Chapter Three

c h a p t e r t h r e e The Bildungsroman of New Youth May Fourth and the Modern Novel hen Duxiu’s magazine New Youth had a profound impact on C the generation of Chinese youths growing up during the May Fourth era. Some of the most famous modern Chinese novels emphasize the moment of reading New Youth as the beginning of a young person’s conversion to modern ideas and pursuit of a new self, which is expected to be more progressive, idealized, and even “younger.” In Ba Jin’s Family, the Gao brothers are thrilled by reading and discussing the articles in New Youth, and even the eldest brother, Juexin 覺新, who is portrayed as a conformist sub- mitting to the power of the family heads, feels his lost youth being awakened.1 In Ni Huanzhi, the protagonist, whose youthful idealism has been eroded by frustrations in his career and marriage, is inspired by the “new” magazine to reevaluate his ideas and find a new beginning in life.2 In Mao Dun’s Rainbow, Miss Mei also feels baptized as a new woman with self-determination after reading New Youth.3 New Youth gave the collective name to a new generation of Chinese youths who answered its call to turn against their patri- archs during the 1910s and 1920s. The self-fashioning of the new 1. Pa Chin, Family, 36. 2. Ye Shengtao, Ni Huanzhi, Ye Shengtao ji, vol. 3, 186–87. 3. Mao Dun, Hong, in Mao Dun quanji, vol. 2, 45. 114 ch apter 3 youth generation motivated the beginning of a new type of literary writing, which culminated in the rise of the Chinese Bildungs roman that centered on the construction of the new youth iden- tity with reference to a new historical consciousness, with both the personal development of the protagonist and national rejuve- nation combined in one plot that unfolds as a process of writing youth into history. This chapter and the next will trace the ascent of the Chinese Bildungsroman in the context of the rise and decline of the New Culture Movement. My discussion focuses on two of the earliest full-length novels that depict the life of the new youth, Ni Huan zhi and Rainbow. These novels were written in the late 1920s, nearly a decade after the peak of the New Culture Movement, and my central argument is that the self-reflective narrative with a retrospective timeframe constitutes the main characteristic of this new genre in Chinese literature. While striving to keep alive youthful idealism, this genre also presents heightened conflicts between self and society, ideal and reality. This chapter looks into the historical conditions and literary form of Ni Huanzhi, which first presents an effort to historicize the story of a new youth, a process that would be continued by Mao Dun’s early novels. The Plot of Enlightenment What attracted Chinese youths to the ideal of new youth was perhaps its emphasis, more clearly than ever, on self-determination. The first issue of New Youth opens with Chen Duxiu’s urgent message to young readers: “I, merely, with tears, place my plea before the fresh and vital youth, in the hope that they will achieve self-awareness, and begin to struggle.” As Lin Yü-sheng has said, Chen’s call to youth can be summarized as “demanding indepen- dence, dynamism, and even aggressiveness, and urging a radical revolt against various aspects of the Chinese tradition.”4 Tradition was viewed as suffocating, or even cannibalistic, as depicted by Lu 4. Lin Yü-sheng, The Crisis of Chinese Consciousness, 65..

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