The Early Period of Chinese Literature: the Formation of Its Characteristics

CHAPTER ONE THE EARLY PERIOD OF CHINESE LITERATURE: THE FORMATION OF ITS CHARACTERISTICS Chinese literature goes back to ancient times. For several thousand years, although it has repeatedly assimilated elements from other cultures, it has nevertheless maintained a consistent and continuous process of development, which is a unique phenomenon in the world. As a result, some basic features of Chinese literature in its early formative period (here it refers roughly to the pre-Qin age), which have since exerted an extremely profound and far-reaching influence on its later development, merit our attention. 1. Culture in the Shang and Zhou Period: A Synopsis The earliest characteristics of a literature sprout and grow from the native soil of its culture. The culture of ancient (pre-Qin) China, after a lengthy breeding period, gradually reached maturity during the Shang and Zhou period, particularly the Zhou, when a series of early Chinese classics came into being, setting the direction of future development of Chinese culture, literature included. In remote antiquity, numerous primitive hordes lived scattered on the land which later came to be called the “Central States.” Over a long period of time, these hordes gradually merged into tribes of various sizes, which in turn formed into different alliances, during the process of which the form of the state took shape. In the past, the Yellow River valley was generally considered to be the sole birthplace of Chinese civilization. Modern archaeological excavations, however, have proved that Chinese civilization resulted from the gradual fusion of multiple sources. So far, several thousand sites of Neolithic culture have been discovered in China; they are scattered, like stars in the sky or pieces on a chessboard, across a vast geographical area, without any obvious regional differences between the primary and the secondary in their relationship. For instance, both the Hemudu site, representative of the Yangtze valley culture, and the Yangshao site, representative of the 2 chapter one Yellow River valley culture, have received special attention, and they were more or less contemporaneous, though they in fact belonged to different types of culture. In addition, the former was by no means less advanced than the latter. In the course of the merging of the various cultures in early China, however, the Yellow River valley culture obviously played a dominant role. The so-called Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties were actually no more than northern Chinese tribal alliances in different periods, but the fact that they later came to be regarded as the “orthodox” repre- sentatives of Chinese civilization demonstrates the dominance of the Yellow River valley culture. What, then, accounted for such a kind of result? Our forefathers, who engaged in agricultural production in the Yel- low River valley, lived under extremely harsh living conditions. On the one hand, they had to deal with armed plunder carried out by nomadic tribes from further north; on the other hand, they had to contend with a natural environment far more hostile than that in the south, especially in coping with the erratic flooding of the Yellow River system. Accordingly they felt an urgent need, in their struggle for exis- tence, to gather their dispersed people together into large and power- ful communities. It may be noted here that most of the large-scale wars of ancient times, whether legendary or recorded in authentic his- tory, such as the war between Yan Di and Huang Di and that between Huang Di and Chiyou, the conquest of Jie of Xia by Tang of Shang, the conquest of Zhou of Shang by the Martial King of Zhou, took place in the north. Leaving aside the controversial Xia dynasty, both Shang and Zhou, the earliest Chinese dynasties confirmed by authentic historical records, had their center in the Yellow River valley. At the same time, there engendered all the intellectual thoughts, ritual and ceremonial systems, and cultural institutions, which were used to maintain the ruling order. In Shang and Zhou cultures, the ideology of the state reached maturity far earlier than in other regions. The oracle bone inscriptions, discovered during the late Qing and early Republican period, provide much information about Shang culture. All extant documents in oracle bone script, imbued with primitive beliefs, involve records of divination, toward gods and spirits, on matters of war, sacrificial ceremony, and farming, to ascertain whether these actions would be auspicious or ominous. These documents indi- cate that the Shang people’s faith in the gods of Nature and their wor- ship of the spirits of their ancestors gradually blended into one, while .

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