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Heroes and Hero-Worship in Chinese Communist Fiction*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

T. A. Hsia
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Extract

A reader in the United States of America or Great Britain may have great misgivings when he opens a book of fiction from Communist China. He is painfully aware of the conditions under which the book is written. He knows that thought control in Communist China means not only a set of taboos but also a strict order to write about certain subjects in a certain manner. With little effort he can guess the plot which rushes on to actual victory or victory imagined. And there is the other side to the “struggle,” which is always wrong and bad and doomed. He knows what characters he is going to encounter: the familiar ugly face of a landlord, the aspiring workers, peasants, and intellectuals who unite to follow the leadership of the Communist Party, and the waverers who somehow have to make a choice between the good and the evil—shadows of the types which, he remembers, dominated proletarian literature in the 1930s. Oversimplification is always an insult to intellect; and the insult becomes all the more unbearable if things are simplified not merely because of the writer's ignorance but, as the reader suspects, from an intention to deceive. Of course, the reader does not have to suffer all this if he can help it. But the book in his hand may be useful as source material for some kind of research, a social document or a storehouse of Communist jargon. So in the name of research, he doggedly reads on, with little expectation of pleasure or stimulus for thought. He is prepared to be insulted and to be bored to death.

Type
Special Survey of Chinese Communist Literature
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 13 , March 1963 , pp. 113 - 138
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1963

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References

1 Empson, William, Some Versions of Pastoral (Norfolk, Connecticut: New Directions, 1960), p. 15.Google Scholar

2 Chou Li-po was born in 1908 in Hunan. Further biographical information about him is found in “Editorial Notes,” Chinese Literature (CL), No. 1, 1954, pp. 165–166.Google Scholar According to a Japanese source (Gendai Chugoku Jimmei Jiten, 1962)Google Scholar, Chou Li-po joined the Chinese League of Left-wing Writers in 1934.

3 Pao-feng Chou-yü (Hurricane) (Peking: Hsin-hua Book Co., 1949)Google Scholar, two vols. Shanhsiang Chü-pien (Great Changes in a Mountain Village) (Peking: Tso-chia Ch'u-pan-she, 1958).Google Scholar

4 Fiedler, Leslie A., No! In Thunder (Boston: Beacon Press, 1960), pp. 8–9.Google Scholar

5 Mo, Yang, Ch'ing-ch'un Chih Ko (The Song of Youth) (Peking: Jen-min Wen-hsueh Ch'u-pan-she, Revised edition, 1960).Google Scholar I have not seen the unrevised edition which was probably published in 1957. A partial English translation of the novel is serialised in CL, Nos. 3–6. 1960.

6 Ch'iang, Wu, Hung Jih (Red Sun) (Peking: Jen-min Wen-hsueh Ch'u-pan-she. Revised edition, 1959).Google Scholar I have not seen the unrevised edition published in July 1957 by the China Ching-nien Ch'u-pan-she. Red Sun is available in an English version, translated by Barnes, A. C. (Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1961)Google Scholar.

7 CL, No. 6, 1960, pp. 138–141.

8 T'an-t'an Ch'uang-tso Ch'ang-p'ien-hsiao-shuo ti T'i-hui (Talks on Comprehensions [Experiences] of Novel-writing), a collection of five essays by Pin, Liang, Mo, Yang, Ch'iang, Wu, Po, Ch'ü, and Teh-ying, Feng (Shanghai: Shanghai Wen-hsueh Ch'upan-she, 1958), p. 11.Google Scholar Yang Mo's article was originally an interview, published in Chung-kuo Ch'ing-nien Pao (Chinese Youth Newspaper), 05 3, 1958.Google Scholar

9 Pin, Liang, Hung-ch'i P'uGoogle Scholar (Keep the Red Flag Flying is the English title given in CL, No. 1, 1959) (Peking: Jen-min Wen-hsueh Ch'u-pan-she, Revised edition, 1959). In my opinion, Liang Pin's book is quite original and daring in its study of Communist heroism. It is also superior to both The Song of Youth and Red Sun in the use of language. I plan to make it the subject of a lengthier study.

10 For instance, Ch'iao-mu, Hu, Chung-kuo Kung-ch'an-tang ti San-shih-nien (The last Thirty Years of the CCP) (Peking: Jen-min Ch'u-pan-she, 1951), pp. 34–39.Google Scholar

11 Page number refers to the 1959 revised edition of Hung Jih. Where English translation is cited, I use A. C. Barnes' version.

12 Barnes' version omits “They want us to turn into hawks.”

13 For “Be obedient to the Party,” Barnes' version has “Be loyal to the Party.” The sentence in Chinese is “T'ing tang-ti hua”—literally, “listen to the words of the Party.”

14 T'an-t'an Ch'uang-tso Ch'ang-p'ien-hsiao-shuo ti T'i-hui, p. 16.Google Scholar Wu Ch'iang's article was originally published in Wen-yi Pao, No. 19, 1958.Google Scholar

15 Melville, Herman, Moby Dick, Chap. 41.Google Scholar

16 Author's preface to the Revised Edition, p. 3.

17 Ch'iang, Wu, “Hsieh-tso Hung-jih ti Ch'ing-k'uang ho I-hsieh T'i-hui” (“The Conditions Under Which I Wrote Red Sun and Some of My Comprehensions”), Jen-nan Wen-hsueh (People's Literature: PL), No. 1, 1960, p. 125.Google Scholar

18 A biographical sketch of Wu Ch'iang is found in an appendix to the English version of Red Sun. Another is found in the Japanese magazine Daian, No. 10, 1961.Google Scholar

19 Ch'iang, Wu, “Hsieh-tso Hung-jih …,” PL, No. 1, 1960, p. 118.Google Scholar

20 A biographical sketch of Mo, Yang is found in CL, No. 3, 1960, p. 3.Google Scholar