Liberal Cosmopolitan Ideas, History, and Modern China

Liberal Cosmopolitan Ideas, History, and Modern China Edited by Ban Wang, Stanford University Wang Hui, Tsinghua University Geremie Barmé, Australian National University VOLUME 3 Liberal Cosmopolitan Lin Yutang and Middling Chinese Modernity By Qian Suoqiao（钱锁桥） LEIDEN • BOSTON 2011 This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Qian, Suoqiao. Liberal cosmopolitan : Lin Yutang and middling Chinese modernity / Qian Suoqiao. p. cm. — (Ideas, history, and modern China, ISSN 1875-9394 ; v. 3) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-19213-3 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Lin, Yutang, 1895–1976—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Lin, Yutang, 1895–1976—Political and social views. 3. Cosmopolitanism—China—History. 4. China—Intellectual life—20th century. I. Title. II. Series. PL2781.N2Z815 2010 895.1’85109—dc22 2010033348 ISSN 1875-9394 ISBN 978 90 04 19213 3 © Copyright 2011 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. To my daughter Qian Simei Emily CONTENTS Acknowledgments ........................................................................ ix Chapter One Introduction: Re-Discovering Lin Yutang in the Post-Mao Era ........................................................................... 1 Chapter Two Chinese Modernity: Nationalism, Imperialism, and the Liberal Cosmopolitan Alternative ............................. 23 Chapter Three Enlightenment and National Salvation: The Politics of a Liberal Nationalist ....................................... 63 Chapter Four “Little Critic:” “Returned” Professionals and the Cosmopolitan Modern ...................................................... 95 Chapter Five A Cross-Cultural Aesthetics of Life: Translating “Xingling” into “Self-Expression,” “Xianshi” into “Leisure,” and “Humor” into “Youmo” ......................... 127 Chapter Six Oriental Other: The Business of Translating Chinese and American Cultures ............................................. 161 Chapter Seven Cosmopolitan Difference: Critique of Imperialism and Debating “Chinahands” .............................. 197 Chapter Eight Conclusion: What a Liberal Cosmopolitan Alternative Means for Contemporary Chinese Intellectual Dilemma .................................................................................. 231 Appendix Chronology of Lin Yutang ...................................... 241 Works Cited ................................................................................. 253 Character List .............................................................................. 265 Index ............................................................................................ 269 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank the individual and institutional support that has accompanied this long and arduous intellectual journey that results in this current book. The first ideas of the book originated in my graduate study years at UC Berkeley, and I want to thank first of all Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow who helped me to launch my intellectual pursuit at Berkeley in 1990 and whose teaching in contemporary West- ern theory and thought prepared me to seek for an alternative route in modern Chinese intellectuality. I would like to thank the late William Nestrick who passed away shortly after signing my dissertation. My sincere thanks go to Lydia H. Liu who graciously served as my thesis advisor and whose teaching in modern Chinese literature and culture has benefited me a great deal. My deep gratitude is owed to Wen-hsin Yeh whose generous support over these years has been a great source of encouragement. I would also like to thank Yu Maochun, Guo Qitao, Andrea Goldman, my fellow graduate students at Berkeley at the time—it was among our free, sometimes endless, sometimes heated, conversations and debates on China that my thoughts grew. When I moved to New York in 1997 as a Mellon Fellow at Barnard College, I was warmly received by Irene Bloom who took personal interest and care in my project and would show me newspaper clippings related to Lin Yutang’s activities in New York. I am particularly grateful to Xiao-huang Yin who first alerted me to the existence of John Day Company files located at Princeton University library, and from there my project took on an entirely new dimension. In New York, I also met Diran John Sohigian whose biographical study on Lin Yutang was pioneering work in the field, and our common interest in Lin Yutang led to many pleasant conversations. At City University of Hong Kong, I am grateful to Zhang Longxi who offered me valuable opportunities to present my work in progress at the Center for Cross-Cultural Studies under his directorship. A draft of Chapter Six was also presented at a seminar organized by the Center for Translation at the Hong Kong Baptist University and I am grateful for the comments and responses from the participants. Moreover, I want to thank Kirk A. Denton and Michel Hockx for urging me to write an essay on Lin Yutang and the Lunyu school, which has become Chapter Four in this book and for x acknowledgments which they have offered extensive comments and valuable suggestions. I also want to thank Charles Hayford for urging me to write an essay on Lin Yutang and American “Chinahands” in the 1940s in an AAS panel, which has now been included in Chapter Seven in this book and I have benefited a lot from his insights on this issue. And I would like to thank Sheldon Xiao-peng Lu for kindly reading the first draft of this manuscript and offering many helpful suggestions. Last but not the least, my thanks to the anonymous reviewer who gave me many insightful comments and suggestions that helped me to revise the manuscript into a much better shape. Over the years, I have benefited greatly from research facilities across the Pacific, from US institutions such as Berkeley, Columbia, Princeton, Harvard, as well as universities in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mainland China. I would like to thank especially the excellent profes- sional service of library staff at UC Berkeley, Columbia University and City University of Hong Kong. I have particularly benefited from the John Day Company papers deposited in the special collection section of Princeton University library. And I have also visited three times Dr. Lin Yutang House in Taipei, Taiwan, to utilize many first-hand archival materials there and my special thanks to the warm reception by Tsai Chia-fang and other staff there. Finally, this book will not be possible without the support of the following two fellowships: the Mellon Fel- lowship at Barnard College from 1997–1999 gave me valuable time and resources to re-orient my dissertation into a book project, and the final manuscript was completed when I was a Fulbright visiting scholar from Hong Kong at Harvard University in 2009. Parts of Chapter Three and Chapter Six on Pearl S. Buck has been included in an article entitled—“Pearl S. Buck/賽珍珠 As Cosmopolitan Critic,” published in Comparative American Studies: An International Journal 3:2 (2005) (153–172) (Maney Publishing, http://www.maney.co.uk/ journals/cas), one section of Chapter Five in a revised form has been included in an article entitled—“Translating ‘Humor’ Into Chinese Culture,” published in Humor-International Journal of Humor Research 20:3 (2007) (277–296) (Walter de Gruyter, full article available at http://www .reference-global.com). Part of Chapter Eight will also appear as the article: “Representing China: Lin Yutang vs. American ‘China Hands’ in the 1940s” in an issue of Journal of American-East Asian Relations. My thanks to these three journals for allowing me to reprint the relevant essays in this book. CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION: RE-DISCOVERING LIN YUTANG IN THE POST-MAO ERA Lin Yutang (1895–1976) was a most significant, yet now almost for- gotten, cosmopolitan intellectual whose literary and cultural practices had traveled across China and America in the twentieth century. After Lin’s The Importance of Living topped the US national bestseller list for the year of 1938, Lin established himself as the authoritative modern Chinese intellectual for the American public for much of the 20th century. Due to his liberal and anti-communist stance, Lin’s name was banned in Mao’s China for several decades, but post-Mao China has seen a revival of interest in Lin Yutang’s works. This book is not a biographical study of Lin Yutang’s life and works.1 Rather, it is a cross-cultural critique on the problematic of the liberal cosmopolitan in modern Chinese intellectuality in light of Lin Yutang’s literary and cultural practices across China and America, situated in the context of Chinese modernity and examined in comparative reference to other discourses of major literary and intellectual figures in modern China, particularly those of Zhang Zhidong , Liang Qichao , Gu Hongming , Hu Shi , Lu Xun , Zhou Zuoren , Pearl S. Buck , Agnes Smedley

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