Shen Fu was a .
He wrote one of the best known descriptions of everyday life during the Ch'ing Dynasty, entitled Six Records of a Floating Life.
In this text, Shen Fu describes the gentle personality of his wife, Chen Yun, and his love for her. He also chronicles the rejection of Chen Yun by her parents and her untimely death. Shen Fu was a government clerk, a "yamen" private secretary. More broadly, he also seems to have been a painter and an occasional trader or businessman, although he failed at these attempts.
2008年9月21日星期日
Shen Congwen
Shen Congwen was the pen name of a writer from the May Fourth Movement. He was known for combining the vernacular style of writing with classical Chinese writing techniques, and his writing also reflects a strong influence from western literature. He was born as Shen Yuehuan on 1902 December 28 in Fenghuang County in Hunan Province. He died on 1988 May 10 in Beijing.
Shen was initially trained for a career in the military. As a soldier in the Chinese army, he observed border fighting and the lives of the tribesmen, which would later become the subject matter of his early short fiction stories. He began writing fiction in 1922 and wrote almost continually until 1949. He taught Chinese literature at various universities during the Second Sino-Japanese War out of monetary necessity.
Originally an apolitical writer, he suffered a breakdown after the in 1949 and the subsequent restrictions on writing. He recovered by 1955, but he never again published another work of fiction. He was given a staffing post at the Palace Museum at the Forbidden City in Beijing, about which he wrote a non-fiction work in 1957. Afterwards, he also published a famous study of Chinese costume and dress.
'''' , written during the , is generally considered the best of his long fiction.
''Chundeng Ji'' and ''Heifeng Ji'' are his most important collections of short stories.
Shen was initially trained for a career in the military. As a soldier in the Chinese army, he observed border fighting and the lives of the tribesmen, which would later become the subject matter of his early short fiction stories. He began writing fiction in 1922 and wrote almost continually until 1949. He taught Chinese literature at various universities during the Second Sino-Japanese War out of monetary necessity.
Originally an apolitical writer, he suffered a breakdown after the in 1949 and the subsequent restrictions on writing. He recovered by 1955, but he never again published another work of fiction. He was given a staffing post at the Palace Museum at the Forbidden City in Beijing, about which he wrote a non-fiction work in 1957. Afterwards, he also published a famous study of Chinese costume and dress.
'''' , written during the , is generally considered the best of his long fiction.
''Chundeng Ji'' and ''Heifeng Ji'' are his most important collections of short stories.
Pu Songling
Pu Songling was a Chinese author who wrote during the Qing Dynasty.
Pu was from a poor landlord-merchant family from . Possibly he was of Mongol ancestry. At the age of nineteen, he received the xiucai degree in the civil service examination, but it was not until he was seventy-one that he received the gongsheng degree.
He spent most of his life working as a private tutor, and collecting the stories that were later published in ''Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio''. Some critics attribute the Vernacular Chinese novel ''Xingshi Yinyuan Zhuan'' to him.
Biography
Pu was from a poor landlord-merchant family from . Possibly he was of Mongol ancestry. At the age of nineteen, he received the xiucai degree in the civil service examination, but it was not until he was seventy-one that he received the gongsheng degree.
He spent most of his life working as a private tutor, and collecting the stories that were later published in ''Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio''. Some critics attribute the Vernacular Chinese novel ''Xingshi Yinyuan Zhuan'' to him.
Ma Sen
Ma Sen , Taiwanese writer, born 1932 in Shandong province.
Ma Sen is a literary critic, a writer of fiction, and a playwright. He studied film and drama in France starting in 1961, later studying Sociology at the University of British Columbia. He is now a professor at Foguang University in the Graduate Institute of Literary Studies.
See for Ma Sen's thoughts on the
Chinese literary scene circa 1991.
See for translations.
Ma Sen is a literary critic, a writer of fiction, and a playwright. He studied film and drama in France starting in 1961, later studying Sociology at the University of British Columbia. He is now a professor at Foguang University in the Graduate Institute of Literary Studies.
See for Ma Sen's thoughts on the
Chinese literary scene circa 1991.
See for translations.
Lu Xun
Lu Xun or Lu Hsün , was the pen name of Zhou Shuren is one of the major Chinese writers of the 20th century. Considered the founder of modern ''baihua'' literature, Lu Xun was a short story writer, , translator, critic and essayist. He was one of the founders of the Chinese League of Left-Wing Writers in Shanghai.
Lu Xun's works exerted a very substantial influence after the May Fourth Movement to such a point that he was lionized by the regime after 1949. Mao Zedong himself was a lifelong admirer of Lu Xun's works. Though highly sympathetic to the Chinese Communist movement, Lu Xun himself never joined the Chinese Communist Party despite being a staunch as he professed in his works.
Born in Shaoxing, Zhejiang province, Lu Xun was first named Zhou Zhangshou, then Zhou Yucai, and finally himself took the name of ''Shùrén'' , literally, "to nurture a person". He was the eldest of five brothers, three of whom reached maturity. His younger brother Zhou Zuoren, four years his junior, would become a notable writer in his own right.
The Shaoxing Zhou family was very well-educated, and his paternal grandfather Zhou Fuqing 周福清 held posts in the Hanlin Academy; Zhou's mother, née Lu, taught herself to read. However, after a case of bribery was exposed - in which Zhou Fuqing tried to procure an office for his son, Lu Xun's father, Zhou Boyi - the family fortunes declined. Zhou Fuqing was arrested and almost beheaded. Meanwhile, a young Zhou Shuren was brought up by an elderly servant Ah Chang, whom he called Chang Ma; one of Lu Xun's favorite childhood books was the ''Classic of mountains and seas''.
His father's chronic illness and eventual death during Lu Xun's adolescence, apparently from tuberculosis, persuaded Zhou to study medicine. Distrusting traditional Chinese medicine , he went abroad to pursue a medical degree at Sendai Medical Speciality School in , Japan, in 1904.
Lu Xun was educated at Jiangnan Naval Academy 江南水師學堂 , and later transferred to the School of Mines and Railways 礦路學堂 at Jiangnan Military Academy 江南陸師學堂. It was there Lu Xun had his first contacts with Western learning, especially the sciences; he studied some German and English, reading, amongst some translated books, Huxley's ''Evolution and Ethics'', J. S. Mill's ''On Liberty'', as well as novels like ''Ivanhoe'' and ''Uncle Tom's Cabin''.
On a Qing government scholarship, Lu Xun left for Japan in 1902. He first attended the ''Kobun Gakuin'' , a preparatory language school for Chinese students attending Japanese universities. His earliest essays, written in Classical Chinese, date from here. Lu also practised some jujutsu.
Lu Xun returned home briefly in 1903. Aged 22, he complied to an arranged marriage with a local gentry girl, Zhu An 朱安. Zhu, illiterate and with bound feet, was handpicked by his mother. Lu Xun possibly never consummated this marriage, although he took care of her material needs all his life.
Lu Xun left for Sendai Medical Speciality School in 1904 and gained a minor reputation there as the first foreign student of the college. At the school he struck up a close teacher-mentor relationship with lecturer Fujino 藤野嚴九郎; Lu Xun would recall his mentor respectfully and affectionately in an essay "Mr Fujino" in the memoirs in ''Dawn Dew-light Collected at Dusk''. However, in March 1906, Lu Xun abruptly terminated his pursuit of degree and left the college.
Lu Xun, in the well-known Preface to ''Nahan'', his first story collection, revealed why he gave up completing his medical education at Sendai. One day after class, one of his instructors screened a lantern slide documenting the imminent execution of an alleged Chinese spy during the Russo-Japanese War . Lu Xun was shocked by the complete apathy of the Chinese onlookers; he decided it was more important to cure his compatriots' spiritual ills rather their physical diseases.
:"At the time, I hadn't seen any of my fellow Chinese in a long time, but one day some of them showed up in a slide. One, with his hands tied behind him, was in the middle of the picture; the others were gathered around him. Physically, they were as strong and healthy as anyone could ask, but their expressions revealed all too clearly that spiritually they were calloused and numb. According to the caption, the Chinese whose hands were bound had been spying on the Japanese military for the Russians. He was about to be decapitated as a 'public example.' The other Chinese gathered around him had come to enjoy the spectacle." .
Moving to Tokyo in spring 1906, he came under the influence of scholar and philologist Zhang Taiyan and with his brother Zuoren, also on scholarship, published a translation of some East European and Russian Slavic short stories. He spent the next three years in Tokyo writing, translating the literature of those countries into Chinese.
Returning to China, Lu Xun began teaching in the middle school of his hometown and with the establishment of the republic, briefly held a post in the Ministry of Education at Beijing. Encouraged by some fellow associates, he took up teaching positions at the Peking University and Peking Women's Teachers College and began to write.
In May 1918, Lu Xun used his pen name for the first time and published the first major baihua short story, ''Kuangren Riji'' . He chose the surname Lu as it was his mother's maiden family name. Partly inspired by the Gogol short story, it was a scathing criticism of outdated Chinese traditions and feudalism which was metaphorically 'gnawing' at the Chinese like cannibalism. It immediately established him as one of the most influential writers of his day.
Another of his well-known longer stories, ''The True Story of Ah Q'' , was published in installments from 1921 to 1922. The latter would become his most famous work. Both works were included in his first short story collection ''Na Han'' or '''', published in 1923.
Between 1924 to 1926, Lu wrote his essays of ironic reminiscences in ''Zhaohua Xishi'' , published 1928, as well as the prose poem collection ''Ye Cao'' . Lu Xun also wrote many of the stories to be published in his second short story collection ''Pang Huang'' in 1926. Becoming increasingly estranged with his brother Zuoren, the stories are typically more melancholic than in his earlier collection. From 1926, after the March 18 Massacre, for supporting the students' protests which led to the incident, he went on an imposed exile to Xiamen, , then to Zhongshan University at Guangzhou with his wife Xu Guangping.
From 1927 to his death, Lu Xun shifted to the more liberal city of Shanghai, where he co-founded the Chinese League of Left-Wing Writers. Most of his essays date from this last period. Xu Guangping gave birth to a son, Haiyang, on September 27th, 1929. She was in labor with the baby for 27 hours. The child's name meant simply "Shanghai infant". His parents chose the name thinking that he could change it himself later, but he never did so. In 1930 Lu Xun's ''Zhongguo Xiaoshuo Lueshi'' was published. It is a comprehensive overview of history of Chinese fiction up till that time, drawn from Lu Xun's own lectures delivered at Peking University and would become one of the landmark books of Chinese literary criticism in the twentieth-century.
His other important works include volumes of translations — notably from Russian — discursive writings like ''Re Feng'' , and many other works such as prose essays, which number around 20 volumes or more. As a writer, Lu played an important role in the history of Chinese literature. His books were and remain highly influential and popular even today. Lu Xun's works also appear in high school textbooks in Japan. He is known to Japanese by the name Rojin .
Lu Xun was the editor of several left-wing magazines such as ''New Youth'' and ''Sprouts'' .
Because of his leanings, and of the role his works played in the subsequent history of the People's Republic of China, Lu Xun's works were banned in Taiwan until late 1980s. He was among the early supporters of the Esperanto movement in China.
By 1936, Lu Xun's lungs had been greatly weakened by tuberculosis. In March of that year, he was stricken with bronchitic asthma and a fever. The treatment for this involved draining 300 grams of fluid in the lungs through puncture. From June to August, he was again sick, and his weight dropped to only 83 pounds. He recovered some, and wrote two essays in the fall reflecting on mortality. These included "Death", and "This Too Is Life". At 3:30 AM on the morning of October 18th, the author woke with great difficulty breathing. Dr. Sudo, his physician, was summoned, and Lu Xun took injections to relieve the pain. His wife was with him throughout that night, but Lu Xun was found without a pulse at 5:11 AM the next morning, October 19th. His remains were interred in a mausoleum within in Shanghai. He was survived by his son, Haiying.
Lu Xun was a very versatile writer. He wrote using both traditional Chinese conventions and 19th century European literary forms. His style has been described in equally broad terms, conveying both "sympathetic engagement" and "ironic detachment" at different moments. His essays are often very incisive in his societal commentary, and in his stories his mastery of the vernacular language and tone make some of his literary works very hard to convey through translation. In them, he frequently treads a fine line between criticizing the follies of his characters and sympathizing with their very follies.
Lu Xun is typically regarded as the most influential Chinese writer who was associated with the May Fourth Movement. He produced harsh criticism of social problems in China, particularly in his analysis of the "Chinese national character". He has often been considered to have had leftist leanings. Called by some a "champion of common humanity," he helped bring many fellow writers to support communist thought, though he never took the step of actually joining the . It should be remarked, however, that throughout his work the individual is given more emphasis over collectivistic concerns.
Lu Xun felt that the 1911 Xinhai Revolution had been a failure. He described the operation of the as "monkey business", and in 1925 opined, "I feel the so-called Republic of China has ceased to exist. I feel that, before the revolution, I was a slave, but shortly after the revolution, I have been cheated by slaves and have become their slave". This disillusionment with politics led the author to come to the conclusion in 1927 that "revolutionary literature" alone could not bring about radical change. Rather, "revolutionary men" needed to lead a revolution using force.
Lu Xun's importance to modern Chinese literature lies in the fact that he contributed significantly to every modern literary genre except the novel during his lifetime. He wrote in a clear lucid style which was to influence many generations, in stories, prose poems and essays. Lu Xun's translations were important in a time when Western literature were seldom read, and his literary criticisms remain acute and persuasively argued.
The relationship between Lu Xun and the Communist Party of China after the author's death was a complex one. On one hand, Party leaders depicted him as "drawing the blueprint of the communist future". Mao Zedong deified him as the "chief commander of China's cultural revolution" At the same time, leaders downplayed the influence of the cosmopolitan May Fourth Movement on Lu Xun, in order to match Lu Xun with the Communist Party's support of folk literature and the common people. During the 1920s and 1930s, Lu Xun and his contemporaries often met informally for freewheeling intellectual discussions. As the Party sought more control over intellectual life in China, this type of intellectual independence was suppressed. Finally, Lu Xun's satirical and ironic writing style itself was discouraged. Mao wrote that "...the style of the essay should not simply be like Lu Xun's. we can shout at the top of our voices and have no need for veiled and round-about expressions, which are hard for the people to understand". Thus, the Communist Party both hailed Lu Xun as one of the fathers of Communism in China and suppressed the intellectual culture and style of writing that he represented.
The work of Lu Xun has also received attention outside of China. In 1986, Fredric Jameson, a prominent Marxist, cited "A Madman's Diary" as the "supreme example" of the "national allegory" form that all Third World literature takes. Gloria Davies compares Lu Xun to Nietzsche, saying that both were "trapped in the construction of a modernity which is fundamentally problematic".
* from《呐喊》''''
** 狂人日记"A Madman's Diary"
** 孔乙已"Kong Yiji"
** 药""
** 明天""
** 一件小事"An Incident"
** 头发的故事"The Story of Hair"
** 风筝"Kite"
** " Storm in a Teacup"
** 故乡"Hometown"
** 阿Q正传"The True Story of Ah Q"
** 端午节"The Double Fifth Festival"
** 白光"The White Light"
** 兔和猫"The Rabbits and the Cat"
** 鸭的喜剧"The Comedy of the Ducks"
** 社戏"Village Opera"
** "New Year Sacrifice"
* from《彷徨》"Wondering"
** 祝福 Well Wishes
** 在酒楼上 In the Drinking House
** 幸福的家庭 Happy Family
** 肥皂 Soap
** 长明灯 Forever Lit Lamp
** 示众 Public Exhibition
** 高老夫子 Old Mr. Gao
** 孤独者 Dictator
** 伤逝 Sadness
** 弟兄 Brothers
** 离婚 Divorce
* from《故事新编》"Old Tales Retold"
** 补天 Mending Heaven
** 奔月 The Flight to the Moon
** 理水 Curbing the Flood
** 采薇 Gathering Vetch
** 铸剑 Forging the Swords
** 出关 Going out
** 怀旧 Leaving the Pass
** 非攻 Opposing Aggression
** 起死 Resurrect the Dead
* 我之节烈观"My Views on Chastity"
* 我们现在怎么做父亲"What is Required to be a Father Today"
* "Knowledge is a Crime"
* 说胡须"My Moustache"
* 看镜有感"Thoughts Before the Mirror"
* "On Deferring Fair Play"
* 《呐喊》
* 《彷徨》Wondering
* 《故事新编》Old Tales Retold
* 《野草》Wild Grass （1927）
* 《朝花夕拾》Dawn Blossoms Plucked at Dusk, （1932） a collection of essays about his youth
* Brief History of Chinese Fiction, a substantial study of pre-modern Chinese literature
* at www.marxists.org
* at www.coldbacon.com
* , a long essay by Lu Xun on the difficulties of Chinese characters
*The Lyrical Lu Xun: a Study of his Classical-style Verse -- a book by Jon Eugene von Kowallis -- includes a complete introduction to Lu Xun's poetry in the classical style, with Chinese characters, literal and verse translations, and a biographical introduction which summarizes his life in relation to his poetry.
Lu Xun's works exerted a very substantial influence after the May Fourth Movement to such a point that he was lionized by the regime after 1949. Mao Zedong himself was a lifelong admirer of Lu Xun's works. Though highly sympathetic to the Chinese Communist movement, Lu Xun himself never joined the Chinese Communist Party despite being a staunch as he professed in his works.
Life
Early life
Born in Shaoxing, Zhejiang province, Lu Xun was first named Zhou Zhangshou, then Zhou Yucai, and finally himself took the name of ''Shùrén'' , literally, "to nurture a person". He was the eldest of five brothers, three of whom reached maturity. His younger brother Zhou Zuoren, four years his junior, would become a notable writer in his own right.
The Shaoxing Zhou family was very well-educated, and his paternal grandfather Zhou Fuqing 周福清 held posts in the Hanlin Academy; Zhou's mother, née Lu, taught herself to read. However, after a case of bribery was exposed - in which Zhou Fuqing tried to procure an office for his son, Lu Xun's father, Zhou Boyi - the family fortunes declined. Zhou Fuqing was arrested and almost beheaded. Meanwhile, a young Zhou Shuren was brought up by an elderly servant Ah Chang, whom he called Chang Ma; one of Lu Xun's favorite childhood books was the ''Classic of mountains and seas''.
His father's chronic illness and eventual death during Lu Xun's adolescence, apparently from tuberculosis, persuaded Zhou to study medicine. Distrusting traditional Chinese medicine , he went abroad to pursue a medical degree at Sendai Medical Speciality School in , Japan, in 1904.
Education
Lu Xun was educated at Jiangnan Naval Academy 江南水師學堂 , and later transferred to the School of Mines and Railways 礦路學堂 at Jiangnan Military Academy 江南陸師學堂. It was there Lu Xun had his first contacts with Western learning, especially the sciences; he studied some German and English, reading, amongst some translated books, Huxley's ''Evolution and Ethics'', J. S. Mill's ''On Liberty'', as well as novels like ''Ivanhoe'' and ''Uncle Tom's Cabin''.
On a Qing government scholarship, Lu Xun left for Japan in 1902. He first attended the ''Kobun Gakuin'' , a preparatory language school for Chinese students attending Japanese universities. His earliest essays, written in Classical Chinese, date from here. Lu also practised some jujutsu.
Lu Xun returned home briefly in 1903. Aged 22, he complied to an arranged marriage with a local gentry girl, Zhu An 朱安. Zhu, illiterate and with bound feet, was handpicked by his mother. Lu Xun possibly never consummated this marriage, although he took care of her material needs all his life.
Sendai
Lu Xun left for Sendai Medical Speciality School in 1904 and gained a minor reputation there as the first foreign student of the college. At the school he struck up a close teacher-mentor relationship with lecturer Fujino 藤野嚴九郎; Lu Xun would recall his mentor respectfully and affectionately in an essay "Mr Fujino" in the memoirs in ''Dawn Dew-light Collected at Dusk''. However, in March 1906, Lu Xun abruptly terminated his pursuit of degree and left the college.
Lu Xun, in the well-known Preface to ''Nahan'', his first story collection, revealed why he gave up completing his medical education at Sendai. One day after class, one of his instructors screened a lantern slide documenting the imminent execution of an alleged Chinese spy during the Russo-Japanese War . Lu Xun was shocked by the complete apathy of the Chinese onlookers; he decided it was more important to cure his compatriots' spiritual ills rather their physical diseases.
:"At the time, I hadn't seen any of my fellow Chinese in a long time, but one day some of them showed up in a slide. One, with his hands tied behind him, was in the middle of the picture; the others were gathered around him. Physically, they were as strong and healthy as anyone could ask, but their expressions revealed all too clearly that spiritually they were calloused and numb. According to the caption, the Chinese whose hands were bound had been spying on the Japanese military for the Russians. He was about to be decapitated as a 'public example.' The other Chinese gathered around him had come to enjoy the spectacle." .
Moving to Tokyo in spring 1906, he came under the influence of scholar and philologist Zhang Taiyan and with his brother Zuoren, also on scholarship, published a translation of some East European and Russian Slavic short stories. He spent the next three years in Tokyo writing, translating the literature of those countries into Chinese.
Career
Returning to China, Lu Xun began teaching in the middle school of his hometown and with the establishment of the republic, briefly held a post in the Ministry of Education at Beijing. Encouraged by some fellow associates, he took up teaching positions at the Peking University and Peking Women's Teachers College and began to write.
In May 1918, Lu Xun used his pen name for the first time and published the first major baihua short story, ''Kuangren Riji'' . He chose the surname Lu as it was his mother's maiden family name. Partly inspired by the Gogol short story, it was a scathing criticism of outdated Chinese traditions and feudalism which was metaphorically 'gnawing' at the Chinese like cannibalism. It immediately established him as one of the most influential writers of his day.
Another of his well-known longer stories, ''The True Story of Ah Q'' , was published in installments from 1921 to 1922. The latter would become his most famous work. Both works were included in his first short story collection ''Na Han'' or '''', published in 1923.
Between 1924 to 1926, Lu wrote his essays of ironic reminiscences in ''Zhaohua Xishi'' , published 1928, as well as the prose poem collection ''Ye Cao'' . Lu Xun also wrote many of the stories to be published in his second short story collection ''Pang Huang'' in 1926. Becoming increasingly estranged with his brother Zuoren, the stories are typically more melancholic than in his earlier collection. From 1926, after the March 18 Massacre, for supporting the students' protests which led to the incident, he went on an imposed exile to Xiamen, , then to Zhongshan University at Guangzhou with his wife Xu Guangping.
From 1927 to his death, Lu Xun shifted to the more liberal city of Shanghai, where he co-founded the Chinese League of Left-Wing Writers. Most of his essays date from this last period. Xu Guangping gave birth to a son, Haiyang, on September 27th, 1929. She was in labor with the baby for 27 hours. The child's name meant simply "Shanghai infant". His parents chose the name thinking that he could change it himself later, but he never did so. In 1930 Lu Xun's ''Zhongguo Xiaoshuo Lueshi'' was published. It is a comprehensive overview of history of Chinese fiction up till that time, drawn from Lu Xun's own lectures delivered at Peking University and would become one of the landmark books of Chinese literary criticism in the twentieth-century.
His other important works include volumes of translations — notably from Russian — discursive writings like ''Re Feng'' , and many other works such as prose essays, which number around 20 volumes or more. As a writer, Lu played an important role in the history of Chinese literature. His books were and remain highly influential and popular even today. Lu Xun's works also appear in high school textbooks in Japan. He is known to Japanese by the name Rojin .
Lu Xun was the editor of several left-wing magazines such as ''New Youth'' and ''Sprouts'' .
Because of his leanings, and of the role his works played in the subsequent history of the People's Republic of China, Lu Xun's works were banned in Taiwan until late 1980s. He was among the early supporters of the Esperanto movement in China.
Last days and death
By 1936, Lu Xun's lungs had been greatly weakened by tuberculosis. In March of that year, he was stricken with bronchitic asthma and a fever. The treatment for this involved draining 300 grams of fluid in the lungs through puncture. From June to August, he was again sick, and his weight dropped to only 83 pounds. He recovered some, and wrote two essays in the fall reflecting on mortality. These included "Death", and "This Too Is Life". At 3:30 AM on the morning of October 18th, the author woke with great difficulty breathing. Dr. Sudo, his physician, was summoned, and Lu Xun took injections to relieve the pain. His wife was with him throughout that night, but Lu Xun was found without a pulse at 5:11 AM the next morning, October 19th. His remains were interred in a mausoleum within in Shanghai. He was survived by his son, Haiying.
Style and thought
Lu Xun was a very versatile writer. He wrote using both traditional Chinese conventions and 19th century European literary forms. His style has been described in equally broad terms, conveying both "sympathetic engagement" and "ironic detachment" at different moments. His essays are often very incisive in his societal commentary, and in his stories his mastery of the vernacular language and tone make some of his literary works very hard to convey through translation. In them, he frequently treads a fine line between criticizing the follies of his characters and sympathizing with their very follies.
Lu Xun is typically regarded as the most influential Chinese writer who was associated with the May Fourth Movement. He produced harsh criticism of social problems in China, particularly in his analysis of the "Chinese national character". He has often been considered to have had leftist leanings. Called by some a "champion of common humanity," he helped bring many fellow writers to support communist thought, though he never took the step of actually joining the . It should be remarked, however, that throughout his work the individual is given more emphasis over collectivistic concerns.
Lu Xun felt that the 1911 Xinhai Revolution had been a failure. He described the operation of the as "monkey business", and in 1925 opined, "I feel the so-called Republic of China has ceased to exist. I feel that, before the revolution, I was a slave, but shortly after the revolution, I have been cheated by slaves and have become their slave". This disillusionment with politics led the author to come to the conclusion in 1927 that "revolutionary literature" alone could not bring about radical change. Rather, "revolutionary men" needed to lead a revolution using force.
Legacy
Lu Xun's importance to modern Chinese literature lies in the fact that he contributed significantly to every modern literary genre except the novel during his lifetime. He wrote in a clear lucid style which was to influence many generations, in stories, prose poems and essays. Lu Xun's translations were important in a time when Western literature were seldom read, and his literary criticisms remain acute and persuasively argued.
The relationship between Lu Xun and the Communist Party of China after the author's death was a complex one. On one hand, Party leaders depicted him as "drawing the blueprint of the communist future". Mao Zedong deified him as the "chief commander of China's cultural revolution" At the same time, leaders downplayed the influence of the cosmopolitan May Fourth Movement on Lu Xun, in order to match Lu Xun with the Communist Party's support of folk literature and the common people. During the 1920s and 1930s, Lu Xun and his contemporaries often met informally for freewheeling intellectual discussions. As the Party sought more control over intellectual life in China, this type of intellectual independence was suppressed. Finally, Lu Xun's satirical and ironic writing style itself was discouraged. Mao wrote that "...the style of the essay should not simply be like Lu Xun's. we can shout at the top of our voices and have no need for veiled and round-about expressions, which are hard for the people to understand". Thus, the Communist Party both hailed Lu Xun as one of the fathers of Communism in China and suppressed the intellectual culture and style of writing that he represented.
The work of Lu Xun has also received attention outside of China. In 1986, Fredric Jameson, a prominent Marxist, cited "A Madman's Diary" as the "supreme example" of the "national allegory" form that all Third World literature takes. Gloria Davies compares Lu Xun to Nietzsche, saying that both were "trapped in the construction of a modernity which is fundamentally problematic".
Works
Stories
* from《呐喊》''''
** 狂人日记"A Madman's Diary"
** 孔乙已"Kong Yiji"
** 药""
** 明天""
** 一件小事"An Incident"
** 头发的故事"The Story of Hair"
** 风筝"Kite"
** " Storm in a Teacup"
** 故乡"Hometown"
** 阿Q正传"The True Story of Ah Q"
** 端午节"The Double Fifth Festival"
** 白光"The White Light"
** 兔和猫"The Rabbits and the Cat"
** 鸭的喜剧"The Comedy of the Ducks"
** 社戏"Village Opera"
** "New Year Sacrifice"
* from《彷徨》"Wondering"
** 祝福 Well Wishes
** 在酒楼上 In the Drinking House
** 幸福的家庭 Happy Family
** 肥皂 Soap
** 长明灯 Forever Lit Lamp
** 示众 Public Exhibition
** 高老夫子 Old Mr. Gao
** 孤独者 Dictator
** 伤逝 Sadness
** 弟兄 Brothers
** 离婚 Divorce
* from《故事新编》"Old Tales Retold"
** 补天 Mending Heaven
** 奔月 The Flight to the Moon
** 理水 Curbing the Flood
** 采薇 Gathering Vetch
** 铸剑 Forging the Swords
** 出关 Going out
** 怀旧 Leaving the Pass
** 非攻 Opposing Aggression
** 起死 Resurrect the Dead
Essays
* 我之节烈观"My Views on Chastity"
* 我们现在怎么做父亲"What is Required to be a Father Today"
* "Knowledge is a Crime"
* 说胡须"My Moustache"
* 看镜有感"Thoughts Before the Mirror"
* "On Deferring Fair Play"
Collections
* 《呐喊》
* 《彷徨》Wondering
* 《故事新编》Old Tales Retold
* 《野草》Wild Grass （1927）
* 《朝花夕拾》Dawn Blossoms Plucked at Dusk, （1932） a collection of essays about his youth
* Brief History of Chinese Fiction, a substantial study of pre-modern Chinese literature
Translations
* at www.marxists.org
* at www.coldbacon.com
* , a long essay by Lu Xun on the difficulties of Chinese characters
*The Lyrical Lu Xun: a Study of his Classical-style Verse -- a book by Jon Eugene von Kowallis -- includes a complete introduction to Lu Xun's poetry in the classical style, with Chinese characters, literal and verse translations, and a biographical introduction which summarizes his life in relation to his poetry.
Li Ang
Li Ang is a Taiwanese writer. After graduating from Chinese Culture University with a degree in Philosophy, she studied drama at the University of Oregon, after which she returned to teach at her alma mater. Her major work is ''The Butcher's Wife'' , though she has a copious output. Feminist themes and sexuality are present in much of her work. Many of her stories are set in Lukang.
The Butcher's Wife is critical of traditional Chinese patriarchy. The heroine is sold into marriage with a brutal butcher much older than she. He dominates her sexually and takes pleasure in frightening her in various ways, including a visit to the slaughterhouse, after which the heroine in a disoriented state of mind murders him with a butcher's blade.
See for a list of translations of her fiction .
The Butcher's Wife is critical of traditional Chinese patriarchy. The heroine is sold into marriage with a brutal butcher much older than she. He dominates her sexually and takes pleasure in frightening her in various ways, including a visit to the slaughterhouse, after which the heroine in a disoriented state of mind murders him with a butcher's blade.
See for a list of translations of her fiction .
Jiang Yan
Jiang Yan is a poet and cifu writer in the Southern Dynasty of China, who occupies an important position in the history of the Southern Dynasty literature.
Jiang Yan says that he loves strange yet differences, which has relations with the admiration and pursuit of new and strange social trends and literary habits. This character also affects his making friends and writing style.
Jiang Yan says that he loves strange yet differences, which has relations with the admiration and pursuit of new and strange social trends and literary habits. This character also affects his making friends and writing style.
Jiang Gui
Jiang Gui 姜貴, also Chiang Kuei, was a Chinese novelist active in Taiwan.
Jiang Gui was born in mainland China. As a young man, he was influenced by the May Fourth Movement and joined the Kuomintang at age 18 in Guangzhou. He married at age 29, and attended college in Beijing. In 1937 he joined the Chinese army as an officer, and served for eight years in the war against Japan in the Northern campaign . His mother and adopted mother were both killed by the Communists in 1945. He moved to Taiwan with the Kuomintang in 1948.
Jiang wrote novels from the early 1950s to the late 1970s. His first and second novels are his best known works: ''The Whirlwind'' and ''Rival Suns'' . Both are anti-communist; the first portrays Chinese communism in a rural setting, and the second within a city .
His third major novel was ''The Green Sea and the Blue Sky: A Nocturne'' . It received little comment. A number of novels followed. Jiang lived in great poverty, and these books were mainly written for the money.
* ''The whirlwind'', by Chiang Kuei, translated by Timothy A. Ross. San Francisco : Chinese Materials Center, 1977.
* ''A Translation of the Chinese Novel Chung-Yang by Chiang Kuei '', by Chiang Kuei, translated by Timothy A. Ross. Lewiston, N.Y. : E. Mellen press, 1999.
Life and work
Jiang Gui was born in mainland China. As a young man, he was influenced by the May Fourth Movement and joined the Kuomintang at age 18 in Guangzhou. He married at age 29, and attended college in Beijing. In 1937 he joined the Chinese army as an officer, and served for eight years in the war against Japan in the Northern campaign . His mother and adopted mother were both killed by the Communists in 1945. He moved to Taiwan with the Kuomintang in 1948.
Jiang wrote novels from the early 1950s to the late 1970s. His first and second novels are his best known works: ''The Whirlwind'' and ''Rival Suns'' . Both are anti-communist; the first portrays Chinese communism in a rural setting, and the second within a city .
His third major novel was ''The Green Sea and the Blue Sky: A Nocturne'' . It received little comment. A number of novels followed. Jiang lived in great poverty, and these books were mainly written for the money.
Selected works
* ''The whirlwind'', by Chiang Kuei, translated by Timothy A. Ross. San Francisco : Chinese Materials Center, 1977.
* ''A Translation of the Chinese Novel Chung-Yang by Chiang Kuei '', by Chiang Kuei, translated by Timothy A. Ross. Lewiston, N.Y. : E. Mellen press, 1999.
Huang Fan
Huang Fan is a contemporary Taiwanese writer, born in 1950.
He grew up in a family dependents community, like many people from Mainland China who arrived with Chiang Kai-shek in 1949. His educational background is in engineering. He is now a professional writer.
His fiction is urbane and often experimental in technique.
He grew up in a family dependents community, like many people from Mainland China who arrived with Chiang Kai-shek in 1949. His educational background is in engineering. He is now a professional writer.
His fiction is urbane and often experimental in technique.
Huang Chunming
Huang Chunming , born in Ilan, Taiwan in 1939, is an influential Taiwanese writer and teacher. Huang writes mainly about the tragic and sometimes humorous lives of ordinary Taiwanese people, and many of his short stories have been turned into films, including .
Huang began his higher education career at a college in Taipei but, after a series of transfers, ended up graduating from National Pingtung University of Education in southern Taiwan. He is a writer of broad interests and remarkable versatility, but he is first of all a short story writer. During the 1960s as a major contributor to the influential ''Literature Quarterly'', Huang was hailed as a representative of ''hsiang-t'u wen-hsueh'', the "nativist " that focused on the lives of rural Taiwanese people. In more recent works he has turned his attention to urban culture and life in Taiwan's growing cities.
* ''The Drowning of an Old Cat and Other Stories'', . Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980.
* ''The Taste of Apples'', . New York: Columbia University Press, 2001.
Career
Huang began his higher education career at a college in Taipei but, after a series of transfers, ended up graduating from National Pingtung University of Education in southern Taiwan. He is a writer of broad interests and remarkable versatility, but he is first of all a short story writer. During the 1960s as a major contributor to the influential ''Literature Quarterly'', Huang was hailed as a representative of ''hsiang-t'u wen-hsueh'', the "nativist " that focused on the lives of rural Taiwanese people. In more recent works he has turned his attention to urban culture and life in Taiwan's growing cities.
Translations into English
* ''The Drowning of an Old Cat and Other Stories'', . Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980.
* ''The Taste of Apples'', . New York: Columbia University Press, 2001.
Chu Hsi-ning
Chu Hsi-ning was born in Shandong province. In 1945, he entered an art college in Hangzhou, but dropped out to join the nationalist army in the struggle against the communists. He reached the rank of colonel. He was one of the soldiers who accompanied Chiang Kai-shek to Taiwan in 1949. He came to prominence as a writer in the 1950s and remained productive until his death.
He can be grouped with anti-communist writers or the soldier writers. His fiction displays an interest in the impact of modernity on ordinary people and in the clash of social forces. These are concerns he inherited from the May 4th movement and the writers of the 1930s. However, Chu Hsi-ning's, unlike that of many Chinese writers of the 1930s, was not leftist. In fact, he is conservative. His stories reinforce traditional communal values and a morally Christian worldview.
He is the father of writers Chu Tien-wen and Chu Tien-hsin, together with whom he participated in the Three-Three series of publications in the late 1970s. The "threes" stand for the Three Principles of the People and for the Christian trinity.
Translations:
He can be grouped with anti-communist writers or the soldier writers. His fiction displays an interest in the impact of modernity on ordinary people and in the clash of social forces. These are concerns he inherited from the May 4th movement and the writers of the 1930s. However, Chu Hsi-ning's, unlike that of many Chinese writers of the 1930s, was not leftist. In fact, he is conservative. His stories reinforce traditional communal values and a morally Christian worldview.
He is the father of writers Chu Tien-wen and Chu Tien-hsin, together with whom he participated in the Three-Three series of publications in the late 1970s. The "threes" stand for the Three Principles of the People and for the Christian trinity.
Translations:
Zhang Chengzhi
Zhang Chengzhi is a contemporary author. Often named as the most influential Muslim writer in China, his historical narrative ''History of the Soul'', about the rise of the Jahriyya Sufi , was the second-most popular book in China in 1994.
Zhang was born in Beijing in 1948 to Hui parents of Shandong origin. Despite his Muslim ancestry, he was raised as an atheist. He graduated from in 1967, at the height of the Cultural Revolution. According to the ''People's Daily'', Zhang was the first person to call himself a ""; he used it as his pen name during his student days. Then on May 29, 1966, just two weeks after the ''People's Daily'' announced the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, Zhang convinced around ten other senior-level students to use the collective name "Mao Zedong's Red Guards" in addition to their individual signatures when signing a denouncing their school officials; three days later, they issued another large-character poster under the same collective name, entitled "We Must Resolutely Carry Out the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution to its End", with over one hundred signatures. Soon, students from all over Beijing began to call themselves "Red Guards".
After his graduation, Zhang was "" to Ujimqin Banner in Xilin Gol League, Inner Mongolia, where he lived for four years before returning to Beijing. Soon after his return, he entered the archaeology department of Peking University, graduating in 1975. He began his writing career in 1978, with the publication of a poem in entitled "Son of the People" and a Chinese-language short story "Why does the rider sing?" . That same year, he entered a master's program in history at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences's Department of , from which he graduated in 1981. In 1983, he received funding to go to Japan as an international exchange scholar, where he conducted research at Tokyo's Tōyō Bunko, the largest Asian studies library in Japan. Aside from Chinese and Mongolian, Zhang also speaks , and once audited a class in at the Central University for Nationalities.
Zhang is often identified as a representative of the so-called , despite the fact that he himself dismisses entire concept of ''xungen''. His work repeatedly touches on the themes of martyrdom, everlasting tradition, and resistance to materialism and urban life. Unlike many other authors who lived through the Cultural Revolution and regret the chaos it created in their lives, even Zhang's early works such as ''Rivers of the North'' and ''Black Steed'' exhibit a noticeable level of idealism about his time as a Red Guard, and clearly demonstrate his desire to rebut the presumptions of scar literature. Analyses of Zhang's impact on Chinese literature and thought vary greatly. Zhu Xueqin expressed his admiration of Zhang for "casting off his old self" and taking a "firm stand" for idealistic values and against ethnocentrism. Dru Gladney, in contrast, analysed Zhang's popularity in terms of a larger trend of consumerist exoticisation of "ethnic chic" in 1990s China. Some scholars, both in China and abroad, go further in rendering harsh judgments: they denounce Zhang as "xenophobic" and criticise his continued support of Maoism even after his conversion to Islam.
The early 1980s have been described as Zhang's "lyrical phase". As a result of his works during this period, he has been described as one of China's first practitioners of "" fiction.
* 黑骏马 ; 1981
** edition: ''The Black Steed''; 1990, Panda Books, . ISBN 0835120775. Translator: Stephen Fleming.
** edition: 黒駿馬, 1994, Waseda University Press, Japan. ISBN 4657930362. Translator: 岸 陽子.
** edition: ''Mon beau cheval noir''; 1999, Philippe Picquier, France. ISBN 2877304353. Translator: unknown.
** Movie adaptation ''A Mongolian Tale'' released in 1995 by Beijing Youth Film Studio
* 北方的河 ; 1984
** edition: 北方の河, 1997, Romandō. ISBN 479521042X. Translator: 磯部 祐子
* 金牧场 ; October 1987
* 心灵史 ; January 1991
* 回教から見た中国―民族?宗教?国家 ; April 1993, Chūō Kōbunsha. In . ISBN 4121011287.
* 清洁的精神 ; 1994
* 鞍と筆―中国知識人の道とは何か , November 1995, Ohta Books. In . ISBN 4872332261.
*
*
*
*
* The section "Constructing a 'Clean Spirit'" is one of the only chapter-length analyses of Zhang in an English-language scholarly work.
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Biography
Zhang was born in Beijing in 1948 to Hui parents of Shandong origin. Despite his Muslim ancestry, he was raised as an atheist. He graduated from in 1967, at the height of the Cultural Revolution. According to the ''People's Daily'', Zhang was the first person to call himself a ""; he used it as his pen name during his student days. Then on May 29, 1966, just two weeks after the ''People's Daily'' announced the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, Zhang convinced around ten other senior-level students to use the collective name "Mao Zedong's Red Guards" in addition to their individual signatures when signing a denouncing their school officials; three days later, they issued another large-character poster under the same collective name, entitled "We Must Resolutely Carry Out the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution to its End", with over one hundred signatures. Soon, students from all over Beijing began to call themselves "Red Guards".
After his graduation, Zhang was "" to Ujimqin Banner in Xilin Gol League, Inner Mongolia, where he lived for four years before returning to Beijing. Soon after his return, he entered the archaeology department of Peking University, graduating in 1975. He began his writing career in 1978, with the publication of a poem in entitled "Son of the People" and a Chinese-language short story "Why does the rider sing?" . That same year, he entered a master's program in history at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences's Department of , from which he graduated in 1981. In 1983, he received funding to go to Japan as an international exchange scholar, where he conducted research at Tokyo's Tōyō Bunko, the largest Asian studies library in Japan. Aside from Chinese and Mongolian, Zhang also speaks , and once audited a class in at the Central University for Nationalities.
Literary career
Zhang is often identified as a representative of the so-called , despite the fact that he himself dismisses entire concept of ''xungen''. His work repeatedly touches on the themes of martyrdom, everlasting tradition, and resistance to materialism and urban life. Unlike many other authors who lived through the Cultural Revolution and regret the chaos it created in their lives, even Zhang's early works such as ''Rivers of the North'' and ''Black Steed'' exhibit a noticeable level of idealism about his time as a Red Guard, and clearly demonstrate his desire to rebut the presumptions of scar literature. Analyses of Zhang's impact on Chinese literature and thought vary greatly. Zhu Xueqin expressed his admiration of Zhang for "casting off his old self" and taking a "firm stand" for idealistic values and against ethnocentrism. Dru Gladney, in contrast, analysed Zhang's popularity in terms of a larger trend of consumerist exoticisation of "ethnic chic" in 1990s China. Some scholars, both in China and abroad, go further in rendering harsh judgments: they denounce Zhang as "xenophobic" and criticise his continued support of Maoism even after his conversion to Islam.
The early 1980s have been described as Zhang's "lyrical phase". As a result of his works during this period, he has been described as one of China's first practitioners of "" fiction.
Works
* 黑骏马 ; 1981
** edition: ''The Black Steed''; 1990, Panda Books, . ISBN 0835120775. Translator: Stephen Fleming.
** edition: 黒駿馬, 1994, Waseda University Press, Japan. ISBN 4657930362. Translator: 岸 陽子.
** edition: ''Mon beau cheval noir''; 1999, Philippe Picquier, France. ISBN 2877304353. Translator: unknown.
** Movie adaptation ''A Mongolian Tale'' released in 1995 by Beijing Youth Film Studio
* 北方的河 ; 1984
** edition: 北方の河, 1997, Romandō. ISBN 479521042X. Translator: 磯部 祐子
* 金牧场 ; October 1987
* 心灵史 ; January 1991
* 回教から見た中国―民族?宗教?国家 ; April 1993, Chūō Kōbunsha. In . ISBN 4121011287.
* 清洁的精神 ; 1994
* 鞍と筆―中国知識人の道とは何か , November 1995, Ohta Books. In . ISBN 4872332261.
=Sources
Scholarly works
*
*
*
*
* The section "Constructing a 'Clean Spirit'" is one of the only chapter-length analyses of Zhang in an English-language scholarly work.
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Newspapers
*
*
*
*
Yu Lihua
Yu Lihua is a Taiwanese woman writer.
Yu Lihua was born in Shanghai and went to university in Taiwan, taking history at National Taiwan University. Then she went to the United States to do a graduate degree in journalism at UCLA and then to teach Chinese literature in the Department of Comparative University at the City University of New York.
She has published both in and in . Her fiction is finely crafted. She excels in psychodramas.
Yu Lihua was born in Shanghai and went to university in Taiwan, taking history at National Taiwan University. Then she went to the United States to do a graduate degree in journalism at UCLA and then to teach Chinese literature in the Department of Comparative University at the City University of New York.
She has published both in and in . Her fiction is finely crafted. She excels in psychodramas.
Wang Zhenhe
Wang Zhenhe is one of Taiwan's most famous writers. Wang's masterpiece is the comic novel ''Rose, Rose, I Love you'', which is set in the coastal town of Hualien during the Vietnam War. The novel's plot centers on the efforts of the town's leaders to come together to set up a brothel to entertain a group of American GIs coming to Taiwan for R&R. Wang is considered the foremost representative of the "nativist literature movement" that swept Taiwan in the 1970s and 80s.
Wang Wenhua
Wang Wenhua is a contemporary Taiwanese novelist and columnist. He graduated from the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at National Taiwan University, and obtained an MBA from Stanford University. He is the author of ''Protein Girls'' and ''61 vs 57''. Wang Wenhua has a background in marketing and his novels chronicle the lives of yuppies in Taipei.
Wang Tuoh
Wang Tuoh is a Taiwanese writer, intellectual, literary critic and politician. He was born in Badouzi , then a small fishing village near the northern port city of Keelung. His name was originally Wang Hung-chiu .
Wang Tuoh published his first short story, ''The Hanging Tree'' in 1970, and went on to write a series of stories set in his home village of Badouzi that drew heavily on his own experiences in a small, insular village where everyone is part of a larger family that has been there for five generations. The most well-known of these stories is the novella ''Auntie Jinshui'' which describes the story of the eponymous Auntie Jinshui. Auntie Jinshui is a street peddler who has successfully raised and educated six sons, but falls upon especially hard times after being swindled by a priest introduced to her by one of her sons. She then falls behind on her payments to her Hui , an informal village credit network, and finds herself gradually ostracized from her friends and family. This novella was also later made into a movie.
His novels are ''The Story of Cowbelly Harbor'', and ''Taipei, Taipei!'',, both written while he was in jail as a political prisoner.
After being freed from prison in 1984, he joined the political opposition to the ruling Kuomintang and in 1991 was elected to Taiwan's Legislative Yuan as a Democratic Progressive Party member for Keelung City.
Wang was nominated by the DPP to run for Keelung City mayor in 2005. The Pan-Green Coalition had two candidates in the election, with both the Democratic Progressive Party and the Taiwan Solidarity Union nominating their own candidate. Wang lost the election, getting only 2,771 votes. He got the least votes out of all four candidates.
In May 2008, Wang was appointed by chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen to serve as the Secretary General of the DPP.
Writing career
Wang Tuoh published his first short story, ''The Hanging Tree'' in 1970, and went on to write a series of stories set in his home village of Badouzi that drew heavily on his own experiences in a small, insular village where everyone is part of a larger family that has been there for five generations. The most well-known of these stories is the novella ''Auntie Jinshui'' which describes the story of the eponymous Auntie Jinshui. Auntie Jinshui is a street peddler who has successfully raised and educated six sons, but falls upon especially hard times after being swindled by a priest introduced to her by one of her sons. She then falls behind on her payments to her Hui , an informal village credit network, and finds herself gradually ostracized from her friends and family. This novella was also later made into a movie.
His novels are ''The Story of Cowbelly Harbor'', and ''Taipei, Taipei!'',, both written while he was in jail as a political prisoner.
Political career
After being freed from prison in 1984, he joined the political opposition to the ruling Kuomintang and in 1991 was elected to Taiwan's Legislative Yuan as a Democratic Progressive Party member for Keelung City.
Wang was nominated by the DPP to run for Keelung City mayor in 2005. The Pan-Green Coalition had two candidates in the election, with both the Democratic Progressive Party and the Taiwan Solidarity Union nominating their own candidate. Wang lost the election, getting only 2,771 votes. He got the least votes out of all four candidates.
In May 2008, Wang was appointed by chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen to serve as the Secretary General of the DPP.
订阅：
博文 (Atom)