Realism and Chinese literature

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From The Spell of Realism in Chinese Literature by Chen Xiwo:

I am indeed fully aware that a completely objective recognition of the facts is difficult. Any description of facts cannot avoid being colored by subjectivity. But the so-called “typical” is determined according to a pre-determined object. A typical character, for example, is “a representative of a particular class and inclination” and “a representative of the particular thinking of his age.” Why does he represent this? Because the most important social relationships are gathered in his person. There is a basis for this belief: the world in which we live is an organic whole, and it has a center. There is reason to doubt this belief, for it inevitably puts constraints onto thinking. Besides, literature itself has the perogative to fictionalize. Whatever criticism was leveled at Yu Hua’s Brothers, practically all of it revolved around “reality.” But in fact, the problem with Brothers wasn’t that it wasn’t real, but that it tried too much to be real and in doing so became a model, an imitation of reality. Strive as he might, the writer simply couldn’t take flight. The author ought to have boldy cast off from reality and let literature drift upward.

Chen Xiwo is working with Engels’ definition of realism: “Realism, to my mind, implies, besides truth of detail, the truthful reproduction of typical characters under typical circumstances.”

A taxonomy of Chinese blog posts

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From Yuyiwang’s blog:

Commonly-observed forms of online writing

  1. The Annie Baobei (安妮宝贝体). The characteristics of this form are: clusters of short sentences, three or four to a paragraph. Lots of adverbials and adjectives in a lucid context, it’s basically one person talking to herself. Frequently appearing props: flowers, grass, plants, and children, and they’re all pretty clean, aesthetically pleasing, and lushly detailed. On average, each paragraph contains what appears to be a sentence of incisive criticism. There may be an emotional object, such as a man named Lin or Shen, but this is nothing more than mirror to reflect light back on oneself. This type of writing is typically short, as the writer lacks a breadth of knowledge or substantive details and has no concern for the people around her. Information content is low and seldom generates conversation.
  2. The Shu Yi (亦舒体). A cold, detached perspective that feigns having seen it all. “She” is written “伊”, and 吧 is written “罢了.” Here too, short sentences predominate, and they’re decisive declarative sentences. Life experience, with a slightly pedagogical attitude, but in my own experience, this form is mostly written by the naive. The intelligence of the language is just a pauper’s wedding — borrowed pageantry. I’m generally fairly well-disposed toward girls who write in the Shu Yi form. It emphasizes reason, where the Annie stresses feelings. However, nothing should be taken too far. Too much argument is like a mouthful of wax; too much emotion is like choking on words.Also: These two forms, with their short sentences and frequent paragraph changes, belong to the sprinters. Clever sentences cluster so thickly it’s fatiguing, and these end up sounding long-winded if they get too long. They usually shouldn’t exceed 1,500 characters.
  3. The Eileen (爱玲体). Similar to the Shu Yi, but there’s a little more body to the writing. Arguments are layered, and articles are usually divided into parts. Qiqi’s early criticism was a little like a relaxed version of the Eileen: leisurely and lucid without giving offense. I quite liked it. This style of writing is trenchant, rich in information, and can be extended to more than 2,000 characters.
  4. The Cartoon (卡通体). Sarcasm delivered in a childish tone. Simple, short language with few adjectives and adverbs but lots of “Yee,” “Yow,” and “Oh.” Certain individuals have found great success with this form. The greatest difficulty with baby-faced writing is the same as when a child actor attempts an image change. It’s innocent and cute when you’re twenty, but if you’re still affecting the intonation of a child when you’re thirty, people begin to suspect that you’re simply childish. So when I saw Annie Inoh’s relationship problems I felt I could relax a bit, because it felt much more natural than seeing her in a tiered dress at thirty-six.

    5. Continue reading →

On the Island by Ren Xiaowen

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任晓雯
岛上
2008

A mental patient who may or may not have killed her professor, with whom she may or may not have been having an affair, is shipped off to a strange island colony whose handful of inmates divide their time between long shifts of manual labor and sessions of vicious gossip about each other. Following instructions from the “ship’s captain,” the island’s shadowy master, a bored cadre conducts criticism sessions in which he encourages the inmates to confess to elaborate crimes.

There’s not much of a plot beyond a slow reveal of the island’s purpose, but the narrator’s desire to recover her lost memory and understand how she arrived on the island keep the book moving until the inmates’ fragile society collapses and the dead bodies start piling up.

This is the author’s first novel, written in 2002 but only published this year following a collection of short stories and a second novel, The Women (她们).

Running to Neverland

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In this article:
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Run, Dajiao! Run!
《大角快跑》
Pan Haitian (潘海天)
266 pages / 160,000 words
2007.11

I was tapped for the “123 meme” a while ago and fulfilled my duty in the comments section of the Mutant Palm blog with a citation from a Xu Kun novel.

I’ve been asked to do the same thing for a SF book, so I’ll use Pan Haitian’s Run, Dajiao! Run, which actually happened to be the closest science fiction book around when I learned of the meme.

It’s a short story collection by an author who’s probably still best known for The Legend of Master Yan, an adaptation of an anecdote from the ancient classic Liezi that describes automatons who do their masters’ bidding. Pan’s most recent work has been in the realm of fantasy, and he’s been involved with Jin He Zai in the Novoland project, an attempt to build an indigenous fantasy universe.

The title story in Run, Dajiao! Run! is constructed as a fable: on a quest for a drug that will save his dying mother, a young man runs from city to city, passing through cities of Hedonism, Industry, and so forth. It’s an old trope, but Pan’s writing is engaging and the various worlds are well-drawn.

Page 123 turns out to be in the centerpiece of this collection, the novella Out of the Darkness (黑暗中归来), which is an interesting take on the Space Ark story. A ship headed for some distant star has navigated into a cluster of dark matter, rendering all sensors ineffective. The crew, grown from test-tubes, take classes in stellar navigation and astrophysics, information that to them seems nothing more than faith-based superstition. They eventually revolt.

Just before the following excerpt, tensions among the crew are high. The narrator spooked his crewmate Eberhard while he was holding a test-tube full of cockroaches, causing him to lose control and drop it, scattering the bugs everywhere.

After that moment of fright, I turned and glared at Eberhard: “Fine. You stupid blockhead, you think you’re so special. You’ve let out the cockroaches. Are you satisfied?”

Flustered, Eberhard said, “I was just trying to help you.” He was always trying to find ways to help people, I thought angrily. “Are those things dangerous?” “There won’t be any problems, right?” He was always asking that, his voice quavering with fright. But whenever he was around, there was no chance for safety.

The cockroach infestation of the ship is just one symbol of the breakdown of order among the crew. The narrator eventually breaks with the paranoid conspiracy-mongers (who see the on-board computer as part of a vast conspiracy to hide the Real Truth) and learns the self-discipline necessary to take his place as captain of the ship and see it through to starry shores.

There are other interesting stories in this collection:

  • A Ladder to the Stars: Hanuman, The Monkey King: The earth, which holds a backward society whose only hope is to escape to the stars, is visited by colonists who look like Monkeys and talk of their great King, Hanuman. Naturally, the earthlings kill off most of these monkey spacemen, or relegate them to concentration camps. A girl and her friends attempt to escape the planet with the help of one monkey who wasn’t caught up in the security sweeps.
  • The City of Clones: An empire has made extensive use of clones in its wars of conquest. The son of the emperor is sent out to deal with a clone revolt, but disagrees with his father’s treatment of the clone army, because of his affection for a palace servant woman who has asked him to spare the leader of the rebels. It’s a relatively straightforward story distinguished by its references to Plato.
  • The Dark Side of a White Star: There’s an accident at a mining colony and a team is sent to investigate. It discovers a strange life form that is killing off human life. The set-up of this story reminds me of a Star Trek episode, what with the search for a way to live in harmony, but some of the syncretic religious elements are fairly interesting.
  • A Place Where Fate is Determined: The story of a “Non-Player Character” in a role-playing game.

Pan Haitian’s English name is Peter, which at first glance you’d be inclined to chalk up to an unfortunate coincidence. However, Peter Pan has decided to make the connection to his literary namesake explicit with a pull-out illustration of a boy on a pirate ship. Nothing to do with the book’s contents, I’m afraid.

Chinese SF writers bid farewell to Arthur C. Clarke

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The death of science fiction master Arthur C. Clarke last Wednesday drew reactions from science fiction authors and fans all over the world, China included. Here are some of the commemorations that Chinese SF enthusiasts posted online this week:

· Wu Yan, probably the most well-known SF critic in China, immediately posted an old appreciation piece he had written on the occasion of Clarke’s 75th birthday. The article, which ran in Science Fiction World in 1992, told of the early encounters that Chinese SF had with Clarke: letters exchanged in which he expressed interest in Chinese SF.

· Liu Cixin, possibly the most popular Chinese SF currently writing, also wrote on his blog of drawing inspiration from Clarke:

Clarke has left us….

Twenty-seven years ago, he was the one who gave me the idea to write science fiction. 2001 taught me how SF could be used to exhibit the breadth and mystery of the universe. Rendezvous With Rama let me see how SF could be like a creator, fashioning an imaginary world real enough to practically reach out and touch. Later, all of my own novels are but clumsy imitations of those two classics.

Now, alas, that man is gone…

· The SFW group on the book-related social networking website Douban changed its name to “Farewell to Clarke.” In its extensive obituary thread, Commenter BRDX wrote:

Arthur, have you become tired of the 21st Century?

We have no moon city, no space elevator to a synchronous orbit, no robot that can read our feelings — we have nothing at all!

In the first year of the 20th Century, Marconi’s wireless signal crossed the Atlantic. In the the third year, the Wright brothers took to the skies in the flying machine they built. In the fifth year, Einstein wrote out his mass-energy equation….

In the 21st Century, a complacent humanity has lost its spirit of adventure.

Sorry, we have let you down.

Farewell, Arthur, farewell.

The dreamer may die, but the dream never will…

· Another commenter, NStar, posted a link to a blog post:

More than twenty years ago, I read Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous With Rama. My enchantment with that book was probably one of the reasons I ultimately fell in love with science fiction. About one year ago, I happened to receive a letter from the master. When I opened it, I saw it was an invitation to join the Planetary Society. In my excitement, I couldn’t help feeling confused: how did the master know of me? Thinking it through, I decided that it probably was because of a science fiction Sudoku — just a small block of text — that ran in Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine that gave the Planetary Society the idea that I was a prospect. Probably, they had given the master a whole stack of things to sign, which they then sent to all the authors whose names appeared in the British and American SF mags, so their advertisement had been sent to me.

Although it wasn’t the master himself who had noticed me, at any rate I was fortunate to receive a letter with his autograph.

· Han Song, SF author and Xinhua journalist, remembered Clarke in a blog post that characteristically touched on contemporary Chinese politics:

When I heard the news that Clarke had died, it was already late, but although I was ill, I still wanted to get up and write a few words. I first read 2001: A Space Odyssey in Modern Foreign Science Fiction, edited by Shi Xianrong and published by the Shanghai Literature and Arts Press. This was probably around 1984-85, and at that time lots of publishers would go to universities to sell old books. I bought that book (it was only the second volume). Clarke’s classic story was the first, and was translated by Guan Zaihan. Published in 1968, this story is still readable today. Clarke’s strongest influence on me was on my outlook on the world and on the universe, just like Marx, the Buddha, Einstein, and Plank. Like Kubrick said of Clarke, he gave us a new perspective, letting us see humanity in its earthly cradle extending its hands to a future in the stars. Very few people you meet in your life will truly influence you. Regrettably, however, I often feel that a compliment from a certain leader was most influential in my life.

In the late 1990s, my office was about to send me to Sri Lanka, but because the departmental leader thought “things are too busy now, so we can’t let you go,” I ended up not going (you see the enormous influence a leader has). This was fairly regrettable. I had even planned out how I would request an interview with Clarke. Later, friends told me that Sri Lanka was oh such a nice place. And it was the place where Clarke predicted a space elevator going out to the universe. The communications satellites that Clarke predicted have become reality. And after humanity ascended to the moon, an American astrophysicist praised Clarke for providing the most important motivation.

Clarke said: “I regard myself primarily as an entertainer and my ideals are Maugham, Kipling, Wells. My chief aim is the old SF cliché, ‘The search for wonder.’ However, I am almost equally interested in style and rhythm, having been much influenced by Tennyson, Swinburne, Housman, and the Georgian poets.” “My main themes are exploration (space, sea, time), the position of Man in the hierarchy of the universe, and the effect of contact with other intelligences.”These ideas had an influence on contemporary Chinese science fiction authors. But today there is still not enough of that “search for wonder” (猎奇), and poetry is still lacking.

Let us draw inspiration from these words, just as we draw inspiration from President Hu Jintao’s remarks at the legislative sessions, to work cleanly for the country and the people, or as we draw encouragement from the words of Premier Wen Jiabao: we must liberate the minds of every individual — that is, we must have independent thought, critical thinking, and creativity.

I think that Clarke could be said to have worked cleanly within the science fiction realm (as clean as the ocean and skies of Sri Lanka), and his independent thought, critical thinking, and creativity should serve as a worthy model.

Clarke worked cleanly in science fiction until he was ninety years old. I am quite young compared to him, but already I’m not very clean: I’ve been polluted, led astray, made mistakes, a body covered in mud. What will the future bring? Will independence, criticism, and creativity — values intrinsic to science fiction — be illuminated by the Olympic torch climbing Mt. Everest?

· Just a few months ago, the now-defunct translations magazine World Science Fiction ran a short biographical introduction to Clarke in its December, 2007, issue. The piece was written by Chinese SF author Xing He, who also posted a commemoration to his blog this week.

Image from Wu Yan’s blog.