A Passage to China (走近中国) - Major Writers and Their Works (Fiction)

Luo Guanzhong (1330 – 1400) and The Romance of the Three Kingdoms

The Romance of the Three Kingdoms was written in the early Ming Dynasty. It was based on folk legends, storytelling scripts and dramas.

It starts from the uprising of the Yellow Turbans and ends in the unification of the Western Jin Dynasty, revealing the turbulent events. Through descriptions of the political, military and diplomatic confrontations among various sections of the ruling class, the novel expose the underside of society in the late Eastern Han Dynasty, criticizes the violence of the feudal rulers, mirrors the people’s sufferings and expresses the people’s longing for a sage emperor and a stable life. The author followed the tradition of popular stories and took sides with Liu Bei and went against Cao Cao, and thus pleased people’s common desire for a wise emperor in repudiating despotism in feudal society.

The plot in the novel is mainly based on history books and folk legends. The author combines realist and romantic styles in writing the novel. The basic expressive technique is realist, but the arrangement of some plots and the portraying of the historical figures are at times full of some plots and the portraying of the historical figures are at times full of romantic color.

The structure of the novel centers on the conflict between the two kingdoms with the plot evolving around the struggles. The novel is full of complexities and variations. Its structure achieves a combined grandness and compactness rarely seen in Chinese classic novels.

The author devoted great effort to portraying the characters in the novel. He wrote about all the intrigues in the Wu Kingdom, the internal strife within the Wu clan. Luo Guanzhong chose his words well in depicting wars. He described with colorful touches, while only giving a few words to the defeated army and highlighted the warfare without wasting many words.

This period created many lively characters, making great contributions to the development of Chinese classic novels. The author revealed the distinct characters of the heroes by placing them in intense conflicts.

The novel adopts extensive literary exaggeration and contrast in depicting the characters which manifests the author’s advanced expressive techniques.

The Romance of the Three Kingdoms is written in clear, concise and vivid language. The dialogue in the novel plays an important role in revealing the character’s personalities.

Shi Nai’an (1296 – 1370) and Outlaws of the March

Outlaws of the Marsh were written in the early Ming Dynasty. It was based on folk legends, storytelling scripts and dramas.

It is the first novel dealing with the subject matter of peasant revolt in China. It describes the full development of a peasant revolt from its inception with the rise of a rebel group, with all the rebels accepting amnesty and surrendering to the government. It is regarded as progressive because it is fully supportive of the rebel peasants. It also analyzes and exposes the deep social roots of the peasant revolt.

Shi Nai’an is skilled at revealing the inner world of characters through their behavior and language. This expressive technique originated from the storytelling scripts does not allow much explanation about characters’ appearances and psychological activities; it displays the figures’ character mainly through their language and behavior, conflict and intrigues in which they are involved.

Some characters in the novel have very similar personalities; they can be distinguished from each other in subtle ways. The author shows great skill in treating these subtleties.

Another distinctive feature of Outlaws of the March is to reveal the characters’ different dispositions and their different forms of resistance to oppression through describing their different life experiences.

Outlaws of the March are based on storytelling scripts. Its language has a strong colloquial: succinct, lively, accurate and very expressive.

Wu Cheng’en (1510 – 1582) and Journey to the West

Journey to the West is written by Wu Cheng’en. It tells the story of how Xuan Zang endures countless imposed by various monsters and demons before he finally gets to the west assisted by his three disciples.

Journey to the West imagines a world of rigid hierarchy managed by goals, which apparently mirrors the social reality of the actual world. The almighty Jade Emperor, the High Lord, the Buddhist monks and all kinds of cruel monsters and demons are all archetypes found in real life.

Journey to the West has a strong romantic flavor. Though it creates a supernatural world, their magic weapons and the environment in which they live are based on reality.

The structure of it centers on characters, and the plot being carried out with their actions. All the 81 difficulties are vividly told around the complicated relationships with each story remaining relatively independent.

Jin Ping Mei

It is the first novel composed by a scholar. It adopted a great deal of colloquial terms of Shandong, and the author may be a native of that province, but his real name remains unknown.

It draws its subject matter from a story which tells about how Wu Song kills his wicked sister-in-law to avenge his brother. By describing the rise to wealth and power and sudden death of a local despot Ximen Qing, it portrays an evil world dominated by the decadent ruling class and the urban scum. It exposes quite comprehensively the sordid reality of the late Ming. The original artistic feature exerted a strong influence on the fiction of later times. But the excessive pornographic descriptions seriously compromise aesthetic values and set a bad precedent.

Cao Xueqin (1716 – 1736) and A Dream of Red Mansions

Written in the later half of the 18th century, A Dream of Red Mansions is not only a great Chinese masterpiece but also a great novel in world literature. The author was born in a noble and powerful family reduced from extreme prosperity to poverty. Based on his understanding of life and serious attitude, the author was able to create a book regarded as the pinnacle of Chinese classical novels.

It describes the life and declining fortunes if a large feudal family. Instead of telling the love story, it tries to tap the social origins of the tragedy through probing deeply into the characters’ minds and the tragic love story and predicts the doomed fate of feudal society as a whole. It is praised as an encyclopedia for analyzing Chinese feudal society.

It portrays a galaxy of unforgettable characters. Its great artistic achievement is especially reflected in characterization. It portrays the characters by describing their different mental outlooks and inner thoughts and emotions and provides a great of detailed descriptions of characters’ daily lives. People find much high aesthetic quality in many aspects: poetry, drama, art, architecture and gardens.

Wu Jingzi and The Scholars

Wu Jingzi (1701 – 1754) was born into a distinguished family and grew up under the tutelage of Confucian though. He was forced to lead a life of poverty but this provided him with a chance to live with common people and observe the conditions at the lower levels of society.

The Scholars mirrors the realities of feudal society and exposes the decadence of the declining feudal system and attacks the vicious examination system and criticizes the corrupt political system and social morals.

It is a masterpiece among Chinese satirical literature. The language is vivid, terse and accurate. It is composed of independent short stories interrelated with each other. The structure exerted a far reaching influence on writers later. It represents the height of the Chinese classical satirical novel.

Pu Songling (1640 – 1715) and Strange Tales of Liaozhai

Born in an impoverished landlord merchant family, Pu Songling lived during a time of unprecedented class confrontation and was also unsuccessful in the imperial examinations. His frustrations and indignation drove him to pouring out his feeling on paper.

Strange Tales of Liaozhai includes 431 short stories written in classical Chinese. It falls into 4 parts:

1. Exposing and satirizing of corrupt officials, despotic landlords and the feudal political system represented by these figures.
   
2. Severely criticizing the rigid and unjust official examination system.
   
3. Tributes to pure and faithful love between men and women and also to those who strive for love.
   
4. Expounding ethics and morals with valuable educational significance.

Strange Tales of Liaozhai is a progressive romantic work. Its romanticism is above all reflected in the characterization of positive figures, especially the images of flower goddesses and fox fairies.

Characters are adeptly and well rounded portrayed. The language is fluent, vivid, exaggerated and satirical. Its well knit structure and intricate plot provide a precious model and resource for writers of later.

Lu Xun’s Fiction

Lu Xun (1881 – 1936) was a great modern Chinese man of letters, thinker and revolutionary, and the founder of modern literature in China. The style was formed on the basis of foreign fiction and reformed traditional Chinese storytelling scripts.

A Madman’s Diary had epochal significance and marked the beginning of a brand-new literary era. It attempts to expose the maladies of feudal patriarchy and the feudal code ethics. It doesn’t describe the harms of feudal patriarchy and the oppression born by the madman in detail, instead it points to the cruel nature of feudal ethics by describing the madman’s eyes, his derangement and frenzied words.

Kong Yiji describes an intellectual inflicted by the imperial examination system. It is written with a laconic and simple structure and in concise language. It castigates the evil of the examination system in trampling down and destroying people’s live.

Hometown is a short story knows to every household in China. By the first person point of view, the story opens up the like of the tragic lives led by Chinese peasants who were forced to endure hunger, heavy taxes, wars, corrupt official and cruel landlords.

The True Story of Ah Q is his most representative work set in Chinese society around the Revolution of 1911. By describing Q’s tragic story it reveals the class confrontations in the rural areas at that time and criticizes the bourgeoisie’s un-thoroughness to and alienation from the masses in leading the 1911 Revolution. The author hoped to waken Chinese peasants’ awareness and desire for revolution.

By learning from the concise, flexible and varied structure of foreign fiction, Lu Xun broke away from the exclusive form of traditional Chinese fiction and created a new form for modern Chinese fiction. He is regarded as the father of the modern Chinese fiction.

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