"Historical Dictionary of Modern Chinese Literature" by Li-hua Ying - Part 22 potx

was defeated at the end of World War II and ordered to surrender the island to the Republic of China controlled by Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang (KMT) party. The military occupation created tensions between the newcomers and the Taiwanese, culminating in the February 28 Incident of 1947, during which the KMT administration in Taipei brutally suppressed the Taiwanese demonstrators who were protesting against its enonomic policies, ushering in the era of White Terror. In 1949 after the KMT lost the Civil War against the Communists, Chiang Kai-shek and his government retreated to Taiwan and moved the capital from Nanjing to Taipei, while continuing to claim sovereignty over the whole of China and planning to take back the mainland from the Communists in three years. Martial law was declared, giving the KMT absolute power to rule the island. The international community contin- ued to recognize Chiang’s Republic of China (ROC) as the legitimate representative of China until 1971 when the ROC lost its seat in the United Nations to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). When Chiang died in 1975, his son Chiang Ching-kuo assumed the presidency. Under his leadership, Taiwan experienced a great economic boom, rising to become one of the so-called little Asian tigers, and political liberaliza- tion that resulted in the lifting of martial law in 1987. The younger Chiang’s handpicked vice president and successor Lee Teng-hui, whose proindependence position later caused his expulsion from the KMT, was the first democratically elected president of Taiwan. Under Lee, Taiwan underwent greater democratization and localization. Laws and practices with a bias against the Taiwanese were changed and local culture, history, and language were promoted to cultivate a Taiwanese, rather than a Chinese, identity. In 2000, Chen Shui-bian, of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), was elected president, the first president outside the KMT. At present, Taiwan remains extremely polarized, with the pan-green coalition of parties pushing for official Taiwan independence and the pan-blue coalition of parties favoring status quo or eventual reunification of China. The first generation of modern Taiwanese literature emerged during the Japanese occupation and conveyed a sense of national pride in ad- dition to anti-Japanese sentiments. Many of the works were influenced by the May Fourth Movement from the mainland. When the KMT lost the Civil War, a large number of intellectuals and writers retreated to the island with the Nationalist government, pumping fresh blood into the literary vein of the island. Mirroring the political divide that gripped the 182 • TAIWAN island, Taiwanese literature witnessed a heated debate between the na- tivists and the modernists, which raged for nearly two decades from the mid-1960s to the end of the 1970s. While the modernists were largely pro-KMT urbanites and intellectual elites from the mainland with West- ernized literary sensibilities, the nativists represented the discontented local population and rural consciousness. These two strands competed for supremacy in the literary development of Taiwan and each delivered some remarkable performances. See also BAI XIANYONG; CHEN RUOXI; CHEN YINGZHEN; FEI MA; HU LANCHENG; HUANG CHUNMING; HUANG FAN; HUANG JINSHU; JI XIAN; LAI HE; LAI SHENGCHUAN; LI ANG; LI YONGPING; LIAO HUIYING; LIN HAIYIN; LIN YAODE; LUO FU; LUO YIJUN; MODERN POETRY MOVEMENT IN TAIWAN; NIE HUALING; OUYANG ZI; PING LU; QIDENG SHENG; QIONG YAO; QIU MIAOJIN; SAN MAO; SHI SHUQING; SU WEIZHEN; SU XUELIN; WANG WENXING; WANG ZHENHE; XI MURONG; XIAO LIHONG; XIE BINGYING; YA XIAN; YANG KUI; YANG MU; YU GUANG- ZHONG; YU LIHUA; YUAN QIONGQIONG; ZHANG DACHUN; ZHANG GUIXING; ZHANG XIAOFENG; ZHANG XIGUO; ZHENG CHOUYU; ZHONG LIHE; ZHONG ZHAOZHEN; ZHU TIANWEN; ZHU TIANXIN; ZHU XINING. TANG REN, PEN NAME OF YAN QINGSHU (1919–1980). Novel- ist. Born in Jiangsu, Tang Ren was a journalist during and after the Sino-Japanese War. He moved to Hong Kong in 1950 and continued to work for newspapers. Tang Ren was a prolific writer, and dur- ing the 30 years of his career he published more than 50 books and many essays and articles in newspapers and journals. His best-known work is a historical novel based on the life of Chiang Kai-shek. His Jinling chunmeng (Spring Dream at Nanjing) and its sequel Caoshan canmeng (The Unfinished Dream at the Grass Mountain) remain two of the most popular books in modern Chinese literature. Other books of his, similar in theme and style, include Jiang houzhu milu (Secret Records of the Ex-Emperor Chiang) and Beiyang junfa yanyi (The Historical Romance of the Northern Warlords). His novels about life in the mainland before 1949 include Funiushan enchou ji (Love and Hate at the Crouching Cow Mountain). He also wrote about Tai- wan in two novels, Zai hai de nabian (On the Other Side of the Sea) and Huoshao dao (Fire Island). Tang Ren depicts the lives of former TANG REN, PEN NAME OF YAN QINGSHU • 183 officials of the Nationalist government who choose to stay in Hong Kong in Ren zha (Human Dregs) and Xianggang wuyan xia (Under the Hong Kong Eaves). Among his novels about Hong Kong society are Xianggang daheng (A Hong Kong Tycoon) and Wo shi yike yaoqianshu (I Am a Money Tree). His stories are set against important historical and political backgrounds, full of drama and legends. Tang has also writ- ten several screenplays, some of which have been made into movies. TASHI DAWA (1959– ). Fiction writer. Born in Batang, a Tibetan region in Sichuan Province, to a Tibetan father and a Chinese mother, Tashi Dawa grew up in Chongqing and had a typical Chinese education. He published his first story in 1978 and has since made Tibet the central focus of his work. He currently lives in Lhasa and is the vice president of the Tibetan Writers’ Association. He is one of the most recognized names among Tibetan writers in China, noted for his magic realist sto- ries. As the root-seeking movement spread over Chinese art and literary circles during the 1980s, Tibet became a mecca for artists and writers seeking inspiration, and Tashi joined the pilgrimage. Unlike Ma Yuan, a Chinese writer famous for his Tibetan stories who used Tibet as a background for his innovative fiction, Tashi searched for the religious and mystic traditions of Tibetan culture and recreated them in his tales. In many of the stories collected in Xizang: Ji zai pishengkou shang de hun (Tibet: A Soul Knotted on a Leather) and Xizang, yinmi de suiyue (Tibet: The Hidden Years) realistic narrative and fantasy are seam- lessly intertwined, a style he likened to Tibetan storytelling traditions influenced by Buddhism in which time and action are nothing but an illusion. In two of his stories, he borrows from Tibetan cultural practice by building the plots on the number 108, alluding to the number of Ti- betan prayer beads: Xizang: Ji zai pisheng shang de hun tells stories that happen in 108 days and Xizang: yinmi de suiyue, a novella, chronicles events that take place in Tibet from 1877 to 1985, 108 years in total. Tashi’s later works are more concerned about contemporary Tibetan life. Yemao zouguo manman suiyue (A Wild Cats’ Long Journey) presents a Tibet that is on the march to modernity. No longer mysteri- ous, it is a world full of incongruities and absurdities brought about by modernization and economic reforms. The urban Tibetan youths, descendants of former serfs and serf owners, have joined the force of 184 • TASHI DAWA capitalist globalization, leaving behind their traditional way of life. Sa- odong de Xiangbala (Turbulent Shambala), a more complex narrative and arguably his best work, deals with confrontations, negotiations, and compromises between two cultural paradigms in Tibetan society, represented by two types of characters: the ones who operate within the bounds of a realistic world and the ones with supernatural powers who transcend time and space. The second group acts as a mediator in the lives of the first group, leading them to a spiritual but illusive realm. In the act of embracing or rejecting the other, they reveal a Tibetan society caught in a tug-of-war between the old and the new, the local and the global. See also AVANT-GARDE. TIAN HAN (1898–1968). Playwright, poet, and filmmaker. A pioneer of the modern Chinese play, Tian Han made significant contributions to modern Chinese theater and the impact he left on Chinese cultural life is well documented. The numerous plays and films he wrote and directed should guarantee him a prominent position in the history of modern Chinese theater, not to mention the number of art organizations and societies he cofounded. Tian came from a poor family in Changsha, Hunan Province. While studying in Tokyo, he helped found the Cre- ation Society with Guo Moruo and others. After he returned to China in 1924, Tian, with the help of his wife, founded the literary journal Nan guo banyue kan (South China Biweekly). Later with Xu Beihong, a painter, and Ouyang Yuqian, a playwright and actor, he founded Nan guo she (South China Society), which energized and guided the movement to modernize the Chinese theater. A founding member of the Left-wing Society of Chinese Writers and the Left-wing Associa- tion of Chinese Playwrights, Tian was also a political activist. During the Sino-Japanese War, he and his troupe toured cities in the interior to boost national morale, performing Lugou qiao (The Marco Polo Bridge), a play he wrote and directed, and other patriotic plays. After the Communist victory in 1949, Tian was appointed director of arts in the Ministry of Culture, a position he held until the Cultural Revolution abruptly and brutally ended his life. Tian was a prolific writer, having created some 100 works, including Kafei dian zhi yi ye (One Night at the Café), written in 1920 while he was studying in Japan, Ming you zhi si (The Death of a Famous Ac- tor), based on the real life of a Peking opera actor, and Suzhou ye hua (One Evening in Suzhou). Several of Tian’s early plays feature artists TIAN HAN • 185 who make the pursuit of artistic perfection the ultimate goal in life. Liu Zhensheng in Ming you zhi si refuses to compromise his art in a society full of people willing to sell their souls in exchange for wealth and influence; the poet in Gu tan de shengyin (The Sound of an Old Pond) jumps into an ancient pond in despair because its malevolent spirit has seduced the dancing girl he saved from materialist corruption; Bai Wei in Hu shang de beiju (A West Lake Tragedy) commits suicide after she finishes reading the tragic story written by her former lover. Through these plays, Tian tells his audience that true art is worth dying for, as, in the words of his character, “life is short but art is timeless.” As his involvement in progressive literature deepened, Tian began to produce plays that dealt less with abstract concepts but more with real sociopolitical issues. Suzhou ye hua, Jiang cun xiao jing (A Vignette of a Village by the River), Nian ye fan (New Year’s Eve Dinner), and other critical realist plays seek to locate the roots of poverty and broken families in the sociopolitical system. Further signs of his political com- mitment are seen in his “revolutionary” plays such as Gu Zhenghong zhi si (The Death of Gu Zhenghong), Yijiusan’er nian de yueguang qu (The Moonlight Sonata of 1932), Mei yu (The Rainy Season), Wufan zhi qian (Before Lunch), and Baofeng yu zhong de qi ge nüxing (Seven Women in a Thunderstorm), all focusing on the working class and its organized uprisings against exploitation and oppression. Tian also worked with historical materials, turning the lives of memorable characters into plays such as Guan Hanqin (Playwright Guan Hanqin) and Wencheng gong- zhu (Princess Wencheng). Modeled after Western plays such as those by William Shakespeare, Henrik Ibsen, and George Bernard Shaw, the modern plays by Tian and his colleagues aspire to reflect real life and address contemporary issues, with actors speaking a language understood by the average person on the streets, in order to inspire the audience into action. The result is a mode that combines realism with romantic zest, a style that dominated Chinese plays and, to a lesser extent, movies until the 1980s and is still evident in Chinese theater today. See also MAY FOURTH MOVE- MENT; SOCIALIST REALISM; SPOKEN DRAMA. TIAN’ANMEN PRODEMOCRACY MOVEMENT (1989). Triggered by the death of Hu Yaobang, a liberal-minded Communist Party leader who had been forced to resign in January of 1988 as the secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, the protest movement started with Beijing 186 • TIAN’ANMEN PRODEMOCRACY MOVEMENT college students and intellectuals who were dissatisfied with the pace of the reforms initiated by Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s. The movement quickly gained the support of urban industrial workers angry about in- flation and government corruption. In large numbers, the students gath- ered in Tian’anmen Square in the center of Beijing, demanding that the party revise its judgment on Hu and political, not just economic, reforms be instituted to bring democracy to China. An editorial in the Renmin ribao (People’s Daily), the official newspaper of the government, which accused the protesters of “plotting civil unrest” and causing “turmoil,” sent the students into a hunger strike to demand that the newspaper re- tract its statement and that a dialogue between their representatives and the party leaders be held to address their concerns. There were different opinions within the leadership as to how to deal with these demands. The liberal faction, represented by party secretary Zhao Ziyang, who made an appearance in the square to urge students to stop their hunger strike, preferred dialogue while the hardliners, represented by Premier Li Peng, pushed for military crackdown. Deng Xiaoping, the paramount leader, and other party elders who feared that a lenient approach would encourage “bourgeois liberalism,” which would in turn challenge the Communist Party’s stranglehold on power, sided with the hardliners. Tanks rolled onto the square and soldiers fired at the protesters. The bloody crackdown was followed by a political cleanup throughout the country. The violent suppression of the prodemocracy movement outraged the international community and the Chinese gov- ernment found itself the target of widespread condemnation. The lead- ers of the protest movement were either put in jail or forced to flee to the West. Many writers who expressed sympathy for the protesters or were protesters themselves went into exile, including most of the Misty poets. Except for a few who eventually returned to China to live, most of these writers have chosen to stay in the West but continue to write in Chinese. The experience of exile has no doubt enriched their under- standing of life and literature, and furthermore, their presence in the West has helped broaden the appeal of Chinese literature in the West. See also BEI DAO; GU CHENG; YANG LIAN; DUO DUO; GAO XINGJIAN; MA JIAN; YAN LI; YO YO; ZHENG YI. TIBET. As part of the People’s Republic of China, Tibet is situated in the western part of the country and is known as the “roof of the world,” a nickname that comes from the majestic Himalayan mountains and the TIBET • 187 high altitude of the region. The Chinese word Zang (Tibet/Tibetan) generally refers to two entities: the first is the Tibetan Autonomous Region, which covers what is historically known as U-Zang or central Tibet; the second is U-Zang plus Amdo and Kham in Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan, and Yunnan provinces, where ethnic Tibetans also live. The Tibetan cultural influence stretches also to Sikkim and Ladkh in pres- ent-day India as well as Bhutan and Nepal. What constitutes Tibet is a hotly debated issue between the Chinese government and the Tibetan government in exile, which was set up in Dharamsala, India, in 1959, when the 14th Dalai Lama and his followers fled Tibet after a failed revolt against the Chinese Communists. To Tibetan exiles, Tibet en- compasses all Tibetan cultural spheres, excluding the communities in Bhutan, India, and Nepal; to the Chinese government, Tibet means the Tibetan Autonomous Region, while the Tibetan communities in Gansu, Qinghai, Sichuan, and Yunnan are given autonomous status under the jurisdiction of the named provinces. Tibet has a long and rich history. Songtsan Gampo (617–650) was the first Tibetan leader to unite the different warring tribes into one of the most powerful kingdoms in Asia and established a centralized government in Lhasa. During his reign, Buddhism took root in Tibet and replaced the indigenous religion, the Bön. In the reign of Lang Dharma (815–843), the Bön made a brief and bloody comeback, re- sulting in widespread persecutions of Buddhists. In 846, when Lang Dharma was assassinated, the Tibetan kingdom disintegrated into an assortment of principalities headed by various nobilities of the old kingdom. For the next four centuries Tibet remained divided, until the 13th century when the Mongol empire extended its influence and control to Tibet. During the centuries of political instability in Tibet, Buddhism, how- ever, had the opportunity to recover and grow. Various sects emerged, Nyingma (the ancient sect), Kagyu (the oral sect), and most important, Sakya (the grey earth sect), whose fifth-generation master, Phagpa (1235–1280), became the spiritual teacher of Kublai Khan (1215–1294), the ruler of the Mongol Yuan dynasty (1279–1368). With the support and protection of Kublai Khan, Phagpa and Sakya rose to the top of political power in all of Tibet. Phagpa is also credited with having in- vented the Mongolian written language. The Ming (1368–1644), which succeeded the Yuan, generally administered Tibet in a similar fashion as the Mongols, adopting a policy that emphasized a respect for its reli- 188 • TIBET gion and a reliance on conferring honorary titles and other appeasement measures to keep Tibet nominally within the empire. In the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), the Manchu rulers tightened their grip on Tibet through several measures that included incorporating Amdo and eastern Kham into neighboring Chinese provinces, installing a resident commissioner to Lhasa, and supporting Guluk (the way of vir- tue or the yellow hat sect) in the feud among various Tibetan Buddhist sects, requiring that the reincarnations of its major lamas, including the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama, be approved by the central govern- ment in Beijing, a practice that began in the reign of Qianlong Emperor (1711–1799). Despite these interventionist measures, the Manchus by and large allowed Tibet to remain an autonomous entity. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Tibet was unwittingly dragged into the “Great Game,” a power struggle among Great Britain, Russia, and China. In 1904, a British army led by Colonel Francis Younghusband invaded Lhasa with the pretext that Russia was increasing its influence in Ti- bet. The British succeeded in annexing to British India 90,000 square kilometers of traditional Tibetan territory in southern Tibet, which is in the present-day Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, while recognizing Chinese suzerainty over Tibet. The Guluk school, with its emphasis on the Vinaya and scholarly pursuits, was funded by Tsongkhapa (1357–1419), whose legacy con- tinues into the modern age. From the time when Qianlong decreed the supremacy of the Guluk sect to the Chinese Communist takeover in the 1950s, Tibet had a system of theocracy in which all political and economic power was concentrated in the hands of the clergy and the aristocracy it supported. In the late 1950s, the Chinese government in- stituted socialism and Tibet was fully brought under the centralized rule of Beijing, forcing the 14th Dalai Lama and his followers to flee in 1959 to India, where they set up the Tibetan exile government in Dharamsala. The political standoff between the Chinese government and the Tibetan exile government is yet to be resolved. While there was a great deal of interest in Tibet in the West, shown in the many travelogues, memoirs, and fictional accounts written by mis- sionaries, adventurists, scientists, military officers, and spies disguised as pilgrims or businessmen, Tibet, curiously, did not register in the literary imagination of the Chinese, except for a handful of cases. All that changed in the early 1980s, when Beijing started recruiting college graduates to work in Tibet as government officials and professionals. The TIBET • 189 move attracted people with wanderlust from Chinese cities, looking for exotic life and adventure. Tibet became the ultimate destination for aspir- ing writers and artists who would later depict their experience in literature and paintings. Following this wave, Tibetan writers who had received a Chinese education began to write about their own culture in the Chinese language, which eventually led to the creation of a new narrative literature written in Tibetan. Traditionally, Tibetan literature consists of Buddhist tales translated from Sanskrit texts as well as a rich body of oral legends and chronicles, the most famous of which is the Tale of Gesar, said to be the longest epic in the world. The new Tibetan literature, which is still in its infancy, attempts to reflect Tibetan life in a realistic manner while tak- ing inspiration from its rich heritage of oral and religious literature. Influenced by magic realism of Latin America, Chinese fiction from Tibet explores the mysteries of its culture in a multitude of styles. Ma Yuan, an avant-garde writer, treats Tibet as a background against which to unfold his experiments in storytelling; Tashi Dawa mixes history with legends; Ah Lai deals with some of the major events in modern history that affected Tibetans living in western Sichuan; Fan Wen traces the spiritual and religious paths of eastern Tibet; Ma Lihua chronicles Tibet’s social and economic changes. Chinese literature from Tibet unfolds a brilliant canvas, rich with colors and textures, occupying a major spot in the literary imagination of contemporary China. See also BI SHUMIN; MA JIAN; METSO; SEBO; WOESER; YA GELING; YANG LIAN; YANG ZHIJUN; YANGDON. TIE NING (1957– ). Novelist. Tie Ning grew up in the turbulent years of the Cultural Revolution and worked for four years among peasants in a village. In her early writing career, Tie focused on the northern country- side with which she is intimately familiar. “Oh, Xiang Xue” (Ah, Fra- grant Snow), a sentimental tale published in 1982, made her a national name. This short story describes the coming of modernity to the Chinese countryside during the post-Mao era, as represented by the arrival of a train at a remote village. While selling fruits and eggs to passengers when the train stops at her village, Xiang Xue, along with other young girls, gets a glimpse of what the outside world looks like. Encouraged by Sun Li, a veteran writer also based in Hebei who liked the lyricism and the optimistic tone of the story, Tie published in the following year “Meiyou niukou de hong chenshan” (A Red Shirt without Buttons), one of her best-known works. Once again, with a young girl as her protago- 190 • TIE NING nist, the author portrays an independent youth who, after some mental anguish, gives up being a model student to wear a red shirt among the uniformity of blues and greys. The story captures the spirit of the new era, when nonconformist behavior was beginning to emerge. Three other works published in the 1980s marked the beginning of Tie’s long engagement with the subject of feminine subjectivity. “Maijie Duo” (Haystacks) concentrates on the fate of women in a vil- lage and the tragedy of their failed marriages. “Mianhua duo” (Cotton Stacks), another of her stories about rural women, centers on three fe- male characters in the 1930s whose tragic fate is tied to the traditional world defined by male agendas. Meigui men (Gate of Roses), her first full-length novel, pays attention to female sexuality while depicting the dark side of human relationships. Most characters in these works survive in a male-centered society in which a “good” woman fulfils her maternal role while a “bad” one lets her sexuality get out of control. Tie is adept at exploring the restricted world inhabited by tradition-bound rural women, the small pleasures they extract from monotonous every- day life, and the enormous sacrifices they make for their families and communities. Tie’s focus on women and their role in society continued into the next two decades. Yongyuan you duoyuan (How Long Is Forever), published in 1999, shifts the spotlight onto a woman born and bred in the city who finds her traditional virtues, such as honesty and kindness, unsuited to the changing times of commercialism. Da yu nü (A Woman of Experi- ence), published in the following year, examines the personal life of a middle-aged woman who has been abandoned by her film star husband. In both novels, the protagonists are treated as victims not just of men but also of other women, an indication that the author believes that the age of innocence, of mutual trust that she wrote about at the beginning of her career, is gone forever. Tie’s best work, Ben Hua (Native Cotton), is set in the chaotic early Re- publican period. The story centers on a family in a village where the main crop is ben hua, a low-yielding but resilient local cotton. The patriarch is a peasant boy whose meteoric rise to the powerful position of a high-ranking military officer is a local legend. Because of its ties to the outside world, the village is at the crossroad of tradition and modernity. While Christian missionaries introduce new water pumps to the villagers, girls from poor families continue the age-old custom of sleeping with strangers in ex- change for cotton during harvest season. The peaceful lifestyle is disrupted TIE NING • 191 . pan-green coalition of parties pushing for official Taiwan independence and the pan-blue coalition of parties favoring status quo or eventual reunification of China. The first generation of modern. energized and guided the movement to modernize the Chinese theater. A founding member of the Left-wing Society of Chinese Writers and the Left-wing Associa- tion of Chinese Playwrights, Tian was also. (1989). Triggered by the death of Hu Yaobang, a liberal-minded Communist Party leader who had been forced to resign in January of 1988 as the secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, the protest