20201130 trans

Cao Runxin 曹润鑫

A good example to illustrate this is the cuisine that is often still defined by national borders (but certainly also in even smaller regional units). The existence of Italian cuisine is undisputed, but you don't have to go to Italy to eat quite authentic Italian food. Of course, there have always been Europeanized variations of Chinese cuisine (e.g. with thickened sauces), and the Istanbul native who orders a kebab in Germany will be surprised that he is served flat bread and not a plate of cutlery.

Eating habits, especially at breakfast, seem to be difficult to change, so that the author did not get used to the Chinese breakfast (rice soup with salty vegetable side dish) in China for years.

Chang Huiyue 常慧月

When Italian spaghetti with bolognese sauce was announced one lunchtime in the cafeteria of Beijing University, the joy was great, at least until the dish could be tasted. Obviously only the outward appearance had been preserved here, the appearance of the spaghetti largely corresponded to that which one can see in cookbooks. However, in terms of taste it was a catastrophe, the tomatoes used had obviously been understood by the cook not as vegetables but as fruit and the noodles had been overcooked for an extra long time.

Also with the enterprises there are such cultures, German enterprises are considered e.g. in many countries as well organized. Even manufacturing processes for the same products often differ from country to country, but are increasingly standardized worldwide, especially when a company has a patented process in several countries.

Chen Han 陈涵

This can lead to interesting national solutions when the same task is set, namely to design a street cleaning vehicle:

Street cleaning vehicle a) China

Street cleaning vehicle b)

Since the 1990s, the author has personally experienced the differences in working in a foreign Chinese software company in America (e.g. PC Express, later TwinBridge in Los Angeles), in a Chinese software company on the mainland (e.g. Suntendy, Beijing), in a German company in China and in a German-Chinese mixed company. These personal experiences flow into the present booklet.

Thus, the term culture here is largely synonymous with tradition or philosophy, whereby tradition appears to be related to the past and philosophy often appears as reflected culture reduced to a few principles, and thus already consciously controlled and teleological. For these reasons, the author has chosen the term culture in the present context.

Chen Hui 陈惠

Japanese production culture is known to us, the Chinese (here abbreviated CMPC) has hardly been investigated in literature, so this booklet has a pioneering character.

In this booklet, the author draws on Geert Hofstede's comparative cultural model, which he discussed with him at the LMU in Munich on January 22, 2009, on fundamental observations on the Chinese economy from a macro perspective by Philip Huang, and on the results of a field study by Jianzhong Hong, Aino Pöyhönen, Kalevi Kyläheiku 1998-2000 (see bibliography).

This booklet was prepared to be presented at the conference "Beyond Japan - Values and Attitudes of Asian Production Cultures" in autumn 2010. The author is grateful to Dirko Thomsen, AutoUni Wolfsburg, who invited the author to contribute to the conference.

Chen Jiangning 陈江宁

Approaches/Perspectives

The distinction between craftsman culture and trader culture has been established for some time. This means that in an economy, more emphasis is placed on developing products that are as perfect as possible, and constantly improving them. A dealer culture places more value on the profit that is made between the cheapest possible purchase and the most expensive possible sale. This distinction becomes clear when we examine a typical case of complaint:

If a customer complains a product in a craftsman culture, then the salesman is concerned, offers an error free exchange product or a financial compensation and reports the product error further, sends the equipment possibly in, with the goal of letting the error, if it should occur e.g. at several devices, in principle of letting the development department eliminate the error.

Chen Jiaxin 陈佳欣

In a dealer culture the service and satisfaction of the customer is more important, here it is more important to see if the customer is angry and reacts accordingly to his complaint with apologies and compensation offers. Feedback to the manufacturer is of secondary importance.

Here are some of the countries that fall under the relevant categories:

Craftsmen's Culture Retailer Culture

Germany, France Poland, USA, China, Korea

Another distinction is made between production and design cultures.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, a production culture developed in mechanical engineering in the USA, whereas in Germany a construction culture developed.

Chen Jingjing 陈静静

The experience of rationalization in the U.S. with the pioneer Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915) was quickly received in Germany, among other things by establishing chairs of business administration in Berlin in 1904, Aachen in 1908 and Hanover in 1910. Accordingly, I follow Kunze in 2008 when he rejects Kothes' assertion that German production culture before 1914 is backward.

In Germany as a culture of craftsmen, a diversification of products developed early on, which was made possible by constantly optimizing the product. Even in teams, the focus is still on the highly qualified individual who does his part of the teamwork independently and assumes responsibility.

Chen Sha 陈莎

In the USA, the goal is rather the production of a cost-effective mass product. Responsibility was delegated to teams and budget control was introduced to control these teams. However, this is more in keeping with the lawnmower principle and does not apply to the appropriateness of the individual special product or the individual employee.

This can be illustrated in an overview:

Chen Sunfu 谌孙福

The Japanese Production Culture

After World War II, Japan did not have as many investments available as Germany, for example, through the Marshall Plan. Out of necessity, the Japanese economy therefore did what was possible, namely an optimization of existing machines, processes and personnel. This also resulted in the development of a special national production culture, the characteristics of which can be seen in an overview:

Chen Yongxiang 陈永相

Today, the Japanese production philosophy is considered the pacemaker for new production technologies and the benchmark for modern industrial nations. Former Porsche boss Wendelin Wiedeking is an admirer and imitator of the Toyota Production System: "Toyota is synonymous with consistency". It is the international standard by which the modernity of a factory is measured.

The basic idea of the Japanese model was that storage costs were incurred because more was produced than purchased. So technologies were developed which ensured that the product was only (re)produced when the customer bought the product (production on demand). The higher costs of producing a single item are more than compensated by the savings in intermediate storage (and, in the case of slow-moving items, final storage) of products. This procedure is successfully used today, for example, in book production.

Cheng Yusi 成于思

More important, however, is the idea that there should be as few production interruptions as possible, and if so, that these should be eliminated as quickly as possible. A typical phenomenon on the construction site is that work stops because a certain part / material to be installed has not been delivered on time. In production plants, a machine in the assembly line production breaks down and the whole production is stopped. This is where the Japanese philosophy comes into play, training the individual employee to the extent that he or she can repair minor defects on their own and assigning the responsibility to them to do so. For larger defects, a central team is available.

Deng Jinxia 邓锦霞

This motivates them to ensure that these smaller defects do not occur in the first place and not only repairs the defect, but also thinks of a way to ensure that this defect does not occur in the future, i.e. they not only repair the defect, but also the cause of the defect.

With production on demand, interruptions in production would also be conceivable if demand were to decline. Ideally, production then adjusts, i.e. it runs correspondingly slower or faster, depending on how strong demand is at the moment. The most important thing is that production is uninterrupted and trouble-free.

Ding Daifeng 丁代凤

The Japanese reward system works in a similar way for innovations introduced by individual employees involved in the production process. Here, it is important that the person who had the idea receives a relevant sum of money immediately and unbureaucratically, long before the idea is implemented.

Another element are the quality circles or Kaizen teams. These are smaller working groups that are responsible for a small part of the production. They should meet once at the beginning and then regularly at least once a week to openly discuss suggestions for improvement.

Recently, other Japanese elements of production culture have also been mentioned, such as multi-divisional structures and decentralization. They are also found in the American production culture.

Fang Jieling 方洁玲

The Japanese production culture, whose optimization was born out of necessity, proved to be more competitive than the cultures of other countries, which is why it quickly became the model, even the epitome, of modern production culture, and in the 1960s and 1970s it began a worldwide triumphal march.

China - Factory of the world

Today, however, China has replaced Japan and the other classic industrial nations as the factory of the world.

It also leads the emerging markets worldwide.

In the projection of economic performance, Goldmann/ Sachs sees China ahead of the USA, India and Germany.

Gan Fengyu 甘奉玉

So China is today again (after the period 0 A.D. until about 1200 A.D.) the leading economy in the world. One of the characteristics of the Chinese production culture is its continuity. For thousands of years, China has been producing products such as silk, tea, porcelain, etc. without interruption. Even though Chinese production was not a world leader in the period 1200 to 2000 A.D., it remained at a roughly constant level for a long time before it caught up with the Industrial Revolution in a rapid development. Such a long production culture is without equal worldwide.

Gao Mingzhu 高明珠

It is still important to bear in mind that China is once again growing to become the leading economic nation, but in this most populous country not all Chinese are yet benefiting equally from this leadership role. This is easy to see when comparing the absolute figures (e.g. GDP in country comparison or related to the growth of its own GDP) with the relative figures (GDP/capita). Here is one such comparison with the USA:

I would like to start my analysis of the importance of production culture with a few questions:

Does the production culture have anything to do with the rapid increase? Is it perhaps the cause of the increase?

Obviously, the Chinese production culture has not been an international model for modern production culture. Could the reason for this be the problem that the production culture is culture-specific? What other reasons could there be? Are these reasons justified?

In order to find clues to answer these questions, the Chinese production culture is examined and defined below.

Gong Yumian 龚钰冕

Genuity of Chinese production culture

The Silk Road has been documented since about the 5th century BCE, but gene analysis proves that it was used to trade domesticated plants and animals in both directions already about 10 millenia BCE. There is also proof of cultural exchange through this trade road. The following products manufactured in China were traded on it:

·Silk

·Tea

·Spices

·Ceramics/Porcellain

·Jade

·Bronze

·Lacquerware/Paints

·Iron

·Paper

·Gunpowder

·Furs etc.

The Silk Road was of course used in both directions, gold, precious stones and for a long time glass were imported into China. If the New Silk Road can be built with rail roads, it will lower the costs and time of shipping several times compared to the current maritime container shipping.

Gu Dongfang 顾东方

With the world's largest merchant ships, junks, which could hold up to 4000 tons, China also dominated maritime trade for centuries. Already in the 3rd century B.C. the Emperor's Canal was built in China for inland navigation.

Previous picture: Chinese junk from the year 1804.[ John Barrow, „Travels in China: containing descriptions, observations, and comparisons, made and collected in the course of a short residence at the Imperial palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a subsequent journey through the country from Pekin to Canton“, Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12.1.2010, ISBN 9781153190947, 302 pp., p. 59.]

Ming period junk (14th century).

In the period from the birth of Christ until 1200 A.D., China had the highest gross domestic product in the world. Only in 1200 was China overtaken by Western Europe.

Guan Qinqing 管钦清

Between 1200 and about 2000, China lagged far behind the West and was considered a developing country. Nevertheless, from 1700 until today, China has experienced the same population explosion as America and Europe.

While Europe ensured the food supply of the larger population at the end of the 18th century with the Industrial Revolution, China slept through this development and caught up with it in fast motion from 1900 with its first factories, from 1950 with centrally planned larger production units and from 2000 with private enterprises, at first mainly joint ventures, which led to an uneven development in the country.

Gui Yizhi 桂一枝

The example of silk production in Japan and China already reveals the first differences in the production culture:

In Japan, a loom was introduced that was copied thousands of times without a license, thus ensuring a nationwide standard. Silk from Japan was always woven in the same way, and buyers could always rely on the same product quality.

In China there were various independent production facilities and regional traditions. So silk from China was of a variable quality.

Another aspect of Chinese production culture is the ethnic component:

·Western companies have better cards in China if they use Chinese middlemen.

·Chinese companies that are active in Africa export their entire business model including employees, cook, buildings.

Guo Lu 郭露

Nevertheless, today's Chinese production culture is no longer genuine, but is also more strongly influenced by history than the Japanese Western culture.

Even party schools at the beginning of the 21st century are commissioning business faculties of American universities to conduct management training.

Made in China

The label "Made in Germany" was originally a British origin label to distinguish itself from poor quality German goods. It was only later that the mark of Cain became a trademark due to the improvement in quality.

"Made in China" stands for cheap products, low wages, poor quality, mass production and plagiarism, hierarchical management and an "ant-like" workforce.

Han Haiyang 韩海洋

But in fact this is only an impression that applied to the first mass products in China; in the meantime the picture has changed.

1 At the beginning of the 21st century, the labor market in China appears saturated for the first time. This is accompanied by extreme wage increases. In the meantime, one has to pay almost as much for a man-day of an engineer with comparable qualifications in China as for an engineer-man-day in western industrialized countries.

2. The previously most important productive sector is being replaced by the service sector as the most important economic sector.

3. Following the example of Western companies that have consistently introduced quality assurance in China, the proverbial poor quality of Chinese products is now a thing of the past. In many companies, quality assurance is now also practiced.

Han Wanzhen 韩宛真

4. apart from the reproduction of products developed in the West, the first high-tech products that have been further developed in China (cell phones, notebooks, etc.) are already available.

5. Chinese companies are now buying companies worldwide with the required know-how (notebook division of IBM => Lenovo, Volvo etc.).

6. with a real ravenous appetite, Chinese managers devour bestsellers that explain Western management principles and apply them with playful curiosity and great zeal, such as team meetings. Meetings in Chinese companies are now more common (5 meetings/day) than in Germany (1-2 meetings/day).

He Changqi 何长琦

Characteristics of Chinese production culture

Hierarchy

Chinese companies are traditionally strictly hierarchical, with many levels. Authority gives face. As in other countries, functions are called together with the name as titles. According to Hofstede, the yardstick for hierarchy is the power distance index.

Appreciation of age

In addition to hierarchies based on professional positions, age also has a corresponding authority. Older people are seldom deported to retirement homes after their retirement, but live until death in the extended family, in which they fulfill tasks until the end. The neighborhood also takes care of the elderly people by involving them in work assignments (street cleaning, support for traffic regulation) depending on their readiness.

Hu Baihui 胡百辉

The older brother automatically has a more prestigious position than the younger one. In Chinese, kinship terms are strictly separated into "older" or "younger". The preceding adjective "alter" in the confidential form of address is an honorific.

In business life, too, older employees are respected because of their life experience (and possibly because of the large network of relationships to be expected). A positive side effect is that the experience remains in the company. New research also shows in the West: older employees are often underestimated, their experience must be used more and knowledge can be kept in the company.

Concept of Face

For the protection of the individual, there is the face concept, where everyone can preserve his or her honor, even if mistakes have been made or someone is inferior. For this purpose, unwritten rules (institutions) are observed in the company: No one criticizes the other person in front of others. If criticism must be exercised, then indirectly. A request is not rejected directly, there is no "No! The Chinese employees are particularly sensitive to the nuances, to the "maybe" and know how to classify it accordingly without being damaged.

Hu Huifang 胡慧芳

Incompetence of bosses leads to informal decision-making

Traditionally, the position of General Manager, or even senior positions in Chinese companies, is preferably filled with people who can be trusted by those making the appointments. The greatest trust is given by a family relationship, somewhat less so in the case of friendship between families or between individuals, or by shared periods of life, such as being born in the same village, attending the same school, the same club, etc. Of course, professional qualifications also help to build trust, but this is only of secondary importance.

The leadership positions of the largest state-owned enterprises in China are assigned by the party, and these positions are cobbled together with correspondingly deserving cadres.

One consequence of this appointment policy is the widespread incompetence of leaders.

Hu Jin 胡瑾

In economic terms, this too is an emergency situation, especially for the bosses concerned, who are surrounded by more competent subordinates. In combination with the facial concept, the bosses thus have to hide their incompetence on the one hand and on the other hand want to keep their position, i.e. they are under enormous pressure to make the right decisions. This has led to an informal decision-making system. The boss discusses possible alternatives informally with the experts. In the end, he has obtained a broad opinion and makes the decision that seems best to him alone. The fact that the laurels are actually due to others remains unspoken; it increases the intensity of the personal relationships (renqing) of the people involved. Once the boss has made a decision and communicated it, the employees will implement it without contradiction due to the hierarchical structures.

Ji Tiantian 纪甜甜

If a superior's decision is not considered correct, the subordinate may not address the boss. Rather, when the hierarchical structures do not apply (joint leisure activities or similar), an opportunity must be sought to indirectly point out the wrong decision to the boss.

Meetings per day C > USA > D

The frequency of meetings is much higher in China than in Germany. In the country comparison of four selected countries/regions the following order results:

1. Hong Kong

2. China

3. USA

4. Germany

Jiang Fengyi 蒋凤仪

Shapes of modern Chinese production culture and their causes

Modern Chinese production culture shows the following characteristics:

1. in the area of know-how China lags behind the western industrial nations and Japan, which causes feelings of shame. Many Chinese feel that they are on the defensive and regard their country's relationship with the USA and Japan as the David's against Goliath. This results in a subjective legitimacy for broad-based industrial espionage with national interest and know-how theft.

Jiang Hao 姜好

2. Innovation

China is traditionally known as an empire of inventions, so letterpress printing, gunpowder, porcelain etc. were invented long before similar inventions were made elsewhere in the world. However, these inventions were often not brought to serial production and were produced in masses, as for example in Europe, where gunpowder led to the production of handguns and cannons. It can be exaggerated to say that gunpowder was used instead for New Year's fireworks by the nobility. This shows the Chinese characteristic of a capacity for innovation with a simultaneous lack of diffusion in the market.

The Industrial Revolution also largely passed China by. Since China, like Europe, was experiencing a population explosion due to better hygiene and medicine, but at the same time the automation of food production did not go beyond manufactories, China fell behind in its standard of living.

Jiang Qiwei 蒋淇玮

Traditionally, imitation has always been highly valued in China. A good copy was almost as important as the original. Thus, both the civil service examination system of previous centuries and today's school system were strongly oriented towards reproduction rather than creativity. One reason may be the enormous amount of characters that requires students to memorize for years.

Kang Haoyu 康浩宇

The idea of copyright is also less rooted in China than in the West.

When the Chinese were awakened from their sleep by the cannon thunder of the 1st Opium War, there was great regret that they had not carried out their own research and development. Although physical violence was disregarded, the foreigners were envied their technical superiority and since then they have propagated the idea of learning technology from foreigners and reproducing it in order to be able to defend their own cultural values and sovereignty more effectively. This feeling of envy gave rise to an extreme motivation to both imitate the superiority of others and ultimately to outdo them.

Kang Lingfeng 康灵凤

3. Competition

The toughest competition worldwide is in China. Successful products immediately find numerous imitators. As soon as an imitator can produce the product at more favorable conditions, the client switches to him. Together with state arbitrariness, this has resulted in the emergence of a typical Chinese type of company: The financial holding company as a family-owned enterprise with involvement in various industries. This enables a company to survive even if the sales market for a product suddenly collapses. In hardly any other country in the world do companies have to be as vigilant as in China, adapting products to changing customer requirements within the shortest possible time and always being one step ahead of the competition. New trends have to be recognized early and capacities have to be built up or reduced flexibly.

Those who survive in this hard school are also prepared for more peaceful and fairer markets like those in Europe and America.

Kong Xianghui 孔祥慧

4. State control

The reform and opening policy since 1978 has led to a predominance of foreign companies in China at the end of the 20th century. In order to protect their own industry, laws were introduced obliging companies to provide a certain percentage of their production in China locally. As a result, Chinese suppliers had to be sought who were able to contribute parts to the production chain. This promoted local industry and also the transfer of know-how.

At the same time, foreign suppliers were also forced to follow the large companies to China if they did not want to be replaced by a Chinese company. This accelerated the settlement of foreign companies in China.

Kong Yanan 孔亚楠

However, legislation (like the joint venture laws) and court decisions favoured domestic companies. Also, China has built up a state capitalism that sponsors industry, supports domestic industry on the world market and helps financing overseas investment. Also, copyright infringement and industrial espionage (including civil-military alliance) supports the Chinese economy. Under the Trump administration, the USA has responded with a protectionist “America first” strategy.

5. Legal system

The legal system in China is not independent. It acts at the behest of the state.

Western companies came to China with superior know-how and financial power. These companies were admired in China, but at the same time a feeling of disadvantage arose with regard to their own backward industry.

Lei Fangyuan 雷方圆

As a counterbalance to this perceived weakness in relation to the large foreign corporations, the legislation was designed and the judiciary was urged to protect their own corporations.

This puts Chinese partners in a better position when joint ventures are dissolved (often the know-how and capital goes to the owner).

Necessity is the mother of invention

The reason for the increase in efficiency, known worldwide as Japanese management culture or production culture, was the lack of money for new machines in Japan after World War II.

Lei Kuangxi 雷旷溪

In China, another emergency situation is also the reason for developing a separate response to the challenges of the market: it is the professional incompetence of management personnel. This has grown historically. In China, management positions are primarily given to people who can be trusted. Traditionally, the most trustworthy people in China are family members or family members of old school friends, acquaintances who come from their own village and who have indulged in the same hobbies together (see Deng Xiaoping's Bridge round or the golf acquaintances in Western lobbying) etc. Loyalty to the party plays a secondary role. In principle, members of the Communist Party have it easier in business life, cadres even easier. Membership in the People's Liberation Army plays a similar role.

在中国，另一种紧急情况也是制定单独应对市场挑战的原因:管理人员的专业能力不足。这随历史的发展不断涌现。在中国，管理职位主要由可信赖的人担任。传统上最值得信赖的人是家庭成员或老同学的家庭成员，来自自己村庄的熟人，有共同爱好的熟人(比如邓小平的桥牌圈或西方游说中一起打的高尔夫熟人)等等。对党的忠诚是次要的。原则上，共产党员做生意很容易做起来，共产党员干部就更容易。中国人民解放军的战友也扮演着类似的角色。--Lei kuangxi (talk) 09:24, 26 November 2020 (UTC)Lei Kuangxi

Li Haiquan 李海泉

Professional competence often plays no role at all. But here, too, a generational change has taken place; the highest leadership cadres in the Central Committee often had no education or training at all in the Soviet Union at the beginning, were replaced by technocrats in the 1980s, and at the beginning of the 21st century many have an American university degree.

In the business sector, the leadership positions of the largest Chinese state-owned enterprises are still awarded by the party to deserving cadres.

The professional incompetence of the bosses represents a plight that must be countered in daily work with a sophisticated strategy if one does not want to be replaced by a more professionally competent boss.

Li Lili 李丽丽

This strategy consists of the following:

·Avoiding the disclosure of own professional incompetence

·Informal consultation and coordination with the actual experts in the company before each decision process

·Announcement and representation of the decision by the boss alone, this decision may then also no longer be questioned

This informal participation in the decision-making process is organized in a network which, however, in contrast to the Japanese model, is not lived out in team discussions, but rather through several face-to-face meetings between the boss and a different expert in each case, since if the boss sought the advice of a first expert in the presence of a second expert, he would lose face with the second expert. This network character is therefore very personal and usually consists of direct two-person relationships.

Li Lingyue 李凌月

However, it is also possible to contact a third person who knows the second person, whereby the second person then only establishes contact and then withdraws.

A further emergency in China is that due to the sleepy industrial revolution and the lack of information diffusion in the market, no research and development tradition of its own has been established to date. Instead of carrying out basic research for a long time, information about the state of the art of advanced competitors was obtained and attempts were made to copy and eventually outperform them. Only recently, due to enormous governmental support, e.g. in hybrid drive technology and electric motor technology, self-developed products have been created in China.

Li Liqin 李丽琴

Changes in the Chinese production culture

When the production site in China opened up to the global industry, the egalitarianism of the planned economy had already erased the tradition of quality assurance from the memory of the factory workers. In the decades before, they had been used to selling along with the scrap. The first factories, which produced goods in China due to the low labor costs, also delivered rejects accordingly. The foreign investors first had to reintroduce the quality assurance concept in China. Due to the strong competition in China and the orientation towards world market prices and standards, quality assurance has now been internalized in China.

Li Luyi 李璐伊

The originally traditional lifelong relationship with the employer, as we also know it from Japan, has now been reversed. China currently has one of the highest employee turnover rates in the world, even higher than the already high rate in the USA.

In the period 1950 to 1980, the production culture was characterized by blind fulfillment of plans; since 1980, production has been oriented to the market. Today, management concepts are as en vogue in China as political campaigns were in the past. They are read and discussed, but often misunderstood due to the lack of foreign language skills and context/background knowledge.

       通过日本我们可以知道，最初的传统终生雇佣关系现在已被颠覆。中国是目前世界上员工流动率最高的国家之一，甚至高于员工流动率本就很高的。
       在1950年至1980年期间，生产文化的特征是盲目地执行计划经济；自1980年以来，生产一直面向市场。 如今，管理理念在中国就像过去的政治运动一样流行。 它们被阅读和讨论，但由于缺乏外语技能和语境背景知识而常常被误解。--Li Luyi (talk) 07:59, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

Li Meng 李梦

Similar to the campaigns, the concepts are introduced with an eternal claim, but only last as long as a seasonal fashion. This type of management, which is based on current trends in management strategies, could also be called guerrilla management, following Sebastian Heilmann's concept of "guerrilla politics".

In China, a culture of secrecy (ID badges, access restrictions), especially among high-tech companies, is prevalent, which is exactly the same as in America. In China, this culture was simply copied from the USA, certainly also due to the findings of Chinese industrial espionage abroad that know-how, e.g. in German companies, is often insufficiently protected against access by third parties.

Li Yongshan 李泳珊

Roles in the Chinese production culture

The central role in the Chinese production and management culture is played by the boss. This can also be seen in the comparatively high values of China's Power Distance Index.

The specific behavior of the boss in the decision making process has already been explained above.

In the following, the difference in the relationship between the boss and his subordinates in China and Germany will be described.

The team member in Germany expects a target for the overall project and the specification of the assigned subarea within the project, feels responsible for the timely achievement of his own and the team goal and wants to find the way to this goal independently.

Li Yu 李玉

It would like to be little supervised and communicates intensively with the other team members. The team leader in Germany is rather a primus inter pares, who has a small area of responsibility as a specialist and is responsible for coordination. The success is always a success of the team.

In China, the boss has a much higher position than the other team members. He gives each team member the individual goal and the individual steps to reach this goal. He closely monitors the progress and cares for the team members, also regarding job satisfaction and in private matters.

Lin Min 林敏

He expects a feedback only to him and no exchange of information between the team members. If the input of the first team member is a prerequisite for the work of the second team member, the boss himself forwards the intermediate / work results of the first to the second team member.

The role of the employee in China is determined by the following characteristics: He cultivates a culture of error, in which it is important not to make any mistakes of his own, and in case mistakes are made, to correct them if possible without being noticed and in case they are noticed, to at least not immediately admit the guilt.

Lin Xin 林鑫

In all these behaviours, the principle of face awareness applies.

As mentioned above, the loyalty of employees to an employer in China is extremely low at the beginning of the 21st century. For a few yuan a month, workers change employers. Headhunters intercept employees at the factory gate, ask about the salary and offer correspondingly more.

The paid passing on of information, especially about customers, suppliers, purchase prices and patents, is also considered a trivial offence. Chinese companies communicate less and employees are more demotivated. This is mainly due to the high production pressure, as case studies by Hong/Pöyhönen/Kyläheiku 2006 show (see list of literature in the appendix).

Ling Zijin 凌子瑾

The Intermezzo of Socialism from 1949-1979

In the phase of socialism, the centrally planned economy applied in it blossomed as follows:

When the news reached the top, there was a culture of whitewashing.

The breakup of the unions made the culture of co-determination in companies even more informal.

Gaming in the Chinese production culture

In China, playful experimentation is a core element of the production culture. In this way, individual management elements, but also entire foreign production philosophies can be tried out in a playful way.

Liu Bo 刘博

One of the main differences between young people in China and those in the West is that, even as young adults, they can still play hilariously without making themselves look ridiculous to others. The joy of playing is particularly unrestrained if the ambition is there to copy a foreign product as similar as possible or even to surpass it and also to implement, for example, a new management concept or a production philosophy.

New rules of the game are accepted very quickly. The introduction of a reward system (incentives) for long service has led to a situation in China where it is always calculated when a change is worthwhile.

Liu Jinxingqi 刘金惺琦

Sustainable concepts can only be introduced if the benefits of the concept are clear. Other concepts with no discernible added value, such as alignment with the American corporate philosophy on mergers and acquisitions, are forgotten just as quickly as they were introduced, and people return to old habits.

Effects on the company

In China today, we find a modern production culture that is international but has its Chinese characteristics.

It has positive and negative effects on the company:

Liu Liu 刘柳

Positive effects of the Chinese management and production culture (CMPC)

·Networks

·the preferential treatment of Chinese companies (e.g. in tenders, competition, within corporate groups such as joint ventures)

·playful enthusiasm for technology

·Brutality, which in turn promotes competition

Negative effects of the Chinese management and production culture (CMPC)

·through their distortion of competition

·by promoting incompetence in management positions

·through their priority of personal rather than non-cash benefits, which is fundamentally negative for the production culture

·through rituals/conventions (face, criticism, status etc.)

·intransparent state sponsoring and corruption

Liu Ou 刘欧

The fundamental difference of the free trade zone established by China, Japan, Australia and other Asian Pacific countries in 2020 from suggestions of free trade zones involving the US or the EU is, that state-sponsoring and corruption are not restricted. Therefore China benefits most of this new free trade zone.

Where is modern Chinese management and production culture (CMPC) an international role model?

Liu Yangnuo 刘洋诺

The Chinese management and production culture (CMPC), as explained in the previous chapters, has its own characteristics that distinguish it from, for example, the Japanese or American management and production culture. Nevertheless, the CMPC is successful and manages the world's largest production market. Elements of the Japanese production culture have been successfully used worldwide to modernize production facilities. Can Chinese elements also lead to global success?

The following 5 elements appear at least compatible on the international market:

1. informal decision making through horizontal and vertical network management

In China, important and unimportant decisions are seldom made by competent committees or officials, but rather are investigated informally.

Liu Yi 刘艺

The hierarchical position in the company of those involved in the decision-making process is irrelevant, only their professional competence. Questioning the most competent is possible because this questioning is completely detached from the honor and reward system, but takes place in a parallel world, the so-called personal relationship system (Chinese: guanxi 关系). Due to this decoupling, the responsible decision-maker does not mind questioning other, not responsible but more competent colleagues/employees/outsiders. At the same time, the colleague/employee/external is motivated to give the best possible decision support, since he can score points in the parallel world.

The results are well-founded and accepted decisions.

Liu Yiyu 刘怡瑜

2. playfully trying out new forms of production and management (attention: hermeneutics/sustainability)

The play instinct in people up to old age is socially sanctioned. In phases when there is little to do in the office, a Mahjong or Go board or cards are taken out as a matter of course. Similarly, new methods, often imported from the West or Japan, are tried out with playful zeal. An incentive system, for example, challenges colleagues to earn as much capital as possible in the form of incentives in as short a time as possible. It is not unusual for hit lists to be posted in the office, so that colleagues encourage each other.

Liu Zhiwei 刘智伟

But it is important to pay attention to three aspects:

1. the actual goals should be achieved without neglecting other aspects of the work or even worsening the overall result, because the colleagues are addicted to the urge to play. The introduction of new management or production strategies is nothing new for Chinese employees, they know this from political or education-oriented campaigns (e.g. traffic education).

The second aspect that must be kept in mind is the understanding of the corresponding philosophies. For this it is important, for example, when importing Western management culture into China, that the correct Chinese term is first found for the fashionable e.g. English expression.

Lou Cancan 娄灿灿

Terms that are translated incorrectly or not at all lead to success messages that a new system has been introduced, with what was understood by it being introduced instead.

A third aspect that must be considered in this context is sustainability. Many new concepts that have been introduced are forgotten after a few weeks and the old rut has returned. Only individual, often senior employees still remember the newly introduced things and occasionally refer back to them without being able to enforce them on their employees.

Luo Weijia 罗维嘉

A process description system that is integrated into the daily work routine (e.g. daily used computer work surface) is useful here, where the employees make or execute decisions and processes in the given paths.

All in all, the playful approach reduces fear of contact with new things, the daily work routine is varied and the employees gain further qualifications.

3. speed and flexibility in product development

One of the hallmarks of the Chinese manufacturing industry is the speed at which products are cribbed and developed further, or at which they react to changing customer requirements or market conditions.

Luo Yuqing 罗雨晴

The ambition that Chinese product developers put into developing solutions for specific requirements is comparable to the play instinct described above.

This high speed and flexibility strengthens the competitiveness of Chinese companies. Western companies can learn these qualities by locating in China and thus benefit from these experiences in the comparatively sluggish production location in their home countries.

4. focusing on personal competence instead of things or functions

Interesting and certainly typical Chinese is the fixation on people instead of the thing.

Ma Juan 马娟

File:Majuan An original feature is the logistics. As this picture illustrates, existing primitive means are exploited to the utmost. Admirable is the matter-of-course way in which the extremes are mastered.

For a long time, production capacity in China grew faster than logistics. Only at the beginning of the 21st century are delivery services and infrastructure (highways, high-speed train connections, etc.) catching up.

Ma Shuya 马淑雅

The Freedom of Intellectual Exchange

Starting to work on the modern Chinese literary essay in the 1990s, I published my Ph.D. thesis The History of the Chinese Essay in 1998. Because it was written in German, I hoped since then to raise interest in this subject in the anglophone world, too. With this volume in hand, this wish has become true. Some of the topics I dealt with in my thesis like the development of the genre, biblio-biographies of several essayists etc., are elaborated here extensively by my collegues in English and more detailed than I could do it in my first ground work in German.

Ma Zhixing 马智星

Moreover, this collection documents the lively discussion, which started among sinologists in the last years of the 20th century.

I remember quite clearly, how the idea of the conference was born during a meal at the Boston AAS conference hotel with King-Fai Tam. Leo Ou-fan Lee had helped to bring both of us together, knowing that we shared a seemingly specialized hobby, the modern Chinese essay. King-Fai was preparing two collection of essay translations, one with essays from mainland China and one from Taiwan. The first is scheduled for publication. I prepared another collection of essays with both, Chinese original and English translation, published by The University Press Bochum half a year ago. The common intention of both of us is to make more Chinese essays available in English translations.

Meng Ying 孟莹

King-Fai Tam and me are both fascinated of the idea of promoting this long time neglected genre and to find out more about its characteristics and the reasons of its success in the 1920s and 1930s as well as in the 1980s and 1990s. On a napkin, we outlined an AAS panel, an international conference and a volume with essays on the essay. All of these ideas are now becoming real more or less in the way we planned it: The AAS panel became an NEAAS panel at Yale, the conference took place in August 25-27, 2000 at the Academy of Euro-Asian Economy and Culture in Achern, in the Black Forest, Germany.

Mo Ling 莫玲

14 scholars of Chinese literature, from the States, Taiwan, the United Kingdom and Germany took part. All of them share the fascination of the phenomenon of the essay. Language was no barrier: The conference was conducted in English with the exception of a few papers in Chinese with English abstracts.

The collection of essays on the essay are the conference proceedings in hand, this book contains extended versions of the conference papers. It was published by The University Press Bochum in December 2000. More important is the fact, that through this opportunity, we now have lively email discussions and a website with updated information on the Chinese essay.

Mo Nan 莫南

Here I would like to take the opportunity to thank the members of the organizing committee Charles Laughlin, Xinmin Liu, King-Fai Tam, and Alexandra Wagner for their great help. I very much enjoyed the discussions via email.

A common philosophy stands behind the whole project: We want to share information, help each other and do not care about language barriers. Everybody can contribute in English or Chinese, some of us like me being non-native English speakers.

We encourage the reader to make use of the large margins for personal notes in the awareness of pursuing a tradition dating back to the very origins of essay writing.

Nie Xiaolou 聂晓楼

Having most of the conference papers in hand with this book, everybody is welcomed to give a feed back. This kind of free intellectual exchange I first experienced in the States when Leo Ou-fan Lee invited me to stay from 1998-1999 as a visiting scholar at the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University.

The contributors to this volume can only introduce and draw the attention of the readers to this Chinese genre, the joy of reading remains to the reader himself.

M.W.

Ou Rong 欧蓉

The Flourishing of the Chinese Essay

Martin Woesler

The flourishing of essay publication in the periods of accelerated modernization, the Western-influenced one (1920s/30s) and the one of liberated economical actors (1980/90s), was helped in part by the appearance of new magazines and book series that existed chiefly as vehicles for contemporary essayists. The emergence of this media show a clear trend: the essay is a genre of overwhelming and increasing interest among Chinese authors and readers.

There are three reasons for the increase in Chinese essay production and popularity in the mid-1990s:

Ouyang Jinglan 欧阳静兰

·The giddy-paced nature of current Chinese society with its demands for diverting and short texts: “[...] we live in an age of exposition”[ Donald Hall, The Contemporary Essay (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984) xiii. In this textbook, Hall has chosen a wide range of contemporary American essayists. In his introduction, Hall applies for clear writing, and active reading.];

·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;

·a revival of interest in discussing socio-political issues through the medium of the essay, as was the case in the 1920s/30s. Because of its increasing importance, the essay can now be assigned its proper place in the canon of contemporary genres and in the history of literature.

Ouyang Ling 欧阳玲

In the last two decades of the 20th century, the essay has been the main communication medium between the discourse of the intelligentsia and the mass of readers of daily newspapers. Therefore we have a genre which transports ideas of the elite in small pieces and common language and functions as the link between mass and elite culture.

December 2000

Peng Dan 彭丹

Keynote: “Let us Assign the Essay its Proper Place in Chinese Literature!”

Martin Woesler

Abstract

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. We are used to the established narratives of C.T. Hsia, Průšek, and Anderson, which let Chinese literature appear overshadowed by its elder brother, fiction. The latter has been prized ever since the valuing of fictional literature and the vernacularization of writing in early Republican China, which followed from the master narrative established by the May 4th movement.

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:

Peng Juan 彭娟

•The essay had a direct impact on Chinese society throughout history. The impact of the essay genre, with its direct language, its connection to life, and its direct access to the individual reader through newspapers, was larger than the indirect effects of fiction or poetry.

•The essay also reflects trends in society better than poetry and fiction. Individualism is expressed in the essay more directly than in the poem, which is limited 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.

Peng Ruihong 彭锐宏

•The essay reaches a larger part of the population than poetry, and does not require the large amount of time spent on reading novels. The essay itself is a genre of high actuality, if not simply the genre of today.

•The volume of essay production exceeds the volume of xiaoshuo production.

Can the picture of Chinese literature remain unchanged if we take the essay into consideration? As stated above, there is a large contrast between the true value and the current valuing of the essay. Let us assign the essay its proper place!

Peng Xiaoling 彭小玲

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. 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); 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.

Peng Yongliang 彭永亮

Two times in the 20th century the Chinese essay was flourishing, first in the 1920s and 1930s, then 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, see works of Laughlin, Klaschka). 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 散文丛书 (essay bookseries).

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.

Peng Yuzhi 彭育志

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.

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).

Qi Kai 漆凯

The impact on literary reflection and theory is shown in the collection Modern Chinese Literary Thought 1996 (see Denton). 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.

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.

Qu Miao 瞿淼

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.

- 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 lives, like Lu Xun, Ba Jin, and Wang Meng.

Quan Meixin 全美欣

-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).

Let us assign the essay its proper place The consequence which must be derived from the above presented contrast between value and valuing of the essay is: Let us assign the essay its proper place!

Taking into consideration the essay will rewrite the history of Chinese literature I will name a few points to illustrate what the essay can contribute to the picture of Chinese Literature, which so far is overshadowed by fiction through the narrative of C.T. Hsia, Pršek and Anderson.

Sagara Seydou

We are used to established narratives, like the emergence and success of the May-Fourth literature. But this view neglects the role, that for example the yuanyang hudie pai played in the choir of different voices in the awoken intellectual debate in the beginning of this century. The May-Fourth group at that time was one voice among many and only succeeded because of its agitation and polemic in the public sphere, so we have to use new means to assign the Chinese essay its proper place. We learn from simplifiying narratives, that it is absolutely necessary to differentiate, and to reconstruct the complex time background. Having understood Chinese literature as determined by the development of fiction and poetry only, a broader understanding will change the whole appearance of Chinese literature. A scholarly endeavour is the use of modern literary theories in the approach to this genre.

Shi Diwen 石迪文

In the following, I will name two aspects (chronologically sorted by past, and modern times) to promote the argument, that the taking into consideration of the essay will rewrite the history of Chinese literature and change our current understanding of it.

1. The classical and premodern essay documents Chinese philosophy, early subjectivity and still, a native Chinese tradition is questioned How is the Chinese essay to be positioned historically, how did it emerge, what is its generic background? Generically, the ancestors of the essay both in China and the West are notes written in the margins of books, as well as letters and travel notes saved. These notes differed from the canonized literature through its informal style, its expression of individuality and subjectivity, a much earlier document for subjectivity than the first autobiographical Chinese novel, The Dream of the Red Chamber.

Shi Haiyao 石海瑶

From the very beginning, the essay was valued lower than poetry: the oldest reference[ This is older than the ones referred to in Morohashi, 5:529a / sequential page counting 5167a, and in the The Encyclopaedic Dictionary of the Chinese Language, vol. 73c / s.p.c. 6137c.] this far for the term sanwen that I found is Luo Dajing's 羅大經 (? - after 1248) statement from 1240: “Shī sāomiào tiānxià, ér sǎnwén pōjué suǒsuì júcù. 詩騷妙天下，而散文頗覺瑣碎局促。” (Poetry is moving mankind in a wonderful way, prose inquires into incoherent bagatells, is limited. Luo Dajing 14:Baihai:1). Another reproach Luo Dajing mentions, is a formal one: In comparison to the highly artistic and century-long tradition of poetic writing, the direct and often vernacular langage of the essay in his eyes had less value.

Si Yu 司妤

In the West, a real 'art of the essaywriting' came up in the late 16th century as a medium for the newly reorganized knowledge. The reorganization originated from the observations of Copernicus, which destroyed the whole conception of the world of the Middle Ages.

In China, particularly the debates on Buddhism in the 4th and 5th century A.D. saw the origination of a tradition of letters. The Chinese tradition of the sanwen 散文 (essay) however, in the understanding of san 散 as to dispel, leisure, loose, relaxed, irregular, independant style, free prose, can be seen not before the detachment from the dialogue - or aphorism, which is still visible in the philosophical Lunyu. Xunzi delivered the prototype of the later essay with his philosophical treatises.

Song Jianru 宋建茹

They are an early form of philosophical didactical essays, in which general theorems are derived not only from quotations of the canonized classical works, but for the first time also from his own individual experience. The individuality is still a main characteristic of the essay today.

During the dynasties the essay manifested itself further in certain subcategories: From reading-notes written in the paper margins originated the biji 筆記 (occasional notes), flourishing in the Ming dynasty. The marginalism is a link between Western and Chinese tradition of early essays. Occasional notes could contain private historical notes, anecdotes, communications and contemplations. However, the consciousness of the essay as a genre of its own originated in China not before the Qing 清 dynastie, when numerous essay anthologies were compiled.

Su Lin 苏琳

Taking into consideration the social-historical background draws a different picture of the old society than short stories and novels: Essays are much closer to real life, since they express individual problems and experiences. Until now, the Chinese pre-Honglou meng individual literature spoke only through the indirect language of poems to us. Rediscovering the essays, we have a splendid source of opinions, social-historical pictures etc.

Premodern essay literature consists of much more than its most well-known example, the formally restrictive baguwen. Lu Xun himself wrote some of his essays in baguwen style, but on the other hand took it as a synonym for the ancient society. Zhou Zuoren saw the rhythm of the language of the “Eight legged essay” as as appealing and intoxicating as the “pleasure of doing opium.” (Zhou Zuoren 1932c, 148).

Tan Xingyue 谭星越

But he considered it also as a prevalent genre implicit in the modern writings as yang bagu (westernized bagu) and dang bagu (party-line bagu) (borrowing from Wu Zhihui, 71).

Neo-Confucianism stressed wen (prose) as the most important tool to transmit the dao (way): wen yi zai dao 文以載道 (Literature as the carrier of the way). If we reinterprete this diction in the perspective of genre, we can say, that the essay then has been regarded as an important tool to express truth, subjectivity and Self.

Liang Qichao developed a xin wenti 新文體 (new prose style), which was influenced by Western languages, but the essay became popular not before the newspapers became mass media, and the language changed into baihua.

Tan Xinjie 谭鑫洁

2. The essay as the medium of modernity

The essay was the genre of the modernizing society of the early 20th century. It was short, dealt with reality, there was no limitation regarding the contents, therefore it was also capable of documenting and spreading the ideas about the best form of society. It was simply the best form to transport the thoughts of the intellectual leaders of the time to the public and to create a public sphere. Imagine the May Fourth Movement without essays! Most of Lu Xun's work consists out of essays!

Many writers had to define and often redefine their position and self-understanding in reaction to war and warlordism and later in the modernizing society, often burying their own ideals, in the larger perspective for the seeming “needs” of society, which also claimed the author to be one of its products.

Tan Yuanyuan 谭媛媛

But from its very nature, the essay set new boundaries in form and content, and therefore not only survived the ideological restrictions, but also established its own critical subculture within. The essay was not only a medium of discussion and a documentation of the social-political background for us today, but also a documentation of the personal struggle of the writers finding a position in a changing environment, since the essay is “a genre of self-reflection”. Some essays even deconstructed master narratives like the one of leftist ideology, often simply by confronting it with subjective experience, reality or art.

Not only the understanding of literature as a whole changes if we take into consideration the essay, also the view of single authors shifts, if we see not only their novels or poems, but also their essays.

I want to mention another position on literature, which stresses the impact of literature on life, especially on the eve of revolutions - following this view, all literature is political (Jameson).(文献 无需翻译)

Tang Bei 汤蓓

The Aesthetic of Marginalism and the Impact of the West on the Chinese Essay Martin Woesler

Abstract Chinese and Western essays derived from the notes in the margins of books. With this step from the private to the public sphere, we find the impact of subjectivity and individualism on literature. The origin of the essay has influenced the later essay tradition in its ephemeral, subjective, marginal character; its claim for understatement; the conversational and colloquial style of expression; and its eclecticism. The essay itself often deals with one subject, but this topic is looked on from different perspectives.

Tang Ming 唐铭

The aesthetic of marginalism, invented by Schlette in 1977 and further developed by Pfeiffer and others in 1996, proves helpful for understanding the character of the essay. Following its methodological perspective, marginalism grants the essayist a distant view of the text body itself from the margins of the book. This enables the essayist to think unorthodoxly, the condition sine qua non of critique and protest.

In my paper, I use the concept of marginalism to explain the rhetorical means of digression in Lu Xun's essays. Lu Xun seems to digress: 1) on purpose for rhetorical effects; 2) going off-target for arts’ sake; 3) as an experiment; 4) for its own sake with socio-critical side blows; 5) as understatement with surprising effects. Further I will show marginalism in the founder of Western essayism, Montaigne, and the Chinese scholar Qian Zhongshu.

Tang Yiran 汤伊然

As for the dispute on whether the Chinese essay grew out of a native tradition or was influenced by Western translations, both traditions are relevant: The current form of the genre is mostly based on the influence of Western essay translations, starting from 1907. From this, there first developed a Chinese essay tradition which consciously leaned upon the Western model in language, form and terminology. Later, the Chinese essay’s own proponents succumbed to the temptation to derive a tradition of the Chinese essay from Chinese history alone. The legendary authors of the May Fourth movement considered the English essay as the father of the Chinese essay. Later, some of these authors changed their minds to support their own theories on the essay by looking for proof of a native Chinese essay tradition.

Tao Ye 陶冶

Wherever on earth human beings developed a high culture, the written language was its essence. Early traces we find in the pictograms of the Near East, Latin America and China. The more the characters remind of the ontological world, the more the written language itself was an object of cult. From the Chinese we know the use of characters in the tortoise shell oracles, from the Germans in sacrificial stones. Later, with the improvement of writing material, the first rolls were created, either from papyrus (Egypt), pergament (Europe) or bamboo (China). Due to the expensive material, written rolls were reserved to wealthier people. The texts were reduced to the documentation of important things.

Wang Meiling 王美玲

For the first time, it was possible not only to document events and therefore to extend the human mind and memory, but to communicate complex information from one author to another or more readers. At this stage, the first reading notes were written. Due to the lack of the precious writing material, the margins of the rolls were used. Still today we find these notes as well as on early European (for example ancient Greek) rolls as well as on Chinese ones. These notes were personal thoughts about the text, explanations of places and events maybe unknown to third readers, interpretations of unclear text passages, alternatives to seemingly miswritten characters, sometimes only marks for structuring the texts, which were used as school textsoles to teach reading, too.

Wang Xuan 王轩

Some notes were intended for other readers, and from this in Europe and China the tradition of commentary developed. Other notes were of a private nature, personal comments to the text, not written down for other people. And both, in Europe as in China, the same evolution took place, when the authors of the notes discovered, that the notes were worth collecting. From these collections of notes they compiled short essays. These notes differed from the canonized literature through its informal style, its expression of individuality and subjectivity, a much earlier document for subjectivity than the first autobiographical Chinese novel, The Dream of the Red Chamber.

Wang Yu 王煜

The names given to these essays reminded of their origin. In Europe they were called “marginal notes,” “marginalia,” in China “brush notes” (biji 筆記, or occasional notes). They were flourishing in the Ming dynasty. They could contain private historical notes, anecdotes, communications and contemplations. However, the consciousness of the essay as a genre of its own originated in China not before the Qing 清 dynasty, when numerous essay anthologies were compiled.

All these terms for the essay, and also the term “essay” itself, which means “try, attempt,” invented by Montaigne, reflect the ephemeral, subjective, marginal character of the essay. The term itself carried the claim for understatement, which is substantial especially when you want to express subjective, individual thoughts, in order not to seem schoolmasterly to the reader.

Wang Yuan 王源

From this origin, different characteristics of the essay came, which are still valid for essays today. One is the conversational style of expression, which comes while you create the sentences from the notes the very moment you are writing them down. From Greek philosophers we know that they sat relaxed in the yard, while one person was reading them their notes from the margins of the books which the philosopher transformed into sentences orally, while another person wrote it down. This also explains the colloquial character of the essays. In fact, the whole development of ideas was based on a conversation in mind with the author of the original role, and many Greek philosophical schools knew about the importance of dialogues for the development of thoughts.

Wei Honglang 韦洪朗

Another characteristic of the essay is its eclecticism. While reading an original text, the educated scholar constantly thinks of quotations and links to other works. Therefore many notes consist out of references to other works. The essay itself therefore often deals with one subject, but is looked on from different perspectives.

In 1977 Heinz Robert Schlette developed the aesthetic of marginalism, in 1996 Klaus-Peter Pfeiffer developed this concept further. It proves helpful for the understanding of the character of the essay. In its methodological understanding, marginalism grants the essayist a distant view from the margins of the book to the text body itself. Following Schlette, marginalism is only possible where dissident thinking is possible. Marginalism is the private sphere left to the reader during the reading process.

Wei Yafei 魏亚菲

It is the condition sine qua non of critique and protest. A marginalist reader is one, who reads a text critically. Also Montaigne saw himself as a marginalist (Ulke, 31 - 38).

Let us now use the concept of marginalism to look on the 20th century Chinese essay. I choose here the example of Lu Xuns' essays. One of Lu Xun's rhethorical means in his essays is the digression. The digression is closely related to marginalism and essayism:

In some of his essays, Lu Xun digresses from his actual subject. This phenomenon increases in his later work. Following Wilpert, digression is one possible expression of conscious scepticism and a warning signal, that something is wrong.

Wen Sixing 文偲荇

Walf 1996 in his article “Marginalism in the Daoism” portrays the margi¬na¬lis¬m as an aesthetic, which in China are linked close to the tradition of scepticism of Wang Chong (27 - 97). As a youth, Lu Xun was optimistic about the impact of literature on society. He soon lost this optimism, as documented in “Preface to ‘Call to Arms’” (Lu Xun 1922b). Finally, he became a sceptic regarding the possibilities of literature to change society.

1, digression on purpose

In 1926, in his essay on “Wuchang, the Ghost of Perishable Life” (Lu Xun 1926b) Lu Xun digressed to contemporary critic on his contemporary Chen Xiying. In “Illustrations of 24 Examples of Children Piety” (Lu Xun 1926a), he protested against the slogan “Down with the colloquial language”. Lu Xun uses here historiographical and autobio¬gra¬phical essays for appeals of daily-political value.

沃夫1996年在他的文章《道家的边缘主义》中将边缘主义描绘为一种美学，这在中国与王充(27 - 97)的怀疑主义传统密切相关。青年时期，鲁迅对文学和社会的影响持乐观态度。他很快就失去了这种乐观，正如鲁迅在他的《呐喊》序言中所描述的那样。最后，他对文学改变社会的可能性产生了怀疑。 1.故意离题 1926年，鲁迅在他的文章《武昌，生命的幽灵》(鲁迅1926b)中转移了对他同时代的陈希英的当代批评。在《24个孩子虔诚的例子的插图》(鲁迅1926a)中，他抗议“打倒白话”的口号。鲁迅在这里使用史学和自传体散文来呼吁日常政治的价值。--Wensixing (talk) 08:57, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

1996年沃夫在他的文章《道家的边缘主义》中将边缘主义描绘为一种美学，在中国，这种边缘主义与王充(27 - 97)的怀疑主义传统密切相关。青年时期，鲁迅对文学和社会的影响持乐观态度。但这种乐观很快就消失不见，，正如鲁迅在他的《呐喊》序言中所描述的那样。最后，他对文学能否改变社会产生了怀疑。 1.故意离题 1926年，鲁迅在他的文章《武昌，生命的幽灵》(鲁迅1926b)中改变了对他同时代的陈希英的当代批评。在《24个孩子虔诚的例子的插图》(鲁迅1926a)中，他抗议“打倒白话”的口号。鲁迅在这里使用史学和自传体散文来呼吁日常政治的价值.--Yao Cheng (talk) 09:51, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

Wen Xiaoyi 文晓艺

2, not targeted digression

In May 1927, Lu Xun starts his “Morning Blossoms Picked at Dusk - Afterword,” continues to write it until July 11 (Lu Xun 1928b). It becomes a full-length essay, which again describes historiographically the character of the servant of the underworld Huo Wuchang and Si Youfen.

3, Marginalism as experiment In the essay “What the Youth Should Read” (Lu Xun 1919), the actual essay does not appear in the text body, but in the footnote. On a questionnaire Lu Xun answers the question about recommended literature shortly, that he never paid attention to this and therefore could not recommend anything. But he makes a footnote, where he starts writing freely. The subject of the questionnaire with the essay in the footnote corresponds parodistically to the classical “discussion” of a “subject”.

Wu Kai 吴恺

4, Marginalismus for its own sake with sociocritical side blows

In 1924, Lu Xun writes the consciously trivial essay “My Moustache” (Lu Xun 1924). In this essay, he makes fun of the things, other people are interpreting into the shape of his moustache. After that, he writes the even more trivial essay “From the Moustache to the Teeth” (Lu Xun 1925a), where he mocks about the fact, that the readers are reproaching him with banality.

5, Marginalism as understatement with surprising effect

Montaigne, too, consciously introduces his essays with understatement. Lu Xun wraps explosive contents into essays, which are titled with marginal headers: In the essay “Idle Thoughts at the End of Spring” he compares the paralyzing effect of Confucianism with the poison of a dangerous wasp (Lu Xun 1925b).

Wu Qi 吴琪

In “Casual Remarks under the Shine of a Lamp” he assumes the Chinese people, that they wanted to be slaves forever, in history as well as in the future (Lu Xun 1925c). In the autobiographical essay “Lightweight Reminiscences” he explains his decision to go to study in Japan (Lu Xun 1926c).

Another example for the awareness of the origin of the essay is Qian Zhongshu's essay collection Marginalia of Life, Shanghai 1941. In it, Qian mocks about human failures, like hypocrisy, humorlessness and groups of people like guards of morality, charlatans, literary reviewers, etc. (see Ba Ping, 1168 - 1173).

Questioning the genuiness of the Chinese essay

散文起源认识的另一例子是1941年钱锺书在上海发表的“围城”散文集。文中，他嘲讽人类的失败，比如伪善，缺乏幽默感，以及一群如道德卫士，江湖骗子和文学评论员等的人。--Wu Qi (talk) 09:45, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

Wu Qiong 吴琼

To solve the dispute on whether the Chinese essay grew out of a native tradition or was influenced by Western translations, one finds both traditions relevant: The occidental essay was introduced to the writers of the literature reform movement from 1907 on by translations in Chinese (Washington Irving's essays by Lin Shu 1907, Joseph Addison's by Ma/Gan 1911). The current form of the genre is mostly based on the influence of Western essay transla¬tions (for Chinese translations of English essays in the 1980s and 1990s see appendix). First developed a Chinese essay tradition, which consciously leaned upon the Western model in language, form and terminology, its own proponents succumbed soon to the temptation to derive a tradition of the Chinese essay from Chinese history only.

Wu Xiang 邬香

A seemingly unbroken Chinese tradition of the native Chinese wenyan sanwen is presented in Chinese textbooks (Yu Zaichun 1978-82, Li Xishang 1985). Still, the value of the native tradition of essay writing and the role of the Western influence upon it is discussed controversially among the scholars. Some admit that Western impact played a key role in what we understand as Chinese essays nowadays: Wang Bin 1992, Fan Peisong 1993; for Western impact in general see Pršek 1964, Gálik 1966, McDougall 1971. Other scholars think that Western influence is overestimated - Denton 1996 showed that the theoretical background was missing for understanding Western theories of literature in China, - and recommended that we understand the essay first by its national tradition.

Wu Yilu 吴一露

Later, some of these authors changed their minds to support their own theories on the essay by looking for proof of a native Chinese essay tradition: for example, Lu Xun with his theory “'Zhankai' shuo yu 'mengya' lun “展開”說與“萌芽”論” (Theory of “Starting” and “Blossoming”) came to see the fighting and critical character of the essay of the Jin Dynasty (265-420) as the 'father' of the Chinese essay, and Zhou Zuoren first the English essay (1921) and later the biji (occasional notes) of the Ming, although he still tried to integrate the English essay in his “Gonganpai yu Yingguo xiaopin 'hecheng' lun 公安派與英國小品“合 成”論” (Theory of the Synthesis of the Gongan School and the Engli¬sh Essay).

Wu Zijia 吴子佳

How far personal opinion may influence the narrative of historical facts can be seen by the example of the legendary authors of the May Fourth movement. All of them considered the English essay as the father of the Chinese essay: Zhou Zuoren 1921, Lu Xun 1934, the anarchist and later member of the Guomindang Wu Zhihui [1932].

Wang Zengqi in 1993 regrets that the national Chinese tradition of the essay at the time of the 'May Fourth Movement' has not been taken up again and has not continued in contemporary essays. The Chinese essay is an accommodating object of study, because one may look to it to prove any theory of the essay. One can find examples for each topic in almost every period, simply because the essay has a wide range of subjects.

Xiao Shuangling 肖双玲

Formation of Modern Subjectivity and Essay:

Zhou Shoujuan’s “In the Nine-Flower Curtain”

Jianhua Chen

Abstract

How to define the modern Chinese essay? Is it modern because of using baihua? Does it start from its naming of sanwen? While scholars identified its origins with May Fourth literature, the complicated trends of literary modernity in the first two decades of the 20th century was neglected. Relating Zhou Shoujuan, a major figure in the Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies school, to his contribution to the formation of modern Chinese essay has to encounter the problems of literary canons in modern China.

Zhou Shoujuan’s “In the Nine-Flower Curtain” (Jiuhua zhang li) reveals that this 1917 vernacular “pillow talk” (qinghua) in the wedding night came out of chaotic conditions of literary genre before the generic system of poetry, fiction, prose, and drama is established in the May Fourth period.

如何界定现代汉语散文?是因为使用了“百花”才变得现代吗?它是从“三文”的名字开始的吗?虽然学者们将其根源归结为五四文学，但20世纪头20年文学现代性的复杂趋势却被忽视了。把鸳鸯蝴蝶派的主要人物周瘦娟与他对中国现代散文形成的贡献联系起来，必然会遇到中国现代文学经典的问题。

周瘦娟的《九花帘》揭示了这段1917年《新婚之夜》中的白话“枕边话”（“清华”）是在“五四”时期诗歌、小说、散文、戏剧的通俗体系建立之前，从文学体裁的混乱状态中走出来的。--Xiao Shuangling (talk) 11:01, 26 November 2020 (UTC)Xiao Shuangling

Xiao Ting 肖婷

Obsessed with first person narratives it hybridizes diary, love-letter, autobiography, and journalist reportage. I will argue that this Butterflies obsession with subjective genres in the early 20th-century lays a foundation for the growth of modern Chinese essay.

The theatrical devices used in this work create a double self in the narrative space - the self as a performer and the self in the beholders’ gaze. This paper emphasizes that the rhetoric of theatricality is indebted to the repertoires of traditional poetry and drama, which become unavailable when the New Literature triumphs in the 1920s.

Furthermore, I will elaborate how the theatricality helps to construct an early Republican subjectivity based on the divisions between the individual, family and nation-building.

痴迷于第一人称叙事，它杂糅了日记、情书、自传和记者报道。我将认为，《蝴蝶》在20世纪初对主观文体的这种痴迷，为中国现代散文的成长奠定了基础。 这部作品所使用的戏剧手段在叙事空间中创造了一个双重的自我--作为表演者的自我和观看者目光中的自我。本文强调，戏剧性的修辞是依赖于传统诗歌和戏剧的剧目，而当新文学在20世纪20年代取得胜利时，这些剧目就变得不可用了。 此外，我还将阐述戏剧性如何帮助建构一种基于个人、家庭和国家建设之间划分的早期民国主体性。--Xiao Ting (talk) 11:10, 26 November 2020 (UTC)Xiao Ting

Xiao Xi 肖茜

Twilight is that moment of the day that foreshadows

the night of forgetting, but that seems to slow time itself,

an in-between state in which the last light of the day may

still play out its ultimate marvels.

Andreas Huyssen. Twilight Memories

By way of tackling the origins of modern Chinese sanwen, this paper opens up a zone of “twilight memories” of literary modernity early in the twentieth century, which has recently haunted the field of modern Chinese literature. In terms of modern Chinese essay or prose, how do we define this genre? Is it modern because it uses baihua? Does its modern start from being called sanwen? How was the May Fourth generic system established? And what were its consequences to literary history?

Andreas Huyssen, Twilight Memories: Making Time in a Culture of Amnesia (New York and London: Routledge, 1995) 3（文献 无需翻译）

Since the 1980s, searching for Chinese literary modernities other than May Fourth have continued with rigor. In this vital current of scholarly reflections on Chinese literary modernities, prominent are Milena Dolezelova-Velingerova’s emphasis on late Qing origins of modern Chinese literature (“The Origins of Modern Chinese Literature,” in Merle Goldman, ed., Modern Chinese Literature in the May Fourth Era (Cambridge and Mass.: Harvard University Press 1977) 17-36; The Turn of the Century Novel (Toronto University Press, 1981), Perry Link’s path-breaking study of the Mandarin ducks and Butterflies fiction (Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies: Popular Fiction in Early Twentieth Century China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981)), Liu Ts’un-yan’s advocacy of “Middle-blow Fiction” (Chinese Middle-blow Fiction: From the Ch’ing and Early Republican Era (Hong Kong: The Chinese University, 1984)), and recently David Wang’s exciting and sophisticate interpretation of late 19th-century novels (Fin-de-Siecle Splendor: Repressed Modernities of Late Qing Fiction, 1848-1911 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997)). In a larger context, approximately in the same period, this basically north American academia has interacted the rapidly changed literary criticism in China - from the theories and practices of “rewriting literary history” with a revision of “twentieth-century Chinese literature” (Chen Guoqiu, ed., Zhongguo wenxueshi de xingsi (Reflections on the history of Chinese literature) (Hong Kong: Sanlian shudian, 1993).（文献，无需翻译）

Xiao Yining 肖伊宁

With these questions, our inquiry into the formation of modern sanwen is inevitably engaged with a process of canon formation, and perhaps this is the appropriate genre by which we can trace the birth of modern subjectivity. In analyiss of Zhou Shoujuan’s (1894-1968) “In the Nine-Flower Curtain” (Jiuhua zhang li), a vernacular autobiographical fiction published in 1917, I will reveal no more than a historical chaos of literature in which a subjectivity was constructed with complex strands in fusion and contestation. This subjectivity owed much to first person narratives Zhou had intensely experimented in his earlier writings; its double voice was not only helped by the traditional theatricality and poetics, but also linked to the modern spatial perception of cinematic representation.

有了这些问题，我们对现代散文形成的探究就必然涉及到一个经典形成的过程，也许这正是我们追溯现代主体性诞生的合适体裁。通过对周寿娟（1894-1968）1917年出版的白话自传体小说《九花帘幕》的分析，我将揭示一场文学的历史混沌，在这种混沌中，用融合和争鸣的复杂线索建构了一种主体性。这种主观性在很大程度上得益于周作人在早期作品中所做的大量实验，它的双重声音不仅得益于传统的戏剧性和诗学，而且与现代电影表现的空间感知有关。--Xiao yining (talk) 07:57, 26 November 2020 (UTC)Xiao Yining

Xie Fan 解帆

To set the terms from the outset, the sanwen will be treated historically as a canonical category grown out of the May Fourth literature. The term xiaoshuo (fiction, small talk) by which Zhou’s work was categorized will also be historicized. Immune from the modern generic system, it was transitionally intertwined with prose, fiction, drama, and other subgenres in the repertoire of traditional literature. My analysis of the work in question aims at revealing literary modernity of the period in its own terms, rather than redeem Zhou, a key figure of the so-called “Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies school” (Yuanyang hudie pai), for his contribution to the birth of modern essay. Nor will I provide a generic definition of modern essay other than open up a new terrain to inquire different genealogies of literary modernity.

Xie Ziyi 谢子熠

Literary Modernization: Generic and Canonical

One of the spectacles in the literary arena of late 1990s China was the revival of the Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies (hereafter Butterfly) literature. Along with countless reprints of Butterfly fiction commercially catering to the post-socialist urban readers, there were sympathetic academic reappraisals that apparently challenged the May Fourth canon. Since the 1980s, the rapidly changed landscape of literary criticism marked a transformation of the critical codes from “revolutionary literature” to “literary modernity.” “Pure literature” (chun wenxue), a core value of literary modernity, was developed by a new generation of literary critics and academics and was ambiguously engaged with the post-socialist conditions: on the one hand, literary criticism was academically institutionalized and practiced with certain intellectual authorities; on the other hand, the “pure literature” was suspicious of its modernist poetics which implied a subversive force to the status quo.

In recent few years around a dozen of scholarly-edited series of Butterfly literature appeared, not to mention other numerous compilations for commercial purpose. To mention a few: Fan Boqun, ed., Zhongguo jin xiandai tongsu zuojia pingzhuan congshu (Nanjing: Nanjing chubanshe, 1994); Fan Boqun and Fan Zijiang, eds., Yuanyang hudie-Libailiu pai jingdian xiaoshuo wenku (Nanjing: Jiangsu wenyi chubanshe, 1996); Wei Shaochang, ed., Yuanyang hudie pai libai liu xiaoshuo. (Tianjin: Chunfeng wenyi chubanshe, 1997); Yu Runqi, ed., Qingmo minchu xiaoshuo shuxi (Beijing: Zhongguo wenlian chuban gongsi, 1997). （文献，无需翻译）

Xu Jia 徐佳

Today, the difference between May Fourth and Butterfly was not discussed in terms of “revolutionary vs. reactionary” or “progressive vs. backward,” but rather in terms of ya (elitism, elegance) vs. su (populism, commonality). While the Butterfly scholarship carved out a critical space in the name of “popular,” the price was high: their proteges can only be canonized through the codes of May Fourth literary modernity. If what underlay the literary modernity, - the premises of progressive history or of national literature - remained unquestionable, then Butterflies can only be considered inferior.

Xu Jing 许晶

For example, in his recent reevaluation of Yuanyang hudie pai, Wei Shaochang, whose pathbreaking bibliography of Butterfly published in the early 1960s made a study of this school possible, affectionately called this term “a beautiful cap” (meili de maozi). Yet this metaphor implies a re-justification of the “cap” imposed on it by the May Fourth writers. Accordingly, Wei maintained that even the best Butterfly works, despite their accomplishments, fail to compete with Lu Xun, Mao Dun and other modern literary giants in terms of intellectual and aesthetic qualities.

Furthermore, until recently scholarly interests in Butterfly never went beyond fiction.

See Wei Shaochang, Wo kan Yuanyang hudie pai (My view of the Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies literature) (Taiwan: Commercial Press, 1992) 1-11. One month ago, the first international conference on Butterfly school was held at Suzhou University, China, and one of its designed events was to celebrate the publication of A History of Modern Chinese Popular Literature, an enormous and enduring project fulfilled by the Chinese department of the host university. With a massive masquerade of Butterfly literature from the late Qing to Republican era (1,500,000 characters), this book boldly claims a new theory that the modern Chinese literature is constituted by a “pair of wings” - May Fourth and Butterfly. In this revision, the literary histories heretofore are invalid since they missed the other half - the popular literature. Thus, a new correct history of modern Chinese literature was called for. Impressively, this theory was unanimously accepted by all the participants, including notable May Fourth scholars Jia Zhifang, Yan Jiayan, and Qian Gurong. Nevertheless, this acceptance seemed more theoretical than practical, more sympathetic than critical. The problem remained unsolved and more crucial to the future of Butterfly scholarship: How to evaluate Butterfly in terms of aesthetic values? During the conference, the debates over the term “tongsu” (popular), by which the Butterfly was labeled, revealed certain anxiety. This anxiety had some reason: if Butterfly is limited to the popular, it would be inferior to the “pure literature” (chun wenxue), and, of course, ultimately it would be subject to the elite - May Fourth. In other words, if this popular “wing” is not strong enough, the double wing theory itself would hardly hold. The hidden core of the debates is that the May Fourth canon continues to dominate the field of literary criticism.(文献，无需翻译)

Xu Jing 许静

In 1997, a new claim for Butterfly essay arose when an eight-volume series The Compendium of Essays by Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies school (Yuanyang hudie pai sanwen daxi) was published. Implicitly, by the term daxi in the title, this series contended with the May Fourth canon, as it reminded one of the well-known Zhongguo xin wenxue daxi (The Compendium of Modern Chinese Literature) in ten volumes published in 1935, which became a monumental for the May Fourth literature. In his introduction, Yuan Jin, chief-editor of this Compendium of Butterfly Essay, asserts that prior to the May Fourth period Butterflies had greatly achieved in essay writings.

Yuan Jin, Yuanyang hudie pai sanwen daxi: 1909-1949 (Shanghai: Dongfang chuban zhongxin, 1997) 3-4. （文献，无需翻译）

Xu Mengdie 徐梦蝶

Although after the 1920s most of them gradually accepted the new concept of sanwen used by May Fourth writers, they wrote in both vernacular and classical, and their essays still inherited the traditional literature, specifically the styles of xiaopin and biji. Emphatic on their thematic and aesthetic characteristics as “representing quotidian life, the private feelings and tastes,” Yuan suggests that the Butterfly essay has its own literary and cultural roots.

The Compendium of New Literature serves a linkage par excellence, for it displays how a canon is formed by defining a genre.

Xu Pengfei 许鹏飞

As the view that the form of modern Chinese essay was born from May Fourth literary movement was still prevailing, it is necessary to see how this modern myth was made. At least, a kind of authentic definition of modern essay was explicated by Yu Dafu (1896-1945) and Zhou Zuoren (1885-1968) in their introductions to the sanwen anthologies they separately compiled for the Compendium.

At the time, almost two decades had elapsed since the May Fourth movement. And the New Culture, as incessantly embracing diverse isms from the West on the one hand and tortured by national and intellectual crises on the other, became more ideologically charged and consequently split into antagonistic camps.

For example, Fan Peisong. Zhongguo xiandai sanwen shi (A History of Modern Chinese Essay) (Nanjing: Jiangsu jiaoyu chubanshe, 1993) 3. The first sentence: “The history of modern Chinese essay opened its curtain when the May Fourth new cultural movement started.”（文献，无需翻译）

有观点任务中国现代散文的形式诞生于五四文学运动，这一观点仍然盛行，该现代迷思是如何产生的值得一看。至少，郁达夫（1896-1945）和周作人（1885-1968）在他们各自为《纲要》编撰的“散文”选集时，于引言部分给予了现代散文一个真正的定义。

当时，五四运动已经过去了近二十年。新文化运动一方面不断地接受来自西方的各种主义，另一方面又受到民族和知识危机的折磨，更受意识形态的控制，并因此分裂成对立的阵营。--Xu Pengfei (talk) 08:26, 26 November 2020 (UTC)Xu Pengfei

Yang Chenting 杨晨婷

As for these invited editors, their relationships (for example, between Hu Shi and Lu Xun, or between Mao Dun and Yu Dafu) were ruined by political arguments, or by personal quarrels and insults. All these, however, did not prevent them from being together to make a new literary myth. It was unlikely that they would return to the old days, yet this tremendous project certainly offered each of them a role of literary master in reshaping the May Fourth history.

Yang Hairong 杨海容

Compromises were necessary, yet, as a matter of fact, the Compendium cannot be easily assessed as a whole, for all the works included were miscellaneous and conflicted in content and form. As most editors claimed, using baihua is the hallmark for the new literature, but there was some flaw in their consensus of excluding the Butterfly School and the Shanghai School (haipai), for both schools also wrote in baihua; rather, the exclusions implied moral bias against urbanism. It was no wonder that a great collective effort was made to reconstruct the conception of new, which itself was authoritative, at least theoretically, inbred with the ideas of progressive history, humanistic universality, and the utopian future.

Yang Hui 阳慧

Thus, traced back to the moment of revolutionary departure, the new literature was portrayed as a myth of rootless origins, a timeless creation, isolated from the past; accordingly, the series presented their self-portraits as literary revolutionaries and cultural iconoclasts. In defining the modern essay, Yu Dafu can hardly figure out where the term sanwen comes from, left with a vague notion that it probably comes from the translation of the English term “prose.”

As Yu stressed in his introduction, the greatest contribution the sanwen genre makes to May Fourth literature is the free expression of individualism.

因此，追溯到革命离开的那一刻，新文学被描绘成一个无根起源的神话，一个与过去隔离的永恒的创造；在此基础上，以文学革命者和文化偶像派的形象展现了他们的自我形象 .在界定现代散文时，郁达夫很难找出“三文”这个词的来源，留下了一个模糊的概念，即它可能来自于英语“散文”这个词的翻译。

正如余在导言中强调的那样，“三文”体裁对五四文学的最大贡献就是个人主义的自由表达。--YangHui (talk) 08:55, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

Yang Yi 杨逸

He is fascinated by this new and independent genre, with its multiple modes of representation and creative linguistic capacities distinct from those of fiction, poetry and drama. It is no accident that as a novelist well known for his autobiographical fiction displaying his sentimental, decadent and masochist personae, Yu believes that the essay should be a kind of self-writing in nature. In the same vein, Zhou Zuoren asserts that the modern essay was born from the linguistic shift from wenyan to baihua, which of course should be attributed to the May Fourth literary achievement. He also gives the highest credit to this genre for its casualty, fluidity and flexibility - its specific capabilities of expressing the author’s own material and spiritual world.

09:01, 26 November 2020 (UTC)==Yang Yue 杨悦==

In exalting the sanwen for its charismatic power, both Zhou and Yu exhibit a kind of anxiety, symbolically related to their status not only as masters of modern essay but, more interestingly, as spokesmen of May Fourth individualism. Their anxiety were charged with different motivation and rhetoric, however, for in the mid-1930s, their political and cultural stands were in stark contrast. More pessimistic to China’s internal and external crises, Zhou retreated from the revolutionary frontier of New Culture and turned to cultural conservatism. On the other hand, Yu was more inclined toward the Left Wing radicalism to redeem himself from his early decadent proclivity.

在赞扬散文的魅力时，周作人和郁达夫都表现出一种焦虑，这是由于他们不仅是现代散文大师，更有趣的是，他们是五四个人主义的发言人。 然而，他们的焦虑来源于不同的动机和言辞，因为在20世纪30年代中期，他们的政治和文化立场形成了鲜明的对比。周作人对中国内忧外患更加悲观，因此他从新文化革命的前沿退隐，转向文化保守主义。另一方面，郁达夫为了弥补自己早期的颓废倾向，所以更倾向于左翼激进主义。--Yang Yue (talk) 01:33, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

周瑜在提升三文的魅力时，表现出一种焦虑，象征着他们不仅是现代散文的大师，更有趣的是，他们是五四个人主义的代言人。他们的焦虑带有不同的动机和言辞，但在 1930 年代中期，他们的政治和文化立场形成了鲜明的对比。对中国的内外危机更加悲观的是，周从新文化的革命前沿退缩，转向文化保守主义。另一方面，余更倾向于左翼激进主义，以弥补自己早期的堕落倾向。--YangHui (talk) 08:57, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

在赞扬散文的魅力力量时，周和郁都表现出一种焦虑，这象征着他们不仅是现代散文大师，更有趣的是，他们是“五四”个人主义的代言人。然而，他们的焦虑被归咎于不同的动机和言辞，因为在20世纪30年代中期，他们的政治和文化立场形成了鲜明的对比。周对中国内忧外患更加悲观，从新文化革命的前沿退隐，转向文化保守主义。另一方面，为了弥补自己早期的颓废倾向，俞正声更倾向于左翼激进主义。--Wensixing (talk) 09:03, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

Yang Ziling 杨子泠

While characterizing the modern essay in social and ideological context, Yu emphasized the essayists’ responsibility to search for a harmony between the individual, nature and society. Moreover, he pointed out that May Fourth writers have endured an intellectual ordeal as they had first embraced the individuality and finally discovered the necessity to connect it to society and collectivity thanks to their moral conscience awakened by the bloody May Thirtieth incident. In contrast, Zhou showed a strong tendency of aestheticism and nihilism when claiming that he dislikes discussing sanwen in terms of history, political partisanship or any new isms.

Yu Dafu. “Daoyan,” in Zhongguo xin wenxue daxi - Sanwen er ji (Shanghai: Liangyou tushu chuban gongsi, 1935) 1-19.（文献，无需翻译）

Yao Cheng 姚诚

Despite their different views, they actually shared the historical perspective in discussing the development and characteristics of modern essay, and neither of them could see beyond their own historical limits. In their reinterpreting the new literature, the history of form was encoded by the new ideology. First of all, integral with the canonical codes and process, the Compendium definitively presented the modern generic division of xiaoshuo, shige, xiju, and sanwen. Lydia Liu called this four-way division a “self-colonizing project” as these terms were perfectly translatable into “fiction,” “poetry,” “drama,” and “familiar essay,” respectively, in English. Historically, as she pointed out, the canonization of these “translated” norms of literary form radically subverted the classical canon as the legitimate source of meaning for Chinese culture and literature.

尽管他们意见分歧，但在讨论现代论文的发展和其特点时，他们历史观点其实一样的，他们都无法超越自己的历史束缚。 在他们重新解释“新”文学时，形式的历史是由新意识形态编码的。 首先，与规范代码和过程集成在一起，该纲要明确地提出了“小说”，“诗歌”，“戏局”和“散文”的现代通用划分。 吕迪亚·刘（Lydia Liu）将此四分方式称为“自我殖民化项目”，因为这些术语完美地翻译成英语中的“小说”，“诗歌”，“戏剧”和“熟悉的论文”。 正如她所指出的那样，从历史上看，对这些文学形式“已译”规范的规范化从根本上颠覆了经典规范作为中国文化和文学意义的合法来源。--Yao Cheng (talk) 09:45, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

Yao Jia 姚佳

Both Yu and Zhou took this modernized generic system for granted. The genre of essay, according to Zhou, represents the finest achievement of New Literature thanks to its capacities to represent widest scopes of life and individual emotions and reflections, with multiple, sophisticate techniques and styles, yet it is succeeded lastly compared to fiction and drama. Zhou’s discontent can be heard when he traced the tradition of modern essay back to the late Ming xiaopin wen, a move showing his pro-tradition revision that was arguable within the May Fourth camp. But he treated sanwen as an integral part in the system of four genres, and his discussion of formal problems was restricted by this systemic framework. 郁达夫和周作人都视这种现代化的通用体系为理所当然。在周看来，散文这种文体代表着新文学的最好成就。因为散文能够以多样的，复杂的技巧和风格体现广阔的生活视野和个人的情感与思考，它最终与小说和戏剧相比也是成功的。周的不满可以从他追溯现代散文传统到晚明时期的小品文的中寻迹。此举表明了他对传统的修正，也引发了五四阵营中的争论。但他将散文视为四种文体体系中的一个重要组成部分，对形式问题的探讨就受到了这一体系框架的制约。--Yao Jia (talk) 10:55, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

Yi Huan 易欢

It was with this canon of modernized generic division that both Zhou and Yu described sanwen in rational terms, defining its linguistic and literary features in order to assert its superiority to other genres. This assertion was grounded on the legitimacy of the generic system and ultimately verified the system as a scientific and organic whole. In characterizing sanwen’s representational capacities, Zhou used three terms: narrating, reasoning, and expressing emotions. More elaborate was Yu’s characterization with four terms, each of which was matched with an English equivalent in parenthesis – “description,” “narration,” “exposition,” and “persuasion” or “argumentation.” A slightly variant explication was allowed when he at the same time showed his favor to other categorical terms such as the reasoning, lyricism, description, and narration.

Yi Zichu 义子楚

Here Zhou’s notion of meiwen (beautiful essay) invites our special attention as it is involved with his historical speculation of the genre, which nonetheless suggests something else. Citing his published articles in chronological order, Zhou shows how he had tirelessly explored sanwen as a new form and at the same time elaborated his own theory of the genre. As he says he still cherishes his original idea that essay should be as perfect as meiwen, which he had advocated as early as the late 1910s. This historical tracing seemed not only to review his insights from the mirror of history, as a matter of fact it aimed at reshaping his politics of “aesthetic essay” in the new cultural situation.

You Yuting 游雨婷

Nevertheless, Zhou’s historicity in the 1935 introduction might reveal more about his painstaking search for the ideal concept of literature if he had drawn deeper from his memory. As early as 1908, he wrote a long essay, whose importance was manifested by its title “On the Significance and Mission of Writing and the Mistakes in Recent Chinese Literary Criticism” (Lun wenzhang zhi yiyi ji qi shiming, yin ji Zhongguo jinshi lunwen zhi deshi). It reveals his initial idea of meiwen as he had already talked about it, yet the fact that it was neglected by Zhou in 1935 might be more revelatory, for in 1908 what he really argued for was the term wenzhang (literature) rather than meiwen. In other words, the excavation of Zhou’s literary past repressed by himself opens up a zone of “twilight memories” to serve my purpose.

Yu Ni 余妮

The essay shows how he intensely seeks a legitimate idea of literature between the terms of wenzhang, wenxue, and xiaoshuo, or in a sense it epitomizes a battlefield of naming literature at the time. While sharing the contemporary intellectual consensus that literary discourse is one of the most viable medium to reshape national spirit, Zhou attempts to construct a system of literature by glorifying the idea of wenzhang which he identifies with the Latin word literature. The ideal of wenzhang is embodied by artistic and affectionate expressions in archaic style (no wonder this essay was written in classical language). In order to enthrone his concept of wenzhang as a kind of new authentic classicism, he annotates the term by deriving from Western literary theories on the one hand, and on the other he combatively denounces other influential terms such as wenxue or xiaoshuo.

Yuan Shiqi 袁诗琦

Paradoxically, Zhou criticizes Liang Qichao’s notion of xiaoshuo for its utilitarian bent, yet he embraces it to such an extent that he equates it with the wenzhang, lest it should be furnished with true sincerity in describing reality so as to move human emotions. The terms sanwen and meiwen do appear, once for each, and yet were casually treated; the former means trivial and lack of aesthetic quality, and the latter is less than a concept.

Lydia Liu, Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity China, 1900-1937 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995) 235.

Charles A. Laughlin excellently analyzed Zhou Zuoren's advocacy of late Ming xiaopin and its tension within the May Fourth literary theory in his paper "Legacies of Leisure: Late Imperial Influences on the 20th Century Chinese Essay" held at the essay conference in Achern (Germany) in August 25-27, 2000.

Zhou Zuoren, “Daoyan”, in Zhongguo xin wenxue daxi, Sanwen yi ji (Shanghai: Liangyou tushu gongsi, 1935) 1-14.

Zhou Zuoren, “Lun wenzhang zhi yiyi ji qi shiming, yin ji Zhongguo jinshi lunwen zhi deshi.” In Wang Yunxi, Wu Guoping, and Huang Lin, eds., Zhongguo wenlun xuan, jindai juan (Selections of Chinese literary criticism, The modern period) (Nanjing: Jiangsu wenyi chubanshe, 1996) 689-725. （文献无需翻译）

Yuan Tianyi 袁天翼

Obviously, the text, with his idea and style, looked outmoded by 1935. He had lost the battle of naming. The contestation of these terms resulted in the establishment of literary hierarchy consisted by the concepts of wenxue that meant literature in general sense, and the genres of xiaoshuo and sanwen as its major constituents. While forgetting his past as a neo-classicist, Zhou’s memory was effected by the canonical process of modern division of genres. Nevertheless, dimly echoing his early neo-classical vision he rebelled against the literary division while identifying the “beautiful essay” with late Ming xiaopin wen, though in the end he must remain as a modern master essayist, filled with agony and nostalgia.

显然，1935年时，再回首他的这篇文章，从思想和风格来看，都已经过时了。周作人已经输掉了这场命名之战。关于这些术语的论战，直接促成了文学分层。而文学分层主要是由“文学”概念构成，并且还主要包含“小说”和“散文”这两个体裁。周作人虽然业已忘却他身为新古典主义作家的过去，不过他的思维还是受到了现代体裁划分的经典过程影响。不过，在用明朝晚期的“小品文”来判别“优美的散文”同时，简单地重复周作人反对文学层次划分的早期新古典主义思想，他也还是满腹悲伤与思乡，哪怕最终他必须捍卫自己现代散文大师的身份。

Yuan Yuchen 袁雨晨

Search for New Form and Subject

While the Poetry Revolution (shijie geming), Prose Revolution (wenjie geming) and Fiction Revolution (xiaoshuojie geming), launched by Liang Qichao from 1899 to 1902, signified that Chinese literature entered the modern epoch, the division of literary genres emerged. The most influential and controversial was the Fiction Revolution, for it was traditionally despised yet directly linked with the mass politics that loomed at the threshold of the century. In his famous essay “On the Relationship Between Fiction and the Government of the People” (Lun xiaoshuo yu qunzhi zhi guanxi), Liang claimed that “fiction is the crowning glory of literature,” and that the “new fiction” should embody a new national soul. This intellectual subservience to populism was not whimsical, rather the subversion of poetic reign within the hierarchy of traditional genres served a metaphor for the collapse of traditional value system.

Zeng Fangyuan 曾芳缘

As Ted Huters explicated, the transformation of prose theories in late Qing period resulted in the ascendancy of the status of “writing” (wen) that is closer to the modern conception of “literature” (wenxue). Yet, the Fiction Revolution changed the generic course drastically. Widely anticipated for its superiority in mass education, the concept of xiaoshuo was elevated to the ontological level, as important as that of wen. Although the Prose Revolution carried with it the power of “new prose style” (xin wenti) invented by Liang himself, it could hardly compete with the Fiction Revolution. While the “new prose style” was limited in its modes of expression, the literary contours were more vibrant with the movement of xiaoshuo. Put it simply, in this period, what determined the formation of modern essay were the theory and practice of xiaoshuo rather than those of wen.

Zeng Liang 曾良

As a matter of fact, literary tradition was reinvented by the notion of new fiction. Contrary to Liang’s expectation, xin xiaoshuo was still entangled with its tradition; selected and combined by new rules, the tradition offered new fiction possibilities to adopt literary techniques from the West. Perhaps Liang and his followers created this ambiguity, as the xiaoshuo came from the Japanese translation of Western “fiction” or “novel” and at the same time it was mixed with traditional popular genres of drama and tanci (musical and performing story-telling). Ironically, while claiming for its capacities to represent the human realms with “complexity, penetration, vividness, and thoroughness” (quzhe touda, linli jingzhi), it was also offered with almost a full range of traditional literary genres for choice.

Zeng Xinyuan 曾心媛

There was a tension within the “new fiction” between its lofty mission to save China and its tradition of “small talk” - fiction for popular desires. The pendulum did not go back to the “small talk” until the mid-1910s when a new wave of urban periodicals surged, this time catering to intimate space and individual pleasure. This was the time of despair and expectation, of reshaping the public and private spheres, full of conflicts between tradition and modernity in terms of social norms of love, marriage and family. New interests in romances were accompanied with the aspiration for first person narratives from the West, such as memoir, love-letter, diary, and confession. It was no accident that popular magazines and newspapers were saturated with the sad love stories, among which Xu Zhenya’s (1889-1937) Yu li hun (Jade Pearl Spirit) became a bestseller in 1914.

Zeng Yanhu 曾雁湖

This weird combination - a tragic romance interwoven with the author’s memory of youth and the style of archaic parallelism - seemed to attract more the refined reading public. Wu Shuangre (1884-1934), a writer also known for tragic romance, redefined the xiaoshuo as the “opposite to the big discourse (dashuo),” his emphasis on the smallness of fiction was urged by new desire and social needs.

Zhang Hu 张虎

Zhou’s intellectual background behind his critique of Liang Qichao and Lin Shu should not be ignored. Influenced by Zhang Taiyan whom Zhou and his brother Zhou Shuren (later Lu Xun) followed during their stay in Japan, Zhou’s archaic vision of literature was based on the conviction that learning from the West by deriving from the Chinese past with deeper and wider scopes can prevent from the danger of populism and mass politics.

Liang Qichao, “On the Relationship Between Fiction and the Government of the People.” Trans. Gek Nai Cheng, in Kirk Denton, ed., Modern Chinese Literary Thought, 74-81.

Theodore Huters, “From Writing to Literature: The Development of Late Qing Theories of Prose.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 47 (1987) 51-90. （参考文献不用翻译）

Zhang Hui 张慧

See, “Zhongguo weiyi zhi wenxue bao Xin xiaoshuo” (The only literary magazine New Fiction in China). Xinmin congbao 14 (1902). When the New Fiction magazine was inaugurated in 1902, Liang and his colleagues lent its representational capacities the widest scopes of lifeworld and the richest literary resources, though in the name of “Western fiction.” The genres include popular song, rhythmic expressions such as drama and musicala storytelling.

参见《中国文学史》。（中国唯一的文学杂志《新小说》）。 新民同保14（1902）。 1902年，《新小说》（New Fiction）杂志发行时，梁和他的同事们以“西方小说”的名义，将其代表能力赋予了世界最广泛的领域和最丰富的文学资源。 种类包括流行歌曲，有节奏的表现形式，例如戏剧和音乐剧故事。

参见《中国唯意志文学报新小说》。（中国唯一的文学杂志《新小说》）。 新民从报14（1902）。 1902年，《新小说》（New Fiction）杂志创刊时，梁启超和他的同事们虽然打着 "西洋小说 "的旗号，将其代表能力赋予了全世界最广泛的领域和最丰富的文学资源。体裁包括流行歌曲、戏剧等韵律性的表现形式和音乐剧故事。--Zhao Xiaoyan (talk) 09:12, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

Zhang Ling 张玲

Zhou meticulously experimented with first person narratives in the mid-1910s. In the wake of collapse of traditional values, literature became a vent for repressed psychology, and meanwhile functioned in reordering the structures of feelings and perceptions that purported to pave a way to rebuilding national spirituality. Therefore, intellectual anxiety was attached to seeking new literary genres. At the time, Zhou was spotlighted on the literary arena with Saturday (Libailiu), a weekly popular magazine aimed to entertain and educate urban readers mainly by the principles of literary pleasure aimed to articulate and regulate desires of everyday life and consumer psychology. This boom of urban print culture signified an inversion to the previous Fiction Revolution devoted to patriotism and national ethos; its representations focused more on the private realms and individuals, revealing a clearer character of the “small talk.” In this sense, Zhou’s intense uses of first person narratives were a necessity for him to represent a kind of the autonomous individual in urban space as an integral part of the periodical culture.

Zhang Peiwen 张佩闻

“In the Nine-Flower Curtain” appeared in 1917, in the Pictorial Story (Xiaoshuo huabao) edited by Bao Tianxiao, who announced from the outset that this monthly fiction magazine aims to promote the baihua fiction. In a history of Chinese literature published in late-1950s, this story was picked out as a typical Butterfly work: “[it is] empty and poor in its content, full of meaningless words and sentences.” However, this biased criticism neglected the fact that this short story was a pioneering baihua fiction, which appeared in a fiction magazine, which advocated the baihua prior to the May Fourth movement! 、

Zhang Qi 张琪

Indeed, “In the Nine-Flower Curtain” was labeled as xiaoshuo, but the notion of xiaoshuo in the teens ambiguously crossed the boundaries of old and new, and Zhou had barely the idea of modern sanwen. Rather, shown by the story mixed with the elements of poetry, prose and drama, his understanding of xiaoshuo was conventional and transitional. Interestingly, some critic conceived that the notion of sanwen was stemmed from xiaoshuo. In 1914, Cheng Zhi’s essay “Miscellaneous Remarks on Fiction” (Xiaoshuo conghua) holds that nowadays only xiaoshuo can do what literature can do; it is so important and enchanting that it can fulfill the task of literature while artistically expressing human emotions and aesthetic thoughts. Since all literary expressions, according to him, appeal to optic and audio perceptions, xiaoshuo contains both sanwen (prosaic) and yunwen (rhythmic) texts. The former can be the vernacular or literary language; the latter includes romance drama and rhythmic story-telling. As the chart intricately shows, the sanwen is sandwiched: on one side it grows out of the trunk of xiaoshuo, and on other side it bifurcates its own branches of literary and vernacular languages. We cannot decide to what extent this concept of sanwen can be related to that of the May Fourth generic system, yet its connotations were still valid in the Butterfly use after the 1920s.

Zhang Weihong 张维虹

The chaotic conditions of literary genres opened up new possibilities, and “In the Nine-Flower Curtain,” as a kind of self-representation, exhibited Zhou’s obsession with subjective writings, blended with the elements of dairy, love-letter, confession, and fictional autobiography. Here, I only briefly show Zhou’s devotion to two kinds of the first person narratives - autobiography and lover-letter. These forms adopted by Zhou, no matter it belongs to the concept of xiaoshuo at the time or more to the sanwen in today’s standard, had a specific charm of lyricism and sensuality that most appealed to him. One type referred to the subgenre of autobiography - amorous memoirs - a colorful branch in Ming-Qing erotic-sentimental tradition, represented by Mao Xiang’s Memoirs of the Plum Shadow Studio (Ying mei an yiyu) and Jiang Tan’s Reminiscences of the Autumn Lamp (Qiu deng suoyi). These texts were included in an anthology titled Selections of Memoirs (Yiyu xuan) Zhou edited and published in 1920s.

Zhang Xueyi 张雪仪

Another inspiration came from Washington Irving, whom Zhou considered a literary genius. He highly praised Irving’s Sketch-Book for its “creativity and uniqueness”; he appreciated most “Westminster Abbey,” “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” “The Broken Heart” and “RipVan Winkle.” Interestingly, Zhou understoods Irving through the window of Chinese literary past. He translated the Sketch-Book into the form of biji, with his comments saturated with the classical poetics: “His writings are secluded and flagrant, limped and stretching far (youxin danyuan), like violets in flower-shrubes; they are also delicate and charming, drifting aloof (qingqian piaoyi), like a pen thrown into the sky becomes a capricious dragon.”

Zhang Yinliu 张银柳

Zhou’s mania for love-letters evinces his pursuit of the fashion, chic and commercial, in contrast to his literati personality immersed in the erotic-sentimental poetics. Raoul Findeisen rightly pointed out that the genre of love-letter enhances to codify the heterosexual love in modern Chinese literature. This form was introduced into China hand in hand with the assimilation of Western-style customs and the idea of free communication between man and woman. At least in 1911, qingshu as a translated term for “love-letter” appeared in a funny essay “Ji qingshu zhi xinfa” (A new way to send a love-letter) in Shenbao. As a piece of passionate qinghua, “In the Nine-Flower Curtain” should be connected to Zhou’s “Qingshu hua” (On love-letter), a series of essays he contributed to Shenbao in 1919. These essays talk about the world famous love stories of Napoleon, Byron, Hugo, and many others, and specifically about how they wrote love-letters. For example, amidst wars Napoleon never forgot to write to Josephine; Zhou translated his words: “I am begging you to receive my thousand kisses, and don’t give me back any of your’s, otherwise my blood will boil.” Also with great zeal he talks about how Hugo wrote 120 letters to his fiancee Adele Forcher.

Zhang Yu 张瑜

Known as master of the “sad love story” in the mid-1910s, he wrote numerous short stories which appeared in around a dozen periodicals and newspapers; among them a number of first person narratives were in best quality. While breaking with the traditional love discourse and modes of romance, his love stories depicted new urban subjects in newly formed public spaces such as the public park, tramcar, medical clinic, and movie theater. Most noticeable is his Short Stories from Famous European and American Writers (Oumei mingjia dianpian xiaoshuo congkan) published in 1917, revealing his ways of dealing with the personal pronounces under chaotic conditions. Among fifty stories included, twenty-six stories belong to first person narrative. Interestingly, in all the eight vernacular texts the first person pronoun is wo, and in the rest eighteen stories in classical language, the first person pronouns are variantly used between yu, yu and wu.

Zhang Yujie 张毓婕

This selection of wo for the vernacular seemed identical to the establishment of “I” as the male subjectivity in May Fourth literature, but they bore different logic of modernity. Perhaps there was another kind of “translated modernity” in Zhou: the vernacular wo is not the absolute in the whole anthology. Zhou’s selected uses of the personal pronouns include not only the first person pronouns but the second and third person pronouns, showing a chaotic state of literary subject. He is more plural and playful while experimenting with both the vernacular and the classical, and one is not subject to the other. Fascinated by multiple possibilities in the new literary situations, he was more concerned with ways of using different first person pronouns to suit different modes and styles of representations, in accordance with his own linguistic sensitivity and capability.

Zhang Yuxing 张宇星

Fan Boqun pointed out that Zhou contributed to modern literature in its early phase by experimenting with psychological forms such as diary, epistoral fiction, and that his creative writings were indebted to his translation. See, “Zhu, bian, yi jie jing de ‘wenzi laogong’: Zhou Shoujuan pingzhuan” (A literary laboror in his refined achievements of writing, editing and translating: A biography of Zhou Shoujuan), in Fan Boqun, ed., Zhongguo jin xiandai tongsu zuojia pingzhuan congshu (A series of modern Chinese popular writers) vol. 4, 177. If this was a late credit to Zhou, there had been another one about his 1917 translation of Famous European and American Short Stories. In the early 1960s he wrote to his daughter revealing the fact that his 1917 translation was praised by Lu Xun and awarded by the Republican Education Bureau, and that he did not know this until he had read Zhou Zuoren’s memoir in the early 1950s. This information was revealed after his literary career was criticized as a reactionary current against the new literature.

Zhao Xi 赵茜

Lydia Liu deals with the use of first person pronoun wo that designates “I” as a central issue of “translated modernity” in modern Chinese literature. Along with wo becoming the only victor in the contests of first person pronouns through heavy traffic of transnational cultures, the male vernacular subjectivity is established (see Lydia Liu, 154-55).

The Poetics of Persuasion“In the Nine-Flower Curtain” was the author’s “love talk” (qinghua) to his bride in the first night of marriage, a passionate confession of his bitter past, with sentiment and self-esteem, and meanwhile he expresses his love and hope for their conjugal life in the future. The narrative begins with a third person account of how the author’s wedding ceremony was held in Yeshiyuan, one of famous public parks in the city, and how in the night his friends gathered in the wedding chamber making fun of the new couple.

Zhao Xiaoyan 赵晓燕

This brief opening is like the “prologue” in premodern vernacular stories, a device originated from thirteen-century drama. By this convention a stage is set for the drama of the pillow talk, predicting his theatricality. Nevertheless, with the phrase “Zhou Shoujuan says” at the very beginning, the tradition is inverted, for in old days, fiction writing is not a respectful job and the author’s name never appeared. While the vernacular storytellers were too humble to claim his authorship, literati were too proud to do so. Perhaps it was Lin Shu who self-consciously broke with the tradition as he signed his name on the novels he translated.

这种简短的开场白就像前现代白话故事中的 "序幕"，这种手法源于十三世纪的戏剧。通过这个惯例，为枕边话的戏剧性搭建了一个舞台，预示着他的戏剧性。不过，一开始就用“周守娟说”这句话来颠覆了传统，因为在旧社会，写小说并不是什么尊贵的工作，作者的名字从来没有出现过。白话故事家谦虚得不敢宣称自己的作者身份，但文人却为之骄傲。也许是林纾自觉地打破了传统，他在自己翻译的小说上签上了自己的名字。--Zhao Xiaoyan (talk) 09:04, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

这种简短的开场白就像前现代白话故事中的 "序幕"，这种手法源于十三世纪的戏剧。通过这个惯例，为枕边话的戏剧性搭建了一个舞台，预示着他的戏剧性。不过，有了开头的 "周寿娟说 "这句话，这个传统就被颠覆了，因为在旧社会，写小说并不是什么尊贵的工作，作者的名字从来没有出现过。白话故事家谦虚得不敢宣称自己的作者身份，文人却骄傲得不敢。也许是林纾自觉地打破了传统，他在自己翻译的小说上签上了自己的名字。

Zheng Huajun 郑华君

This self-referential information at the outset is more than a self-promotion: it sets a tone of respectfulness and expectation, evoking a blissful and jubilant atmosphere for what follows. Moreover, the voice from a famous writer suggests new semantics of love and new ways of expressing love. Of course, the marriage is a new chapter in his life; it was the fashion to have a Western-style wedding (wenming jiehun) in a public park. The guests are celebrities, novelist, journalists and print entrepreneurs, such as Bao Tianxiao, Chen Diexian, Ding Song, indicative of a newly born social stratum recognized by the urban public.

Zhou Luoping 周罗平

When Zhou promises to satisfy his friends’ curiosity about what he said to the bride “inside the curtain” in the first night, he deliberately shifts the scene from the backdrop to the main tableau - the curtain. His wedding, albeit part of his private life, was already exposed by Bao Tianxiao and Chen Diexian who, as Zhou mentioned, had written about this event and published them in newspapers. And Zhou himself announced that his own pillow talk would appear in the Pictorial Story. Aware of his privacy under the public gaze, Zhou spotlighted the “curtain” as center stage, namely in the innermost space of the chamber; this is bold and unconventional. Of the marriage rituals and symbols familiar to the Chinese, those descriptions related to the wedding chamber are most erogenous and mysterious, arousing their erotic and voyeurist desire.

Zhou Shiqing 周诗卿

In Six records of a floating life (Fusheng liu ji), a classical autobiography, Shen Fu (1763-?) vividly depicts, “I saw by the light of our wedding candles that Yun’s figure was as slim as before. When her veil was lifted we smiled at each other. And we had shared the ceremonial cup of wine and sat down together for the wedding banquet, I secretly took her small hand under the table. It was warm and it was soft, and my heart beat uncontrollably.” However, readers might be disappointed as there is no such details they expected. Yet to great writers, dealing with the first wedding night is a moment to play with readers’ expectation. For example, in one of Li Yu’s stories, after the bridegroom undresses the bride, he is shocked by the fact that she is a “stone woman” who lacks the sexual organ! In Dream of the Red Chamber, when Baoyu lifts the bride’s veil, he finds Baocai instead Daiyu - he is cheated by his family seniors who makes the substitute; thus the dark side of traditional marriage system is unveiled and the tragic theme of the novel reaches its climax.

Zhou Shuyao 周书尧

The narrator’s loving voice begins with: “My Phoenix Lady: This is the first night of our marriage, the first day to raise the curtain of our family life. Whether our chamber will be paradise or hell, the drama opens from the present; whether our life will be sad or happy, we will open our theater today.” The long and passionate pillow talk is lyrical and decorative in style, with verbal and imagery rhetorical devices such as the poetic couplets and parallel sentences, metaphors, and repetitions, blending the classical and Western-style vocabulary and grammar. The bridegroom says:

From now on, you become a member of my family; your name Hu Fengjun is crowned with the surname Zhou. Since you stepped into the door of Zhou, naturally you will do something for his family. The domestic duty falls on us with weight; we should carry it together: the half of it is on my shoulder, the other half on your’s. We should become one heart in order to overcome innumerable difficulties ahead of us. My old mother needs your good service, the multiple household needs your great care. If sometimes I am worried, you should understand me, and care about me.

Zhou Siqing 周思庆

The most important word for husband and wife is “love,” which comes from their mutual understanding and mutual care. If we love each other until the last day of our life, we will spend our whole life in a wonderland with flower and the moon. Every second of our time is gilded with honey and sugar; everywhere in this world is as beautiful as rose. At our ears we often hear the singing birds; before our eyes we often see the flowers in smile. In four seasons, we always have bright and fantastic landscapes around us; the sky looks embroidered, even from cruel storm and frost there grows out the splendid Spring.

Therefore it is truly important for a couple to love each other, and nothing else is so important. If you have a plenty of money but no love, if you are so tightly fastened by the “red string” that you cannot escape from it, then although you are still husband and wife, how can you feel any happy? Since the ancient time, countless virtuous women were victimized as such. In this first day of our marriage, we should think of a way to make our love forever: each day we should let our hearts meet and mirror each other.

夫妻之间最重要的词是“爱”，它来自于彼此的理解和关心。如果我们相爱直到生命的最后一天，我们将在一个有花有月的仙境度过我们的一生。我们的每一秒都充满了甜蜜与糖;世界上任何地方都像玫瑰一样美丽。我们经常听到鸟儿在耳边歌唱;我们经常看到微笑的花朵出现在眼前。在四季中，总是有明亮的和奇妙的风景在我们周围;天空看起来像绣了花一样，即使是残酷的风暴和霜冻也会带来灿烂的春天。

因此，夫妻彼此相爱是非常重要的，没有什么比这更重要了。如果你们有很多钱却没有爱情，如果你们被那根“红线”拴得死死的，那么即使你们还是夫妻，你们怎么能感到幸福呢? 自古以来，有无数贤惠的妇女成为这样的受害者。在我们结婚的第一天，我们应该想办法让我们的爱永远:每一天我们应该让我们的心相遇，彼此关照。--Zhou Siqing (talk) 09:57, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

Zhou Yiwen 周艺文

A reader of modern taste may frown at the rhetoric of excess and hyperbole, the naive self-indulgence, and the Chauvinist male voice in this early baihua prattle. But in this early modern phase, what most fascinates the contemporaries are its novelty and hybridity of diverse images and grammars; i.e. the unfamiliar is within the familiar, the modern within the traditional. Perry Link asserted that Butterfly fiction provides “psychological comfort” to the urban readers who feel the pressure of modernity. Yet, “In the Nine-Flower Curtain” provides something more positive than the “psychological comfort”: the narrator’s persuasive voice throughout this pillow talk.

Zhou Yuanqu 周园曲

Embedded in a kind of love philosophy mixed with late Ming discourse of passion (qing) and the Romantic influence from the West, this love talk asserts that true love is primarily based on mutual understanding and mutual compassion. A persuasive tone, rather than the didactic or authoritative, prevails the text, and when the persuasion itself it a crucial way to reach and fulfill true love and compassion, its effect depends on refined speech and aesthetic values. For instance, the use of rhythmic repetitions aims to be chantable and enchanting; this audio characteristic is discernibly linked to traditional poetry and drama. The variations of the parallel sentences, poetic couplet, idiomatic phrase and resonant words display the author’s grasp of the repertoire of traditional literature. The sentences “My old mother needs your good service, the multiple household needs your great care” resemble the “four-six” parallelism; the pair of colloquial phrase haohao'er (well, greatly) comes from vernacular drama or fiction. A contemporary reader might be excited by this Western-style couplet, “You are like the warm sunshine in the summer; I am the bright moon in the autumn.” Or readers may be fascinated by the fresh expression such as “We a pair of mandarin ducks were hit by the Cupiter’s arrow.”

Zhou Yujuan 周玉娟

Narrative strategies are organized around the poetics of persuasion. By the resonant repetitions and variations the narrator changes his manners and tones to make his linguistic performances most persuasive. The nuanced tones range from the stronger “you should,” to the milder “naturally you will” and to the asking “do you understand.” Apart from the prosaic sentences that function in describing things or reasoning the love sermon, the parallel sentences are divided into two kinds: one addresses melodiously to the bride and the other describes lyrically the fantastic scenes.

Zhu Meimei 祝美梅

In order to set role models for the bride, a gallery of world-famous women are introduced to add another dimension of the persuasive, mixed with eroticism and ethics, literary references of the East and West. Mrs. Tolstoy helps her husbands devote to and achieve in writing. Liang Hongyu, a legendary heroine who joins her husband to defeat the foreign invaders in thirteenth-century China. It is a persuasive way for a cultural balance in transnational traffic: while the latter a local patriot is internationalized, the former is internalized a la traditional “virtuous wife and good mother.”

Zhu Suyao 朱素瑶

So far the kind of masculine persuasion is tinged with pedagogy and the sublime, what follows turns to be sweet and flattery. The narrator says he received a letter from his friend, in which the bride is likened to the beautiful Spring Goddess of Greek mythology, to the sweet Julie and the noble Botia, the heroines in Shakespeare’s plays. This symbolic showcase of female world celebrities, whether it be factual or imaginary, articulate to circulate and assimilate not only modern knowledge but refined taste for urban readers; at the same time, the author shows off his familiarity with the Western novelties necessarily acquired by this fashionable writing. Also noticeable is the intertextual traffic in the circulation and assimilation of cultural information occurred in everyday urban space. While the Julia and Botia are transplanted from Lin Shu’s classical translations onto his writing, Zhou popularizes the Western classics and meanwhile elevates the vernacular. One more tricky detail: all about these foreign literary women, as the narrator says, are from his friend’s letter in English, which adds this pillow talk a savor of exoticism and universality. By this Zhou plays out the fancy and fashion with a fashionable style in this fiction.

Zhu Xu 朱旭

Cinematic Representation and Republican Subjectivity In this story, the curtain crucially serves thematic and formal purposes. It is a piece of furniture that is decorative and ritualistic in the innermost space of the conjugal life, yet by infusing this interior curtain with a cinematic curtain, the narrator creates an illusion of a double curtain, which facilitated his double voice. His self is represented as an individual and collective being, and at the same time speaks to the private and public audience.

Zou Xinyu 邹鑫雨

The phrases “raising the curtain” (kaimu) and “opening our theater” (kaichang) are cliches for something to start, but the term mu referring to the theatrical or cinematic curtain was new, after the oral drama and film were introduced from the West at the turn of the twentieth century. Zhou’s pronouncement of opening a theater addressed to the bride sounds happy for pronouncing their new family life; also it is theatrical as the narrator consequently conjures up a “paradise” within the curtain, where birds sing and flowers smile in the spring. Nevertheless, the repetition of theater at the outset of this qinghua addresses not only to his bride - the exclusive beholder inside the curtain, but also to an audience, namely this curtain faces the implied beholders. Readers are already aware from the prologue that the author predicts to show this pillow talk to his friends. The visual characteristic of the text is inscribed by the imagery title “In the Nine-Flower Curtain,” and by the metaphor of curtain the intimate space is turned into a theater under the public watch. Against a larger cultural canvas, as a kind of imported cultural material, the curtain was applied as a new decorum in urban spaces, such as art studio, or photograph studio. Consequently, it functioned in shaping modern perception about the relations between space, life-world and work of art.