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Intellectuals in Chinese Fiction A publication of the Institute of East Asian Studies University of California Berkeley, California 94720 The China Research Monograph series, whose first title appeared in 1967, is one of several publications series sponsored by the Institute of East Asian Studies in conjunction with its constituent units. The others include the Japan Research Monograph series, the Korea Research Monograph series, the Indochina Research Monograph series, and the Research Papers and Pol icy Studies series. The Institute sponsors also a Faculty Reprint series. Correspondence may be sent to: Ms. Joanne Sandstrom, Editor Institute of East Asian Studies University of California Berkeley, California 94720 CHINA RESEARCH MONOGRAPH 33 & INSTITUTE OF EAST ASIAN STUDIES UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA • BERKELEY CCS CENTER FOR CHINESE STUDIES Intellectuals in Chinese Fiction YUE DAIYUN Although the Institute of East Asian Studies is responsible for the selection and acceptance of manuscripts in this series, responsibility for the opinions expressed and for the accuracy ofstatements rests with their authors. Copyright © 1988 by the Regents of the University of California ISBN 0-912966-97-1 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 87-82667 Printed in the United States of America All rights reserved. Contents Foreword vii Joyce K. Kallgren Acknowledgments viii Introduction 1 1. The First Anecdotal Collection Describing the Lives of Intellectuals: A New Account of Tales of the World 8 2. Intellectuals at an Impasse and the Collapse of Feudal Society: Six Chapters of a Floating Life 38 3. Modem Chinese Intellectuals in Modem Chinese Literature: The Eclipse and Rainbow of Mao Dun 57 4. The Young Intelligentsia in the War Years: Lu Ling's Children of the Rich 83 5. Chinese Intellectuals of the 1950s as Seen in Wang Meng's Bu li 108 Postscript: The Man—or Woman—of Letters as Hero 134 Cyril Birch Foreword Yue Daiyun is Professor of Modem Chinese Literature in Peking University. For the period 1982-1984 she took leave of absence to work at Berkeley as Research Linguist in the Center for Chinese Stu dies. She brought with her a comprehensive knowledge of Chinese fiction and a critical approach in which Marxist/sociological method ologies loomed large. During hertime at Berkeley she wasimpressed by the fmitfulness of some recent Western studies of the art of fiction, in particular the ways in which analysis of the narrator's function led to deeper understanding of the relationship among au thor, world, text, and audience. She embarked on a study of the Chinese intellectual in the modes of his self-portrayal in fiction through successive historical stages. This book is the result of her study. After soundings in the fifth and eighteenth centuries she provides searching account of three focal writers of our own time. Professor Yue's involvement in the adventurous life of the Chinese intellectual is vividly narrated in her book To the Storm (with Carolyn Wakeman). With the present monograph she completes a prolonged meditation on the intellectual's relationship with self and society. The manuscript of this book was expertly translated from Chinese into English by Deborah Rudolph and Yeh Wen-hsing to whom thanks are due. The Center for Chinese Studies has shifted the pub lication of its series "Studies in Chinese Terminology," supervised by the Current Chinese Language Project, into the ongoing China Research Monograph series. JOYCE K. KALLGREN Associate Director Institute of East Asian Studies vn Acknowledgments While writing this book I received a great deal of assistance from Professors John Jamieson and Frederic Wakeman. I am particularly indebted to Professor Cyril Birch, who read every page of the original draft with meticulous care and offered a number of valuable sugges tions, and to Dr. Carolyn Wakeman, who offered much concrete ad vice concerning structure and organization. I would also like to thank Professor James D. Wilkinson of Harvard and Professor Vera Schwarcz of Wesleyan University who read sections of the manuscript and gave me the benefit of their opinions. Finally, I would like to express my very deep gratitude to Professor Joyce Kallgren, chair of the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and Professor Lowell Dittmer, former chair, for the support they have provided. And for their hard work I thank the translators, Yeh Wen-hsing and Deborah Rudolph. Without the aid and support of these friends and colleagues, this work could not have been completed. vui Introduction While novels are not meant to be complete records of historical fact, they do contain a wealth of sociological data. For a novel presents to us not only the world it seeks to portray; it presents us as well the ideals of its author, his valuations, and his goals. Its reflections of society as it is or was, of course, are inevitably one sided, even distorted. But such misrepresentation can aid us in understanding the forms of a previous generation's prejudices, its at titude toward life, its moral constraints, and its distinctive philoso phies. The information to be found in fiction—particularly fiction written under the circumstances in which free and unrestricted ex pression was not possible—becomes even more valuable and gains in authenticity. In China, the eras of free expression of thought have not been numerous. Invariably, the authors of novels of merit are men who have been thwarted in politics and frustrated in life. In researching Chinese social history, therefore, we may discover in fiction new layers of information not uncovered in other sources. The five novels under discussion here—Shi shuo xin yu (A new account of tales of the world), written by Liu Yiqing in the years 433-444; Fu sheng liu ji (Six chapters of a floating life), written by Shen Fu in the early years of the nineteenth century; Hong (Rain bow), written by Mao Dun in the years 1927-1928; Caizhu de ernumen (Children of the rich), written by Lu Ling in the years 1943-1944; and Bu li (Bolshevik greetings), written by Wang Meng in the years 1978-1979—span a considerable period and are unlike in the persons and societies they depict. Yet there are many common points and themes among them. First, the authors of these works are all members of the intelli gentsia and of a particular stamp: they are men who have lived lives of chaos and upset, who are dissatisfied with the realities of life around them, who hope, through their writing, to probe that life. Chapter 51 of the Song shu (Documents of the Song) tells us that liu Yiqing, "finding that the roads and ways of the world had become difficult and that he could no longer straddle a horse [i.e., pursue an official career], summoned the masters of literature, and without fail, Intellectuals in Chinese Fiction from far and near, they came to him"—and A New Account of Tales of the World was compiled. After suffering various setbacks in family life and in society Shen Fu recollected his past in Six Chapters of a Floating Life. In Rainbow, an account of the failure of the Northern Expedition of 1926-1927, Mao Dun dispels his own profound senti ments and energetically explores the boundaries of the new road. In Children of the Rich, Lu Ling portrays his own predicament in the na tional crisis of the Japanese War of Resistance as well as the bitter struggle between the Nationalist Party, whose reactionary rule had disillusioned him, and the Communist Party, which he opposed, dissatisfied and doubtful. In Bolshevik Greetings, Wang Meng ponders his twenty years of oppression as a member of the lowest stratum of society, a Rightist. Next, the intellectual protagonists of the works are, all of them, in different stages of life. Their passion for life consequently is at different levels. Yet if we look carefully we will find certain com monalities of spirit and mind. These commonalities are best ex pressed in their maxims "resisting position (wei) with virtue (de)" and "resisting decorum (li) with emotion (qing)" and, in some cases, their sensibility to Western culture. The Mencius tells us, "In point of position, you are the prince and I am your subject. How dare I be friends with you? In point of vir tue, it is you who ought to serve me. How can you presume to be friends with me?"1 "Position" refers to political status, power, might (shi). "Virtue" refers to ideals, principles, the proper way (tao). Resistance, in the proper way, to rituals or decorum and to the nobil ity is a valued tradition of the Chinese intelligentsia. The Mencius tells us that the intelligentsia "delighted in the way, forgetting the ex alted position of others. That is why kings and dukes could not get to see them often except by showing them due respect and observing due courtesy. If just to see them often was so difficult, how much more so to induce them to take office."2 Many anecdotes in A New Account of Tales of the World describe the abrasive haughtiness displayed toward nobles and aristocrats by the intellectuals in accordance with their own proper way. The au thor and protagonist of Six Chapters of a Floating Life, while not equal to the famous scholars of the Wei-Jin period in their supercilious 1 Mengzi 5B:7; trans. D.C. Lau in Mencius (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1976), p. 157. 2 Mengzi 7A:8; Lau, p. 183. Introduction aloofness, still stipulates that among himself and his friends there will be absolutely no talk of people's official promotions, lawsuits and current affairs, or the conventional eight-legged essay. This is another example of resistance, albeit passive resistance, to those in positions of power and influence.

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