"Historical Dictionary of Modern Chinese Literature" by Li-hua Ying - Part 23 pot

by the entry of the superior cotton introduced from Japan, which is closely followed by the Japanese Imperial Army’s invasion of China. The novel ends with the family losing two of its members to Japanese brutality. Tie was president of the Hebei Writers’ Association and in 2006 was elected president of the Chinese Writers’ Association, the first woman to hold that position. See also SINO-JAPANESE WAR. – W – WANG ANYI (1954– ). Novelist. Daughter of Ru Zhijuan, also a writer, Wang Anyi grew up in Shanghai. In 1970, after graduating from middle school, she went to the countryside of Jiangsu to be reeducated by the peasants. Two years later, she joined a performance troupe in the in- dustrial city of Xuzhou. By the time she returned to Shanghai to work as an editor of a children’s magazine, she already had several stories to her name. One of the most diverse and influential writers in contem- porary China, Wang has continued to reinvent herself, evolving from a sentimental storyteller to an experimental writer and astute commenta- tor on social mores. It is hard to categorize her work in one or another representational mode. Her love stories, best represented by Xiaocheng zhi lian (Love in a Small Town), subscribe to the realist mode. Xiao bao- zhuan (Baotown), on the other hand, mixes legends with reality to create a sense of permanence that transcends time and space, giving the story an allegorical dimension. Likewise, Fuxi yu muxi de shenhua (Patrilinial and Matrilineal Myths) is told with a similar ironic detachment, despite its professed autobiographical content. The most imaginative of Wang’s writings is Jishi yu xugou (The Real and the Fictitious), in which the author traces her family history by mixing historical record with her own imagination. In the process of locating her maternal ancestry, Wang examines her own sense of place in the metropolis of Shanghai. As metafiction, the work is not only a highly fictionalized account of clan history but also a self-conscious commentary on the act of writing, which is equated to mythmaking. In between the popular and the experimental narrative modes lies Wang’s most ambitious project: reinventing Shanghai, where she grew up and still resides. In Changheng ge (The Song of Everlasting Sorrow: A Novel of Shanghai), Meitou (Meitou), Fuping (Fuping), Tao zhi yaoyao (The Dazzling Peach Blossoms), and other works, 192 • WANG ANYI Shanghai becomes a character with a soul of its own, both shaping and shaped by the lives its residents lead. Despite its size, the Shang- hai in Wang’s works is surprisingly intimate, approachable, a city characterized by its bourgeois taste and material culture as seen in its architecture, mannerisms, and etiquettes. Her mundane Shanghai is comforting and alluring despite the social and political changes to its appearance, like the protagonist of Changhen ge, whose down- ward spiraling life spans several decades of modern Chinese history, from when she was a glamorous winner of a beauty pageant in the 1940s to her ordinary life in the 1980s. Critics see some similarities between Wang and Zhang Ailing, who wrote about Shanghai in the 1940s. Both are captivated by the city and its social manners. They represent the so-called Shanghai school of writing, whose character- istics include detailed descriptions of daily life, a focus on the middle class, a fascination with urban existence, and an obsession with the pragmatic side of living. With her most recent novel, Qimeng shidai (The Era of Enlighten- ment), Wang revisits her early days as an educated youth in the coun- tryside by re-creating the experience of several urban youths in the heyday of the Cultural Revolution. Hailed as a record of a “spiritual odyssey” of a generation of Chinese, the novel captures the idealism and the confusion associated with the 1960s. Laden with discursive commentaries and observations, it highlights the author’s perspective on history and the individuals trapped in it. See also ROOT-SEEKING LITERATURE; WOMEN. WANG DINGJUN (1927– ). Prose writer. One of the most influential and prolific prose writers in contemporary Chinese literature, Wang Ding- jun was born in Shandong and spent his early youth in the Nationalist army, which he joined during the Sino-Japanese War. At the end of the Civil War, he followed the government to Taiwan and worked as a writer and editor for radio and newspapers. He has been living in the New York City area since emigrating to the United States in the 1970s. Wang’s creative oeuvre consists of mostly essays. For an essayist, the best source of inspiration is life experience of which Wang has had an abundant amount. He has gone through earthshaking events in modern Chinese history, fought two wars, and having been uprooted several times in his life, endured long separations from his family, friends, and cultural environment. In addition to these painful but valuable WANG DINGJUN • 193 life-changing experiences, he possesses a curious mind that enjoys prob- ing into history, society, and human behavior. Many of his essays express a strong sense of nostalgia. Ever since he left his home in Shandong more than half a century ago, Wang has never returned to it in person but has never stopped writing about it. To Wang, home is a “piece of art” that he has “imagined, carved, polished and em- bellished” during more than half of his lifetime. It is his spiritual anchor. The concept of home in his writing is not just the village in Shandong but has extended to encompass China with its rich history and culture, including its beauty and its sufferings. Jiaoyin (Footprints), Shan li shan wai (Inside and Outside the Mountains), Zuo xin fang de xuanwo (Swirls of the Left Atrium of the Heart), Hai shui tian ya Zhongguoren (The Ocean, the Edge of the Sky, and the Chinese) are all expressions of his love for his home and his home country. Another prominent theme of his writings is humanity. He enjoys “people watching.” Every human being, according to Wang, is a slide of “scenery” that he never tires of observing and describing. From these observations, Wang de- rives lessons about society, human nature, and the psyche of a nation. Works such as Zhongnian (Middle Age), Qingren yan (The Eyes of a Lover), Sui liuli (Broken Colored Glaze), Women xiandai ren (We the Modern People), and Rensheng (Life) belong to this category. Taiwan also features prominently in his writings in which he bears witness to the island’s march to modernization and its impact on the environment and the people. Wang has worked with all genres of prose writing, including the lyri- cal essay, narrative essay, and satirical essay. In his essays, he employs the techniques commonly used in poetry, fiction, and drama. His lan- guage is colloquial and succinct. In addition to a long list of publications of prose work, Wang has also written short stories collected in Danshen wendu (Body Heat of Unmarried Men) and Toushi (X Ray). WANG HAILING (1952– ). Novelist. Born in Shandong, Wang Hailing joined the military at the age of 16 and spent 14 years stationed on a tiny island. To help pass the time, she took up writing. Her breakthrough came in the 1990s with the family drama Qian shou (Holding Your Hands), which was made into a television series, earning Wang national fame. She followed it with two more best sellers, Zhongguo shi lihun (Divorce: Chinese Style), a novel about marital problems encountered by three couples, which was also turned into a popular television series, 194 • WANG HAILING and Xin jiehun shidai (The Era of New Marriage), which centers on the members of an intellectual family and their unconventional romantic re- lationships, such as the widowed father with a young, uneducated maid from the countryside and the son with an older woman. Wang writes in a realist style and deals with love and conflict in contemporary Chinese families. With a unique understanding of interpersonal and familial re- lationships in Chinese society, she has become a popular writer widely considered “the number one interpreter of Chinese marriage.” See also WOMEN. WANG JIAXIN (1957– ). Poet. Born in Hubei, Wang Jiaxin gradu- ated from the Chinese Department of Wuhan University. From 1985 to 1990, he edited Shi kan (Poetry), the main poetry journal in China. After spending two years in England in the early 1990s, Wang returned to China to teach literary theory and comparative literature at Beijing Educational College. A representative of the so-called academic poets mostly based in Beijing, Wang has been writing poetry since the 1980s, when the influence of Misty poetry was at its height. For this reason, he is considered, by some literary critics, one of the Misty poets. However, Wang’s reputation as a poet was not widely recognized until his sojourn in and return from Europe. One of the recurring subjects in his poetry written during this period is the émigré experience. In a series of poems paying homage to, or in dialogue with, poets such as Ezra Pound, Wil- liam Butler Yeats, Joseph Brodsky, Boris Pasternak, Czeslaw Miłosz, and others, Wang identifies with them in feelings of alienation and rootlessnesss. Chinese poets who have influenced his work include Feng Zhi, also a scholar-poet of an older generation. See also GENERATION III POETS. WANG JINGZHI (1902–1996). Poet and a member of the Lakeside Poetry Society. Born in Jixi, Anhui Province, Wang attended a trade school before enrolling in the Number One Hangzhou Teachers’ Col- lege. As the May Fourth Movement unfolded, Wang was attracted by its call for personal emancipation and freedom. His best-known poem, “Hui zhi feng” (Hui’s Wind), which is also the title of his first collection of poetry, is a self-confessing poem about his first love. Never before had anyone been so honest and unashamed about expressing sexual desire. This defiant act against established Confucian decorum reverber- ated in Chinese society. As Zhu Ziqing later described it, he “threw an extremely powerful bomb into the middle of old social morality.” At WANG JINGZHI • 195 the age of 20, Wang became an influential poet, mentored by prominent figures such as Lu Xun, who helped him revise his work, Hu Shi, who wrote the preface for his first collection of poetry, and Zhou Zuoren, who graced the book with calligraphy. When Wang was attacked by conservative moralists, these flag bearers of the May Fourth New Culture Movement rose in his defense. Lu Xun called Wang’s poems “sounds of nature.” After the success of Hui zhi feng, Wang published Jimo de guo (The Lonely Country), another collection of love poems, and three fictional works: Yesu de fenfu (Advice of Jesus), Fu yu nü (Fa- ther and Daughter), and Cuiying ji qifu de gushi (The Story of Cuiying and Her Husband), all written in 1926. Swept up in the wave of revolu- tion of the 1920s, Wang began work in the propaganda department of the Northern Expedition Army, but soon left. Unlike the other Lakeside poets, he lacked an enthusiasm for politics. He later taught literature at various schools and universities. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, Wang worked as an editor for the Classics Department of the Beijing People’s Press and became a member of the Chinese Writers’ Association on the payroll of the state. However, the new society required poetry for the masses, while Wang’s forte was expressions of personal passion and emotions. He managed to produce a meager pamphlet of 21 poems. On the eve of the Cultural Revolution, Wang returned to Hangzhou where he lived an anonymous life until the end of the 1970s. In 1982, when the Lakeside Poetry Society celebrated its 50th anniversary, Wang was elected chairman of the newly revived organization. Liu mei yuan (Encounters with Six Beauties), poems about his relationships with six women in his youthful days, was published four months before his death. To the very end of his life, Wang believed that the central subject of poetry should be love and passion. WANG LUYAN, A.K.A. LU YAN (1902–1944). Fiction writer. One of the early nativist writers in modern Chinese literature, Wang Luyan was born in a village in eastern Zhejiang and left home for Shanghai at the age of 15 to work as a shop apprentice. Three years later, he joined a work-study group in Beijing where he audited classes at Beijing Uni- versity and taught himself Esperanto while trying to make a living by selling small wares and washing clothes. Attracted to the leftist literary doctrines in the 1930s, Wang became a member of the Left-wing As- sociation of Chinese Writers. 196 • WANG LUYAN, A.K.A. LU YAN Wang began his career by writing romantic tales. Later, as he became increasingly captivated by Marxist ideas, he adopted some of the leftist tendencies in his works. The novel Ye huo (Wildfire), renamed Fennu de xiangcun (The Enraged Countryside), foregrounds class struggle in line with the Communist Party’s interpretation of social hierarchy. While his works written during this phase have more or less gone out of fashion, his stories about his hometown, all written in the late 1920s and early 1930s, have secured him a place in the history of modern Chinese literature. Inspired by the memories of his childhood, these stories paint a vivid picture of rural Zhejiang with realistic details describing customs and habits of village life and capturing the beauty and complexity of the countryside. The most prominent characters in these stories are small merchants who struggle to stay solvent as industrial forces and local powers nibble away at their traditional way of life. “Huangjin” (Gold) is about such a middle-class character whose respected status in his village is compromised when he does not receive money his son is supposed to have wired to him. Once the money does not materialize, he becomes the laughingstock of his fellow villagers. Clearly, in this society, a man is judged by the amount of wealth he possesses. “Qiao shang” (On the Bridge) tells the story of a small businessman, like Lao Tongbao in Mao Dun’s “Silkworm,” driven to bankruptcy by big companies with foreign machines and investments. Several of Wang’s hometown stories describe the customs of the seaside communities of eastern Zhejiang. “Juying de chujia” (Juying’s Wedding) portrays the local tradition of marrying a woman to a dead man; “Cha lu” (Fork in a Road) tells about a fight between two villages as they carry the deity Guandi in a proces- sion to purge evil spirits. “Shu ya” (The Teeth of a Mouse) describes the local custom of “mice giving away daughters for marriage” to drive ro- dents to the neighbor’s house. These stories invoke a sense of nostalgia for a bygone world with all its attractions and imperfections. In addition to these hometown stories for which he is best remem- bered, Wang also wrote essays and translated literature written origi- nally in Esperanto. During the Sino-Japanese War, Wang drifted from place to place and finally died in Guilin from tuberculosis. WANG MENG (1934– ). Fiction writer. In the early 1950s, Wang Meng, a young, idealistic Communist, wrote “Zuzhibu laide nianqing ren” (A Young Man from the Organization Department), the story that got him WANG MENG • 197 into trouble in 1957 during the Anti-Rightist Campaign. He was exiled to Xinjiang in 1963 and lived there for more than 15 years before being allowed to return to Beijing in 1978. Since then, he has turned out more than 20 volumes of works, with varying degrees of critical success. He has held many official positions in the government, including minister of culture. Before his exile, Wang had only a handful of short stories to his name. A novel, Qingchun wansui (Long Live Youth), begun in 1953, did not come out until 1979; its publication delayed, apparently, by its author’s political troubles. His best works were completed after 1978. In many ways, Wang has been a trendsetter. He is widely credited with leading the way in the late 1970s and early 1980s in appropriating Western modernist techniques such as stream of consciousness and the expression of the absurd, and his Xinjiang stories are believed to have helped open up the field of root-seeking literature. One of his experimental stories is “Hudie” (The Butterfly), in which Wang examines social, political, and personal transformation by focus- ing on how his characters lose and regain their self-identity. The bulk of the narrative is sustained by the internal musings of the protagonist, who returns to Beijing after a long political exile in a remote mountain village. While the length of time covered by the novel is only two days, the character’s mental activities, set off by external events, cover a span of 30 years of his life. Huodong bian renxing (Movement Shapes Human Figures) is arguably Wang’s best work. Unlike his many ex- perimental stories, the novel is written in the mode of psychological realism. Through the tragic saga of four generations of the Ni family, Wang ponders issues such as the meaning of revolution and history, personal destiny, the clash of civilizations, and tradition as opposed to modernity. Wang’s series of four novels, Lian’ai de jijie (The Season of Love), Shi lian de jijie (The Season of Lost Love), Chouchu de jijie (The Sea- son of Hesitation), and Kuanghuan de jijie (The Season of Revelry), took him less than a decade to complete. They chronicle the journey of a Chinese intellectual from the founding of the People’s Republic to the end of the Cultural Revolution, representing the author’s view on the relationship of the intellectual to the Communist revolution. Essentially, these novels are semiautobiographical in nature, in that they mirror the author’s own trajectory from an ardent supporter of the revolution in the early days of the People’s Republic to a victim of its political cam- 198 • WANG MENG paigns. They were conceived, in the words of the author, as the “spiritual history of [his] generation.” The author examines the price one has to pay for decisions made at various crucial junctures in history. Whether one chooses to cooperate with those in power or remain independent ultimately determines the state of one’s soul. Qing hu (The Green Fox), a novel portraying the meteoric rise of a middle-aged woman writer and her failed quest for love in the midst of a male-centered literary circle, is a tragic story told in a playful, satirical language. In this novel, Wang intensifies the facetious narrative voice used in some of his short sto- ries. The dominant syntax, built by repetition and parallelism, results in a hyperbolic style and heightens the cynical tone. In writing about the absurd behaviors of his fellow writers, Wang turns the Chinese literary circle into a ludicrous circus. WANG PU (1950– ). Fiction and prose writer. Born in Hong Kong, Wang Pu went with her parents to the mainland at the age of one. She received her Ph.D. in literature from China Eastern Normal University in Shang- hai. In 1989, she moved back to Hong Kong and worked as a newspaper editor and a college professor. She currently lives in Shenzhen. Wang’s writing career began in the early 1980s when her stories appeared in literary journals in Changsha, where she lived. Her first collection of short stories, Nüren de gushi (Women’s Stories), was published in 1993 after she had moved back to Hong Kong. Told in the first-person point of view, these stories deal with the elusive nature of love and how an emotionally deprived childhood intensifies the desire for intimacy and romance. Wang’s prose work Xianggang nüren (Hong Kong Women) invokes the heady, glamorous fusion of East and West in the ordinary lives of women of Hong Kong. Her award-winning nov- els Buchong jiyi (Supplementary Memories) and Yao Jiu chuanqi (The Story of My Uncle) are set against the background of mainland China and inspired by the memories of her childhood and youth. Another novel, Xiang Meili zai Shanghai (Emily Hahn in Shanghai), looks at the colorful life of the American writer, particularly her romantic entangle- ment in the 1930s with Shao Xunmei, a Chinese poet and publisher. Wang uses a refined language in both her prose and fiction. While her fiction contains the characteristics of her graceful prose, her essays read like short stories with well-developed plots. WANG SHUO (1958– ). Novelist. Born and raised in Beijing, Wang Shuo, known for his so-called hooligan literature, has written stinging WANG SHUO • 199 satires with real moral implications. Wan’r de jiushi xintiao (Playing for Thrills), one of his early novels, is a tour de force of psychological real- ism. The protagonist, an unsuccessful writer, becomes the prime suspect in a murder case that took place 10 years earlier. Unsure if he indeed committed the crime, he searches for old friends for verification. The sense of guilt he feels, coupled with the burden of not knowing the truth, places the protagonist in a moral dilemma. Qianwan bie ba wo dang ren (Please Don’t Call Me Human), a dark satire about Chinese national- ism, delivers a timely remonstration against misplaced national pride. The story describes the search for and the absurd training of a man groomed to win back China’s national pride by defeating an American in a wrestling match. These early successes made Wang a darling of the media. He began churning out, in quick succession, television scripts that led to great commercial success. WANG TONGZHAO (1897–1957). Fiction writer. A Shandong native and graduate of the University of China in Beijing, Wang Tongzhao worked all his life teaching literature and editing magazines and journals. He participated in the May Fourth Movement and was one of the founders of the Literary Research Society. His early stories, mostly romantic and sentimental outpourings, revolve around the theme of love and beauty, describing youthful passion and despair. Yi ye (One Leaf), his first novella published in 1922, features a young man from an old gentry family. Poor health and a sensitive disposi- tion make him acutely aware of social injustice and misery around him. At college he is antisocial, distrustful of his peers. Although a pessimist and fatalist at heart, he eventually discovers love: love for his mother and sisters and the love he and his friends have for one another, which brings him hope and gives him faith in the world. An- other novella, Huanghun (At Dusk), is about a college graduate hired by his uncle to run a textile manufacturing company in their home- town where he meets the uncle’s two young concubines. Sympathetic to their predicament, he helps them escape their bondage. One of the women commits suicide upon reading her husband’s search an- nouncement in the newspaper and the other strikes out on her own and eventually becomes an opera star. In many ways, the story re- flects the sense of obligation the May Fourth intellectuals felt toward their countrymen, as illustrated through the young man’s effort to liberate the women from an unhappy marriage as well as through the 200 • WANG TONGZHAO clash between generations in the same family and the pertinacity of traditional practices. Wang’s later works focus on the sufferings of the working class, reflecting the influence of critical realism on Chinese writers. His 1932 novel Shan yu (Rain in the Mountain), set in rural northern China in the 1920s and 1930s, focuses on the disintegration of the agrarian way of life, as a result of civil unrest, exploitation, and heavy taxation at the hands of the government, and on the awakening of the peasants as they discover the source of their plight. Toward the end of the novel, the pro- tagonist, a destitute farmer, leaves the countryside to seek his fortune in the city where he is faced with more challenges. The protagonist comes to grips with reality by joining the revolution. Another novel, Chun hua (Spring Blossoms), portrays the impact of the May Fourth Movement on the educated youths. In addition to fiction, Wang also published sev- eral collections of essays, poems, and plays, including Ye xing ji (Night Travel) and Qu lai xi (Leaving and Returning). In 1934, Wang went to Europe and spent several months studying literature in London. After he returned to China a year later and through the years of the Sino-Japanese War, Wang worked as an editor and continued to pursue his literary career. When Japan surrendered, Wang returned to his native Shandong and taught Chinese literature at Shan- dong University. After 1949, he held several official positions, includ- ing director of Shandong Provincial Cultural Bureau. WANG WENXING, A.K.A. WANG WEN-HSIN (1939– ). Fiction writer and critic. Wang Wenxing was born in Fujian and grew up in Tai- wan. He received his B.A. from National Taiwan University, then a bas- tion of Taiwan’s modernist movement, and an M.A. in creative writing from the University of Iowa. Besides several collections of short stories, Wang has also published two novels, Jia bian (Family Catastrophe) and Bei hai de ren (Backed against the Sea), which are major works in Taiwan’s modernist literature. Wang is noted for his bold stylistic and linguistic experimentations. When Jia bian was published in 1972, it caused a great controversy. It was considered an assault on traditional Chinese family values, particularly its long-held Confucian tradition of filial piety. Its stylistic peculiarities also came under fire. The story dramatizes stresses on the modern Taiwan family by highlighting the problems between husbands and wives and be- tween parents and children. It starts with the unexpected disappearance of WANG WENXING, A.K.A. WANG WEN-HSIN • 201 . side of living. With her most recent novel, Qimeng shidai (The Era of Enlighten- ment), Wang revisits her early days as an educated youth in the coun- tryside by re-creating the experience of several. member of the Left-wing As- sociation of Chinese Writers. 196 • WANG LUYAN, A.K.A. LU YAN Wang began his career by writing romantic tales. Later, as he became increasingly captivated by Marxist. history of modern Chinese literature. Inspired by the memories of his childhood, these stories paint a vivid picture of rural Zhejiang with realistic details describing customs and habits of village