China became a civilian user of nuclear power relatively late, and for many years development was comparatively slow. The first commercial nuclear power plants—in Zhejiang and Dayawan provinces—have only been operating since the mid-1990s. Considerable development has taken place over the past decade, and nuclear power is primarily designated to supply the energyhungry coastal regions with electricity. The operating plants are thus located along the densely populated east coast. Meanwhile, a number of provinces in central China have submitted plans for nuclear power plants as well (Thomson 2011, 471). China’s nuclear power plants currently produce a mere two percent of the country’s total electricity, a very modest share of its energy mix, but the coastal provinces of Guangdong and Zhejiang already receive about 10 percent of their electricity from nuclear power. With 15 reactors with an installed capacity of 11.8 GW in operation and 25 reactors under construction, the PRC is still a dwarf compared to leading nuclear power nations like the United States and France, but this will likely change over the next few decades while China pursues a very ambitious nuclear program, striving to increase its share of nuclear power to five percent by 2020. Although this proportion sounds modest in comparison with that in certain Western countries, it nevertheless amounts to a huge program for constructing additional nuclear power plants. In March 2011, only two days after the Fukushima disaster, the National People’s Congress approved plans to expand the overall capacity of the country’s nuclear facilities to 43 GW during the period of the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011–2015). This will entail almost a fourfold increase in capacity within only five years. The country’s long-term plans aim at an expansion to 60 GW by 2020 and up to 200 GW by 2030 (World Nuclear Association 2012). If these plans are fully implemented China will

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overtake the United States as the world’s leading nuclear power nation by 2030 at the latest. Nuclear

Province

power

Capacity

Type

Operator

(MW)

Commercial operation

plant unit Daya Bay

Guangdong

944 MW

1&2 Qinshan

CGNPC

1994

CNNC

1994

CNNC

2002, 2004.

France Zhejiang

279 MW

Phase I Qinshan

PWR,

PWR, China

Zhejiang

610 MW

Phase II,

PWR, China

2010, 2012

1-4 Qinshan

Zhejiang

665 MW

Phase III,

PHWR,

CNNC

2002, 2003

CGNPC

2002, 2003

CNNC

2007

CGNPC

2010, 2011

Canada

1&2 Lingao

Guangdong

935 MW

1&2 Tianwan

PWR, France

Jiangsu

1&2

1,000

PWR

MW

(VVER) , Russia

Lingao Phase II, 1

Guangdong

1,037

PWR,

MW

France

&2 Total

11,881 MW

Table 17-5: Nuclear power plants in operation (as of Feb. 16, 2012) CGNPC = China Guangdong Nuclear Power, CNNC = China National Nuclear Corporation, PWR = Pressurised Water Reactor, PHWR = Pressurised HeavyWater Reactor (After: World Nuclear Association 2012)

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Despite these long-term plans, the Fukushima disaster has had an enormous public impact in China (like elsewhere) and resulted in the reassessment of the risks associated with the nuclear program. On March 16, 2011 Prime Minister Wen Jiabao announced an inspection of all the plants currently in operation as well as those under construction, plus a moratorium for approval of any new nuclear power projects until revised safety standards have come into effect (Lietsch 2011, Frogatt 2011). Leading newspapers and magazines, such as Nanfang Zhoumo फᮍ਼ ᳿ and Caijing 䋶㒣, have featured detailed reports about the possible risks of China’s nuclear power program. The authors repeatedly spoke of the Great Leap into Nuclear Energy (hedian yuejin Ḍ⬉䎗䖯), a phrase suggesting that the ambitious targets being aimed at, are likely to be achieved too quickly and without sufficient preparation, possibly resulting in a disastrous outcome (Li Weina 2011, 64). An article published by the magazine Caijing argued that the point was “to reduce speed, not to stop the vehicle” (shi jiansu, bushi tingche ᰃ‫ޣ‬䗳ˈ ϡᰃ‫ذ‬䔺) (Li Hongbing 2011, 74). The Chinese Environmental Ministry’s Department for Nuclear Safety had repeatedly warned against a rushed expansion of nuclear energy before the Fukushima accident. Zhou Shirong, the department’s deputy director, expressed concern about a lack of adequately trained professional personnel to operate the growing number of nuclear power stations in China (Meng 2010). In September 2011, the authorities announced that safety checks had been concluded for all nuclear power plants in operation and under construction (Zuo 2011). The approval procedures for new projects were expected to resume during 2012. It is already apparent that the Fukushima disaster has not caused any radical change in China’s nuclear power program. Nevertheless, it will probably result in a slowdown and in certain limitations being imposed on the plans for expansion. A number of inland projects have now been postponed because of concerns about possible pollution of rivers (World Nuclear Association 2012). Despite the existence of a temporary moratorium on approval procedures for nuclear power projects, some Chinese energy experts and politicians persist in claiming that nuclear power is a relatively safe source of energy for China (Stanway 2011).21 They argue China operates modern 21

In fact, the Chinese nuclear power corporations have yet to provide any official proof about the safety of their power stations. Although China has signed and ratified the Convention on Nuclear Safety drawn up by the International Atomic Energy Administration (IAEA), as well the Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel

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nuclear plants that employ second-generation technology with safety standards developed after the Chernobyl accident. Right from the outset, China’s nuclear power sector has relied on both home-grown and international technologies (from Canada, France, Russia, and more recently the USA). So far, pressurised water reactor (PWR) technology has mainly been used, with three reactors designed in China (Qinshan 1, 2, and 3), four reactors purchased from France (Daya Bay and Lingao), two reactors of Canadian design (Qinshan 4 and 5), and two Russian-designed pressurised water reactors (VVER 1060). Qinshan 4 and 5 are Canadian CANDU-6 pressurised heavy-water reactors. The two plants in Sanmen and Haiyang, presently under construction, are being equipped with four “third-generation design” AP 1000 reactors (made by Westinghouse Electric, now owned by Toshiba). China will be the testing ground for these “third-generation” reactors, which are going to go into commercial operation for the very first time. In exchange, Westinghouse has agreed to transfer the AP 1000 technology to China, allowing it to build its own third-generation PWR reactors based on the AP 1000 design. In October 2008 a similar agreement was signed between the French corporation Areva and CGNPC concerning the technology transfer of the EPR (European Pressurised Reactor) and PWR plants. China is still pursuing the development of the high-temperature gascooled reactor (HTGR) and is currently the only country in the world to be doing so. Qinghua University’s Institute of Nuclear Energy has developed a 10 MW high-temperature gas-cooled test reactor (HTR-10)—also known as a pebble-bed modular reactor (PBMR)—which went into operation in 2000 and remains the only operational PBMR in the world (Durmin 2007). This technology is based on an earlier German development and was introduced by Chinese engineers formerly trained at the Jülich Nuclear Research Institute in Germany (Kadak 2006, 5). While Germany gave up its PBMR research and shut down the experimental reactor in Jülich in 1988, Chinese researchers continued working with the project. In 2006 the State Council announced that the small reactor would be a high-priority project for the next 15 years. PBMR technology is regarded in China as a promising alternative to conventional nuclear power technology because small reactors can be factory-built and are less costly. Moreover, the technology does not depend on cooling water and is therefore suitable for regions in which water is scarce or simply unavailable. In the summer of Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management, the country has not made any national reports public to date (Froggatt 2011).

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2011, construction of a demonstration HTGR plant started in Shidaowan, Shandong province. Long-term plans include the construction of another 18 modules with a total capacity of 3,800 MW. In addition, China is cooperating with Russia on the development of a “fourth-generation” fast neutron reactor (FNR), a so-called “fast breeder.” This technology is especially attractive for a country like China where a shortfall in the supply of uranium could become a bottleneck for further expansion of the nuclear industry. The “fast breeder” technology produces more plutonium than the reactor needs and is said to use uranium up to 60 times more efficiently. However, it is a controversial technology because it requires weapon-grade uranium, which is riskier to handle than conventional uranium.22 The China Institute of Atomic Energy (CIAE) in Beijing has been running an experimental 65 MW reactor since 2010. It was connected to the grid in July, 2011. The first commercial Chinese prototype of the “fast breeder” is expected to be built by 2017 (World Nuclear Association 2012). The planned Sanming power plant in Fujian province is scheduled to begin construction in 2013 and to be equipped with Russian BN-800 technology (Sternfeld 2010). While the nuclear industry is booming in China, the issue of nuclear waste disposal is becoming an urgent problem. 23 At present, low-level waste is stored in stainless steel casks and disposed of at regional facilities near the nuclear plants. High-level nuclear waste is being stored directly at the reactor sites. Recycling and reprocessing is mainly done in France. In 2006, a pilot reprocessing plant with a capacity of 50 tons per year started operation near Lanzhou. This plant is still in its initial stage of operation, but is to be extended to a capacity of 550 tons per year. A larger reprocessing plant is planned for 2020. In 2007, Areva and CNNC signed an agreement on setting up a large reprocessing facility for used fuel and mixed oxide (Yuan Ying 2011). Like most other nuclear power nations, China has still not set up a permanent site for the disposal of its nuclear waste. A nationwide screening procedure has been conducted since 1985 to locate potential

22 Countries such as Germany and the USA have abandoned their fast-breeder programs, because the environmental risks related to plutonium extraction seemed to be incalculable. 23 The World Nuclear Association has estimated that China produced 600 tons of spent fuel in 2010 and had already accumulated a total of 3,800 tons. The WNA expects an annual output of 1,000 tons and a total of 12,300 tons of accumulated spent fuel by 2020 (World Nuclear Association 2012).

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sites for permanent deep geological storage. An area screening procedure is currently underway at the three most promising sites in an uninhabited desert area in the Beishan region of Gansu province in northwestern China. Surface geological, tectonic evolution, hydrological and geophysical surveys have been conducted at these three sites since 1999, along with borehole drilling. In a second step, an underground laboratory will be built at the selected site by 2020, and the construction of the final repository is expected to start by 2040. Disposal is expected to begin by 2050 (Wang et al. 2006).

Nuclear Fusion Research China is currently participating in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) Project together with the EU, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia, and the USA. China contributes 10 percent of the project’s budget. The international community hopes that a breakthrough in nuclear fusion research will help to solve the world’s quest for an efficient and safe source of energy. Scientists at the Institute for Plasma Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Southwest Institute for Physics, and the Centre for Nuclear Fusion Theory and Simulation from Zhejiang University are participating in the project on the Chinese side. In 2006 the Institute for Plasma Physics reported a breakthrough in controlling high-temperature reactions in the experimental Tokamak fusion device (Xinhua News Agency 2006). However, it is expected that it will be several decades before nuclear fusion is available as a commercial power-generation technology. The construction of an experimental reactor began in France in 2010 and is expected to start test operation by 2020 (ITER 2012).

Energy Efficiency and the Promotion of “Clean” Coal Technologies Despite the huge amount of investment in what are known as “clean sources of energy,” Chinese planners do not expect such sources of power to satisfy more than 15 percent of the country’s energy mix by 2020. The search for strategies to make the use of coal more efficient and “cleaner” is therefore highly appropriate. With respect to international levels, the country’s energy efficiency is still low in relation to its GDP (Enerdata 2012).

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Along with industrial production and forms of electricity supply, the building sector also has a very high potential for conservation and efficiency gains. At present, two to three times more energy per square meter is required to heat buildings in northern China, in winter, than in regions with a comparable climate in northern Europe and North America. The vast majority of buildings in this region of the PRC lack sufficient insulation. Moreover, individual adjustment of the room temperature is not possible in many apartments, so overheating and unnecessary heating of rooms or apartments is commonplace. A similar problem occurs during the long hot summer months with central air-conditioning systems in large buildings. At present, significant investments are planned for the modernisation of coal-fired power plants. In recent years, numerous small outdated plants have been taken offline and been replaced by large facilities with the most advanced technology and a capacity of 600 MW. China is currently the leading country when it comes to operating thermal power plants with circulating atmospheric fluidised-bed combustion (CFBC), and supercritical and ultra-supercritical power plants with even higher efficiency and fewer emissions.24 Modernisation of existing plants is still frustrating and a major challenge. For example, in 2006 only 30 percent of the power-generation units were equipped with flue-gas desulfurisation (FGD), whereas long-term plans aim to run 90 percent of the units with FGD (OECD 2009, 102). In addition, China is experimenting with technologies to capture or recover carbon dioxide. A pilot project for testing post-combustion CO2 capture technology (IGCC) is operating at the Gaobeidian Power Plant in Beijing. Using this technology, 3,000 tons of CO2 per day are separated and can be used in the beverage industry, for example. The possibilities for introducing CO2 capture and storage (CCS) technologies are being investigated as well. Depleted oil and gas fields near Daqing and Jilin are currently being assessed (NRDC 2009, 39). As is the case elsewhere, the introduction of CCS is still constrained by lack of proven technology and high costs. It is estimated that the application of CCS would increase the cost of electricity production by 75 percent given the present state of technology. On the other hand, while the technology would help reduce the impact of coal on climate change, it would not solve other coal-related 24

In 2007, 2,671 power plants were operated with CFBC technology. Supercritical power plants accounted for approx. 17.8 percent of China’s electricity production (OECD 2009, 101).

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problems such as environmental pollution, negative impacts on public health or strains on the transport system. In view of the aforementioned problems, it is no surprise to discover that CCS does not rank very highly on the agenda of Chinese energy policy. Consequently, large-scale implementation is not expected. 2005

2006

2007

2020

2030

515

624

713

1,500

2,000–2,300

Coal-fired

368

454

524

1,040

1,200

- subcritical

355

419

524

700

440

- supercritical

13

32

50

200–220

440

- ultra-

0

3

10

80–90

270–280

- IGCC

0

0

0

80–90

170

Gas-fired and

22

30

40

60

200

390

484

564

1,100

1,400

53

162

270

700–800

1,000–1,100

Total generation capacity

supercritical

oil-fired Total thermal capacity Installed FGD capacity

Table 17-6: Coal-fired power-generation technologies used in China, 2005–30 (in GW) (After: OECD/IEA 2009, 101)

Concluding Remarks China’s booming economy is being fuelled by coal, and a radical change in this situation is not likely to occur over the next two decades. In fact, China’s appetite for fossil energy will be the main reason for experiencing a further increase in greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. However, at the same time China shows a high degree of motivation to become the avant-garde in developing non-fossil energy resources and new technologies that are climate- and environment-friendly. And it

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actually has the potential to achieve this ambition as well. Like its plans for renewable energy development, the PRC is unlikely to give up its ambitious nuclear program in light of the Fukushima disaster, although some projects may slow down and others may not even be approved.

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Li, Hongbing ᴢ㑶݉, and Li Chenlei ᴢ᰼㭒. 2011. “Hedian jiansu qiji Ḍ⬉‫ޣ‬䗳༥ᴎ” (“A Turning Point in the Rate of Growth of Nuclear Power”). Caijing 䋶㒣 286: 74–77. Li Junfeng, Shi Pengfei, Gao Hu. 2010. Zhongguo fengdian fazhan baogao Ё೑亢⬉থሩ᡹ਞ (2010 China Wind Power Outlook.) Accessed on January 16, 2012. http://www.greenpeace.org/eastasia/Global/eastasia/publications/report s/climate-energy/2010/2010-china-wind-power-outlook.pdf Li, Weina ᴢ㒀࿰, and Wang Qihua ⥟༛ढ. 2011. “Zhongguo hedian yuzhen Ё೑Ḍ⬉ԭ䳛” (“China’s Nuclear Aftershock”) Caijing 䋶㒣 286: 62–66. Lietsch, Jutta. 2011. “China verfügt Moratorium für neue AKWs.” taz, March 24. Lynas, Mark. 2009. “How do I know China wrecked the Copenhagen deal? I was in the room.” Guardian, December 22. Accessed on February 18, 2011. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/22/copenhagenclimate-change-mark-lynas. National Bureau of Statistics of China. Zhongguo renmin gongheguo guojia tongji ju Ё೑Ҏ⇥݅੠೑೑ᆊ㒳䅵ሔ. 2010. China Statistical Yearbook 2010 Ё೑㒳䅵ᑈ䡈 2010DŽBeijing: China Statistics Press. National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC). 2007. “Medium- and Long-Term Development Plan for Renewable Energy in China” (abridged version, English draft). Accessed on January 16, 2012. http://www.martinot.info/China_RE_Plan_to_2020_Sep-2007. pdf. —. 2009. “China’s Policies and Actions for Addressing Climate Change— The Progress Report 2009.” Internal publication. —. 2011. “Guowuyuan guanyu yinfa “shi er wu” jieneng jianpai zonghexing gongyuo fangan de tonzhi “guofa (2011) 26 hao” ೑ࡵ䰶 ݇Ѣॄথ“कѠѨ”㡖㛑‫ޣ‬ᥦ㓐ড়ᗻᎹ԰ᮍḜⱘ䗮ⶹ“೑থ (2011) 26 ো ” (“Circular by the State Council about Energy Saving and Emissions Reduction. Comprehensive Workplan for the period of the 12th Five-Year Plan”). Accessed on January 13, 2012. http://hzs.ndrc.gov.cn/newzwxx/t20110907_433096.htm. Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). 2009. Identifying near-term opportunities for carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) in China. Accessed on January 27, 2012. http://www.nrdc.org/international/chinaccs/files/fchinaccs.pdf.

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Ng, Eric. 2010. “Wind in China’s sails for clean energy race.” South China Morning Post (SCMP). Accessed on October 1, 2010. http://www.scmp.com. NNN (Namnewsnetwork). 2012. “China’s Qinghai Province, European Firm to Build One-gigawatt Solar Power Base.” Accessed on January 20, 2012. http://www.namnewsnetwork.org/v2/print-read.php?id=181505. Martin, Kevin. 2009. “Solarenergie in China: Entwicklungsstand, staatliche Förderung, wirtschaftliches Potenzial.” China Analysis 72. Meng, Dengke, and Cao Haidong. 2010. “Demystifying Nuclear Power.” Chinadialogue, August 24. Accessed on March 7, 2011. http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/3785Demystifying-nuclear-power.html. Moore, Malcolm. 2011. “20 Chinese Coal Miners Killed in Latest Accident.” The Telegraph, November 10. Accessed on February 16, 2012. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/8881397/20Chinese-coal-miners-killed-in-latest-accident.html. PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, European Union. 2011: Long-term Trend in Global CO2 Emissions 2011 Report. Accessed on January 16, 2012. http://www.pbl.nl/en/publications/2011/long-term-trend-in-global-co2emissions-2011-report Piao, Shilong, Ciais Philippe, Yao Huang, Shen Zehao, Peng Shushi, Li Junsheng, Zhou Liping, Liu Hongyan, Ma Yuecun, Ding Yihui, Friedlingstein, Pierre, Liu Chunzhen, Tan Kun, Yu Yongqiang, Zhang Tianyi, and Fang Jingyun. 2010. “The Impacts of Climate Change on Water Resources and Agriculture in China.” Nature 467: 43–51. OECD and IEA. 2009. Cleaner Coal in China. Accessed on February 16, 2012. http://www.iea.org/publications/free_new_Desc.asp?PUBS_ID=2089. Reuters. 2012. “China Orders 7 Pilot Cities and Provinces to Set CO2 Caps.” Accessed on January 16, 2012. http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/13/us-china-carbon-idUSTRE 80C0GZ20120113. Roney, Matthew 2012. “World Wind Power Climbs to New Record in 2011” Accessed on March 19, 2012 http://www.earth-policy.org/indicators/C49/wind_power_2012# Shi Jiangtao. 2011. “Fine Particles Nearly 10 Times WHO Ceiling.” South China Morning Post, December 12.

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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN GROWING UP WITHOUT CARE: CHINA’S RURAL LEFT-BEHIND CHILDREN WANG XUAN

Since the late 1980’s, the initiating of reforms and open policy in China have greatly promoted the process of urbanisation and industrialisation. One consequence of this dynamic process was the emergence of a large population of rural migrant workers. Due to the very imbalanced economic development between urban and rural areas, the socalled “urban-rural dual structure”, a huge number of rural surplus labourers migrated into the urban cities searching for a job to increase their income and better support their family in the rural countryside. At the present time there are over 252 million rural migrant workers in China (National Population and Family Planning Commission of P.R. China, 2011), and they have made a significant contribution to the rapid growth of the Chinese economy over the last 30 years. Unfortunately, most of them are unable to have their children live with them in the urban environment because of their very limited social conditions. The consequence has been that a large population of rural left-behind children has developed. Usually these children lack proper care from adults and different kinds of social problems evolve day by day as these children mature. The government and society in general started to focus on these children after a report was published in the Guangming Daily in 2002: The Education Problems of “Left-behinds” in the Rural Countryside Need to be Solved. (Li 2002) Subsequently, the term “rural left-behind children” began to be used frequently and their very difficult life-stories gradually touched the hearts of more and more people.

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Who Are the Rural Left-behind Children? How should we define the concept of “rural left-behind children”? Different definitions have appeared, but if a child’s situation meets the following 3 criteria they generally come under this classification: 1) the child was born and lives in rural areas; 2) the child is under 18 years old and 3) one or both parents of the child have left home for work and have been absent for over 6 months (Ye et al. 2005; Duan and Yang 2008; Liu 2008; Nie and Li 2008).

How Many Children and Where Are They From? There are different calculations as to the total number of Chinese rural left-behind children, but most scholars agree with Duan Chengrong’s estimate in the National report on rural left-behind children (2005) of 58.61 million, based on a 1% sample survey of the population. According to the Report, the breakdown of these children for the whole country is as follows: Province

Population

Percentage

(million)

(%)

Province

Population

Percentag

(million)

e (%)

Beijing

0.036

0. 06

࣫Ҁ Tianjin

0.033

0. 06

1.228

2. 09

gu ‫ݙ‬㩭 স

Hunan ␪

4.000

6. 82

Guangdo

4.313

7. 36

3.594

6. 13

0.163

0. 28

ng ᑓϰ 0.47 4

0. 81

Guangxi ᑓ㽓

㽓 Neimeng

6. 11

फ

࣫ Shanxi ቅ

3.583

࣫

໽⋹ Hebei ⊇

Hubei ␪

0.269

0. 46

Hainan ⍋फ

Growing Up without Care: China’s Rural Left-behind Children Liaoning

0.458

0. 78

䖑ᅕ Jilin ঢ়ᵫ

Chongqi

401

2.206

3. 76

7.926

13. 52

3.347

5. 71

1.445

2. 46

0.081

0. 14

1.535

2. 62

1.524

2. 60

0.108

0. 18

3.734

6. 37

0.240

0. 41

58.61

100.00

ng 䞡ᑚ 0.186

0. 32

Sichuan ಯᎱ

Heilongji

0.248

0. 42

ang 咥啭

Guizhou 䌉Ꮂ

∳ Shanghai

0.030

0. 05

ቅϰ Jiangsu

ѥफ 2.797

4. 77

∳㢣 Zhejiang

1.169

1. 99

5.708

9. 74

1.526

2. 60

3.734

6. 37

फ

Ningxia ᅕ໣

1.693

2. 89

ቅϰ Henan ⊇

Qinghai 䴦⍋

㽓 Shandong

Gansu ⫬ 㙗

ᓎ Jiangxi ∳

Shanxi 䰩㽓

ᖑ Fujian ⽣

Xizang 㽓㮣

⌭∳ Anhui ᅝ

Yunnan

Xinjiang ᮄ⭚

4.804

8. 20

The Whole Country

Table 18-1: The population of rural left-behind children from each Chinese province and its percentage within the whole country The table indicates that 6 provinces account for over half of the total population of these left-behind children: Sichuan, Anhui, Henan,

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Chapter Eighteen

Guangdong, Hunan and Jiangxi. The pie chart below provides a clearer image of the distribution of these children:

Figure 18-1: The distribution of rural left-behind children in China

Ages and Educational Situation In the 2005 National report on rural left-behind children, the children are grouped into 4 subgroups by age: 0-5 years (preschool); 6-11 years (primary school); 12-14 years (junior secondary school); 15-17 years (senior secondary school). Table 18-2 shows the percentages of left-behind children by age:

Age 0-5 6-11 12-14 15-17 Total

Male 14.94 18.65 10.91 8.93 53.43

Age Structure (%) Female Male and Female 12.11 27.05 16.20 34.85 9.92 20.84 8.34 17.27 46.57 100.00

Table 18-2: Age structure of rural left-behind children

Growing Up without Care: China’s Rural Left-behind Children

403

From the Table, we can see that children under 12 years of age are more likely to be left at home, especially primary school children, while the older children are more likely to stay with their parents in urban areas, given that they can take care of themselves, leaving their parents free for work. However, and more importantly, many peasant-worker parents also believe that secondary school education in urban areas is better than in rural areas, and that therefore their children will have more job opportunities after graduation. Table 3, which is drawn from the same National Report, indicates the educational status of left-behind children:

Never been to school In school School-leavers Other Total

6-11 years 3.00 96.83 0.10 0.07 100.00

Age structure (%) 12-14 years 15-17 years 0.56 0.81 98.50 96.04 0.92 3.10 0.02 0.05 100.00 100.00

6-17 years 1.78 97.14 1.05 0.03 100.00

Table 18-3: Education situation of rural left-behind children As we can see, most children from all 4 subgroups are enrolled in school. However, there are still a number of school-leavers, especially at the junior secondary school level, where the percentage of leavers is 3.1%. Furthermore, although primary and junior secondary school education have been compulsory in China since 1986 (9-years compulsory education), the Report indicates that 1.78% of rural left-behind children have never been to school. The 3.00% of primary school children with no schooling at all is especially significant, given that this group is not only the most likely to be left at home, but also the one most likely to receive no education. The question naturally arises as to how these children are cared for and supervised once their parents have left them.

Who Takes Care of These Children? The 2005 Report classified 7 basic types of family structure for the left-behind children: living alone; living with father; mother; father and grandparents; mother and grandparents; grandparents; other relatives. Table 18-4 shows the percentage of children for each type of family structure:

404

Chapter Eighteen The type of family

Live alone Live with father Live with mother Live with father and grandparents Live with mother and grandparents Live with grandparents Live with other relatives Total

Percentage among the total population of rural left-behind children (%) 11.58 9.45 22.66 4.30 10.73 25.56 15.72 100.00

Table 18-4: Different types of family structures of rural left-behind children We can see that 86.25 % of these children live without their father’s supervision, while more than 40 % live with their grandparents, and over 25% are being cared for by their grandparents alone, who thus play an important role in their development. The Report indicates that most grandparents are under 69 years of age, so taking care of their grandchildren is not a major burden for them. However, the survey indicates that the main problem is that the grandparents generally have a very poor educational background, especially the grandmothers. Table 18-5 shows the ages and educational background of grandparents: Grandfather (%)

Ages

Education

Average

80 years Never been to school Primary school Junior secondary Senior secondary College

4.16 43.19 37.14 13.68 1.82 17.25 57.71 21.26 3.51 0.27 5.84 years

Grandmother (%) 8.34 47.64 31.00 11.59 1.40 50.56 43.46 5.64 0.33 0.02 3.16 years

Table 18-5: Ages and educational background of grandparents

Growing Up without Care: China’s Rural Left-behind Children

405

What Problems do These Children Have? Previous studies point to 3 major problems for these rural left-behind children. First, there are psychological problems. Numerous youth surveys from different areas of China indicate they have more significant psychological problems than children who live with their parents (Gao et al. 2007; Lan et al. 2009; Hu et al. 2010; Guo and Huang 2011). Anxiety and tensions in interpersonal relationship are the most common problems discussed. Second, there is a lack of proper supervision by guardians. Not surprisingly, the academic achievement of left-behind children is generally lower than that of children with proper supervision by their parents (Chen 2007; Gu and Yan 2007; Yang and Xie 2010). Juvenile delinquency is also a significant problem, as these children are often deprived of a proper family upbringing (Guo et al. 2009; He et al. 2011; Xu 2012). Third, protecting these children is a major problem. Children seperated from their parents are frequently victims of traffic and drowning accidents, abduction and personal injury, as well as sexual abuse for girls (Zhou et al. 2010; Wang and Hu 2011; Xiao 2011).

Solutions for Helping Rural Left-behind Children Since 2005, both the government and society at large have made an enormous effort to help these rural left-behind children. The local bureau of education and schools must maintain a special file for each child. The information recorded includes personal information about the child, his/her parents and current guardians, as well as contact information for all family members, so to keep children connected with their parents and guardians. Boarding school is also a solution for children without proper guardians. Since 2004, 10 billion RMB has been allocated for building boarding schools in rural areas, and children from all 23 provinces have benefited from this project. NGOs also play an important role, providing direct funding from various foundations and helping and supporting organised volunteers. Today, thanks to the concern and aid from all of society, the unfortunate situation of many rural left-behind children has been greatly improved. However, given the huge number of these children, and the economic imbalance that continues to exist between urban and rural areas, the problem of China’s rural left-behind children remains difficult, and much effort is still needed in order to solve it.

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Chapter Eighteen

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CONTRIBUTORS

Tania Becker Tania Becker is a PhD candidate at Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany. Raoul David Findeisen Raoul David Findeisen is professor of Oriental languages and literatures at Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia. Mariarosaria Gianninoto Mariarosaria Gianninoto is associate professor at Stendhal University in Grenoble, France. Jarkko Haapanen Jarkko Haapanen is a PhD candidate at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Shun-yee Ho Shun-yee Ho is assistant professor of Chinese literature at the University of Hong Kong. Tina Ilgo Tina Ilgo is assistant with PhD in the Department of Asian and African Studies at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. Charles Kwong Charles Kwong is professor of Chinese and comparative literature in the Chinese and Translation Departments at Lingnan University, Hong Kong. Liu Xi Liu Xi is a PhD candidate in the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Hong Kong. Ma Jun Ma Jun is a PhD candidate at Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris, and lecturer in the Department of Chinese Studies, University of Paris VII Diderot, France.

410

Contributors

Helena Motoh Helena Motoh is research assistant at the Science and Research Centre of Koper and assistant professor in the Faculty of Humanities (both at the University of Primorska, Slovenia). Mateja Petrovþiþ Mateja Petrovi is assistant professor of contemporary Chinese language in the Department of Asian and African Studies at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. Jana S. Rošker Jana S. Rošker is professor of Chinese philosophy and intercultural methodology in the Department of Asian and African Studies at the University of Ljubljana and Head of the Department of Asian and African Studies at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. Mitja Saje Mitja Saje is professor of Chinese history, politics and economy in the Department of Asian and African Studies at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. Eva Sternfeld Eva Sternfeld is assistant professor at the Technical University of Berlin and Head of the Center for Cultural Studies on Science and Technology in China at TU Berlin, Germany. Marija Šuler Marija Šuler is a PhD candidate in the Department of Asian and African Studies at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. Nataša Vampelj Suhadolnik Nataša Vampelj Suhadolnik is assistant professor of Chinese art history in the Department of Asian and African Studies at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. Martin Winter Martin Winter is a PhD candidate at the University of Vienna, Austria. Xuan Wang Xuan Wang recieved her PhD in the Department of Psychology at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.

INDEX

A aesthetic education, 236, 240, 241 Ai Weiwei 㢮ᵚᵚ, 6, 147, 153, 154, 155, 259, 260, 261, 262, 263, 264, 265, 267, 268, 270, 271, 272, 274, 275 anthology, 2, 5, 116, 193, 194, 195, 197, 200, 201, 202, 204, 205, 209 art, 3, 6, 43, 111, 115, 138, 147, 148, 149, 152, 153, 156, 173, 174, 195, 233, 235, 236, 237, 238, 239, 240, 241, 242, 243, 244, 245, 246, 248, 250, 251, 252, 253, 255, 259, 261, 262, 263, 264, 267, 271, 272, 273, 274, 277, 284, 336, 350, 410 Asian financial crisis, 361, 363, 366

B baihuawen ⲭ宅᮷, 113, 116 Birth Control Policy, 225 Byron, George Noel Gordon, 174

C Cai Yuanpei 㭑‫ݳ‬ษ, 236, 239, 240, 241, 251, 252, 285 causal historical narrative, 96 Central Committee, 34, 41, 353 Chen Duxiu 旰⤜⿰, 12, 23, 51, 57, 60, 63, 107, 123, 239, 240, 349 Chen Hengzhe 旰㺑ଢ, 114 Chen Shizeng 旰ⶰᴮ, 244, 245

Chen Shuren 旰㞹Ӫ, 242 children, 7, 187, 223, 227, 399, 400, 401, 402, 403, 404, 405, 406, 408 Chinese characteristics, 3, 33, 37, 41 Chinese Communist Party, 48, 55, 56, 59, 111, 147, 194, 195, 201, 206, 207, 208, 209, 349 Chinese identity, 5, 20, 21, 26, 88, 91, 96, 137, 142, 143, 153, 171, 172, 217, 242, 261, 272, 274 Chinese ink and brush, 248 Chinese language, 5, 6, 11, 13, 22, 49, 50, 101, 107, 113, 114, 116, 119, 128, 132, 136, 139, 141, 143, 172, 196, 270, 281, 287, 297, 299, 301, 302, 306, 307, 313 Chinese market, 5, 7, 34, 114, 197, 216, 219, 221, 228, 237, 273, 354, 355, 356, 357, 358, 362, 363, 364, 366, 368, 369, 370, 382 Chinese painting, 233, 234, 235, 237, 238, 239, 240, 241, 242, 243, 244, 245, 246, 250, 253, 254, 255 Chinese poetry, 57, 106, 118, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 140, 141, 142, 143, 150, 151, 152, 153, 155, 173, 174, 177, 194, 247 Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads, 262, 271, 272, 274 civil rights, 6, 147, 152, 259, 261, 262, 269

412

Index

class, 6, 26, 44, 53, 55, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 96, 112, 113, 138, 196, 215, 216, 217, 219, 224, 226, 227, 228, 368, 370, 381 classical language, 123, 125, 136, 140, 144 classical poetry, 125, 135, 136, 143 climate change, 378, 389 coal, 352, 353, 356, 373, 374, 375, 376, 378, 388, 389, 390, 395, 396 community, 25, 98, 206, 222, 225, 226, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 285, 286, 287, 288, 290, 291, 292, 298, 364 comparative philosophy, 28 Confucianism, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 22, 23, 24, 36, 38, 188, 265, 284 countryside, 155, 158, 216, 217, 221, 222, 223, 225, 352, 356, 399, 400, 402 Crevel, Maghiel van, 148, 156 critical realism, 171, 172, 175 cultural construction, 4, 34, 38, 40 Cultural Revolution, 14, 23, 25, 27, 108, 117, 150, 151, 155, 352, 358, 359

D dangdai ᔧҷ, 105, 107, 108, 110 Declaration, 18, 19, 40 Declaration for Cultural Construction on a Chinese Basis, 33, 36 Deng Xiaoping 㢥ᇣᑇ, 14, 24, 44, 353 Dict.cn, 307, 309, 310, 311, 312 DictALL, 307, 309, 310, 311, 312 distribution, 13, 72, 308, 401, 402

E economic growth, 7, 15, 85, 349, 350, 351, 352, 354, 355, 356,

357, 358, 359, 360, 361, 366, 367, 368, 369, 370, 374 economic policy, 350, 352, 354, 359, 360, 368 economic reforms, 14, 352, 354 education, 13, 14, 50, 51, 53, 57, 89, 90, 173, 187, 194, 205, 222, 224, 238, 240, 241, 245, 297, 301, 310, 351, 403, 404, 405 energy, 7, 351, 352, 353, 355, 356, 369, 370, 373, 374, 375, 376, 378, 379, 380, 381, 382, 383, 385, 388, 390, 394 energy efficiency, 378, 379, 380, 388 enlightened despotism, 75 environment, 7, 40, 301, 327, 355, 357, 369, 370, 378, 390, 394, 399 evolutionary outlook, 94 exhibition, 155, 237, 238, 253, 255, 261, 273, 275

F foreign investment, 354, 362 form of the government (zhengti ᬓ ԧ), 71, 72, 74, 76, 80, 81 form of the state (guoti ೑ԧ), 71, 72, 74, 76, 81 fossil fuel, 373

G Gao Jianfu 催䥔⠊, 236, 237, 238, 242, 248, 250 Gao Qifeng 催༛ዄ, 242 GDP, 357, 361, 368, 369, 375, 378, 379, 380, 388 gender, 6, 89, 158, 206, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 222, 225, 226, 227, 228 GINI index, 355 grass-mud horse (caonima 㤝⊹唚), 266, 267, 268, 270

Modernisation of Chinese Culture: Continuity and Change Great Leap Forward, 14, 25, 155, 351, 352, 358 group, 18, 33, 39, 127, 263, 272, 273, 285, 287, 288, 308, 358, 364, 402, 403 guohua painting ೑⬏ (national style painting, 235, 238, 242, 244, 248, 254, 255

H Han Han 呻ᆦ, 148 harmonize (hexie ੠冢), 269 harmony (he ੠), 29, 39, 42, 241, 265, 266, 269 He Bingsong ԩ⚇ᵒ, 36 He Weifang 䊔㸯ᮍ, 150 historiographic revolution, 4, 95 Hu Jintao 㚵厬⍯, 41, 265 Hu Shi 㚵䗖, 33, 34, 35, 38, 39, 51, 109, 110, 113, 114, 116, 118, 119, 123, 149, 194, 349 Hu Yaobang 㚵㗔䙺, 354 Huang Binhong 咘䪪㱍, 244 Huang Liang 煒ṕ, 151, 154, 155

I iCIBA, 305, 307, 309, 310, 311, 312, 313, 314 ideological cycle, 7, 359, 360, 361 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 362, 364, 365 internet, 6, 42, 115, 259, 260, 261, 262, 264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269 internet meme, 266, 267 iron room, 172, 179, 183

J Jin Shaocheng 䞥伦ජ, 244, 245

413

jindai 䖥ҷ, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 118

K Kaiming Bookstore, 193, 209, 212 Kropotkin, 53, 54, 56

L left-behind, 7, 399, 400, 401, 402, 403, 404, 405 Li Dazhao ᴢ໻匐, 23, 58 Liang Qichao ṕਃ䍙, 4, 50, 51, 58, 61, 71, 72, 74, 75, 78, 79, 80, 81, 85, 86, 87, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 99, 101, 102, 114, 115, 285, 286, 290 Liao Yiwu ᒪѺ℺, 150, 152, 153 Lin Biao ᵫᔾ, 358 Lin Fengmian ᵫ乼⳴, 241, 242, 243, 246, 250, 251, 255 Lingnan school ⼼फ⌒, 236, 237, 242 literary historiography, 106, 110, 111, 120 literati painting, 240, 245, 246, 247, 248 Liu Haisu ߬⍋㉳, 238, 239, 241, 243, 246, 248, 252, 255 Lu Xun 喴䖙, 5, 111, 117, 123, 125, 138, 149, 151, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 182, 183, 184, 186, 188, 194, 203

M Manchus, 346 Mao Zedong ↯䳊䢕, 14, 24, 25, 57, 106, 111, 140, 149, 171, 349, 358 Maoism, 24, 25

414

Index

Marxism, 12, 17, 22, 23, 25, 26, 53, 54, 55, 56, 58, 59, 61, 62, 63, 107, 112 May Fourth Movement, 12, 13, 16, 17, 35, 42, 47, 55, 205, 210, 299 MDBG, 307, 309, 310, 311, 312, 313 migrant worker, 149, 151, 154, 218, 219, 221, 228, 229, 357, 367, 399 modern Chinese literature, 123, 142, 171, 172, 173, 194 modern history writing, 94 modern identity, 171, 217, 222 modern language, 107 monetary system, 365 moon symbol, 172, 175, 177, 178, 179, 184, 187, 189

N Nanjing Decade, 194, 209 National Art Exhibition, 252, 253, 254, 255 national history, 92, 93, 96, 99, 274 Nationalist Party, 13, 194, 198, 201, 202, 207, 208, 209, 349 Nciku, 307, 309, 310, 311, 312 neologisms, 6, 266, 297, 298, 299, 300, 301, 302, 303, 304, 305, 306, 307, 308, 309, 311, 312, 313 New intellectuals, 13 New Life Movement, 35, 36, 38, 39, 40, 207 nuclear power, 380, 383, 385, 386, 387

O Old Summer palace (Yuanming Yuan 䨟ᯢು), 271, 274 online dictionaries, 6, 297, 300, 304, 305, 306, 310, 311, 313, 317 Opium War, 106, 271, 272, 281, 346

P People’s Republic of China, 14, 16, 261, 263, 268, 270, 349, 352, 358 population, 7, 13, 61, 150, 223, 224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 268, 349, 352, 355, 356, 369, 370, 373, 399, 400, 401 Population, 13, 352, 355, 369, 401 Provisional Constitution of the Republic of China, 80 public art, 6, 273 public space, 262, 269, 271, 272, 273, 274 purchasing power parity, 361

Q Qin Hui ⾺ᱝ, 150 Qunxue 㕸ᄺ, 281, 282, 284

R renewable energy, 378, 380, 383, 390 republicanism and nominal monarchy, 73 rhyme, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 137, 141, 160 river crab (hexie ⊇㷍), 265, 266, 267, 269 rural migrant women, 215, 217, 229

S Sa Mengwu 偣ᄳ℺, 36 Shehui ⼒Ӯ, 290, 293, 406 Shehuixue ⼒Ӯᄺ, 281, 288 Shenbao ⬇㦅, 109, 253 short fiction, 5, 194 social Darwinism, 91, 99

Modernisation of Chinese Culture: Continuity and Change socialism, 41, 43, 44, 48, 53, 54, 56, 57, 60, 61, 62, 289 society, 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 20, 21, 22, 25, 26, 29, 34, 36, 37, 38, 41, 43, 48, 51, 52, 53, 59, 60, 61, 81, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 112, 148, 149, 152, 154, 178, 188, 195, 196, 197, 199, 205, 210, 216, 217, 223, 224, 228, 234, 236, 237, 240, 244, 252, 254, 259, 262, 265, 268, 269, 270, 273, 274, 283, 286, 287, 288, 289, 290, 291, 297, 301, 303, 345, 346, 348, 352, 356, 359, 399, 405 sociological lexicon, 281, 282, 292 sociology, 3, 6, 57, 99, 100, 281, 282, 283, 284, 285, 286, 287, 288, 289, 291, 292 solution, 15, 50, 74, 78, 79, 223, 225, 234, 351, 353, 405 Sun Yat-sen 䪘Ёቅ, 75, 77, 79, 92, 236, 347 supervision, 42, 399, 404, 405 Suzhi ㋴凝, 223, 224, 225, 226, 228 symbolic elements, 172, 175, 189 symbolic realism, 173

T Ten Years, 5, 193, 194, 195 traditional Chinese historiography, 86, 87, 93, 95 translation strategies, 297, 300, 301, 304, 305

U urban modernity, 217, 219, 225, 226, 227 urbanisation, 356, 357

415

V vernacular poetry, 125, 126, 131, 133, 135, 137, 140, 141, 143

W wenyi fuxing ᭛們ᵵ䤥, 114 Western ideas, 6, 11, 12 Western painting, 243, 245, 248, 253, 254, 255 World Bank, 362, 364, 375 World Trade Organisation (WTO), 362, 364, 373 Wuchang Uprising, 1, 73, 75, 76

X xiandai ⦄ҷ, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109 xin guohua ᮄ೑⬏(New National Painting, 242 Xin qingnian ᮄ䴦ᑈ (New Youth), 12, 52, 53, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 116, 123, 171, 173, 236, 239 Xinhai revolution, 235 Xu Beihong ᕤᚆ噙, 241, 243, 246, 247, 248, 249

Y Yahoozidian, 307, 309, 310, 311, 312, 313 Yan Fu 䢘ᵵ, 51, 109, 282, 283, 284, 285, 290 Yan Jun 丣ዏ, 148 Yihetuan 㠼੠䨚, 346, 347 Yuan Shikai 㹕Ϫ䥁, 72, 73, 75, 76, 79, 80

Z Zhang Kangkang 䬤ᡫᡫ, 5, 149, 215, 217

416 Zhao Ziyang 刚㋿䰇, 354 Zheng Xiaoqiong 䜁ᇣ⪞, 149, 151, 158, 159 Zhi Ma 㡱咏, 5, 215, 216, 217, 218, 228

Index Zhou Yang ਼䮆, 111, 112, 113 Zhu Wen ᴅ᭛, 149, 150