The Novelists of Modern China

THE Chinese soul is rooted in her soil, and it is this love of the soil that explains her writers’ loyalty and gives to all their writings an aroma distinctly Chinese. Their ideals and dreams Soar high and are often tenuous in their pathos, but its real affiliation is with the world of daily life, of the earth earthy.

The Chinese stories and novels have developed from their traditional folk-tales, which are an unending source of fresh inspiration to her writers. An introduction to China’s old and classical literature is necessary before we can understand her modern writers, who have received shocks of diverse influences other than traditional.

First about language. Two types of language have been used all through the literature of China; Wen-li, or the Written Language, and Pai-hua, or the Spoken Language. Most of the traditional writers of China have written in Wen-li. This language was quite unintelligible to the common reader and the literature was thus confined amongst the learned and scholars. Although novels in Pai-hua were written as far as T’ang (618-907 A.D.) and Sung (960-1126 A.D.) dynasties, they were insignificant in comparison with their traditional Wen-Ii literature.

Chinese stories and novels originate from the traditional folk-tales and folk-lores. Such a traditional book is ‘San Kuo Chi’ or ‘Stories of the Three Kingdoms’. What are these Three Kingdoms? With the end of the Han Dynasty (200 B.C.-221 A.D.) the country was, due to wars, divided in three parts between three war-lords. Wei became the king of the North, Shu of West and South-West, Wu of East and South-East. Wei established the Tsin Dynasty by defeating the other two war-lords, and this dynasty ruled over China till 420 A.D. The period the book ‘San”Kuo Chi’ deals with is the 3rd century A.D. Although it was written in pure Wen-Ii, the novels which originated from it were written in Pai-hua, and the name of the collection of these novels is ‘San Kuo Chi Yen I’, published at the end of Yuan rule (1206-1368). Another well-known book of Old China is ‘Shui Hu Chunan’ or ‘All Men are Brothers’, using 13th century China as its ground. This book has hundred and eight characters–men who are bandits in the eye of law and enemies of the government. This group of rebels resort to the hilly tracts of Shantung, being unable to bear the tyranny of law and the barbarity of society. They have been described as fighting against the wrongs and evils of society, and helping the poor and the distressed, and bear some resemblance to Robin Hood of England. Even today the Lian-shan-fo region of Shantung is known after the name of this gang of robbers.

Novels in Pai-hua or the spoken Chinese began to grow in number during the Mings (1366-1644) and the Ch’ings (1644-1911). The most remarkable novel of the Ming Dynasty is ‘Chin Fing Mei’–translated into English under the title ‘Golden Lotus’. The plot of the book centres round Chin, Fing and Mei–the three concubines of a rich man. The language of the book was regarded as obscene and it was banned for younger people. But it is much more strange that the obscene portions in the English version have been put into Latin!

The most popular Ch’ing Dynasty novel is ‘Hung Lo Meng,’–which has its title ‘The Dream of the Red Chamber’ in its English translation. This was written in Mandarin–the state language of Peking (Peip’ing). lt is a love story which ends in a tragedy. The heroine did not marry the lover and died of pthisis. The main plot deals with the episode of a pair of lovers who were cousins, and there are a few sub-plots of romantic love. The book consists of long portions giving detailed descriptions of houses and gardens and elaborate family-histories. The book has provided themes for many dramas and plays written out of its many episodes. There was much controversy over the author of this great work, but it is now believed to be written by one Chao Hsien-chin, who did not want to reveal his identity, possibly out of doubt and fear lest a novel written in Pai-hua be disliked by the people.

Wen-li gradually lost its unique position and became the constant source and subject of criticism by the end of the Ch’ing rule and the establishment of the Chinese Republic. This was a revolution which has made China shake off so much of its old tradition. Students went overseas for higher studies and with their return home they spread the dangerous ideas of individualism, women’s education, etc. And then they began criticising minutely all the Confucian ideals. By 1917, the literary renaissance took a definite shape and Wen-li was replaced by the outcast Pai-hua. The May Fourth Movement of 1919 had considerable influence upon Chinese life, though mainly for political reasons. This movement attempted to shake off the lethargy that followed the success of the Revolution. The note of this new literature was marked in 1917 in the literary theories of Dr. Hu Shih. When he told that the language of China’s literature should be Pai-hua instead of Wen-li, the innovators began to look at the modern age and its problems as completely different from those of the old times. A new style, a new angle of vision and a new technique were felt necessary. But the pundits maintained the legacy of the language as their own by binding it with so many rhetorical and grammatical rules. It was not an easy task to break through that legacy.

But Hu Shih was not alone in this task. Dr. Tsai Yuan-Pei, Chancellor of the Peking University, helped him. This group of young reformers were described as ‘obscene’, loose-characters, haggards. The traditionalists charged them with having sold themselves to Western ideals, that they are destroyers of Chinese culture and tradition. But most of these charges have proved to be untrue. It is nevertheless true that the modern Chinese novel owes its existence to the impact and influence of western literature. In the attempt to introduce a new attitude and a new style, Chinese literature appeared almost new in its ideas, language, technique and subject-matter, as it has declared war against all that is old and traditional. A great urge was felt throughout the country to pull down the walls of the Confucian ideals of morality.

The beginning of this renaissance, however, did not mark any brilliant future. Hu Shih’s poems in Pai-hua were somewhat experimental. But gradually, through the untiring enthusiasm of Hu Shih, Tsai Yuan-Pei, Ch’en Tu-Hsin, Ch’ien Hsuang-t’ung and others, Pai-hua began to monopolize the world of literature, even in books on science and philosophy. A change in grammar was also noticed by the end of the first and the beginning of the second World War. Innumerable European words also gained currency in the Chinese language. And such adaptations of European grammatical systems made translations from western literature an easy task, and the influence of western technique, style and subject-matter counted for much in the literature of Modern China. The revolutionary ideals of Young Russia were felt in the very beginning of modern Chinese novels. As a result, we find the writers attaching more importance to the subject-matter than the treatment.

An important publication in modern Chinese literature is the collection of short stories by Lu Hsun (1918). Lu Hsun himself said of this book that he tried to point out the disastrous consequences of adhering to the traditional Chinese family system and the so-called rules of morality. This has been the tone of all writers of China of that period. Lu Hsun’s life itself was a revolt against the social customs and traditions that then prevailed in China. An interested reader will mark the profound note of love in every human being he depicts, even in very queer and impossible characters. He toiled much in completing the work. His room in Peip’ing used to be flooded with pieces of paper in which he recorded any idea that came to him, and he would build out of these broken pieces a good story just like a good builder. Lu Hsun, while studying Medicine in Japan, saw a picture of the execution of a Chinese secret reporter. This brought a change in his life and he realised that China needed mental medicine much more than physical treatment. His future rival Kuo Mo-Jo also, like him, was a medical student in Japan, and also realised the futility of studying human physiology rather than human psychology. Both of them treated literature as a great and sacred task, as if they had been entrusted on behalf of China, with this difficult and very important job for the benefit of humanity. This gives a moral grandeur to their work.

The intellect of Kuo Mo-Jo was all-embracing. Lu Hsun created a literary circle called Literary Research Society. Kuo Mo-Jo also, with Yu Ta-Fu, Chang Tsi-Fing, Th’ien Han and Chen Fang-wu, formed a group in 1922 called Creationist Society. They never admitted compromise between literature and morality. They said that literature deals only with beauty, and this creation of beauty is morality. Kuo Mo-Jo had a bold style. But Yu Ta-Fu wrote rather touchingly. He also, like Lu Hsun, wanted the old traditions to die out. Lu Hsun wanted art to help social reform; but Yu Ta-Fu and his friends dealt directly with art avoiding the problem of reform. To the former, reform was the ultimate object and literature its means; to the latter, art was the only important thing in literature, and reform, if necessary, was to be a by-product.

Two such movements, one of which aspired for “art for art’s sake,” and the other wanted art or literature to be indirectly the means of social reform, actually were not separated from one another. There was some link between them, some sort of bridge. The writings of Hsi Che-Tsun supply an example of this. He was neither a romantic nor a reformer; he was also first to employ Freudian psychology in novels.

Time took its usual course in ending these movements, and gradually political movements overwhelmed all else. Between Dr. Sun Yat-Sen’s death in 1924 and the success of the second revolution in 1927, a new sign was marked in the fact that the writers, who generally avoided political or social movements, obviously got themselves entangled directly in such movements. This literature, born only about thirty years ago, received another blow within ten years of its existence. This infant literature, born during war, has been continuing its existence through wars, one war after another. This uneasiness of this particular period is marked in the novels of Mao Tun. He maintained that one should be neither sentimental over the past, nor too hopeful over the future. So we get in his writings a balanced scanning of the present, a good and creditable attempt towards diagnosis of facts.

Chang Th’ien- Yi, a powerful writer from Honan, who uses the life of peasants as his subject-matter, was also influenced by Lu Hsun in the sense that all ultra-modern stories, with language cruelly unmasked, owe their origin to him. Chang Th’ien-Yi was also famous as a satirist, but his real merit seems to be in assembling his plot from the earth of China. He had the rare quality of depicting revenge, with sympathy. I may mention here of one of his stories, ‘The Breasts of a Girl’, in which a married woman, not satisfied with the cold attitude of love from her husband, joins her lover and even bears a child to him. She is, on the one hand, punished by the clan leader, and is also sought to be seduced by the same. She finally succeeds in taking revenge on this old man and on society, and re-joins her lover. The story reveals insight into the minutest matters and an attitude of sympathy towards all the characters. Chang Th’ien-Yi once wrote that in the human organism there is one nerve which has not been discovered by any physiologist, and that is the nerve of Contradiction and Inconsistency. He may not be an all-round artist like Lu Hsun or Kuo Mo-Jo, yet he seems to have discovered that nerve much more successfully than others. His writings vibrate with the earthbound life of China.

An entirely new trend came into Chinese literature in 1931, with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. It turned towards nationalism as its inspiration. The spirit of revolt, with which Lu Hsun was born, matured. It was Hsiao Chun who first wrote stories instigating the Chinese directly against the enemy. The young group of writers who followed suit, wrote against the aggressive war-mongers and instigated the Chinese to save their ancestral abode from these enemy hordes. But in doing so, the literature of this period lost its significant approach and became rather circumscribed. Awakening the nation was the major object in view.

The Chinese authors nowadays do not write only to delight their readers. They want that from their writings the people may get food to think seriously of the present system of government, society and aspects of life, and may thereby make good their shortcomings. Since the literary renaissance down to the second World War, China has not produced many good books. This renaissance and the war came in such quick succession that all the stories and novels have obviously and unhesitatingly been dealing with war and inspired by war. This literature has a local importance rather than a permanent value. Yet we have many writers who have crossed the bar of the period and have been eternal artists. They are gifted writers like Lu Hsun, Kuo Mo-Jo, Lao She (one of whose famous books is ‘Rikshaw Boy’), etc. Another great writer is Shen Yen-Ping, alias Mao Tun. His novels and stories alike have earned fame, e.g., ‘Eclipse’ (1927), ‘The Rainbow’ (1929), and ‘Twilight’ (1933).

During the second World War, attempts were made to write in the common language in which a man in the street talks, instead of adapting the style and technique of the West. This happens quite naturally during wars. The writers from different provinces, deprived of their hearth and home, and joining the army, naturally come in contact with the common folk. Some are forced to leave the cities and live in their village homes. As a result of this, the writers, who had so long ignored the existence of the poor and the forgotten, now came in close contact with them and were attracted by the mode of their living, their individuality perseverance, patience and other qualities. They realised that these people–who form the majority of population–are actually bearing the brunt of the war, but are being ignored by the small group of persons at the helm of the country. The literature thus became healthy by this link with the common people, and a real novelty crept in. The language which was being influenced by western modes was now completely rid of this influence and became that which is true Chinese. The language now was really a universal one,–which could be understood by all,–and became alive with the technique and style which everyone uses in expressing his sentiments, hopes, and failures. It may be said that the internal and external War of China came as a blessing in disguise. It has caused a sense of awakening amongst the Chinese, and now China’s literature is sure of the road it has to take, even if that road lies through wars and revolutions, famine and frustration.