Empire Without End: Imperial History Printed, Staged, and Screened in Modern China, 1900-Present
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EMPIRE WITHOUT END: IMPERIAL HISTORY PRINTED, STAGED, AND SCREENED IN MODERN CHINA, 1900-PRESENT A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Kun Qian August 2009 © 2009 Kun Qian EMPIRE WITHOUT END: IMPERIAL HISTORY PRINTED, STAGED, AND SCREENED IN MODERN CHINA, 1900-PRESENT Kun Qian, Ph. D. Cornell University 2009 This study deals with the ways that writers and producers in the modern period have represented the pre-modern imperial past. It sets out to pose the question: what role has a historical way of thinking inherited from the pre-modern empire played in China’s continuous quest for modernity? In describing what in imperial history has been represented and how that has been represented during the modern period, this study attempts to explain why it was represented this way. It endeavors to theorize the historical continuity between traditional empire and modern nation-state, and address the tension between them. During the long journey of China toward modernity, historical representations have played an essential role in redefining China’s self-identity and imagining its place in the world. Throughout the modern period, despite different nominal characterizations about China’s social reality, be it a semi-colonial, semi-feudal society, a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist socialist state, or a market-economy-post-socialist country, there is a deeply rooted historical way of thinking that persisted throughout the modern era and determined the way modern China developed itself conceptually. This historical way of thinking constitutes an “imperial-time regime,” which deems unification as normal and takes the morality of each polity as the ultimate standard to judge its position in history. Such an imperial-time regime, the normalization of unification and moralization of time, encompasses discursive changes in the modern era. It is manifested in various historical representations, suggesting that China persistently resists being put into the category of modern nation state. Weaving textual and contextual analysis with critical theories, this study participates in the ongoing debate on China’s past, present, and future within China and the worldwide discussion on redefining empire. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Kun Qian received a B.A. in Economics from Peking University in 1996. She worked at a national bank in Beijing as a financial analyst before moving to the US in 2001 to continue her graduate education at Cornell University. She earned an M.S. in Applied Economics and Management in 2003 and an M.A. in Asian Studies in 2004. She then entered the Ph.D program in East Asian Literature at Cornell University, completing and defending her doctoral dissertation in the summer of 2009. She is joining the faculty of the University of Richmond in the fall of 2009. iii To the memory of my father, Qian Zongjiu (1938-2009) iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This study would not be possible without the inspiration, encouragement, and help from the professors and friends I met at Cornell. I am deeply grateful to Professor Edward Gunn, whose trust, erudition, open-mindedness, and conscientiousness have guided me through the rigorous graduate program and will remain a powerful force to impact my intellectual life. I am also indebted to my other committee members. Professors Timothy Murray and Thomas LaMarre have provided me with crucial intellectual resources and constant encouragement. Their seminars play a critical role in helping me to develop the theoretical framework of my dissertation, and they continually challenge me to expand my intellectual horizons. Professors Bruce Rusk and Petrus Liu have given me valuable advice and I have benefited enormously from their insight and friendship. I owe a great deal to Professor Sherman Cochran for bringing me to the world of Chinese history. His warmth, scholarship, and mentorship are widely celebrated among his students, of whom I will always be one. Many friends have offered me invaluable understanding and support during the critical transitions of my life, from China to the US, and from Economics to Literature. Special thanks go to Duan Hong and Li Minqi for their unwavering friendship and intellectual input from the fields of their specialty: Political Science and Marxist Economics; to Zhang Dongming for the intriguing discussion on Chinese literature; to Soon Keong Ong for lending support during my anxious journey of job searching. This study would not have achieved its current form and scope without financial support from the Sage Fellowship, Starr Fellowship, Lam Family Award for South China Research, and a China Travel Grant from the Cornell University East Asia Program. I greatly appreciate these funding opportunities. v My father passed away in March, 2009, before I defended my dissertation. I always had a complex relationship with my father, who passed on to me his passion and love for literature, yet also discouraged me from pursuing my dream in literature. Our communication was characterized, sometimes, by mutual understanding, inspiration, and joy; at other times, by anger, tears, and guilt. However, I am deeply aware that he was always proud of me. I dedicate this dissertation with love and gratitude to the memory of my father, Qian Zongjiu, whose enthusiasm, optimism, perseverance, and passion for life will continually shed light on my life ahead. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Biographical Sketch ……………………………………………………………….....iii Dedication ……………………………………………………………………………iv Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………. .v List of Figures ………………………………………………………………………viii Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………1 Part I 1. The Imperial-Time Regime: the Eternal Return of the Chinese Empire …………6 Part II 2. Between Empire and Nation State: the Symptomatic and the Paradigmatic ……. .48 3. Staging Empire: Literary Representations of Imperial History (1900-1981) ……..87 Part III Preface: From “the People” to “Tianxia”: the Resurgence of the Empire in Post-Pevolutionary Representation ….139 4. Love or Hate: The First Emperor on Screen ----Three films on the first Emperor Qin Shihuang……………………………..157 5. “Minxin—Tianxia”: Emperors in Contemporary Novels………………………...203 6. Empire plus Family: the Performative Space on the Television Screen………….234 Part IV Preface: Minority Historical Fiction: Alternative History of the Chinese Empire….275 7. Becoming-Minority: Chinese Characteristics in Minority Historical Fiction……287 Epilogue …………………………………………………………………………… 338 Bibliography ……………………………………………………………………….. 339 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figures 4-1—Figure 4-4 Still shots from the film The Emperor’s Shadow …………………171, 172, 176 Figure 4-5—Figure 4-10 Still shots from the film Emperor and Assassin …………………..183, 184, 185 Figure 4-11—Figure 4-14 Still shots from the film Hero ……………………………………..188, 189, 190 Figure 6-1—Figure 6-10 Still shots from the TV series Han Wu da di (The great Emperor Wu of Han) …………………………258, 259, 260, 263, 264, 267, 268 viii INTRODUCTION At the turn of the twenty-first century, narratives and images of past Chinese empires nearly dominated cultural production, coinciding with the intensification of the market economy and worldwide globalization. Intellectuals within China have debated whether this has been a collective psychological reaction against Western economic/ideological dominance to fulfill national pride as manifested in historical glory, or unconscious pursuit of a stable, secure past as a transcendent force of unity against the rapidly changing present to relieve an anxiety of emptiness, or, instead, is a more enduring issue, an ingrained belief in an underlying historical force that transcends this transient historical moment and manifests its enduring power. Although a mix of all three explanations may be at work, this dissertation is devoted to the third and broadest thesis. Literary representations of the Chinese Empire throughout the twentieth century have been imagining time and space of the imperial past to identify China in the momentary flux and uncertain future of the newly discovered world order. These representations, variously manifested in novels, short stories, stage plays, films and television dramas, offer a virtual focus to look at modern Chinese history through their presentations of the imperial past. The two discourses that have dominated twentieth-century China since the Chinese door was forced open to the Western (including Japanese) imperialist aggression are the discourse of modernity and the discourse of the modern nation state. For both of them imperial history has played the role of the “Other” in tension with the Western “Other.” Whereas the desire for modernity requires representing the imperial past as backward and suffocating, the nationalistic sentiment evokes the pride in antiquity and morality of the past Chinese Empire. Such a contradiction in 1 representing the past, therefore, not only manifests the selectivity of contemporary ideological needs, but also reflects the function of the past as a crucial factor in constructing the present, which has been largely overlooked or understated by modern scholars. In studying Chinese history, scholars have made efforts to deconstruct the modern-premodern dichotomy, but the myth persists that the West has played an overwhelmingly dominant role leading to China’s hybrid modernity. They suggest either a “Western impact-China response” model or an “internal demand-external solution” model. By contrast, a “China-centered”