20201228 trans

Cao Runxin 曹润鑫

Zhu Ziqing

A third example, where an author shows another face in his essays is Zhu Ziqing. He is known as the author of the most often reprinted story-like Chinese essay "Back View" (Beiying), a standard school text. The success of this essay lies in the fact, that it applies to filial pity. From the reported fare-well scene with his father at the train station, he learned that his father loved him and that he had grown-up too now.

Chang Huiyue 常慧月

This self-reflective essay helped Zhu to find himself through the observation of the other (here his father). The 2nd often printed essay is also from Zhu. Parallelistic and repetitive structures are the driving factor in the atmospherical nebulous lyrical landscape desription "The Moonlit Lotus Pond", whose style easily may seem mannerist to the Western reader.

Zhu Ziqing supposedly opposed all political engagement and, wrote about unspectacular things. In Taiwan he became a type of substitute for the categorically refused state writer of the People’s Republic, Lu Xun, mainly because of Zhu’s supposed political independence.

Chen Han 陈涵

I would like to show with three examples that Zhu had absolutely clear political ideas: He had taken part in the demonstration March 18, 1926, which ended in a massacre. Zhu described this in "Report On the Massacre of the Government"[ (Zhizhengfu da tusha ji).].

Shots were still being fired, and the entrance of the east gate was packed with people. [...] Pushing and shoving, we climbed over them with great effort. We must have lost our senses then, not seeing, to our shame, the grotesqueness of our action.

Chen Hui 陈惠

[...]I was still walking on top of the people. No one dared to miss a single step, filing through the gate that divided safety from danger, one that would give us life or take our lives away. [...] My efforts finally brought me down to the ground, sealing my fate as I rolled down from the human pile. [...] I learned later that some of the people by the gate were dead, killed by the pistol squad firing from the other side of the gate. When I recall stepping over dead bodies, I cannot help but tremble with fear. [...]

Chen Jiangning 陈江宁

From this experience, Zhu addresses directly the repsonsible political leaders:

Duan Qirui, you must think about it! [...] How could we explain this to the world? [...] Granted, Duan Qirui and others could commit such atrocities without a thought; but how could we, the people of China, face the world with such a shameless government? [...] We, [...], must ask, „So many were killed—what should we do?“

Chen Jiaxin 陈佳欣

In contrast, Lu Xun has portrayed the same massacre with sighing undertone and Zhou Zuoren bitter-humorously in his "Ways to die"[ (Si fa).] - in which he finds "to be shot" the best method to die. The supposedly less politically engaged Zhu shows here more engagement.

The essay "Facing the New China"[ (Xin Zhongguo zai wang zhong).] is Zhu's political manifest: He asks for democracy, enlightenment and an increase of the education level.

Chen Jingjing 陈静静

China has to be born again through democratization. [...] The people should express their own will, concentrate on their own strength. Every level of administration should build up on the expressed will and strength of the people and struggle for the majority and its greatest happiness. This means that the people govern, the people own, the people enjoy.

A few weeks before his death, he demanded in the speech "Today's duty of the Intellectuals"[ (Zhishifenzi jintian de renwu).] the participation of the intellectual in the struggle for a better society.

Chen Sha 陈莎

With only a handful of essays I have demonstrated, that the picture of these three authors changes substantially, if we read carefully also their less known essayistic work. Imagine now how the picture of 20th century Chinese literature might change, if the literary histories and anthologies would not only tell the history of drama, fiction and poetry, but would also grant the essay its proper place. The following part of my paper are results of my monograph on the 20th century Chinese essay.

Chen Sunfu 谌孙福

The essay boom as a mirror reflecting growing individuality, participation in the public sphere, and the giddy-paced character of modern Chinese society

Acquiring an overview of the essay and assessing its essence has required extensive research in bookstores and libraries, in the People's Republic of China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and the United States for available resources in the form of essay book collections as well as secondary literature dealing with the essay.

Chen Yongxiang 陈永相

I built a database for a statistical analysis to rank more than 5000 essays and 1400 essayists. It turned out that out of the top 60 most famous Chinese essays only 14 had been translated into English so far. The forthcoming collection of Tam King-fai adds 4 and my own one the remaining 42.

Analysis reveals a general increase in essay publication after 1979 with two peaks immediately after the 'Cultural Revolution'. The publications apparently reaching a new height in 1990. The first increase came about in the 1920s and 1930s, after which the essay's role was eclipsed by the genre of the report[ (baogao wenxue) (Klaschka 1998).].

Cheng Yusi 成于思

The flourishing of essay publication in the 1920/30s and 1980/90s was helped in part by the appearance of new magazines that existed chiefly as vehicles for contemporary essayists, and numerous essay bookseries[ sanwen congshu 散文叢書.].

The reason for the increase in essay production, which we can date right after the clear-cutting of the ‘Cultural Revolution’ has been the backlog of demand, which is reflected in 1 million copies of essay collections being printed between 1980 and 1982 - only counting the collections contained in the sampling of 130 ‘representative’ books I was able to collect for the survey. There are three reasons for the increase in Chinese essay production and popularity in the mid-1990s:

Deng Jinxia 邓锦霞

1, The giddy-paced nature of current Chinese society with its demands for diverting and short texts, as Hall has put it: “[...] we live in an age of exposition”[ (Hall 1984:xiii).].

2, The increasing consciousness of individuality for which the essay is the most direct form of subjective expression, even more direct than the poem with its metrical and formal demands.

3, A revival of interest in discussing socio-political issues through the medium of the essay, as was the case in the 1920s/30s.

Ding Daifeng 丁代凤

If we look carefully at essay collections not only published in the United States, but also in Hong Kong, Taiwan and the People’s Republic, we find the following three reasons for the under- and overestimation of single essayists or essays which correspond to regional differences:

1, EXOTIC In the United States, essays are often chosen according to Western taste and totally unknown authors are given as much space as established ones.

Fang Jieling 方洁玲

2, SOCIO-POLITICAL In Taiwan, Lu Xun has been banned for a long time, but today, as the mentioned survey proofs, he ranks 12th among modern authors there. Wang Meng has been overestimated in the People’s Republic of China due to his political post.

3, PERSONAL Hong Kong literature on Yu Guangzhong has been censored by his disciple Huang Weiliang in favor for Yu.[ (see Lin Yaode 1989:50).]

Having named reasons for the essay boom and for the support for and the suppression of different actors in the cultural field of the essay, I would like to finish my paper by naming a few trends of the essay as they appear at the eve of the century.

Gan Fengyu 甘奉玉

The topical development of political essays sees a shift from the enlightenment-educational essay, which emerged in 1907, to the daily-political essays in the 1920-30s, further to anti-Japanese propaganda in the 1940s and ideological propaganda in the 1950s and 1960s. Whilst the 1980s saw a revival of political issues in terms of discussion on the best system of society, (also in literature in general and in film) to a mere unpolitical and again more philosophical-moral theme spectrum in the 1990s, where essayists define their role, first of all to counterpart the consumer-orientation of the masses. The essay seems to be the only genre in China which has kept its educational claim with the exception of essays which claim to be "art pourt l'art".

Gao Mingzhu 高明珠

The topical development of the unpolitical essay starts with the everyday-topics of Zhu Ziqing ("On dreams"[ "Shuo meng 說夢" On dreams in: Zhu Ziqing 1928.]) and Zhou Zuoren from 1917 ("My own garden"[ 9.1923.], "The Fly"[ 1924.], "Reading on the Toilet"[ 1936.]), with a caesura 1927, when the political essays became the main stream, until the late 1930s, when the unpolitical essay was eliminated totally by the anti-Japanese movement. It didn't recover until the 1970s, when life turned back to normality and normal things became topics of interest because of their long absence. Again in the 1990s, the unpolitical essay boomed also due to less interest in political issues and the need for a new orientation in the newly encountered world of mass consumerism.

Gong Yumian 龚钰冕

In the end of this century not the governmentally demanded affirmative texts stand at the forefront, but unpolitical essays, mostly dating from the Republican era, especially from the years 1923 to 1928. This observation is supported by the results of the mentioned statistical analysis. Among the upper list places of the political essay after 1949 there are critical essays. For the most often selected essays in the People’s Republic, Taiwan and Hong Kong, moral and aesthetic criteria seem to have underlain.

Gu Dongfang 顾东方

A sign for the increasing independence of the editors of essay anthologies from governmental or ideological handicaps, and for the increasing commercialization of the publishing houses with an orientation for customers (former: "readers"). Following the emotional essays of Zhu Ziqing who rank 1st and 2nd, nostalgia is the element of emotional identification in "Wild vegetables of my home region" by Zhou Zuoren, which ranks 3rd[ In Jia Pingwa's "Moon traces", which ranks 11, and in Ba Jin's "Paradise for Birds", which ranks 19]. Therefore one can state, that moving essays form the top.

Guan Qinqing 管钦清

In 1927, Chinese literature took the form of 'engaged literature'. In the 1980/90s, the discussion of politics in daily interest form a smaller part than in the 1920/30s. In the 1980s all genres including poems and essays were used for the critic against the master narrative of Communism or the Maoist understanding of art as serving ideology. In the later half of the 1990s, the master narrator himself seems to be lost within the subjectivity of individuals and everyday's profaneity and banality of a more and more formally organized but substantially empty citylife.

Gui Yizhi 桂一枝

In the 1990s, the essayistic culture of political criticism of the 1980s has vanished, the only remiscent element left is the patriotism.[ Trends like the use of ordinary language, which one finds in novels since 1993 (Jia Pingwa, Feidu; Gu Cheng, Yingger) and New Borderlessness since 1995, cannot be proven in the essaywriting.The reason that we do not find post-modernist essays in the sense of post-modernist fiction lies in the directness of the essay: The essay as a genre is a chat between author and reader and not an object d'art which wants to give cause for different interpretations or which would depend on exceptional form or contents or even quotations of pre-modern characteristics in order to make it an distinguishable object d'art.]

References [partly mentioned with German translation] （不用翻）

Vera Schwarcz 1996, Vera Schwarcz, "The pain of sorrow: public uses of personal grief in modern China", in Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Winter 1996)

Ba Jin 1982, Ba Jin: "Yi feng huixin 一封回信" (Ein Antwortbrief (26.10.1982)), in: Bing zhong ji 病中集 (Auf dem Krankenlager), Hongkong 香港 1984(?) (Series Suixiang lu 隨想錄 (Thoughts) Bd 4), 147 pp.

Ba Jin 1982a, Ba Jin: "Yi pian xuwen 一篇序文" (Ein Vorwort) [dated 1982.9/10], in: Ba Jin: Auf dem Krankenlager 1984

Ba Jin 1956, Ba Jin 巴金: "Duli sikao 獨立思考" (Unabhängig denken), in: Li Jisheng 李濟生, Li Xiaolin 李小林 (Hgg.): Ba Jin liushi nian wenxuan (1927 - 1986), Suixiang lu, zagan, sanwen, xuba, yanjiang, shuxin 巴金六十年文選（１９２７－１９８６）隨想錄·雜感·散文·序跋· 演講·書信 (Ba Jin. Werkauswahl aus 60 Jahren (1927 - 1986), Gedanken, vermischte Gefühle, Essays, Vor- und Nachworte, Reden, Briefe), Shanghai 上海: Shanghai wenyi chubanshe 上海文藝出版社 (Literatur- und Kunstverlag Shanghai), 1986.12, S. 461 - 462 [Datiert auf 1956.]

Ba Jin 1962, "Zuojia de yongqi yu zerenxin 作家的勇氣與責任心" (Mut und Verantwortungsbewußtsein der Schrifsteller) 1962; der Essay von Zhou Zuoren 周作人: "Wenxue tan 文學談" (Über Literatur), in: Tan long ji 談龍集 (Über Drachen. Sammlung), Shanghai 上海: Kaiming shudian 開明書店 (Kaiming Buchladen) 1927.12, Nachdruck: Hongkong 香港: Shiyong shuju 使用書局 (Praxisverlag) 1972.1, 310 S., S. 165 - 167

Zhou Zuoren 1919, Zhou Zuoren, "Zuxian chongbai 1919 (Ancestor Worship)," in Early Essays, op.cit., pp. 78

Zhou Zuoren 1920: Zhou Zuoren 周作人, Xin wenxue de yaoqiu 新文學的要求" (The demand of the New Literature) [lecture], in Beiping shaonian xuehui 北平少年學會 (Beiping youth conference) 1920.1.6, in: Zhang Ruoying 長若英: Xin wenxue yundong shi ziliao 新文學運動史資料 (Material on the history of the New Literature movement), Shanghai 上海: Guangming shuju 光明書局 (Guangming bookstore) (1934.9) ²1936.9, 291-296

Zhou Zuoren 1923, Zhou Zuoren: Yanzhicao ba (Preface to Yu Pingbo's Yanzhicao), in: Yongri ji (Book of Eternal Day), Shanghai: Beixin shuju 1929, 180-181

Zhou Zuoren 1929, Zhou Zuoren: Ertong de shu (The books of children), in: Chenbao fukan (1923.8.17)

Zhou Zuoren yuanliu, Zhou Zuoren: Zhongguo xin wenxue de yuanliu (Sources of New Chinese Literature), p 71

Zhou Zuoren 1932, Zhou Zuoren: Lun baguwen 1932, in: Kanyun ji p. 148

Source: NEAAS annual meeting 10/09/1999 New Haven (Yale University)

Guo Lu 郭露

Modern Chinese Literature and the Essay Genre: A New Perspective

Martin Woesler

In this paper, I will not recount the contents and propose interpretations of any essays, nor will I outline the main topics or styles of essaywriting in China, but I would like to take the opportunity to reflect a little bit on the phenomenon of the genre itself and discuss some conclusions and hypotheses with the attentive and critical audience which can be found at only a few places on earth, EALC at Harvard definitely being one of them.

Han Haiyang 韩海洋

1. The unknown genre

The literary-historical narrative told by anthologies and collections of the 20th century has drawn an incomplete picture of Chinese literature: The genre of the essay was lacking. In my paper I will ask, if the picture of literature can remain unchanged, if we take into consideration also the essay. The genre has been neglected for a long time as a genre of merit (Margouliès 1949, Schmidt-Glintzer 1990) or overlooked (McNaughton 1974, Leiden 1988-90, McDougall 1998);

Han Wanzhen 韩宛真

whereas its elder brother, fiction, has been prized ever since the valuing of fictional literature and the vernacularisation of writing in early Republican China, which followed from the master narrative established by the May 4th movement. Modern anthologies would have the reader believe that a triumvirate of poetry, fiction and drama forms the backbone of modern Chinese literary output.

He Changqi 何长琦

Excursion: Defining the essay as a non-fictional subjective representation in a free form

Similar to international literature, the basic subdivision of literature in China in general is one in three types: epic (with xiaoshuo (fiction), sanwen (non-fictional prose)), lyrics (shige) and drama (xiqu). Though there is no pure epic form, fiction and prose are often jointly addressed with the Chinese term "wu yunwen" which corresponds to the term "epic" in the West. The types may be distinguished roughly by their nature in the following way: In the epic, bygone events are retold, a broad, filled story dominates the foreground.

Hu Baihui 胡百辉

In the lyrics, the reader is encouraged to feel the current sensations and often confessionlike feelings of the poet. The drama recalls a self-contained action directly in monologue or dialogue and in this way unburdens the re-creative imagination of the readers/spectators through it. The essay as a genre of the epic is a detached non-fictional subjective representation in a free form.

Hu Huifang 胡慧芳

"Essay", Chinese mostly sanwen, is a genre term for shorter, self-contained non-fictional prose texts, in which the author tries to mediate individual experiences on an object or a question out of subjective I-perspective. This it tries associatively and from different sides, not as a text for daily use, but with artistic or educationally demanding means of language, nevertheless in an accessible form. The resource is mastered by the essayist sovereignly and the topic is seen in a larger context and can even be presented humorously. Freedom in form and content is essential for the essay.

Hu Jin 胡瑾

Different perspectives range in the international genre of the essay: Genres are primarily divisions of literature through the scholarship of literature for specialized contemplation and in order to be able to compare similar texts more easily. On the other hand, a subcategorization in numerous small entities, like Zheng Mingli does with the essay, questions the sense of such subdivisioning in reference to hermeneutic findings. One must also stay aware of the changing nature of literature itself and the relativity of the scientific perspective, which is still a timely one, even if its accepted internationally.

Ji Tiantian 纪甜甜

Regional deviations seem less important for the essay than for established genres like short stories, novels etc., and far less important than for poems. All these other genres are seen as international genres. My hypothesis, that the Chinese and the Western essay also belong to the same international genre maybe proved by the crosscultural mutualities both in form and content.

Jiang Fengyi 蒋凤仪

In the 21st century, the world is growing together and culture is mainly determined by the grade of modernization. The Chinese essay, as we find it in newspapers today, has taken on the form and content of the Western essay and is aimed at a target group comparable to that of the Western essay. This is a second hint that the modern Chinese essay belongs to the international genre of the essay.

Jiang Hao 姜好

Even though the translation of duanpian xiaoshuo with short stories is commonly accepted, both are less closely related than the Western essay and its Chinese counterpart. The definition, which I developed out of a sample of more than 5000 modern Chinese essays, fits also the special international understanding of the essay (following Bolz 1992 13:269-272 on the development of the western essay; Butrym 1989 on the theory of the western essay).

Jiang Qiwei 蒋淇玮

Besides the trend towards a globalized society, first expressed in Zhou Zuoren's call to adopt the English essay style, there are special local characteristics of the Chinese essay. How is the Chinese essay to determine culturally, what makes it "Chinese"? In the occidental essay the form seems to be a more important criterion of differentiation than in its Chinese counterpart. In China even those texts are included, which have only a similar content, but cross the borders of the formal generical framework.

Kang Haoyu 康浩宇

This can be shown with Zheng Mingli, who subcategorises the "unfinished diary" or the "unfinished letter". Those texts belong - within the Western context - to texts of personal use and therefor to the non-fictional prose works. Only after they have been altered into essays (Zheng Mingli: "essay in diary form" and "essay in letter form"), they are accepted as essays.

Kang Lingfeng 康灵凤

The Chinese understanding of the genre is tendencially broader

This tendencial broader understanding of the essay in China can be traced back directly to the connotation, that the term sanwen possesses in Chinese: wú yùnwén "non-rhythmic prose", which originally meant all non-fictional prose. In this broader meaning, also texts for personal or everyday use are included. However I deal only with sanwen in the narrower meaning "short literary essay pieces".

Further differences are that Chinese essays often have ideological contents and show stylistic characteristics like repetitions and the usage of sayings.

Kong Xianghui 孔祥慧

The Chinese essay is booming again in the 1980s and 1990s

Analysis reveals a general increase in essay publication after 1979 with two peaks immediately after the 'Cultural Revolution'. The publications apparently reaching a new height in 1990. The first increase came about in the 1920s and 1930s, after which the essay's role was eclipsed by the genre of the report (baogao wenxue).[ Klaschka 1998.] The flourishing of essay publication in the 1920/30s and 1980/90s was helped in part by the appearance of new magazines that existed chiefly as vehicles for contemporary essayists, and numerous sanwen congshu 散文叢書 (essay bookseries).

Kong Yanan 孔亚楠

The increase in essay production right after the clear-cutting of the ‘Cultural Revolution’ has been the backlog of demand, which is reflected in 1 million copies of essay collections being printed between 1980 and 1982 - only counting the collections contained in a sampling of 130 ‘representative’ books I was able to collect for a survey.

Thanks to the work of some major Chinese editors, the whole essay culture was compiled from magazines and newspapers and was published in a flood of anthologies since the 1970s. This boom is comparable to the cultural fever of undigging xiangtu literature, which rose in Taiwan in front of the background of the movement of self-identification and independance.

Lei Fangyuan 雷方圆

2. Why is the essay as abundant as fiction?

Let me name a few reasons, why the essay in fact is as abundant as its prose brother, fiction, and its lyrical sister, poetry, and why it must be valued as highly:

- The essay had a direct impact on Chinese society throughout history (the reform ideas from the end of the Qing dynasty through the May Fourth period with the literary theorethical pieces and the daily political zawen of Lu Xun, until today are mostly presented in essay form). The impact on literary reflection and theory is shown in the collection "Modern Chinese Literary Thought" 1996. The effect of the essay genre with its direct language, its connection to life (e.g. its role in the coming to terms with the cultural revolution), and its direct access to the individual reader through newspapers. This impact is larger than the indirect one of fiction or poetry. The poem is the genre of retreat from social life, from political issues and time references.

Lei Kuangxi 雷旷溪

Hu Shi argues, that poetry is most important in the process of modernity, since poetry rises emotions. But it relies also on images and on linguistic rhythm. Liang Qichao stresses the role of novel and opera in the changing society. But sanwen is able to name things, it reflects life, caleidoscopic. Modern subjectivity is constructed with the tool of sanwen.

- The essay also reflects trends in the society better than poetry and fiction: Individualism is expressed in the essay more directly than in the poem with its limitation in content and form. Ephemerality is reflected in the short form of the essay, which may be read in the subway on the way to work, where poems may not be so spontaneously enjoyed.

Li Haiquan 李海泉

- The essay reaches a larger part of the population than poetry, the amount of time spended on reading novels goes back, too. The essay itself a genre of high actuality, if not simply the genre of today.

- The essay tells us more about an author and his time than fiction or poetry, because in this genre, we encounter the author himself without metrical restrictions. We look trough authentic eyes on his contemporary society. Many authors turned to essay writing in the later periods of their lifes, like Lu Xun, Ba Jin, and Wang Meng.

Li Lili 李丽丽

- The volume of essay production exceeds the volume of xiaoshuo production: Chinese newspapers since the 1870s on[ Shenbao, Shibao etc. Liang Qichao sees the role of the newspaper both as liberal and authoritative: He understands the press as an institution to control the government, on the other hand he favors censorship.] and as a mass media from the early 20th century presented only one or two fictional stories in a serialized form, but invented essay columns like zagan (from which Lu Xun developed his zawen), suibi or suixiang (from which famous collections like Ba Jin's Suixiang lu derived).