THE MODERN CHINESE NOVEL
Beore discussing the “modern”Chinese novel,that is,the type written in the vulgate ,or language of the ordinary man on the street,perhaps one should remind one’s readers that in China there have always been two distinct languages:the Wenyan ,or lirerary language;and the Pai-hua ,or spoken one.With a few notable exceptions,all literature in the past has been written in the Wen-yan which,as far as the common people were concerned,was practically a foreign language.First hand acquaintance with all the great literature of China,therefore,was confined to the Literati ,or scholars,since the common people could never hope to master the difficult literary language.However,as far back as the T’ang and Sung Dynasties (A.D.618-907and 960-1126,respectivedly),one does find novels written in the Pai-hua .They may go further back.So the “modern”novel is not so new,after all.
Stories of The Three Kingdoms
Even as far back as the seventh century,there were current a number of tales out of books,which were quite well known to people in general—stories which formed the subject matter of Annals or written novels,but which,as told to the people by the professional story tellers,differed both as to form and even content from the originals from which they were taken.During the Sung Dynasty,for example,one would often see in the streets or lanes of cities and villages the professional story teller,surrounded by a wide-eyed audience listening with rapt attention to stories of the heroic deeds and romantic adventures of the real or legendary figures out of China’s long past.Especially did the story tellers love to recount tales concerning the colorfui figures whose exploits formed the subject matter of the San Kuo Chih, or Annals of the Three Kingdoms.The period covered in the Annals is the third century A.D.and its stories are about the men and events of that turbulent era of China’s history.Although the San Kuo Chih was written in the purest Wen-yan ,the novel made from the Annals,the San Kuo Chih Yen I ,was written in the Pai-hua ,or vulgate,and it was in this language,which the people could understand,that the story tellers told of the swashuckling herose of this long civil war,which for more than half a century divided the country into three warring states.The street story teller,by the way,has by no means passed from the scene in China,for one still finds him throughout the country,the center of groups of eager listeners.
Although the Three Kingdom stories,as recounted by the professional story telles,followed the main outlines of the historical incidents of the original,each story teller was apt to add some purely imaginary incidents of his own invention,and so,through the centuries,the tales were considerably “embroidered.”The fact remains,however,that the men and events of this troubled perido of China’s history were quite familiar to the common people.The San Kuo Chih Yen I first appeared in the latter years of the Yuan Dynasty (A.D.1206-1368),and is said to have been written by one Lo Kuan-chung,but much enlarged and expanded versions of it kept appearing well into the seventeenth century.
All Men Are Brothers
In the same way,the main incidents and characters of the Shui Hu Chuan (translated into English with the title of “All Men Are Brothers”),were known to the masses of the Chinese people.The story of the Shui Hu Chuan ,like the San Kuo Chih Yen I , covers a period of China’s historywhen the reigning house was falling into decline (this time it was the Northern Sung Dynasty A.D.960-1126),and there was the usual corruption in officialcircles,gross injustice of all sorts,and in fact all the evil characteristic of rottenness and decay.It was a time when honorable and upright officials weredriven from office and fawning sycophants,bent on their own advancement,were put in their places.The setting of the Shui Hu Chuan ,which is undoubtedly based on historical fact,is the thirteenth century,in a mountainous district of the Province of Shantung.There are 108 characters in the book,thirty-six of whom are major ones and the other seventy-two of minor importance.These 108 men,a number of whom were former high officials,but all of whom have eversince been regarded as “bandits” in government eyes,lived together on a strategically located mountain.They had fled to this mountain fastness either from threatened danger from their enemies,or because they could no longer toleate the social evils which“tried men’ s souls.”These men organized themselves into a sort of Robin Hood band,with very strict rulcs governing their conduct,and from their retreat they waged unrelenting warfare,mostly in Central China,against those who oppressed the poor and helpless.From their retreat,too,they fought the Government troops,that were sent periodically to wipe them out.Since they fought against official corruption and glaring social evils,the “outlaws”,as theywere called by the Government,were regarded by the common pcople as heroes,andthrough the years the fame of their deeds spread far and wide,as the stories oftheir exploits were told and re-told from generation to generation.The heroes ofthe Shui Hu Chuan were undoubtcdly brave as well as good men,andmany of them described in the book are actual hisorical figures.They were men,however,who had infinite pity for the victims of oppression and a burning resentment against the rapacity of greedy officials and the callousness of the rich.They never denied that they were rebels and outlaws,nor even that they were robbers,but it must be said,in extenuation of their activities,that what they took from the rich they gave to the poor who needed it.Even to this day,the region of Liang Shan p’o,in Shantung Province,from which this band operated,is known as a robbers’stronghold.
It was to be expected,of course,that even though to the common people of the country,the“outlaws”of the Shui Hu Chuan were heroes,the Government,at the time,and in fact ever since,has taken a somewhat dim view of their activities and has always been anxious that the people did not glorify them.From the time the book first appeared,and up until the end of the Ch’ing Dynasty,official orders have been issued banning it.As late as 1799,severe punishments were threatened for those who read the book or sold it in bookshops.
These two famous popular novels,however,cannot really be said to be the work of any one man,since in both cases they are really a collection of stories and legends that grew up through the years and were finally put into book form,in much the same way that the writings of Homer wcre collected and finally made into one single connected narrative.
Ming and Ch’ing Dynasty Novels
In the Ming and Ch’ing dynasties (1368-1644 and 1644-1911,respectively),there were also novels written in the Paihua .The most outstanding of these,in the Ming Dynasty,Was a novel called Chin P’ing Mei translated into English under the title of “The Golden Lotus,”by the Englishman Clement Edaerton.This novel,in the opinion of the writer,is undoubtedly one of the greatest ever to be written in the Chinese language.The story centers around the three characters whose names give the title to the novel.These three young women are concubines of a very wealthy man,and their doings,as well asthe doings of the rest of the household of which they were membes,form the subject of the narrative.Both the events described in the story and the language used to recount them have been considered obscene ,and young girls andboys have always been forbidden to read the book.Expurgated editions of it are still obtainable in China,although they are not easy toprocure .One is apt to find a copy,however,in a bookshop in Hongkong or Shanghai,or some other large city.Copies of the original Ming and later Ch’ing editions,are very beautifully illustrated,but these are extremely rare and in any market would bring a fantastically high price.The story,written in the Shantung vernacular,is a very serious piece of work and contains writing ofavery high order.In the English translation,oddly enough,the so-called obscene passages are put into Latin,in order, supposedly.to make them as unintelligible as possible to the average reader.
The most famous popular book of the Ch’ing Dynasty (A.D.1644-1911),was the Hung Lo Meng ,or Dream of the Red Chamber,which was written in the purest Mandarin,the official language of Peking;and the story,like that of the other novels described above,was well known to the people generally.Undoubtedly it is the most famous and popular of all Chinese novels written in the vernacular.It is a love story with a tragic ending,as the heroine dies of a disease now recognized as tuberculosis,and does not marry the man she loves.The principals of the Hung Lo Meng are two young people,distant cousins,but members of a large well-to-do Mandarin bousehold in Peking.While the tragic story of the lovers is the main theme of the book,there are many other stories within the main one,some of them also love stories.The novel is one of very great length—a sort of Chinese Gone With the Wind —and contains lengthy descriptions of the great House itself,its gardens,pavilions,etc.,aswell as of the large number of people living within the walled compound where the action takes place.Many incidents in the long tale have been the subject of separate plays and operas ever since the book first appeared.For a long time it was not known who the author was ,but it is now credited to one Chao Hsien-chin,who chose to hide his identity in anonymity ,supposedly because books of this kind,written as they were in the vernacular,were not in any sense considered literature,since they did not flollow the stricttraditional rules as to language and form.Now,unfortunately,all Chinese novels written in the Uulgate are considered literarture,whether or not they have any rightful claim to such distinction.Fifty or sixty years ago,young people were not allowed to read novels written in the Uulgate ,because they were considered improper.Today good or bad,proper or improper,everyone reads novels writtcn in the people’s language because it is considered the modern and thcrefore proper thing to do.
Even before the end of the Ch’ing Dynasty in 1911 and the beginning of the Republic in China,the classical style of novel writing,like so many otaditionally accepted things,became the target of criticism and re-evaluation.There had already begun a general questioning of all the old values which had held sway in China for so many hundreds of years.A number of things were responsible for the changed attitudes.Following the Boxer Rebellion of 1900,many Chinesestudents had been sent abroad for study,and had come back to China with all sorts of “dangerous thoughts”about individual freedom,the rights of women,etc.,all of which ran counter to the traditional ones.Then too,schools of a modern type had been established throughout the country,and students in these had been exposed to and infiuenced by western ideas of personal freedom and democracy.The old Confucian ideals were being subjected to critical analysis and,in some quarters,found wanting in meeting the changcd conditions of the modern world.A group of western-educated men,fired with ideas of individual freedom and the need for widespread education,started,about 1917,what has come to be known as the Literary Renaissance,which was a movement attempting,among other things,to have the Pai-hua or vulgate,used as an accepted literary medium,replacing the classical language of the literati ,which up to then bad been the only form in which“literature” could be written and accepted.
Influence of the West
It is not strange,therefore,that about thirty years ago,novels began to appcar which tried to follow the western pattern.In those early days of groping for a new and suitable literary form,the novel differed radically both as to form and content from the stereotyped and devitalized classical model.First of all,there was no attempt in the new type to uphold,by implication or otherwise,the Confucian canon governing the relations of the individual either to the State or to the family;nor to retail supernatural happenings of the kind that characterized the traditional novel; rather is there an attempt to get away from what has been called the “deadweight”of Confucian morality,and to write of the pressing social and even political problems facing the country—problems of a sort with which the older type had nothing whatsoever to do.Classical fiction dealt very often with ghosts,dragons,foxes who turned into people,and other highly imaginative and miraculous events—in a word,novels with no social significance whatever.The modern Chinese novel,on the other hand,from the very beginning,has dealt almost exclusively with problems that people are meeting in their every daylives,and the conflicts that have arisen,especially in the control of the family over the individual,as people have begun to turn away from the old ideas andto adopt different ones.
The Chinese Literary Renaissance
The use of the Pai-hua as a means of literary expression was given great impetus through the Literary Renaissance which was started and carried through by such outstanding figures as Hu Shih,Ts’ai Yuan-p’ei,Ch’en Tu-hsiu and Ch’ien Hsuan-t’ung,who were its foremost pro-ponents.From the very beginning,this movement was supported by almost all the younger writers,and since then practically all creative writing in China has been done in the Pai-hua .Gradually,even scientific and philosophical works have been written or translated into the vernacular,and today all text books are written in the spoken language.This is really a genuine revolution,since even less than fifty years ago,and before the more general use of the Pai-hua ,all aspirants to literary recognition were compelled to write in the classical language exclusively.Even before the fall of the imperial regime in China,however,writers had begun to use colloquialisms in their writing,in order to give it a little more vitality.
In the period following the end of the first World War,and the beginning of World War II,Chinese writers of the modern school began to introduce into their stories relative clauses and modifying adverbs,and also to use a sort of Europeanized grammar.They hoped by this means to acquire a certain smoothness in writing,as well as continuity of thought,Chinese grammar, judged by western standards,is very simple,its main purpose being merely to convey a general idea.In the ordinary spoken language the sentences are short and somewhat choppy,and such things as relative clauses and modifying adverbs are practically unknown.This makes it,of course,simple and direct.The use of modifying phrases,etc,however,makes it possible to put into one somewhat long sentence what formerly it had taken two or three sentences to express,and this was thought desirable,since it made for a smoother and more uninterrupted flow of thought.Still another development in modern writing that came between the turn of the century and the second World War was the use of characters that conveyed a sharper distinction of meaning;for instance,the simple character“t’a”which is the singular form of the third person pronoun,means either he,she or it,depending on the context.Now,occasionally,along side the character “t’a”,a radical is placed which conveys the gender. This and other changes have posed something of a problem for the modern writer ,which will be discussed later.
In addition to these changes in the Chinese language itself,new European words and expressions have constantly been introduced into both the spoken and written language,thus making better“word pictures,”and furnishing an exactness and precision in writing not heretofore employed,The traditional literary form of Wen-yan was entirely too limited and narrow in scope to convey all these different meanings,or shades of meaning.and it was felt necessary,therefore,in the new style of writing,to introduce such changes as I have indicated,thus changing the sentence structure somewhat from that used in the classical form.
Influence of European Writers
The introduction of Europeanized phrases,relative clauses,modifying adverbs,etc,has also helped greatly in the translation of foreign works into the Chinese language. European writers have had a very great influence on the present generation of students and writers.This is true both as to form and content.It is especally true as regards the Russian writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,notably Tolstoy,Chekhov,Dostoievsky,Gorki,Turgenev,and others;but perhaps Tolstoy has had more influence than any other single writer.From the very beginning of the Literary Renaissance,modern Chinese novel writing has shown the effect of the impact of the entire western literature of revolt,especially that exemplified by the Russian School.The result has been a rather serious attirude on the part of modern writers toward the subject matter of their work.For example,while they may not agree with the philosophical or social ideals of Tolstoy or the others who have written so vividly and so passionately of the hardships and injustices suffered by the common people,nevertheless the sheer greatness of Tolstoy in particular and the burning sincerity with which he writes have inspired many Chinese writers of the new school,who have tried to brig as much sincerity of purpose as possible into their writing.This is one reason why,for the last thirty years,Chinese writers have not produced a single detective story.And we must thank the Russian influence for that.
One might think that with all the translations of modern novels and short stories,there would have been some attempt to translate the modern,western detective story into Chinese,With the exception of the stories of Sherlock Holmes,however,no such translations have been made,although this would be a very lucrative field for some enterprising writer of publisher.Still,no such translations havebeen made.Of course,detective fiction is not considered serious writing and for this reason,if for no other ,Chinese writers have not indulged in it.The Chinese reading public has not even heard of the existence of Edgar Wallace or Dorothy Sayers,or of the widely read“mystery”stories of Ellery Queen.The works of Edgar Allen Poe,however,have been widely read in translation,although his stories cannot strictly be called detective fiction.
Attitude of Modern Chinese Writers
The thoughtful Chinese writer of today does not think of his work as something which will divert or amuse people; rather does he consider is as a means of arousing them to think seriously about life in general and the problems that have arisen in the modern world,more especially in his own country,or village,or even in his own family,and his own relations to them.This also is somehing quite new in the field of literature in China.
During the period,roughly,from the beginning of the Literary Renaissance up to the beginning of the second World War,the output of Chinese writers was somewhat meager,although during this period there have been some very good novels and a number of very good short stories produced.They have had wide circulation and are well known to the reading public.Perhaps the most outstanding figure of this period is Lu Hsun,sometimes called Lusin,a native of the Province of Chekiang,who died about nine years ago.In a volume of contemporary short stories translated into English by Professor C.C.Wang,of Columbia University,and published in 1945 by the Columbia University Press,several of Lu Hsun’s stories are included.They are about the common people of China and rate high in the opinion of all modern Chinese writers;in fact,his place in modern Chinese literature is similar to that of Gorki’s in Russian literature.In addition to his short stories,he was an essayist of wide repute.His short essays appeared for years in the daily press and attacked all kinds of outworn social and other codes,corruption in official circles,social and aconomic injustices;in fact all things that needed to be changed if China were to take her place alongside other enlightened nations.Lu Hsun is not well known to occidental readers because he wrote no long novels. But he was a scholar,philosopher,and a master of the writing technique. His Short History of the Chinese Novel is standard in its field.
Another well known Chinese writer of this period is Shen Yen-ping,better known under his pen name of Mao Tun.His reputation as a writer of both novels and short stories is well established,and both have been translated into English .His best known novels are Eclipse ,published in 1927,which won him immediate fame;The Rainbow (1929)and Twilight (1933).His novels have attempted to bring burning social issues to the attention of the people.Eclipse,for example,is concemed with the cvcnts of the Nationalist Revolution of 1926-27,and the role the students of China played in it;The Rainbow tells the story of a young woman revolutionary of this same period;and Twilight deals with big business,Shanghai variety.
One of the better known living poets and writers of today is Kuo Mo-jo,who is also well known for his plays,and who is an archeologist of world renown.In the opinion of the writer he is,after Lu Hsun,The greatest of modem Chinese literary figures. Becoming deaf after having been traincd in the medical profession,he was forced to give up the idea of being a doctor,and it was then that he took to his literary work and to his translations.He has translated the works of Goethe into Chinese,and also Tolstoy’ s War and Peace.
There are,of course,other well known and widely read modern writers,but spacedoes not permit consideration of their writing here.Their writing deals,almost universally,with the lives of the people of China today,but predominantly the middle,lower middle and depressed classes. A great deal of it is fiercely proletarian in sympathy.
Before the second World War some writers had tried their hands at the western type of psychological novel,and there have been a few interesting and well done novels of this kind.During the war itself,however,nothing along this line of writing was done,since all efforts were directed to the production of special plays,short stories,marching songs,etc.,the purpose of which was to arouse the patriotism of the people and get them to support the war.While the genuine psychological novel as it is known in the West has not had much development in China,nevertheless in a sense,all modern novels are more or less psychological in character,since they deal,on the whole,with problems that have arisen in modern China,and the effect which the changed times and new ideas have had on various individuals and groups.The older,classical type of novel,as has already been pointed out,contained simply a recital of events,in which very often the supernatural had a prominent place.The modern novel,on the other hand,deals with changes that have already taken place in the social,political and economic structure of the life of the country,and the confusion and often bewilderment they have ensued as people have had to adjust their lives to them.In this connection,it is pertinent to note that within the last fifteen or twenty years,Chinese doctors trained in the field of modern psychiatry have been confronted with types of behavior—problems not heretofore encountered in China—problems that have caused such profound emotional reactions as to render the individual genuinely ill.
The Novel and World War II
During and since World War II,there has been a tendency to drop the use of westernized grammatical structure which characterized writing at the turn of the century and later,and to use the laguage of the common people exactly as it is spoken.While the war was raging,writers from all parts of China,torn from their native provinces,came into much closer contact with the common people,not only from their own districts,but with those who,uprooted like themselves from their home soi l,found themselves far from home.The mass migrations,the flight of millions to escape from the onrushing Japanese invader to a safer place into the Interior,brought people together in a way that could have been accomplished by no other means.So the writers,many of whom did not know very much about the masses of the common people,nor have great interest in them,began to learn something of the integrity,the industriousness,the patience,kindness and sterling qualities of their own countrymen—the ones who bore the brunt of the war,and in the end helped win it.During this time they talked with all sorts and conditions of people;carpenters,day laborers,rickshaw boys,farmers,peddlers—men in all walks of life,and they learned much from them.Some of the salty expressions and phrases used by these men and women from all over China and from all ranks of society found their way into the work of the writers.And because,during the war,the writers set themselves the task of arousing the patriotic feelings of the people so that they would continue to support the war effort,they began to write things that appealed to them and to the common soldier in the ranks.A great deal of research was done in folk songs and marching songs,local folk lore,etc.,and the result of all this was used in new songs,plays and other material that would catch and hold the interest of the people and bolster their morale.In writing special songs and dramatic sketches for the people,all talk of democracy was avoided,but every effort was made to help the people understand the significance of what was happening to China because of the Japanese invasion and the necessity for them to fight the invader until he was driven form Chinese soil.There was a great deal of this sort of activity at the beginning of the war,but towards the and there was much less.The theatre groups which thewriters had organized and which went all over China during the first years of the war also curtailed their activities as the war went on,since such activities were not encouraged by the govemment.
Back to The People’s Language
At the beginning of the war there were many writers who went directly to the soldiers and visited them in their barracks or trenches,but this was also discouraged by the government,and so gradually all the writers went back to the big cities.This going to the people,of course,was an excellent way to get source material for their writing.It has enriched the language considerably,and has made it possible more adequately to express the inmost thoughts,emotions,aspirations,hopes and fears of the great mass of the common people of China which heretofore,unfortunately,had not been considered a worthy subject of literature.Even the writers from the South who knew Mandarin,the offcial spoken language of the country,found,when they came to write it,that it was too rigid and lacking in flexibility to convey all they wanted to say.They found their writing lifeless and sterile and lacking in vitality until they began to introduce into it expressions used by the people from all parts of China,or as they used bits of conversation or incidents told them by the different classes of people with whom they had come into contact.The introduction of local idioms and colloquial expressions,therefore,has tended to take literature,during and since the war,out of the clouds and bring it down to earth.The use of western-style grammatical structures and relative clauses which characterized writing at the beginning of the century and for sometime after,is gradually being dropped,and writers today,in their short stories,novels and plays,are more and more using the simple,direct language of the people.In other words,they are striving for a language that is “pure” Chinese,uninfluenced either by foreign grammatical construction,foreing words,or western writing technique in general.They found this use of the simple,direct language of the people very effective during the war when they were striving to appeal to the patriotism of the people and to arouse their enthusiasm for the war against Japan.They found also that the ordinary man on the street or on the farm did not understand the relative clauses and other “western” devices that had crept into the language of modern writers;in fact this was just as unintelligible to them as the language of the Literati,and so the writers found that if they wanted to make an impression on the people they would have to use a language that did not confuse them.So the movement came about to discard the more complex grammatical constructions and to create a genuine literature in the language of the common people.How far this movement will go,it is impossible to predict at the moment,but there seems no doubt whatever that the post war years in China will see a tremendous output of writing in all fields,and that the literature produced will be of the serious type and will deal with the struggles,conflicts,and profound changes in the ordinary life of the common people as they return to their farms and villages and take up their lives again after the long and bitter years of China’s fight for survival.