Towards Prosperity: The Glory and Dream of Chinese Contemporary Literature over the Past 70 Years
The Glory and Dream of Chinese Contemporary Literature over the Past 70 Years
In concert with the growth of the great nation, Chinese contemporary literature has written a magnificent and glorious chapter.
ON October 1, 2019, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) celebrated its 70th birthday. In concert with the growth of our nation, Chinese contemporary literature has written a magnificent and glorious chapter. It encompasses vivid literary accounts of the tortuous events and struggles of the revolutionary age and of the country’s transition to the new epoch of reform and opening-up and pluralistic symbiosis by virtue of the burgeoning tide of commercialization in the 1990s. Since the dawn of the new millennium, Chinese contemporary literature has kept pace with the times and the Chinese nation’s pursuit of its great dream of rejuvenation. Focusing on the real life and spiritual pursuits of the people, Chinese contemporary literature has artistically documented this majestic Chinese epoch.
Throughout its 70-year history, Chinese contemporary literature has epitomized the Chinese nation’s inner spiritual strength and physical magnitude. A main cultural facet, its momentum has also propelled the country’s progress. Whether inspired by the authentic realist tradition of Chinese classical works or the neo-realist approach in a specific historical context, the link connecting Chinese literary creation and criticism with the nation, country, and social politics appears closer than in other countries. Therefore, the social development of the PRC should be regarded as the backdrop to a grasp on the ideological transformation wrought by contemporary Chinese literature and an understanding of its spiritual characteristics. It constitutes the premise for an exploration of the growth of Chinese literature over the past 70 years.
The First 30 Years: Flames of War amid a Pastoral Idyll
Modern China of the 1940s experienced unprecedented social changes, and in 1949 the Chinese mainland officially began a new page of its history. Having arrived at the threshold of a new era, the country’s socialist literature embarked on a fresh epoch. With their revolutionary passion fired by the triumph in the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, and the War of Liberation, the people of China entered an era of peace and hope.
The new features characterizing the literature and art of New China are reflected in the dominant themes of revolution and reconstruction, a tenacious fighting spirit, and sublime heroism. After the first Congress of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles in 1949, Chinese contemporary literature
advanced along the path of socialist revolutionary literature that Mao Zedong introduced in 1942 in his “Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art.” Thereafter, China’s literary circles of the 1950s and 1960s bore the vivid imprint of socialist realism whose primary focus was on rural life and revolutionary war. This brand new history of literature and art which centered on the people superseded the classical works that had hitherto had such significant impact on the people’s hearts and minds. It constituted a historical notch and literary benchmark in the growth of new Chinese literature. Popular examples are the oft-quoted epic novels, Keep the Red Flag Flying, Red Sun, Red Crag, Builders of a New Life, Defending Yan’an, Tracks in the Snowy Forest, The Song of Youth, and Great Changes in a Mountain Village. These works created literary characters like Liang Shengbao, Zhu Laozhong, Yang Zirong, Lin Daojing, Jiang Zhuyun, Deng Xiumei, Shen Zhenxin, and Zhou Dayong, all of whom are widely known and well-loved among the Chinese people.
Literary celebrities of other genres also appeared, including essayists Yang Shuo, Liu Baiyu and Qin Mu, and famous poets Feng Zhi, Ai Qing and Zang Kejia.
This brand new history of literature and art which centered on the people superseded the classical works that had hitherto had such significant impact on the people’s hearts and minds.
The resolute fervor embedded in the revolutionary sentiments that they expressed in their works engendered a distinct literary element of this historical stage which penetrated the boundaries of literary criticism.
The Beginning of Reform and Opening-up: Re-introduction of Individualism and Pluralism
In 1978, China kicked off its reform and openingup. The subsequent social trends advocating emancipation of the mind and literature and art’s return to individuality created a surging literary tide. An influx of experimental literature and avant-garde thought carved out an expanse of space for the thought and art of multiple groundbreaking literary schools. These included the indigenous root-seeking, scar, introspective, and reform literature, along with the flourishing modernist, avant-garde, feminist, and neo-historicist schools of thought. A large cohort of writers and works, distinct for the independent thought and unconventional values they expressed, hence sprang up. Works included Chess King, Be Initiated into Monkhood, and Red Sorghum Family.
Others, such as Headmaster, Hibiscus Town, and Life, integrated human power into reflections on and examinations of life, while A Mongolian Tale, North River, and My Remote Qingpingwan enshrined happy memories of the authors’ homeland. Heavy Wings and Ordinary World showcased the inconstancy of human relationships in the process of reform, and Fabrication and Raise the Red Lantern deconstructed the modern world’s ostensible utopias. Unforgettable Love, Rose Door, and Female (group poems) focused on the inner world and consciousness of women; and works such as The Temptation of Gangdis and You Have No Choice incorporated life’s realities into metaphysical thinking through a post-modern narrative structure. Meanwhile Little Village Bao, Pa Pa Pa, and The Ancient Ship celebrated Chinese national characteristics through depictions of national folkways and portrayals of historical changes. In the Chinese literary arena of today, it is precisely these innovative works, borne of vital creativity, that have achieved the power and direction of an overall revival of Chinese literature.
Dawn of the New Millennium: Multiple Trans-boundaries while Holding Fast to the Homeland
The gradual liberalization since the 1990s, apparent in diversification and individualization of the cultural environment, its mechanisms, and literary and artistic concepts, has elevated the diversity of contemporary Chinese literature to new heights. This is especially true of its middle and late stages when, influenced by economic globalization, multipolarization, and other factors, China’s door opened ever-wider to the world at large. As a result, Western theories and thought flowed rapidly into the field of humanities and social sciences on the Chinese mainland, which embraced new literary and artistic concepts. A large section of scholars became fascinated with modernist concepts and terminology, and proactively promoted and disseminated “postmodernism” cultural theory. In the context of a more open and modernized literary theory, a number of literary works with multiple and cross-border elements also appeared. They included such avant-garde writings as Chronicle of a Blood Merchant, To Live, and Cries in the Drizzle, the neo-historical novel White Deer Plain, the neo-realist Ground Covered with Chicken Feathers, and works of new women’s individualistic
The inevitable nascence of network literature rapidly occupied the literary high ground and expanded rapidly.
writing, including One Man’s War, Private Life, Choice, and Everything Is Settled, all of which constructed new and arresting literary scenarios.
This avalanche of excellent literary works prompted the ascent of visual culture and popular literature. The sweeping tide of commercialization and innovated network technology opened up abundant literary and artistic channels for everyday people by promoting literature and art among the general public. This transformed the formalized characteristics of contemporary literature. Secularization was the distinctive feature of literary works in the alternating period of the 20th and 21st centuries and thereafter. The status of the cultural elite that formerly sustained literary history gradually disintegrated as commerce and the market reshaped writers’ cultural identities. This had considerable impact on the grand narrative and spiritual character of traditional literature, to the extent of replacing it with entertainment and popular recreational culture. The inevitable nascence of network literature rapidly occupied the literary high ground and expanded rapidly. Incomplete statistics show that as many as 400 million people in China log on to literary websites and blogs, that there are more than 14 million registered online authors, and that daily updates on literary works amount to more than 200 million words. Network literature has thus become a new literary force that has gained acknowledgement in academic circles by virtue of its swelling bulk. For example, Jin Yucheng’s Blossoms won the Mao Dun Literary Prize in 2015. First published in an online forum, this book targeted the minority of
netizens studying Shanghai culture. In recent years even more challenging works, namely science fiction, especially that on artificial intelligence, have appeared. Liu Cixin’s The Three-body Problem and Hao Jingfang’s Folding Beijing have gained recognition and won the Hugo Award for science fiction or fantasy works. The impact of artificial intelligence science fiction on human nature and aesthetics has also brought a change of literary direction.
Despite all these changes, mainstream Chinese literature has remained firmly in its position since the turn of the millennium. Rooted in realist themes, they include Ge Fei’s Jiangnan Trilogy, Tie Ning’s Stupid Flower, Chi Zijian’s The Right Bank of the Argun River, Liang Xiaosheng’s Human World, Xu Huaizhong’s Story of Towing the Wind, and Xu Zechen’s Go North. As the spirituality of these writers is rooted in their homeland, their narration represents a return to local cultural logic. Mo Yan’s novel Frog polarized global attention in 2012 when it won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Since China’s reform and opening-up, the translated works of many Chinese writers have been hailed abroad as masterpieces. Members of the Chinese Writers’ Association at the national level now exceed 10,000, and more and more writers have articulated artistic expressions of global public topics and deeply explored the themes of human survival and significance.
In his congratulatory letter in 2019 to the 70th anniversary celebration of the founding of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles and the China Writers Association, President Xi Jinping expressed hope that the vast number of the country’s literary and artistic workers would record, write and eulogize the new era, and strive to create excellent works worthy of the times, the people, and the nation; that they would re-emphasize the important position of literature and art in the new era and advance the new historical requirements of contemporary literature.
Having experienced 70 years of vicissitudes, protracted tortuous struggle, and brilliance, Chinese contemporary literature has witnessed the extraordinary missions and unyielding aspirations of the country. Propelled both by the progress of the times and social development, contemporary literature has itself achieved glory and made great accomplishments. Several generations of writers in New China have jointly forged its glorious and distinctive literary cause. Specializing in prose, poetry, fiction, drama, and many other forms, all focus on the people, bear historical memories, and express life’s joys and sorrows through legendary and mind-twisting stories.
As a medium, Chinese literature has added to a greater confluence of Chinese and Western cultures, so embodying cultural integration. It constitutes a specific logical evolution, having developed from a single mode to a pluralistic form. Amid the process of opening-up and development, it has inherited the origins of the Chinese culture. In its distinct approach to expressions of life in the world today it has moreover searched out ways to integrate and flourish and realized the sharing of common human experience while striving to build a community with a shared future for mankind. C