Chinese Literature

A

Music Theater

The earliest demonstrations of this gradual cultural shift may have appeared in music theater. This form of entertainment evolved during the empires of the Southern Song (1127-1279), the Jin (1115-1234), and the Yuan. Music theater employed the latest musical tunes from Central Asia, called qu, and developed into light opera, which was performed in various sites—from the marketplace to the teahouse, the homes of wealthy patrons, and the imperial court. Qu were similar in form to the earlier ci tunes of the Tang and Song, and the stories ranged from domestic drama to crime cases and to famous romantic or martial episodes from legend and history. These increasingly elaborate conceptions eventually became masterpieces of literary creation that dealt with subtle and profound questions about the cultural order of the empire.

By the time of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) and the early Qing dynasty (1644-1911), music theater featured famous writers whose scripts were published in expensive editions. Emperors passed judgment on the most celebrated piece of the moment. The operas with the most enduring reputations include the comic Xi xiang ji (The Story of the Western Wing) by Wang Shifu, from the Yuan dynasty; the romantic Mu Danting (The Peony Pavilion) by Tang Xianzu, from the Ming dynasty; and Tao hua shan (The Peach-Blossom Fan) by Kong Shangren, from the early Qing dynasty. All of these operas concern the fate of love relationships at odds with social convention and political power. See also Asian Theater.

B

Fiction

Along with musical theater, fiction written in the vernacular (spoken language) is the other great innovative achievement of late imperial Chinese literature. It is also the achievement that made Chinese literature most accessible to modern readers. The move from literary language to the vernacular was a giant step. Although Chinese music theater contained much dialogue in the spoken language, song lyrics still provided a showcase for verse writing. Fiction written in the vernacular completed the transition. See also Chinese Language.

Prior to the Tang dynasty (618-907), fiction describing supernatural events was written in literary language, and the engaging short fiction of the Tang dynasty was also written in an educated, literary style. This form of fiction, the chuanqi, focused on love, adventure, and the supernatural and continued as a tradition of its own through the 18th century. The best-known collection of chuanqi is Liao zhai zhi yi (Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio) by Pu Songling, who lived in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.

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By the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368), however, commercial printers were publishing collections of stories and full-length novels largely written in the spoken language of the time. Novels of the 14th and 15th centuries were mainly tales of adventure and conquest taken from historical records and reworked using unofficial legends and popular religion. The most celebrated novel of this genre is San guo yanyi (Romance of the Three Kingdoms), attributed to Luo Guanzhong. It tells of the great civil war that followed the collapse of the Han dynasty. Whereas official histories had favorably recorded the achievements of the most successful warlord of this period, Cao Cao, he was preserved in unofficial anecdotes and legends as a major villain. The novel offers a complex portrait of him as a villain, alongside more admiring portraits of his chief adversaries, Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei, together with an adviser in popular Daoist magic, Zhuge Liang.

Although many Chinese novels of this era are simply exciting stories that reflect popular tastes in heroes and religious beliefs, a number of novels made more complex use of these elements. Shui hu zhuan (All Men Are Brothers, also known as Outlaws of the Marsh or Water Margin) is the history and legend of a bandit army in revolt against a corrupt regime during the Song dynasty. The story itself has ancient origins, but the earliest complete versions known were published in the 1500s. The novel is a masterpiece of vivid description that leaves unresolved whether the bandits are popular heroes, ruthless killers, or agents of a vengeful heaven. Another novel, Xi you ji (1592; Monkey, or Journey to the West, 1943), based on accounts of a Buddhist pilgrim’s travels to India, has all the comic adventure and fantastic qualities of a lively children’s story, complete with a magical monkey. The work, attributed to 16th-century writer Wu Cheng’en, also contains reflections on myth and a complex religious allegory that make it an intellectual challenge for readers.

By the late 16th century the novel had moved from history and legend to include accounts of social manners and domestic life. This change also ushered in a wave of graphically detailed erotic fiction. The acknowledged landmark representing both literary trends is Jin ping mei (Golden Lotus, or The Plum in the Golden Vase), about three of the six wives of a drug merchant and pawnbroker, whose ambition to achieve wealth and social status is exceeded only by his sexual desire. During the 18th century this controversial novel helped inspire Cao Xueqin (Cao Zhan), the author of the single greatest masterpiece of Chinese fiction, Hong lou meng (1792; variously translated as Dream of the Red Chamber, 1929; Story of the Stone, 1973; and A Dream of Red Mansions, 1978). Almost certainly based on the childhood experiences of the author, the book is about a young boy in an aristocratic household who detests his destined career and stubbornly pursues his sentimental devotion to the girls in his household, especially his frail and temperamental cousin. The book also has a large section that was added on by another writer, Gao E. Hong lou meng was the fulfillment of a goal for Chinese literati who sought a literature that could rival the ancient texts they were taught to study. Interweaving a large cast of characters and their conflicts with unprecedented originality and inventiveness, the book is full of allegories relating to the intellectual issues of the time. It is also full of realistic detail that makes it an important document of 18th-century life. Cao Xueqin lived and worked in obscurity, however, and the novel was not published until almost 30 years after his death.

VI

The Collapse of Traditions

Until 1911 and the end of the Qing empire—the last imperial dynasty in Chinese history—the Confucian Classics and the poetry and essays of official scholars remained at the pinnacle of the literary and educational hierarchy. But as the Chinese imperial system unraveled and the country confronted modernity as introduced by powerful Western nations, the old literary order was replaced as well.

A

Transformation of the Novel

This transformation was reflected in the novel, the literary form most sensitive to the fundamental changes sweeping the country. Novels criticizing the leadership of the cultural and political elite grew in number during the Qing, from Wu Jingzi’s Ru lin wai shi (1768; The Scholars, 1957) to Lao Can you ji (1903-07; The Travels of Lao Can, 1952) by Liu E. The Travels of Lao Can poignantly illustrates the changes occurring in China during this period. Its hero, an itinerant scholar practicing Chinese medicine, searches out evidence of the great Chinese tradition of knowledge that has been lost by the cultural and political elite of his day. The novel shows that with proper understanding or knowledge reform can occur. This work, first published in the new Chinese newspapers and magazines appearing in the cities built and controlled by Western colonial powers, shows an acceptance of Western innovations set inside the form of the Chinese novel.

The changing values of society and the resistance to change by the traditionally educated literati resulted in the publication of two very different types of novels. One type was set in the brothels of the modernizing port city of Shanghai, where prostitutes are presented as understanding the city better than their customers. Another type presented young heroes or heroines who rejected all romantic passion for the traditional ideals of chastity and devotion to religious or political beliefs, with characters speaking in largely ancient-style language.

The erosion of the traditional literary hierarchy began in 1905 when the Qing government abolished the official civil service examination and thereby severed the link between literary education and positions of political authority. At the same time, large numbers of students were sent to Japan and Western countries for study. Those who wanted to be modern-style writers had no interest in existing Chinese newspapers and magazines, whose editors had been trained in the traditional civil service education system. Therefore, foreign-educated Chinese writers associated themselves with the new Chinese universities then being established and started magazines and journals of their own, dedicated to their radical beliefs. Following the Republican Revolution of 1911 and 1912, the new literary intellectuals launched a movement to end the use of ancient classical language and the study of ancient texts. They supported instead using the spoken language for all writing and the creation of a new Chinese literature on the model of modern European literatures. The chief spokespersons for this “literary revolution” were Hu Shi, who studied in the United States and later served as an ambassador to that country, and Chen Duxiu, who studied in Japan and was a founder of the Communist Party of China in 1921.

B

Realism and Revolution

The period from 1917 to 1927 was one of cultural ferment in China. A wave of Chinese translations of Western authors appeared, and Chinese writers made numerous attempts at writing poems, essays, short stories, and one-act plays in the Western manner. Their common theme was emancipation—from classical restraint, from the Confucian family system, and from imperialism. While a romantic emotionalism dominated much of the new literature, the chief writer to emerge from this period was the pessimistic Lu Xun. His “Kuangren Riji” (“Diary of a Madman,” 1918) is sometimes called China’s first modern story. Lu Xun shared the period’s passion for social justice and change, but he had grim doubts that society would respond.

The decades leading up to the Communist Revolution in 1949 were marked by protest against social inequality. The politics of many writers took a leftward turn, summed up in the slogan “From Literary Revolution to Revolutionary Literature.” Yet the key works inspired by Marxism during this period, such as the fiction of Mao Dun and the polemical essays of Lu Xun, were independent of—and even clashed with—Communist Party prescriptions. Moreover, authors who did not embrace Marxism wrote most of the period’s major works. These writers included Shu Qingchun (Lao She), author of Luotuo xiangzi (1936-1937; Rickshaw or Rickshaw Boy, 1979); Ba Jin, author of Jia (1931-1932; Family, 1972); and Shen Congwen, who was known for the compilation The Selected Works of Shen Congwen (1936). The most accomplished writer of the time, Qian Zhongshu, enjoyed satirizing the cultural elite of his era. At the same time he embedded his characters in a world without order or reassuring purpose, as in the novel Wei ch’eng (1946; Fortress Besieged, 1979).

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