20201221 trans

Cao Runxin 曹润鑫

The idea that tones discerned in verbal art will reflect the mood of the relationship between the people and the state makes frequent appearances through Chinese literary philosophy, and it frequently enters the world of modern politics, as work on the modern Chinese folklore movement will attest (Hung).

Another more recent sample is the expression “setting the tone” [定調子] describes the degree of condemnation in a Cultural Revolution era Big Character poster. This modern example displays a relatively cynical view of the function of tone; the power to set tone is in the hands of the accuser, but its strength reflects the crime of the victim.In the world of literature and arts policy, “New Tone” 新基調 became the standard Chinese socialist line against precisely such works as our “provincial leader” above castigated as “pei pei pei-ing”.

Chang Huiyue 常慧月

The term “tone” (particularly as diao) has acquired negative connotations over the past two of decades, at least in part because of its role in politicoliterary battles. Even editors sympathetic to “new tone” values distance themselves from the term (Yang, Zhu). In a parallel strategy, contemporary zawen are written in covert form, more like “East Station,” than like “Pei pei pei!”?, which so revealingly displays the mechanics of the declamatory modal trope. In contrast to the late 1980's, contemporary zawen have in recent years receded to hide in other types of writing. This strategy is a familiar one in the context of zawen history; the necessity to hide only increases the effect the “involuntarily” discordant tone, which is held to be, biting and kicking, reflecting the truth.

Chen Han 陈涵

When zawen were first fashioned as a modern genre, it was the involuntary expression of responsive emotions that were explicitly invoked as zawen's purpose. When Hu Shih published the first major newspaper column devoted to the serial publication of zawen in 1918, the “Record of Spontaneous Feeling,” the introductory essay was entitled “什麼話,” literally “What speech.” This title also provides a demonstration of a modal trope on the level of syntax. In this original title there was no punctuation, as “shenme” already indicates the question “what” in the standard form, before European punctuation was imported as a regular feature of written vernacular Chinese.

Chen Hui 陈惠

Beyond the interrogative function, however, “hua,” [“speech” or “talk”] has the declamatory effect of objectifying speech, and holding it up for dramatic examination. For an idiomatic English translation I would offer “What!?” including both exclamation and question mark. The contents of essay describe the purpose of zawen as a venue for explosive emotional responses, linked to the other, “regular” items printed in newspapers everyday. This ordinary newspaper fare “gives people goose flesh [disgusts them] makes them sigh, or elicits a cold smile or an outright laugh” (Hu Shih, Shen Bao 1918). Zawen were thus launched in the early modern Chinese newspaper as the nearly physical expression of these feelings or moods in the form of literary essays.

Chen Jiangning 陈江宁

Hu Shih's formulation emphasizes zawen's role as a response to “life itself.” Like most poetry, but unlike most fiction and drama, zawen is itself a first person voice, not a representation of voices. Yet unlike poetry, which may need to be at least imagined to be read out loud, repeated and savored for full effect, zawen's ideal is to appear for a fleeting moment on the back page of a newspaper, to be received with the accompaniment of an enigmatic laugh, sigh or snort from the reader, and then thrown away quickly, before anyone can “find their seat and sit in it,” or take offence.

Chen Jiaxin 陈佳欣

Generic categories are not the only aspect that zawen tend to mix; they characteristically contain sudden shifts in tone, style and voice, moving from a snippet of stray “overheard” conversation to an elegant, classical allusion. Echoing Hu Shih's 1918 idea of zawen as a “response” to the articles on other pages of the newspaper, the zawen, still characteristically the back page of most newspapers, nearly always contains a “foil” in the form of a direct quote from the author has read or heard. In addition to creating a microcosmic social dialogue, this split between two voices, the writer's and that of the “foil” also allows for dizzying clashes of style and voice that enclose unlikely combinations of syntax and grammar, as well as ideas, a single text.

Chen Jingjing 陈静静

Tone in an essay is an ironic figure of speech; how can you channel that which is carried in sound through the ink of print? In this paper I have tried to illustrate the trope of tone through the “sonorous” work, particularly that of ShaoYanxiang, an official poet who in retirement is better known for the essays in which he collapses poetry into polemic, his zawen. The distinct and beleaguered social and cultural space for zawen in contemporary China reveals the mechanics, ideology and significance of tone in Chinese writing. Even more than other literary genres, zawen depends upon something within the earthy noise of moody, mulish voices to carry its messages.

Chen Sha 陈莎

While readers love to hate their morally and politically provocative zawen-of-the-moment, writers string zawen across stretches of time and publishing organs to construct heavily intertextualized conversations. Eventually they even preserve zawen, long after the dizzying minutia of allusions, jokes and digs are forgotten, often compiling a career's worth of them into small print runs of volumes that they give away to friends and admirers as discursive portraits of themselves. Lu Xun's genre of the “dagger and spear” is thus not only a sly political weapon, but also a complex sculpture of the culturally shaped self, chiseled by the cantankerous tones of contentious social dialogue.

Chen Sunfu 谌孙福

Appendix: Translations of two primary texts: “'Pei Pei Pei!'? ” and “East Station”

“Pei Pei Pei! ”?

A friend from outside literary circles asked me to find him some “pei pei pei!” essays to read, and I had to stare at him blankly with nothing to say. He then explained that he had read in a newspaper that a certain provincial leader had announced at a banquet that there must not be “pei pei pei – ing” all over the place, and so clearly there must be pei pei pei-ing all over the place. Have I gotten so insensitive? Out of self-abrogation, and also out of curiosity, I rushed to seek it out.And so it was, what had been said was “there must not be pei pei pei -ing all over the place, it must not always be the language of mockery, sarcasm and scornful dismissal that is used to write about the party, the nation and the people, dispersing a gray mood that makes people pessimistic and disappointed.” It is like this all over the place, and not in just in one particular place, things are always this way, and not just at a certain time, you can see how widespread and serious the problem is.

Chen Yongxiang 陈永相

A long time ago in the liberated areas, it was advocated that the entire party should publish newspapers. After the establishment of the nation, when everything was “operated on a large scale with the entire people” I did not pay attention to whether or not it was advocated that all the people should publish the newspapers. But getting all people to read the newspapers is the goal of all those who follow the newspaper profession. In that way, newspapers are not merely published for leading institutions and leaders to read, but rather at the same time (actually this should be primary) for the masses to read. They are published for all the people -- among the people there are illiterates and partially literate, but through listening to the newspapers being read, the broadcasters and televisions have accepted the responsibility of getting the newspaper read, and this segment of the masses also figures as indirect readers of the newspapers.

Cheng Yusi 成于思

The readers have the greatest right of criticizing the newspapers, and I wonder how many readers have discovered this phenomenon of there being “pei pei pei -ing” all over the place.

I am one of these readers, subscribing on my own to several “large” newspapers (newspaper publications have not been classified as large or small, but I follow convention here) there are in addition a few newspapers that people send to me; as to “small” newspapers, I have not the leisure nor the money to buy the papers in the Beijing area, not to mention nearby Tianjin and Hebei. Even so, just taking the 10 to 20 different newspapers I often look over, including the cultural newspapers, I have not discovered these “always using the language of mockery, sarcasm and scornful dismissal to write about the party, the nation and the people” sorts of “pei pei pei” pieces.

Deng Jinxia 邓锦霞

I could only hand back to my friend a blank report. But naturally my not having seen them does not mean they do not exist. What one person can see is limited. I hope that the extra sensitive speaker on this matter can openly point them out, or even offer examples of eight or ten articles, or even hold up just three to five articles as models of this kind of work, so as to allow us to be enlightened and improve our discriminating ability in seeing which essays are those called “pei pei pei,” perhaps at the same time clearing up a related matter by analogy, that of understanding what kind of essays constitute “ba ba ba” as well.

Ding Daifeng 丁代凤

This suggestion is sincere, not just the usual politeness. In order for literary arts, newspaper publications and literary publications to develop better social effects and to help unite the ways of our times with the people's hearts, newspaper editors, newspaper readers, and those in charge of this occupation should all be able to directly express their own views, and upon making mistakes should help each correct and make up for them, nobody needs to be polite about this.

Fang Jieling 方洁玲

After reading this speaker's comments, there is another matter that mystifies me. According to what was said, “from the next (meaning this and next) two years of discipline and rectification, there will be more new challenges and problems, and literary publications should be of assistance in stabilizing the people's minds, increasing faith, and not demoralizing the people's will.” In reading all these newspapers, this is the first time I have seen this “stabilize the peoples mind” proposition. If there is a need to stabilize the people's hearts, it must proceed from the assumption that the peoples hearts are not stable. As for the reason why people's minds are not stable, it comes back to the “discipline and rectification and the new challenges and problems” of these two years.

Gan Fengyu 甘奉玉

I am confused again. These “challenges and problems” that so vex people, do they result from the “discipline and rectification” or is it because of these “challenges and problems” that the need arises to “discipline and rectify”? If the more you “discipline and rectify” the more you provoke “many new challenges and problems” in people's minds, then why do all this “discipline and rectifying”? Moreover, I do not understand what “discipline and rectification” refers to nor what the “new challenges and problems” are, and I cannot figure out what “stabilize people minds” means very precisely, nor can I see what concrete request is being made. This is my request for instruction.

Gao Mingzhu 高明珠

The Literature Journal column “Literature and the People's Lives” has been asking for a manuscript from me many times, but I have never been able to take up the assignment. As I write to this point, I suddenly thought that this piece should be called “Literature and the Peoples' Minds”? But that is a big topic, something that a thousand characters can not manage to capture. 1989.2.21. Shao Yanxiang 1993 in 自己的酒 [My Own Wine] pages 181-183, 群眾出版社

East Station

Thirty years ago in Beijing, if you mentioned “East Station,” everybody would know that referred to the Beijing East Station that lies to the outer east side Front City Gate. Today this unremarkable construction, built in a half-westernized architectural style and sandwiched between the tall buildings of this noisy and busy city, supports a little sign that reads “Railway Workers Club.” It is already an “ancient artifact,” long gone are the prosperous and glorious days of old.

Gong Yumian 龚钰冕

This train station was once a symbol of bustling urgency, day and night swallowing and spewing out the many different hues of travelers who come to and leave the old capitol. Outsiders that have been to Beijing may not have wandered on Fragrant Mountain or not even have visited the Imperial Museum, but none would not remember this railway station.

This train station, like any other place in Beijng, has experienced everything, cycles of prosperity and demise passing before its watch. It has greeted both the voluntary and the involuntary travelers to Beijing, and also the powerful it welcomed, as well as those it did not welcome. It sent off the happy people on their first [train] voyages, and also the broken hearted people who were departing; how many of them left this place never to come back?

Gu Dongfang 顾东方

When 20-year-old Shen Congwen arrived in Beijing after his roundabout journey from Phoenix in Hunan Province, he may have walked out of the station and stood for a while at the square in front of it. He would have seen, because in those years there was still a space in front, first the uniformly arranged buildings, and the colorfully carved gate of Zhengyang tower. His senses would have been struck with awe at the deep and solemn beauty. Did he think of the way Kang (youwei) and Liang (qiqiao) were in the depths of an inescapable trap when they embarked their train to flee, in the midst of their hurry without even the time to look back upon the winged palace roofs of their beloved capitol?

Guan Qinqing 管钦清

That year in July the canons sounded at Lugou Bridge. When the railroad was restored between Beiping and Tianjin, the first trainload was the “four thousand refugee reds fleeing to Tianjin,” that was how the Tianjin newspaper put it. When those travelers entered East Station, they took their first step on the road of flight; were there any among them that that could predict that long after their own “fortuitous rescue,” in 1958 there would be another group making their unseemly departure from the Beijing station, submitting their fates to the unpredictable road?

Gui Yizhi 桂一枝

Recently I looked through Liu Meng's “Reminiscences on a Rainy Day” in which he writes of the rainy day April of 1958, when [he along with] a group was sent to the great northern wilderness. The platform in the rainy day, the locomotive in the rainy day; he deliberately reminisced calmly, saying it was like this memory had also been washed clean by the rainy rain. At that time Liu Meng had been young, but traveling along with him were many people who had fallen into this hardship in their old age, certainly each of them had their own earlier “at that time.”

Head hanging, walking upon the rain-wet road; this is someone who has far to travel. Every window is weeping; this is someone reminiscing in the rain.

Guo Lu 郭露

And in March of 1949, when Guo Moruo and his democrats gathered together and arrived in Beijing, they were received with grand ceremonious welcome; the tears they wept were of joy. At the time he composed a poem “How much of the people's blood was spilled for this honor. Thinking of it, the tears fall, and happy laughter is unable to articulate in sound.” -- I don't know why, but this poem was not collected in any of his later collections.

The platform of Beijing East Station, from the end of the last century to the middle of this century, has been a stage of constantly revolving action, no matter whether the security forces patrolling the edges of the stage were armed police of the North Coast Warlords, or the Japanese Army Police, or the Nationalist soldiers, police, M.P.’s or special agents, or the “People's Traffic Police.”

Han Haiyang 韩海洋

But because nearly everybody “performed” there in one way or another, at least having passed across that stage, everything about it was forgotten. Literary works pass through it with a single stroke, only the ending of the novel “Golden Powder Dynasty” provided a scene for it. This leftover architectural structure does not even rate a “district preservation unit” marker. This is because there are too many ancient traces in Beijing, how could an object merely one hundred years of age be considered antique?

Today will also become history. And every inch of Beijing earth will provide proof of its history.

1989. 9. 13

Please don't cut or change this date. The new railway station began operation in 1959, and this fits in parallel with “more that thirty years ago” at the beginning of the essay.

Han Wanzhen 韩宛真

Nostalgia without Memory: Reading Zhang Wei’s Essays In the Context of Fable of September

Jie Lu

Abstract

In this paper I will discuss what can be called agrarian nostalgia in Zhang Wei's essays collected in his Anxious and Indignant Homeward Journey, published in 1995 as a part of Resisting Compromise Book Series. I will examine his nostalgia as a critical and moral stance in the literary context of his highly claimed novel The Fable of September. In the novel, history is mythologized, essentialized, and therefore erased to embody an agrarian being associated with land. If land in Zhang's novel represents an idealized existence, then in his essays, it becomes both a social and literary metaphor to symbolize moral purity and literary elitism. It is posed as a means to achieve individual, social and literary salvation, and an absolute standard to critique social reality and popular culture in the age of commercialization.

He Changqi 何长琦

Nostalgia as an indication of fundamental condition of human estrangement or alienation has been exacerbated by the speeds and scopes of modernization and globalization in contemporary China. This nostalgic sentiment is intensely experienced by intellectual elites who wish to maintain their traditional role as society's moral guardians or as society's conscience, and by literary writers who wish to sustain the distinction between pure and popular literature. It is exactly this moral absolutism and literary elitism that have been undermined by cultural and socioeconomic changes. What nostalgia in Zhang's writings reveals is not so much a resistance to modernization process as incapability of deep understanding the complexity of Chinese modernity.

Hu Baihui 胡百辉

At the turn of the twenty-first century in China, with modernization and globalization gaining full momentum, it is interesting to find many writers turning their gaze backward to the past rather than singing the praises of this new global age. Among writers such as Liang Xiaosheng, Zhang Chengzhi, and Zhang Wei, nostalgia has become their dominant literary mode, through which to both critique commercialism and globalism and express the authors’ moral and literary ideals. In this paper I wish to focus on the moral and literary implications of nostalgia in Zhang Wei’s essays, as collected in his Anxious and Indignant Homeward Journey (youfen de guitu), published in 1995 as a part of the Resisting Compromise Book Series (dikang touxiang shuxi). [* Jie Lu is an Assistant Professor of Chinese at the University of the Pacific. The author is grateful to Martin Woesler, the organizer of the conference on The Modern Chinese Literary Essays (August, 2000, Germany) where this paper was presented, and Michelle DiBello for her insightful comments and careful editing of the whole text. Resisting Compromise Book Series (Dikang touxiang shuxi) includes collections of essays by Zhang Chengzhi, Zhang Wei, Han Shaogong, Yu Qiuyu, Li Ri, and Shi Tiesheng respectively. ]

Hu Huifang 胡慧芳

Instead of putting Zhang’s writings in the larger context of contemporary intellectual debates over radicalism (radical intellectual/cultural discourse) and (new) conservatism (anti-radical),[ Regarding the major theoretical discourses in contemporary intellectual debates in China, see Xu Ben’s “Contesting Memory for Intellectual Self-Positing: The 1990s’ New Cultural Conservatism in China” in Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, Vol.11 (Spring, 1999) 157-193; Jianhua Chen’s “Local and Global in Narrative Contestation: Liberalism and the New Left in Late-1990s China” in Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, Vol. 9 113-129; Intellectuals’ Positions (Zhishi fenzi lichang) in three volumes, edited by Li Shitao, published by Shidai wenyi chubanshe, 2000. ] I will examine it in the literary context of his highly acclaimed novel Fable of September published in 1992. Fable of September represents history in a way that mythologizes, essentializes, and therefore erases it in the name of an idealized agrarian existence. Indeed, the idea of “the land” (tudi) is a transcending and all-encompassing concept in Zhang Wei writings, representing an idealized pure state uncontaminated by industrialization and modernization. In his essays, the land is transformed into a social and literary metaphor that symbolizes moral purity and literary elitism against what the author perceives as the contemporary backdrop of general moral decadence and literary chaos. This ideal is posed as a means to achieve nothing less than social, moral and literary salvation, raised as a kind of absolute standard to critique social reality and popular culture.

Hu Jin 胡瑾

My argument, however, is that Zhang’s reification of “land” as a transcendental metaphor in his essays only betrays the author’s lack of any profound historically informed understanding of the complexity of Chinese modernity. He simply refuses to accept social and cultural dilemmas and contradictions as permanent fixtures of the intellectual and cultural landscape. At the same time, Zhang’s outright criticism of consumerism and globalism suggests an underlying ambivalence about modernization. As China’s post-socialist social reality grows more complex and demanding, with more diversified and unstructured cultural formation, any clear-cut moral solution to social evils based on pre-modern social relationship and norms (positing the utopian vision of a transcendental realm) can no longer be effective. Nor is it sufficient to solve the sense of cultural crisis brought on by the progression of both modernization and globalization.

Ji Tiantian 纪甜甜

The contemporary Chinese intellectual and cultural scene is a complex one, with major conflicting trends – one toward the commercialization of knowledge/literature and another in strong resistance to the very same. A new diversity of voices can be heard in intellectual debates at the more abstract conceptual level, and a number of Chinese writers have also joined the scene – whether consciously or unconsciously -- with their own distinct literary voices. The Resisting Compromise Book Series in fact embodies these writers’ own effort of resistance to commercialism and globalism, which they perceive as corrosive forces in their culture and society.

Jiang Fengyi 蒋凤仪

As the series’ editor-in-chief states in the preface, the work is devoted to those contemporary “literary heroes” (Xiao 1995, II), that is, certain literary idealists such as Zhang Wei, Zhang Chenzhi, Han Shaogong, Yu Qiuyu, Shi Tiesheng, and Li Rui. These literary heroes are recognized for daring to stand up and raise the banner of “literature of resistance” (Xiao 1995, II), attacking the literary degeneration and moral decay of the times.

Jiang Hao 姜好

In publishing the Resisting Comprises series, its creators were responding to a growing domination of the literary arena by a so-called “Hooligan Movement.” According to the editor, literary hooliganism, as it were, is essentially a “language game” -- represented first and foremost by the irreverent writer Wang Shuo – with its various forms of “literary trash” including “literature of sexual promiscuity” (xingluan), “literature of leisure” (xianshi), “hack literature” (bangxian) and “sneezing literature” (penti) (Xiao 1995, II).

Jiang Qiwei 蒋淇玮

But there are several larger social and literary issues that this project essentially addresses, namely: the loss of literary/cultural/social dominance by the intellectual elite to mass/commercial culture; the commercialization of knowledge/literature; erosion of the “humanist spirit;” abandonment of ultimate human concerns; desertion of idealism, enlightenment and such modernist projects. In the face of such upheaval, the editor describes the contemporary cultural/literary scene in China as dark and degenerate. The age is “cursed,” “tragic,” an age of “betrayal” and “surrender” (Xiao 1995, IV). And the targets of the literary/moral resistance are postmodernism, commercialism, and mass culture.

Kang Haoyu 康浩宇

Zhang Wei is primarily known as a novelist. His major novels include Ancient Boat, Fable of September, My Countryside, Clan, and novelle include Meditation in Autumn, Anger in Autumn, and Vineyard. [ Ancient Boat (Guchuan), Fable of September (Jiuyu yuyan), My Countryside (Wode tianyuan), Clan (Jiazu), Meditation in Autumn (Qiutian de sisuo), Anger in Autumn (Qiutian de fennu), and Vineyard (Putaoyuan) are all included in Zhang Wei wenji (Collected Writings of Zhang Wei) (Shanghai: Shanghai wenyi chubanshe, 1997).] He has also published many collections of essays. His writings collected in Anxious and Indignant Homeward Journey include essays, talks, and interviews. These essays do not express this uncompromising stance in such a strong voice and straightforward manner. Instead, Zhang poses a literary persona of moral integrity as a kind of self-representation. He appears as an idealized individual, embodying in every way pure moral qualities of both a human being and artist/writer. This idealized individual is a fighter, fighting a lonely and heroic battle against fashionable trends and any and all forms of evil (Xiao 1995, 6).[ Anxious and Indignant Homeward Journey includes both Zhang Wei’s essays as well as critical articles by various critics. In this paper I will use Xiao Xialin, the editor of this collection as the reference to provide in-text citations to essays by both Zhang Wei and other critics. ]

Kang Lingfeng 康灵凤

As a generous humanitarian, he loves and helps all good people. As a socially committed artist, he takes upon himself a great responsibility to all humanity. And as a serious writer, he self-consciously pursues high literature. He is also represented as an honest laborer, making a living through hard labor and sweat. As part of this self-representation, Zhang criticizes those who succumbed to moral and artistic degradation, such as those writers who choose to “enter the commercial world” (xiahai), or cater to popular low-brow tastes by writing “trash literature.”

Kong Xianghui 孔祥慧

He points out in his essay “Anxious and Indignant Homeward Journey” several “lacks” in many contemporary writers. First, many of today’s writers lack “self-reflexivity” (which really refers more to moral “self-reflection” or “self-consciousness” rather than intellectual self-reflexivity). They lack “conservatism,” an ability to hold to a certain kind of spirit, in which he also sees as a lack of real avant-guard spirit. They lack “intolerance,” meaning they are overly tolerant of vices and decadent practices, and rarely engage in serious, genuine, and frank criticism and debate. Finally, they lack “stable emotions” -- the definition of which is rather ambiguous.

Kong Yanan 孔亚楠

Zhang’s self-representation, then, is also a form of self-legitimization. It endows him with legitimacy through a kind of literary aura and the staking out of high moral ground. From this privileged stance, he proceeds to interpret, represent, articulate, define and judge the essence, meaning and criteria of literature, society, and human life. Throughout his essays, including interviews, talks, and lectures, we find Zhang, like a self-styled guru, constantly giving advice to college students, young writers, and literature fans on what to read, how to write, and how to live. This advice is based exclusively on a clear distinction between high and popular literature, and on his unabashed criticism of mass culture (represented by television).

Lei Fangyuan 雷方圆

In a broader sense, we can see his self-representation as an essential reaffirmation of the traditional role that Chinese intellectuals played in society. The claim to an authoritative voice is fundamental to maintaining the privileged position of the intellectual elite within a structure of knowledge and power. Zhang’s self-representation, then, is nothing less than an attempt to reestablish the intellectual elite’s role in literature and society based on a clear distinction between high and popular literature. This power struggle for cultural dominance and hegemony in the ongoing reformation of intellectual/cultural discourse largely defines China’s socio-cultural condition in the wake of socialism.

Lei Kuangxi 雷旷溪

Perhaps the most important part of Zhang’s essays is his use and development of the concept of “land” (tudi), which strongly conveys his self-representation as a simple yet serious “rural intellectual” (xiangcun zhishi fenzi). In his well-known essay “Immersion in the Wild Field” (rongru yiedi), the land in fact functions as a transcending metaphor. As a signifier of nature – wild fields, mountains, bushes, green crops, the ocean -- the land symbolizes all that is morally good in social and cultural realms as well as in individual’s life. The land represents a mother figure, where one can always find comfort, wisdom and inspiration. As an eternal backdrop, the land embodies eternity itself. It serves as an aesthetic standard through which the author defines the social and aesthetic functions of “pure literature,” and criticizes various aspects of cultural reality.

Li Haiquan 李海泉

Zhang associates popular literature and TV culture with low class and uneducated tastes, and criticizes current literary Chinese criticism for being overly influenced by foreign literary jargons. His concept of the land is even a moral criterion through which he criticizes many aspects of contemporary modern society -- from commercialization in which money is the source of all evils, to globalization marked by domination of transnational corporations and bad influence of some foreign literature, as well as modernization represented by cellular phones, cars, and high tech.

Li Lili 李丽丽

But most of all, Zhang’s concept of land symbolizes an ideal based on ages old dichotomy between city and countryside. At the beginning of the essay, he tells us: “[The] city is a willfully and recklessly modified wild field, and I will eventually leave it” (Xiao 1995, 19). Later he claims that a real artist should be “a worshiper of land” (Xiao 1995, 60). To Zhang, the spirit of “land” should be the spirit of the age (Xiao 1995, 241). Seen in the context of his criticism of modernization, it is evident that this dichotomy is built around the moral distrust of the city – a psychological complex that traces back to Chinese agrarian tradition and Mao’s revolutionary heritage. At the same time, it reveals a profound nostalgia for a pre-modern rural existence.

Li Lingyue 李凌月

The Land, then, points to an ideal transcendent realm, closed to contamination by the modern world. But represented only in highly literary, allusive, emotive language and nature images and analogies, the idea of the Land only comes across as very abstract and unreal. The author himself asks: “What exactly is the wild field? Where does it exist? Does it really contain my innocent world I imagine?” (Xiao 1995, 30). Indeed, as an all-encompassing and pervasive metaphor, The Land is never once in his essays clearly and objectively defined. Whether expressed as a personification of the mother figure, an embodiment of eternal being, or as a constellation of various ideal qualities and values, Zhang’s “land” lacks the substantial tour-de-force as a moral and social metaphor. But if we are to discover an ontological anchoring for this concept, it can only be found, I would argue, in his well-known novel Fable of September.