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

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 professional 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 forgotten, 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 and Edgar Snow . While relevant to contemporary Western critical concerns over cosmopolitanism, my study re-orients the issue in the context of Chinese modernity in terms of Chinese intellectual interaction with the world. In the September 13, 1930 issue of The China Critic, an English- language weekly published in China, there appeared a “Proposal for a Liberal Cosmopolitan Club in Shanghai,” in which a group of West- ern-educated Chinese intellectuals called for Chinese and foreigners to form “a club of men who are citizens of the world who can think,

1 A full biographical study of Lin Yutang’s life and works is my next project. For current biographical work on Lin Yutang, see Lin Taiyi, Lin Yutang zhuan (Biography of Lin Yutang); and Diran John Sohigian, “The Life and Times of Lin Yutang,” both offering useful biographical information about Lin Yutang but falling short of giving a complete and balanced picture. 2 chapter one or are willing to make an effort to think, over and above the merely nationalistic lines.”2 At a talk given at the Liberal Cosmopolitan Club in March, 1931, entitled “What Liberalism Means,” Lin Yutang identified liberalism as essentially an attitude of mind that embraces cosmopolitanism, that is, one-world-ness brought about by modern technological innovations such as the radio, the plane, the automobile and the television. Even though liberalism is “offensive, degrading and unpatriotic,” since race prejudices are much more popular, natural and patriotic, Lin contends, it is urgent for us to develop a modern intellectual attitude that corresponds to the modern world we live in where “foreign devils” are right next door.3 Lin Yutang’s own literary practices across China and America in much of the twentieth-century can be seen as exemplifying and prob- lematizing such an intellectual disposition. Born to a Chinese Chris- tian family in a mountain village in Fujian province, Lin Yutang went to St. John’s College, an Episcopalian missionary school in Shanghai, earned his MA in Comparative Literature at Harvard University, and obtained his doctoral degree in Philology from Leipzig University, Germany, in 1923. Lin’s first publication was in English, and in 1930, he started the “Little Critic” column in The China Critic. He was first well-known in Chinese literary world as a leader of the Lunyu (Ana- lects) literary school in the 1930s, responsible for launching a series of very popular literary periodicals. Hailed as “Master of Humor ,” Lin was seen in China as an exemplary Westernized modern Chinese intellectual introducing such Western cultural dispositions as “humor” into Chinese culture. After he came to the US in 1936, however, Lin was most widely known as a “Chinese philosopher ” interpreting Chi- nese cultural wisdom to the American public at large. With a series of bestsellers in English such as My Country and My People , The Impor- tance of Living, The Wisdom of China and India, Lin became an influential public figure in America outspoken on cultural and political issues related to China and Asia in the 1930s and 1940s. Self-fashioned as a kind of world citizen, Lin established himself as an internationally renowned writer/intellectual in the 20th century world of letters. His bilingual writings and cross-cultural practices have left a formidable

2 “Proposal for a Liberal Cosmopolitan Club in Shanghai,” The China Critic, (Sep- tember 13, 1930): 1085. 3 Lin Yutang, “What Liberalism Means,” The China Critic, (March 12, 1931): 251–253. introduction 3 liberal cosmopolitan legacy in the modern Chinese intellectual realm and beyond. But such liberal cosmopolitan legacy has largely been overshadowed by the twists and turns of cultural politics in modern China. This book represents, in a sense, an effort to recover such an intellectual legacy, reflecting at the same time my own intellectual journey growing up in post-Mao China and later in America in the 1990s. My chief argument is that, seen from the perspective of the modern Chinese intellectual context, Lin Yutang’s literary practices demonstrate that a liberal cosmopolitan road that suggests a middling Chinese modernity, an alternative to the mainstream narratives of nationalism and revolutionary radicalism, is both possible and desirable, although when encountered in the diaspora on a global stage, modern Chinese liberal cosmopolitanism is still conditioned by the power of imperialism as shown through Lin Yutang’s cultural practices in America. A critical inquiry into the liberal cosmopolitan problematic in Chi- nese modernity by focusing on Lin Yutang’s literary practices pre- sumes the pre-eminence of Lin Yutang as a cosmopolitan intellectual in modern China. Modern Chinese intellectuals were predominantly cosmopolitan, as most of them had studying-abroad experience and many were fluent in one or more foreign languages.4 Many prominent modern Chinese writers were simultaneously translators themselves, and translation was indeed a defining element in Chinese modernity so that it is aptly called a “translated modernity,” in Lydia Liu’s term.5 At his time, Lin Yutang was well-known for his English-language excellence and regarded as an exemplary figure among Westernized modern Chinese intellectuals. Lin was perhaps the only one among noted modern Chinese writers/intellectuals whose first creative piece of literature was written in English, and was one of the very few who produced bilingual works in English and Chinese.6 More significantly, almost all the cosmopolitan endeavor by modern Chinese writers/ intellectuals was devoted to introducing and translating Western culture to China, and in that realm Lin Yutang was instrumental in translating and bringing into modern Chinese culture the notion of

4 Shuang Shen has recently done pioneer work on the group of Anglophone modern Chinese intellectuals. See Shuang Shen, Cosmopolitan Publics. 5 See Lydia H. Liu, Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity, China 1900–1937. 6 The other noted modern Chinese writer with bilingual works was Zhang Ailing. For a collection of Lin Yutang’s bilingual works, see Qian Suoqiao ed. Selected Bilingual Essays of Lin Yutang. 4 chapter one

“humor” and thus establishing the “Analects school” in modern Chi- nese literary scene. But that only constitutes part of Lin Yutang’s cosmopolitan practice. What makes Lin Yutang stands alone compared to other modern Chinese intellectuals was the fact that Lin devoted the majority of his cosmopolitan endeavor in translating Chinese culture to the West and producing volumes of writings in English during his almost thirty-year residency in America. Lin’s lived experience in and direct political and cultural engagement with the West constitute a unique cosmopolitan experience that makes an ideal and indispens- able example par excellence for the liberal cosmopolitan problematic in Chinese modernity. A liberal cosmopolitan inquiry focusing on Lin Yutang’s literary practices is at the same time a personal intellectual search on my part. Born to Mao’s Red China and growing up in the 1980s Reform Era, I never heard of the name Lin Yutang during my middle school and college education, as Lin was deemed as “anti-revolutionary” and his name was virtually “written off” in modern Chinese intellectual history. Chinese intellectual discourses, whether during Mao’s era or Deng’s era or even today, unquestionably focus on Lu Xun—Lu Xun the revolutionary, Lu Xun the not-so-revolutionary, Lu Xun the national soul, Lu Xun the modernist, Lu Xun the thinker, Lu Xun the relentless critic, etc. etc. When his name began to re-emerge in late 1980s China, it was such a curiosity to me, and when I later read his English works from the Berkeley library, I realized what I had missed under the Communist education. In that sense, my interest in Lin Yutang’s literary practices parallels my intellectual unlearning and inquiry into Chinese modernity to arrive at a truer picture of what happened to modern China in which I was brought up a deformed product. Hence, in the next section by way of introduction, I will ﬁrst discuss the “re-birth” of Lin Yutang in the 1980s China during the decade of reform and opening up, in which Chinese intellectual discourses began to shake off the Maoist dogma and re-introduce and translate all kinds of Western discourses to China. The rediscovery of Lin Yutang very much occupied a central stage in the reform discourses in the 1980s and it was under such reform discourses my own intellectual development began. My study on alternative Chinese modernity in light of Lin Yutang’s literary and cultural practices follows in a sense the cross-cultural cosmopolitan approach put forward in the 1980s “cultural zeal ” environment, but at the same time attempts to go beyond the limitations of the 1980s intellectual discourses. introduction 5

The next chapter will examine the background of Chinese modernity and its rationale for a liberal cosmopolitan alternative, while the ensuing chapters will explore in detail different aspects of the liberal cosmopolitan problematic following the contour of Lin Yutang’s literary practices in China and America. Chapters Three and Four are based on Lin’s literary practices in the context of modern China, Chapters Six and Seven in the diasporic context in America, while Chapter Five across China and America. Chapter Five examines the cultural aesthetic dimension of cosmopolitanism in terms of Lin’s cross-cultural translation of Chinese and Western aesthetic ideals. Chapters Four and Six can be seen comparatively as they focus on issues of self and identity in the modern Chinese and diasporic contexts, while Chapters Three and Seven deal with Lin’s politics in the modern Chinese and global stages. The concluding chapter will reflect upon the relevance of Lin Yutang’s literary and cultural practices in contemporary Chi- nese intellectual debates. In Chapter Two—Chinese Modernity: Nationalism, Imperialism, and the Liberal Cosmopolitan Alternative, I will situate Lin Yutang’s liberal cosmopolitan alternative in the context of Chinese modernity. While issues of alternative modernities and cosmopolitanism are of current interest in Western cultural discourses, I must spell out at the beginning that the liberal cosmopolitan issue I am concerned with stems from the modern Chinese context, from which the meaning of such notions as nationalism, cosmopolitanism, imperialism and modernity must be understood. It is the contention between nationalism and cosmopolitanism as engendered by imperialism that characterizes Chinese modernity. I will look at the transition from the universalist consciousness of “tianxia ” (all under Heaven) central to traditional Chinese worldview to the rise of the national self-consciousness from Lin Zexu to Zhang Zhidong, and analyze the latent nationalist discourse of Zhang Zhidong’s cultural strategy of “zhongti xiyong,” as well as the explicit nationalist subject-formation in Liang Qichao’s “New Citizen .” On the other hand, an examination of the pioneering discourse of critical cosmopolitanism by Gu Hongming will help foreground our search for the liberal cosmopolitan alternative in Chi- nese modernity. I will argue that in the increasing radicalism of the New Culturalist discourses, Chinese modernity found a Nietzschean/ Hegelian “subjet” as fashioned by Lu Xun, but it was a doubly negative subject based on radical iconoclasm and relentless self-critique. What Lin Yutang’s literary and cultural practices had opened up was 6 chapter one an alternative middling Chinese modernity, somewhat closer to Zhou Zuoren’s approaches, in which a more confident cosmopolitan critic seeks for a more balanced and tolerant approach towards the modern Chinese condition. Chapter Three—Enlightenment and National Salvation: The Poli- tics of a Liberal Nationalist—looks into the controversies surrounding Lin’s political engagement in the social milieu of modern China. The extremely complicated and shifting positions Lin carved out for his socio-political critique in Republican China were welcome to neither the Right nor the Left, neither the progressive nor the conservative. I will argue that Lin’s politics must be seen in the liberal cosmopolitan light in that it involves a fundamental tension between a liberal intellectual’s insistence upon individual freedom and integrity and the nationalist claim on nation-building. Born and raised in modern China, Lin Yutang shared the same nationalist impulses with most Chinese intellectuals. To be a cosmopolitan does not mean to be anti- nationalist, especially in the third-world context. What Lin opposes is that “saving the nation” has become a “speaker’s benefit” where intellectual autonomy and integrity are in great danger. By examining the different political orientations of Lu Xun and Lin Yutang, as well as the different responses to the works of Pearl S. Buck, I will show that Lin’s “de-political disposition ” differs from both the Right and the Left who are actually competing for the “speaker’s benefits” on nationalist claims, while Lin’s is precisely intended to bracket the overwhelming claims of the nation-state. In Chapter Four—“Little Critic:” “Returned” Professionals and the Cosmopolitan Modern , I will engage in a socio-cultural reading of the “Lunyu phenomenon” and probe into the self-identification of Lin Yutang and the Lunyu group through their bilingual writings. Lin became first well-known in China by launching and editing the literary periodical Lunyu (Analects). Associated with Lin’s series of journals both in Chi- nese and English, there gathered at that time in Shanghai a group of Western-educated bilingual professional intellectuals who formed the so- called “Analects School.” By looking into their educational background and social identity, I will show their literary and cultural practices fashioned a new modern ethos in Shanghai—a distinctive cosmopolitan attitude or sensibility that was suggestive of a certain middling alternative modernity, attractive and desirable for a readership that was experiencing the anxieties of rapid social modernization. introduction 7

Having bracketed the claims of the nation-state, the cultural-aesthetic dimension of cosmopolitanism comes to the fore, which will be the focus of discussion in Chapter Five—A Cross-Cultural Aesthetics of Life: Translating “Xingling” into “Self-Expression,” “Xianshi” into “Leisure,” and “Humor” into “Youmo.” While Lin’s cosmopolitan politics brought him controversy and criticism whether in China or in America, it was his unique type of aesthetics out of a particular cross-cultural fusion that won him popularity and fame both in China and in America. In this chapter, I will interpret Lin Yutang’s literary and cultural discourses and practices surrounding his translating “xingling” into “self-expression,” “xianshi” into “leisure” and humor into “youmo,” which constitute a distinct aesthetics of life through his cross-cultural mediation and appropriation of traditional Chinese and modern Western cultures. The basic theoretical formulations for such an aesthetic attitude was ﬁrst worked out in the cross-cultural context of modern China. When the directions of the cosmopolitan New Culture Movement were at a crossroads, Lin Yutang believed that a “leisurely” humorous attitude in the spirit of reasonableness based on free expression of individuality would be a good sign for the maturity of modern Chinese culture. Lin’s aesthetics was quite attractive to the emerging urban reading public in modern China, but it did not win much applause from the elite intellectual class obsessed with the “salvation of the nation.” However, when such aesthetics was articulated and re-oriented towards the American audience, it won Lin Yutang the crown title of a wise “Chinese philosopher” from both the elite and the public. I will discuss the different implications of the American reception of Lin Yutang’s philosophy of life in Chapter Six—Oriental Other: The Business of Translating Chinese and American Cultures. During a major part of the twentieth century, to the Western world and the world at large, the most well-known Chinese writer/intellectual was Lin Yutang. In a sense, Lin’s success was a powerful attestation to the cosmopolitan triumph. Few seem to disagree that Lin’s greatest contribution lies in his introduction and translation of Chinese culture to the world. But I will argue that Lin’s literary practices during his American years offer a most interesting case for cross-cultural study as they raise many questions which must be addressed in the historical context of Chinese-American cross-cultural interpenetration. To travel from a cosmopolitan writer in Shanghai to a cosmopolitan writer in 8 chapter one

New York, is that path as smooth as it appears? What kind of role does a Chinese cosmopolitan assume, once transplanted to the West- ern world, in translating his native culture? What is the mode and strategy of such cross-cultural translation and what are the effects to the target culture? Aided by unpublished correspondences between Lin and his publisher/friend Richard Walsh , I will examine the strategy and effects of Lin Yutang’s cross-cultural translation of Chinese culture (as well as American culture) in relation to the problem of the cosmopolitan identity he assumed as the cross-cultural agent. What is also highlighted in the unpublished correspondences between Lin and Walsh is the fact that Lin was far from being a mere cultured world citizen removed from worldly politics, as purported as such by his bestsellers, but rather engaged, even ﬁercely, in the world politics especially involving China during the wartime 1940s. Lin’s enthusiasm in world politics is quite a contrast to his de-political stance towards national politics in the 1930s China. Now living in diaspora and writing for the American audience, his political enthusiasm was also aroused and rejuvenated. Chapter Seven will discuss the two critical engagement of Lin’s wartime political passion: Lin’s critique of Western imperialism on the one hand and his defense of liberal principles in terms of American representation of China on the other. Just like in the 1930s when Lin’s de-national and de-political attitude brought him criticism from both the Left and the Right in China, his cosmopolitan politics in the 1940s caught him in between again, except that this time his critical opponents are the Right and the Left in America. In Chapter Seven—Cosmopolitan Difference: Critique of Imperialism and Debating “Chinahands,” I will ﬁrst discuss Lin’s critique of imperialism, and then examine the debate between Lin and a group of contemporary American “Chinahands ,” including Edgar Snow, Agnes Smedley, Owen Lattimore and John King Fairbank, in their representing China. Lin’s critique of Western imperialist and colonial mentality on the one hand (surprise to many who thought a congenial and polite “philosopher” had lost his temper) and his even sharper critique of American liberal progressive “Chinahands” (what Lin called “parlor liberals ”) forsaking liberal principles in regards to the fate of modern China on the other, apparently demonstrate a typical tension of Chinese-American liberal cosmopolitan practices. Finally, in Chapter Eight—Conclusion: What a Liberal Cosmo- politan Alternative Means for Contemporary Chinese Intellectual introduction 9

Dilemma, I will discuss the contemporary relevance of Lin Yutang’s liberal cosmopolitan road for Chinese modernity. While the re-discovery of Lin Yutang was an important part of the cultural re-awakening in the 1980s, my reading of Lin’s cross-cultural politics across China and America will reveal more acute relevance of Lin’s literary practices to the intellectual dilemma in China today. As contemporary Chinese intellectual world is divided along three lines of thought—Neo-Confucianism , Liberalism and the New Left , a liberal cosmopolitan alternative in light of Lin Yutang’s literary and cultural practices can shed light upon the possibility of the fusion of all these three trends. Lin Yutang was in fact a forerunner of Neo-Confucianism, and creative transformation of Confu- cian (as well as Taoist) cultural resources, especially in face of Western technological modernity, was an important part of his liberal cosmopolitan endeavor and will have lasting relevance in today’s China. More interestingly, perhaps, my critical reﬂection of Lin Yutang’s literary and cultural practices may still point to a middle ground for the deep schism between liberal intellectuals and New Leftists today, by recognizing the prominence of global imperialism and market commercialism (a New Leftist emphasis) while insisting upon the liberal cosmopolitan principles of individual integrity and rights (a liberal requisite), as demonstrated and revealed in Lin Yutang’s cross-cultural practices in much of the twentieth century.

Opening Up in an “Iron House”

Along with the end of the Cultural Revolution and the ushering in of the Reform Era in the late 1970s, 1980s China saw an exciting cultural revival characterized by daring liberal challenge to the authoritarian ideology of the state and unabashed cosmopolitan embrace of Western philosophy and thought. To better appreciate the achieve- ments as well as the limitations of the 1980s cultural revival in China, however, it is crucial to remind us of the socio-political context immediately preceding and still overshadowing the 1980s. For the year 1949 was a significant watershed event. It not only marked the political takeover of the Chinese Communist Party and the consequent establishment of the Party state, but also signified an abrupt and violent re-ordering of “knowledge structure ” that cut off divergent and competing modernity discourses in China and set up the Marxist ideology 10 chapter one as the unquestionable orthodoxy.7 The institutional establishment of “Marxism Only” in 1949 ostensibly completed the “total Westerniza- tion” project in Chinese modernity on the one hand and successfully imposed the Marxist ideology and historical model of modernization. Such superimposed epistemic change was extensive and far-reaching, and would eventually have a lasting effect upon the 1980s generation of intellectuals who grew up in the Cultural Revolution. Due to successive campaigns to purify intellectual mind, all disciplines of knowledge have been streamlined to conform to the Marxist ideology in Mao’s China. Literature stands at the forefront of Marxist ideological purification and the writing of modern Chinese literary history was institutionalized to strictly conform to the ideological dogma laid out in Mao’s Yan’an Talks.8 The treatment of Lin Yutang was a revealing example. In mainland China after 1949, the name of Lin Yutang was a political taboo. Lin Yutang and his literary activities were hardly mentioned in modern Chinese literary studies as if they never existed. The first volume of Wang Yao’s Zhongguo xinwenxue shigao (A Draft History of New Chinese Literature), for instance, first published in 1951, already set the tone for positioning Lin Yutang. It gave Lin Yutang a minimal 2-page treatment including two long quotes by Lu Xun in the section entitled “Ideological Struggles” within the period called “The Decade Under the League of Left-Wing Writers.” Lin Yutang was here regarded as one of the targets in three major ideological struggles launched by the Leftist camp led by Lu Xun, and his “familiar-style essays” were dismissed by Lu Xun as “little ornaments” having an objective social effect of anesthesia.9 Under Maoist ideology, Lin Yutang received a clear-cut political label: he was a “reactionary

7 I borrow here the term “knowledge structure” from A Cheng in his reflection on the cultural environment of the 1980s China. For Chinese youth growing up in the post-1949 Mao Era, their “knowledge” and worldviews were very much conditioned and “structured” by ideological and institutional constraints imposed by the totalitarian regime. See Zha Jianying ed., Bashi niandai: fangtanlu (The 1980s: Interviews), pp. 15–65. Also Cf. Michel Foucault’s notion of “epistemic change” in The Archaeology of Knowledge. All translations in this book are mine, unless otherwise noted. 8 For a discussion of the institutionalization of the writing of modern Chinese literary history, see Yingjing Zhang, “The Institutionalization of Modern Literary History in China, 1922–1980,” Modern China, 20, No. 3 ( Jul., 1994): 347–377. See also Bon- nie S. McDougall, Mao Zedong’s “Talks at the Yan’an Conference on Literature and Art:” A Translation of the 1943 Text with Commentary. 9 See Wang Yao, Zhongguo xinwenxue shigao (A Draft History of New Chinese Lit- erature), pp. 166–167. introduction 11 comprador bourgeois writer,” his “Analects school” was a “reactionary literary school,” and his journals were “reactionary literary journals.” In the “Iron House ” constructed under Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought, Lin Yutang’s name became virtually non-existent to the generation growing up with such “knowledge structure,” when his trace as a modern writer could only be found in the official footnotes to The Complete Works of Lu Xun. By the late 1970s, China’s political environment began to change— Mao’s Cultural Revolution was succeeded by Deng’s Reform Era when the strict state ideological control began to loosen up. The 1980s not only saw the beginning of an era of economic and political reform whereby the Party state tried to sustain itself by dealing with the devastating consequences of the Cultural Revolution, but more importantly, the 1980s was characterized by a cultural re-awakening in which the ironclad ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought was under critical challenge and consequently the entire “knowledge structure” constructed after 1949 began to break up. In appearance, the intellectual environment looked as if it were a re-visiting of the New Culture and May Fourth Movement when Chinese intellectuals actively pursued “new knowledge,” namely, a plethora of intellectual discourses introduced and translated from the West. Just like the May Fourth period, for instance, translation of Western philosophical, literary and cultural works was the major intellectual enterprise of the 1980s. On a closer look, however, the intellectual discourse of the 1980s was very much conditioned by its political and epistemological limitations. In other words, it was both promising in its open and receptive attitude toward new horizons of possibility and limiting in its scope and maturity as characteristic of the immediate legacy of the totalitarian grip of the past three decades. The re-discovery of Lin Yutang in the 1980s was a good case in point. As the fact that Lin Yutang’s name disappeared in modern Chinese literary and intellectual history was quite emblematic of the ideological bias of the Mao Era, a re-discovering of Lin Yutang in modern Chinese literary history became somewhat a breakthrough event along with a general re-evaluation and rectification of the past era in the 1980s. A group of literary critics began to notice the obvious gap and intended to revise the stereotypical ideological label on Lin Yutang as the “reactionary writer.” It has taken strenuous efforts on the part of some revisionist critics in the 1980s to facilitate the change in the critical reception of Lin Yutang. And it is quite interesting to examine 12 chapter one the strategies of those revisionists, which will reveal to us the nature of such “rectification.” To revisionist critics of the Reform era, the political label of Lin Yutang as a “reactionary writer” was a sign of “ultra-leftism” that ought to be rectified. Wan Pingjin’s Lin Yutang lun (On Lin Yutang) was the first book-length study on Lin Yutang, in which Wan supplied many biographical and historical data that had been previously blocked off. Wan discussed, for instance, a number of controversies surrounding Lin’s literary practices in the modern Chinese literary context. To Wan, Lin Yutang was not found to be an important writer but he deserved to be mentioned in order to have a more objective account of modern Chinese literary history. Wan’s thesis was that there was a gradual degeneration in Lin’s politics: when Lin was a friend of Lu Xun, he was a politically progressive writer; when Lu Xun began to criticize him, he turned “right” into a stubborn “bourgeois writer” diametrically opposed to the Leftist camp. This has become a standard line of judgment toward Lin Yutang in the 1980s and beyond till today. So long as Lu Xun remains the unquestionable cultural- political icon of modern China, Lin Yutang could be rescued from oblivion from the official footnotes to The Complete Works of Lu Xun, but his cultural politics must be evaluated vis-à-vis Lu Xun’s positions. To Wan, by rectifying the “ultra-leftist” mistake in the Cultural Revolu- tion, his “fair and scientifically objective” critique of Lin Yutang would not negate Marxist historical materialism but rather prove its validity, as if the disastrous practices in the Mao Era had not failed but rather enhanced the truth of Marxism. While Wan’s overall critical framework was apparently confined to the dogma of the so-called “Marxist historical materialism,” his study opened up the ensuing efforts by other critics to re-position Lin Yutang politically. Their strategy was to emphasize Lin Yutang’s Leftist credentials and to show that there had been some misunderstandings or tactical mistakes on the part of the Leftist camp. It was interesting that their first move was to rediscover some specific historical facts hidden in the archive. On June 18, 1933, Yang Quan , general secretary of the Chinese Civil Rights Protection Alliance, was assassinated by the government secret police. Rumors abounded that the next target would be more eminent leaders of the Alliance—its Executive Committee included Cai Yuanpei , Song Qingling , Lu Xun and Lin Yutang. Despite the threat, Lu Xun showed up to pay his respect in the coffining ceremony held on June 20. He observed that Cai and introduction 13

Song also showed up but not Lin and thus expressed his dissatisfaction to his friend Xu Shoushang on their way back. He then expressed similar feeling to Feng Xuefeng . Both Xu and Feng recorded this in their memoirs of Lu Xun which were widely circulated in the Main- land after 1949.10 Ni Moyan published an article entitled “Defending and Clarifying One Thing for Lin Yutang,” in which he was able to reveal that, according to records, there were actually two ceremonies of condolences held for Yang Quan, one was the cofﬁning ceremony on June 20 that Lu Xun went to; the other was the funeral proces- sion and burial ceremony held on July 2, to which Lin Yutang did show up. So, Ni concludes: “Among the celebrities and activists of the Chinese Civil Rights Protection Alliance, many of them showed up in neither of the two condolence ceremonies. Lin Yutang after all participated once, and that’s already pretty good.”11 On the other hand, Shi Jianwei also cited Xiao San’s “Letter to the Left League,” dated November 8, 1935, to show that the CCP leadership at that time had already regarded Lin Yutang as a target for alliance in the united front, and thus to engage in polemics against Lin was a strategic error of the Left League.12 Armed with archival ﬁndings, the revisionist critics put forward new arguments concerning the politics and positioning of Lin Yutang.

10 In Feng Xuefeng’s account, after Lu Xun praised the courage of Cai and Song, he then said of Lin Yutang: “Now at this moment you can see the true nature of a person. Lin Yutang, he didn’t show up; actually, what danger is there for him to go!” See Feng Xuefeng, Huiyi Lu Xun (Reminiscences of Lu Xun), p. 45. Lin Taiyi, Lin Yutang’s daughter and biographer, had this to say: “I remember after Yang Quan was killed, my father did not go out for two weeks, and there were always two or three people standing in front of our door. I didn’t know who they were and was quite scared. Later they disappeared and then my father dared to go out.” See Lin Taiyi, Lin Yutang zhuan (Biography of Lin Yutang), p. 93. 11 Ni, Moyan, “Wei Lin Yutang bianzheng yijian shi” (Defending and Rectifying One Thing for Lin Yutang), Xinmin wanbao [Shanghai] February 18, 1982. 12 Shi Jianwei quotes Xiao San’s letter in detail to argue his point: “The evil government of the rulers and especially its traitorous policy have caused reproach by intellectuals at large, Lin Yutang’s couplet ‘Zigu weiwen fen you shui, erjin zhixu pi wujuan’ (Never since ancient times has shit been taxed/Right now only fart can avoid being levied) is most satirically to the point . . . when national crisis increased . . . the Chinese literary world should have organized an inclusive anti-imperialist united front, but due to the closed-door policy and the factionalism that the Left League has always had, it failed to make use of the anti-imperialist and anti-feudalist united front to organize such discontents, so that in the various ideological struggles and the ensuing favorable situations, it failed to organize in a planned way those progressive middle writers into our camp.” See Shi Jianwei, “‘Zuolian’ yu Lunyupai” (The League of the Left-Wing Writers and the Analects School), Shehui kexue 3 (1991): 68. 14 chapter one

They argued that, in terms of the actual effect of the politics of the time, Lin’s politics was middle-favoring-the-left due to the following credentials. First, Lin had many friendly and cooperative relations with Leftist writers. He was a member of the Executive Committee of the Chinese Civil Rights Protection Alliance and helped to save some imprisoned revolutionaries. In 1935, he signed, together with many Leftist literary schools, a joint statement entitled “Our Opinion towards the Cultural Movement” that openly denounced the New Life Move- ment launched by the Nationalist government. In 1936, he answered the call by the Communist Party to form an anti-Japanese nationalist united front and signed, together with Lu Xun, Guo Moruo , Mao Dun and others, “The Declaration of the Literary and Arts World for Unity, Resistance and Freedom of Speech.” Also, Lin’s close personal relationship with Lu Xun was fully examined and emphasized. Although Lu Xun did not like “humor,” he did not disapprove of it and in fact contributed several articles to Lin’s journals. And Lu Xun at least openly approved the special issue of the journal Lunyu featuring George Bernard Shaw ’s visit. Even when he was critical of Lin, he did not regard Lin as an ideological enemy. In his article “The Ghosts in China’s Literary World” written in November, 1934, for instance, Lu Xun mentioned the Crescent Moon school, the “Nationalist Litera- ture” school, the “Third Category” school as ideological opponents, but not the “Analects” school led by Lin Yutang. Furthermore, in the journals launched by Lin Yutang such as Lunyu, Renjianshi , Yuzhou feng, as many as some 40 Leftist and progressive writers published their works, including Lu Xun, Guo Moruo, Ah Ying , Mao Dun, Yu Dafu and Lao She, greatly outnumbering the right-wing writers. At a time when the Left League journals were constantly banned by the government and many other journals would not dare to publish the works by the Leftist writers, Lin’s open and inclusive attitude was extremely beneﬁcial to the Left League. Take Guo Moruo for example. As Chen Jingan points out, “Guo Moruo’s long biographical memoirs Haiwai shinian (Ten Years Overseas) and Beifa tuci (Northern Expedition Stop- overs) as well as articles ‘On Japanese Attitudes Toward the Chinese,’ ‘Dafu’s Visit,’ ‘Coming Back From Japan’ were all published in Yuzhou feng. At that time, Chiang Kai-shek had not lifted the ‘order of arrest’ on Guo. To publish his works took considerable courage.”13

13 Chen, Jingan, “Ping Lunyupai” (On the Analects School), Xuzhou shifan xuebao 3 (1979): 8. introduction 15

Apparently, critics who tried to re-interpret Lin Yutang on a “left” line were sympathetic to Lin Yutang, and they were merely trying to re-validate Lin’s politics within the political perimeter allowed in the Reform Era where legitimacy of the Leftist legacy must be presupposed. It should be noted that such a “left” move had not been gone unchallenged. Wang Jianguo, for instance, tried to put Lin back on the “right” track. Wang argues that the misunderstanding concerning Yang Quan’s condolence ceremonies cannot overturn Lin’s overall ideological inclination as a bourgeois writer. The critical campaign launched by the Left League against Lin was not a strategic error either, because Lin’s literary practices on the whole exerted a negative social effect and the Left League must ﬁght such bourgeois literary ideologies to develop itself.14 In any case, the “Lin Yutang” thus recovered and re-discovered in the 1980s is quite apologetic at best. It certainly does not mean the “political problem” of Lin Yutang has been solved. Rather, the revisionist Left-leaning argument constitutes a deliberate misreading of Lin Yutang’s politics. The fact that Lin Yutang’s essays have become publishable today is precisely because his politics have been bracketed. While the revisionist re-positioning of Lin Yutang has made the reprinting of Lin’s works possible, it has also left the “political problem” of Lin Yutang unexplored and unac- counted for. After all, to list the Leftist credentials in Lin’s middling alternative approach is to miss the point of Lin’s liberal politics.

Limitations of the “Cultural Zeal” in the 1980s

Under the shadow of lingering authoritarian ideological control, it took courage to re-examine and re-think the politics of a writer like Lin Yutang who had been deemed as “reactionary.” The limitations of such a revisionist strategy are also quite understandable and easily detectable. What is less obvious but much more signiﬁcant are the limitations of the cultural discourse in the 1980s. “Wenhua re,” or “cultural zeal,” was the characteristic feature of the 1980s intellectual scene. One of the strategic intentions of the de-political cultural enthusiasm was precisely to get away from the still powerful authoritarian

14 See Wang Jianguo, “Guanyu ‘Lunyupai’ he zuoyi wenyi zhenying pipan ‘Lunyu- pai’ de lishi gujia wenti” (The Question Concerning the ‘Analects’ School and the Cri- tique of the School by the Left-Wing Literary Camp), Tianjin shida xuebao 2 (1991): 66. 16 chapter one ideological control of the Party-state. On the other hand, the “opening up” of the 1980s brought about a lively cultural re-awakening characterized by embracing all kinds of Western thought by means of translation, rather reminiscent of the Enlightenment atmosphere of the New Culture and May Fourth Movement of the early twentieth century. But the comparison is more apparent than real, as there is a considerable gap between the New Culture Movement and the 1980s new cultural awakening, and that gap constitutes much of the 20th century historical experience of Chinese modernity. The “opening up” in the form of a radical Westernization as reaction to the totalitarian Marxist orthodoxy turns out to be quite problematic as it bypasses a self-reflective awareness of modern Chinese historical experience itself that brought about the totalitarian Marxist supremacy. One of the most eye-catching and influential events in the “wenhua re” atmosphere of mid-1980s was the promotion of the notion of “Twentieth Century Chinese Literature” as a theoretical model for studying modern Chinese literature and culture. Given the fact that the study of modern Chinese literature had been rigidly formalized along the orthodox Marxist politics with the notion of “class struggle” as the underlining theme and measurement, three scholars Qian Liqun, Huang Ziping and Chen Pingyuan proposed the notion of “Twentieth Century Chinese Literature” to break away from the stifling “class struggle” dictum. In their “Three-Person Conversation” that appeared and was serialized in six sections in the intellectual journal Dushu, they challenged the prevalent paradigm in literary studies and called for an open and inclusive approach that looks at “twentieth century Chinese literature ” as a whole, and as part of the modern experience of the world. Proposed in a conversational format, it was certain that the notion of “twentieth century Chinese literature” was to free the study of Chinese literature from the shackles of political dogma, but the idea was not formulated and formalized in any theoretical paradigm but instead suggested many possibilities of approach once an open and inclusive attitude was adopted. Central to the notion of “twentieth century Chinese literature” was to look at the cultural historical process of China’s modernization as a whole and with a world perspective. To see “twentieth century Chinese literature” from a world perspective is to open up to a cross-cultural cosmopolitan approach that will take seriously the modern Chinese literary and cultural experience as a whole. And in that light, as Chen Pingyuan points out insightfully, modern Chinese literary works written in languages other introduction 17 than Chinese, particularly Lin Yutang’s works in English for instance, should be included in the critical vision and even occupy a prominent stature.15 The proposal of the approach to examine “twentieth century Chi- nese literature” from national, cross-cultural, aesthetic and cosmopolitan perspectives was a very promising and ingenious idea, aside from its original intention to get away from the dominant “class struggle” paradigm in PRC modern Chinese literary studies. And it was quite exciting and influential in the overall “cultural zeal” atmosphere of the 1980s. However, the actual practice of such cultural approach in modern Chinese literary studies at that time was rather limited and disap- pointing. To substantiate the claim of a “twentieth century Chinese literature” in a cross-cultural and cosmopolitan light, Chen Pingyuan was quite perceptive in paying critical attention to Lin Yutang’s works. And his two essays on Lin Yutang—“Lin Yutang yu dongxi wenhua” (Lin Yutang and East-West Cultures) and “Lun Lin Yutang dongxi zonghe de shenmei lixiang” (On Lin Yutang’s Aesthetic Ideal out of East-West Integration)—were not only pioneering critical essays on the study of Lin Yutang, but were representative of the cultural approach prevalent in the “cultural zeal” of the 1980s. A careful examination of Chen’s critique, however, shows much less of the understanding of Lin Yutang’s cross-cultural and bilingual works from a cosmopolitan light than the limitations of the “knowledge structure” inherent to the 1980s generation of intellectuals who were otherwise bold and daring in their attempts to challenge the status quo.16 At first look, Chen seems to intend to downplay Lin’s politics and instead to focus on Lin’s East-West cross-cultural practice. Unlike Wan Pingjin’s downright political positioning of Lin Yutang as politically incorrect in a Leftist regime but nonetheless worth including as a modern Chinese writer, Chen seems to suggest that his critical discourse on Lin’s cross-cultural practices derives from his cultural concern

15 See Huang Ziping, Chen Pingyuan and Qian Liqun, Ershi shiji zhongguo wenxue sanrentan (Three-Person Conversation on Twentieth Century Chinese Literature), p. 40. 16 Chen Pingyuan has recently acknowledged the limitation of the “twentieth century Chinese literature” approach, see Zha Jianying, Bashi niandai: fangtanlu (The 1980s: Interviews), p. 128. It should be noted that my comments here only involve Chen’s two essays on Lin Yutang as representative of the 1980s intellectual background. 18 chapter one despite Lin’s rightist politics.17 To proclaim to be aware of Lin’s anti- Communist stance and yet still engaging in a critical evaluation of Lin’s cross-cultural practice, it was certainly a bold (de-)political move in the 1980s political context. Yet Chen’s critical assumptions in his cultural discourse on Lin Yutang betray his link with Wan Pingjin’s worldview. In fact, Chen’s cultural approach can be more deceiving as it claims to go beyond the politics altogether. While it is easy to understand that the revisionist strategy of positioning Lin’s politics leads to misleading conceptions of Lin Yutang’s literary practices, Chen’s cultural approach claims to be detached from such entanglement in politics, and yet is underlined by a critical negativity that is reﬂective both of the Leftist legacy of polemical defamation of Lin Yutang and the particular cultural ethos of the 1980s. Chen’s de-political cultural approach aimed at seeing modern Chi- nese literature with a cosmopolitan perspective is nonetheless conditioned by an inherent logic of the Leftist ideology in his pioneering study of Lin Yutang. Underlying Chen’s critical discourse of Lin Yutang were certain negative assumptions that had long been taken for granted in the Leftist discourse. In commenting on Lin’s introduction of such Western cultural notion of “humor” into modern Chinese cultural scene, for instance, Chen clearly followed the Leftist, or Lu Xun’s, polemical attack that the introduction of “humor” was nothing less than an amnesia of people’s spirit, and therefore an awkward ﬁt to Chinese culture, though such evaluation was said to be seen from an aesthetic (that is, non-political) point of view.18 Chen’s aesthetic reading of Lin Yutang apparently assumes the Leftist line of criticism that Lin was a progressive writer when he was a friend of Lu Xun and a member of the yusi group in Beijing in the 1920s, but deteriorated into a reactionary writer when Lu Xun broke up with him and the Leftist camp engaged in polemic attacks upon him. The cultural and aesthetic turn of the 1980s intellectuals was a de-political strategy to shun away from the tight ideological control of the Party-state, but

17 Chen Pingyuan mentions in passing Lin’s anti-Communist stance in his Vigil of a Nation and Flight of the Innocents to show that he was aware of Lin’s politics, but ultimately not the focus of his critical interest. See Huang Ziping, Chen Pingyuan and Qian Liqun, Ershi shiji zhongguo wenxue sanrentan (Three-Person Conversation on Twentieth Century Chinese Literature), p. 36. 18 Chen Pingyuan, “Lin Yutang yu dongxifang wenhua” (Lin Yutang and East- West Cultures), in Zai Dongxifang wenhua pengzhuang zhong (As East-West Cultures Clash), p. 36. introduction 19 when commenting on Lin’s de-political turn toward an aesthetics of “humor” and “xianshi” (leisure), Chen was quick to repeat the Left- ist charge that de-politicization was itself a political stance, and there was no way to seek an alternative middle road except for appearing cowardly in front of the power while criticizing the Left was merely wrong-headed and unintelligible, as if the Left and Lu Xun axiomati- cally hold truth in their hands.19 Given the intellectual climate of the 1980s when intellectuals began to open up and be dissatisfied with the suffocating Marxist ideological politicization of modern Chinese writers, critical inquiry should be directed at the legacy of the Leftist polemics itself that led to the totalitarian control of mind and thought after 1949. In such inquiry, Lin Yutang’s de-political position and his promotion of aesthetic notions of “humor” and “leisure” would offer a refreshing historical testimony to the possibility of an alternative Chi- nese modernity. To engage in a critical inquiry of Lin Yutang’s literary practices that claims to be “cultural,” “aesthetic,” and “cosmopolitan” yet inherits uncritically the assumptions of the Leftist polemics yields little understanding of the significance of Lin Yutang’s literary practices in modern Chinese intellectuality in particular and the problematic of Chinese modernity in general. More significantly, what prompts Chen’s negative tone in his reading of Lin Yutang lies in the linear view of Western culture as modern and progressive and Chinese culture as traditional and regressive, a view that underlines the cultural assumption of the Leftist legacy and once again embraced by intellectuals of the 1980s. As Chen rightly perceives, the problem of East-West cultural integration is the defining element of Chinese modernity, and Lin Yutang’s cultural practices were precisely characterized by such cross-cultural concern between Chinese and Western cultures. But to Chen, this cross-cultural problematic was seemingly solved too easily by Lin, as his strategy was a regrettable failure because Lin’s solution was to “go back to tradition.” As Chen sees it, Lin Yutang was a radical advocate for total Westernization in the 1920s when he returned from his study abroad, but then in the 1930s he began to talk about Chinese traditional culture and in the 1940s he became an outright defender of Chinese

19 Ibid, p. 50. Also, Chen Pingyuan, “Lun Lin Yutang dongxi zonghe de shenmei lixiang” (On Lin Yutang’s Aesthetic Ideal out of East-West Integration) in Zai Dongxi- fang wenhua pengzhuang zhong (As East-West Cultures Clash), p. 74. 20 chapter one culture and assumed the role of an “oriental philosopher.” This was an unbelievable cultural degeneration. Only when Lin Yutang was critical of Confucianism did Chen see some “positive achievement” of Lin’s cultural effort.20 Thus, Chen sees Lin Yutang’s cross-cultural solution to the defining problematic of Chinese modernity as part of, and representative of, the general wave of cultural regression after the radical progressiveness of the May Fourth Movement had faded away. As a Western-educated intellectual, Lin turned into a conservative tradition-defender, and that was just incomprehensible and seemed all too comical to Chen.21 To dub Lin Yutang’s cross-cultural strategy as “regressive” merely reflects the inability of Chinese scholars in the 1980s to engage in a truly “cosmopolitan approach,” that will take seriously the actual cross-cultural practices of modern Chinese writers. A serious critical reflection of the predominance of the Marxist orthodoxy in contemporary China, the consequence of the Westernization process in modern China, would have found Lin Yutang’s cross-cultural strategy intriguing and thought-provoking in the context of modern Chinese East- West cultural mediations. Instead of engaging in a critical reflection upon the ascendancy of Marxist orthodoxy itself, the Chinese scholars of the 1980s posed themselves as enlightenment intellectuals advocating and embracing again total Westernization as a form of resistance to the Marxist orthodoxy. By recalling the enlightenment ideals of the May Fourth spirit, Chinese scholars of the 1980s hoped to shun away from the fetters of the Marxist orthodoxy and re-orient themselves as liberal cosmopolitan intellectuals equipped with new knowledge and latest theoretical discourses from the West. But such a strategic move will necessarily lead to a blind eye towards the significance and lessons of the modern Chinese cross-cultural experience. Chinese intellectuals of the 1980s found themselves back in the times of the May Fourth era of the early twentieth century, as if nothing happened in between, and Westernization was again found to be the most symbolic means to achieve freedom and power. Lin Yutang’s cross-cultural practices in much of the twentieth century would not be found to contain much meaning in such a cultural move.

20 Chen Pingyuan, “Lin Yutang yu dongxifang wenhua” (Lin Yutang and East- West Cultures), in Zai Dongxifang wenhua pengzhuang zhong (As East-West Cultures Clash), p. 34. 21 Ibid, p. 38. introduction 21

Imbued with the cultural climate of the 1980s, Chen Pingyuan’s reading of Lin Yutang’s cross-cultural practices reveals an incredible overbearing and a false sense of superiority over Lin’s alleged “regressive turn” to Chinese tradition, and for that matter, to the Taoist tradition. In this light, Lin Yutang’s cultural move was taken as a betrayal of the iconoclastic spirit of the May Fourth Movement. And the criteria for “good and evil” always lie in Lu Xun’s attitude. It was true that Lu Xun was attracted to certain aspects of the Taoist spirit, but Lu Xun’s overall attitude toward Taoism was critical and negative, because Lu Xun was concerned with the reform of the Chinese “national character,” and Taoism contributed much to the negative traits of the Chinese national character. Therefore, Lin Yutang’s promotion of Taoism was simply ill-ﬁtted to the modernization (read: westernization) of Chinese culture. Whether Lin’s introduction of Chinese culture and philosophy to the Western culture has any positive effect, it was another question. Actually, in the mentality of Chinese scholars of the 1980s for whom Western thinkers and Western thought occupy an unchallengeable superiority, it was a big question if a Chinese scholar’s introduction of Chinese culture to the West was trustworthy at all. In Chen’s analysis of Lin Yutang’s cross-cultural aesthetic construction, one of his focus (and tellingly the readers’ interests) was whether Lin Yutang got it correct in his translation and introduction of Croce’s aesthetic theory.22 Chen claims that Lin Yutang’s notion that “art is expression” contains two aspects: all art is expression, and all expression is art. While so far as the ﬁrst dimension is concerned, Lin was authentic to Croce, but he misread and got it wrong from Croce in the second aspect.23 It was not so much such an essentialist reading of Lin’s cross-cultural strategy was jejune, it simply offers little insight into Lin’s cross-cultural mediation for an alternative Chinese modernity, but rather reveals the particular intellectual ethos of the 1980s China when Western thought was embraced once again as axiomatic, and almost sacred, truth.

22 Whether the Crocean idea of aesthetics was understood clearly or not was a reader’s response to Chen Pingyuan’s comment on Lin Yutang. See Huang Ziping, Chen Pingyuan and Qian Liqun, Ershi shiji zhongguo wenxue sanrentan (Three-Person Conversation on Twentieth Century Chinese Literature), pp. 106–109. 23 Chen Pingyuan, “Lun Lin Yutang dongxi zonghe de shenmei lixiang” (On Lin Yutang’s Aesthetic Ideal out of East-West Integration) in Zai Dongxifang wenhua pengzhuang zhong (As East-West Cultures Clash), p. 81. 22 chapter one

A fruitful understanding of Lin Yutang’s literary practices in Chi- nese modernity must go beyond the limitations of the 1980s intellectual discourses by bracketing the truth claims of the “West” in general and the Marxist-Leftist legacy in particular. Indeed, such truth claims must be the very subject of our unlearning critical inquiry into Chi- nese modernity. And such unlearning must begin at the beginning of Chinese modernity—a couple of generations ahead of Lin Yutang’s generation of the May Fourth intellectuals. CHAPTER TWO

CHINESE MODERNITY: NATIONALISM, IMPERIALISM, AND THE LIBERAL COSMOPOLITAN ALTERNATIVE

知耻近乎勇张之洞，引孔子语，《劝学篇》 (1898) Know thy shame, thou shall have courage. Zhang Zhidong, quoting Confucius in Exhortation to Learning (Quan xue pian) (1898)

有教无类 Among the really educated men, there is no caste or race-distinction. Gu Hongming, translating Confucian saying “you jiao wu lei ” in The Discourses and Sayings of Confucius (1898) What is Chinese modernity? How do we think about Chinese modernity? What are the problematics of Chinese modernity? Where do we seek for possible alternatives to the dilemma of Chinese modernity? According to Charles Taylor , contemporary theories of modernity by and large fall into two types of understandings of the rise of modernity in Western society: a cultural theory of modernity vs. an acultural theory of modernity.1 The cultural theory understands West- ern modernity as the rise of a distinctive new culture in the Atlantic World in modern times, hence particular to the Western culture— with “culture” understood in the anthropological sense in that hundreds of cultures have existed in our human history and only within each cultural framework can we understand such notions as self, values, nature. But the predominant mode of understanding in the last several centuries has been the acultural theory, or the “developmental model,” in which the rise of modernity in the West is taken as a universal human development from “dark” medieval times to enlightened modern times. In this light, modern transformations are seen as cultural-neutral phenomenon in that they are taken as irresistible and

1 See Charles Taylor, “Two Theories of Modernity,” in Alternative Modernities. 24 chapter two inescapable paradigm changes from “traditional” society to a universal modern world because modernity is evolved out of our “coming to see” some kernel truths that deﬁne our present realities. Modernity in this theory is explained in many terms, as historical developments like industrialization, as the advancement of science and technology, or as the discovery of reason as a universal rational capacity. Taylor charges that the acultural theory is a rather misleading account of modernity. It offers an erroneous account of social transformations in Western society leading to a false sense of modern identity. By putting everything into an Enlightenment package, it distorts the understanding of the modern Western society in its diverse and multiple muta- tions of meaning in one’s relation with self, nature, society and so on. Furthermore, in viewing the rise of Western modernity as a universal truth claim against traditional beliefs, the acultural theory suggests that all traditions and cultures are bound to follow the evolutionary path and to converge with the type of modernity originally arisen from the West. In this way, the acultural theory is very much an ethnocentric view that blocks any effort on the part of other cultures for their creative adaptations into modernity. As Taylor puts it, the acultural theory is detrimental in “understanding the full gamut of alternative modernities which are in the making in different parts of the world. It locks us into an ethnocentric prison, condemned to project our own forms onto everyone else and blissfully unaware of what we are doing.”2 And Taylor further points out that the most subtle mistake the acultural theory commits is that it distorts our understandings of the actual happenings of the transition. According to the cultural theory, the rise of modernity is not so much a change or a loss of old beliefs than a shift of background understandings against which new beliefs are made possible. The idea of background understanding Taylor invokes here inherits a ﬁne line of thinking from Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Ludwig Wittgenstein to John Searle, Hubert Dreyfus and Pierre Bourdieu.3 Taylor’s notion of alternative modernity combines a sophisticated line of modern Western philosophical thought with the contemporary

2 Ibid., p. 185. 3 See Martin Heidegger, Being and Time; Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Per- ception; Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations; John Searle, Intentionality; Hubert Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World; Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice. chinese modernity 25 social concern of cultural pluralism. It can serve as a very helpful reference point to start thinking of Chinese modernity. The most subtle part of Taylor’s cultural theory of modernity relies on the philosophical idea of background understanding, which cannot be easily explained and may even seem rather mysterious. When we shift our position in thinking about Chinese modernity, however, certain defining elements that brought China into modernity are not so complicated to identify. Chinese modernity is a historical given. It contains two essential elements: “modern” refers to its temporal and historical dimension while “Chinese” refers to its spatial and geographical location. In an elemental sense, “Chinese modernity” refers to the ensemble of historical practices that happened to modern China. On the other hand, it is also such historical practices that have produced a new distinct modern Chinese way of being, which is certainly fluid, flexible, undetermined, incomplete and ongoing, far from being an “identity” as such. Chinese modernity was first of all military in nature. The definitive element of Chinese modernity is the fact that it is a product of a series of Chinese-Western military confrontations. Indeed, modernity was forced upon China by colonial powers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. While early missionary activities brought limited impact upon Chinese elite in late Ming and early Qing, Western colonial encroachment upon China in the mid and late nineteenth century gradually brought such a sense of crisis to the Chinese intelligentsia that China had to undergo a painful and chaotic change, so that the very meaning of “Chinese” had to change and is still changing precisely because of its affiliation with modernity.

Chinese Nationalism and the Subjectivity of Chinese Modernity: Zhang Zhidong and Liang Qichao

The first military confrontation between China and the West in modern times was of course the Opium War of 1840. Even though China was defeated disastrously and Hong Kong became a British colony, intellectually China was not yet shaken. In the celebrated “Letter to the English Ruler” by Commissioner Lin Zexu (1785–1850), for instance, Lin clearly demonstrates a self-assured cultural confidence and control of his intellectual reasoning by employing forceful Confu- cian moral persuasion to make his stance of prohibiting opium trade 26 chapter two understood to the British ruler.4 Twenty years later, however, after China’s defeat in the Second Opium War of 1860, the situation began to change. The latter decades of the nineteenth century saw China engaged in the so-called Yangwu, or Self-strengthening, Movement, attempting to bring about technological and military modernization. Nevertheless, contemporary indigenous discourses on the strategies of engagement with the West seemed rather scanty. Feng Guifen was one of the most sensitive voices of his generation, yet his Jiaobinlu kangyi (Timely Proposals) mainly consist of a series of piecemeal reform proposals short of offering a more systematic cultural strategy to engage the encroaching West.5 China’s defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War of 1895 was a serious blow to Chinese intellectual confidence. If the First Opium War of 1840 was symbolic of the beginning of Chinese modernity, it did not bring much significant change in the intellectual mentality of the Chinese gentry-scholars. The Second Opium War of 1860 was a significant landmark in that it brought a real sense of urgency among the elite class for change and accommodation in face of military threat from the West. But the First Sino-Japanese War of 1895 was a watershed event. It signified China’s breakthrough to modernity. China’s disastrous and humiliating defeat in the War brought a consensus among the educated Chinese that several decades of Yangwu Move- ment to strengthen China was very much a failure and some more fundamental change must be enforced to save China.6 After the War, Chinese intellectual discourses had a significant paradigm shift. Two competing discourses arose to answer the critical needs of the times: one as represented by Zhang Zhidong ’s theory of “zhongti xiyong” (Chinese Subjectivity with Western Utility) and the

4 See Lin Zexu, “Ni banfa xi yu yingguo guowang gao” (Communication to the English Ruler), in Lin Zexu quanji (The Complete Works of Lin Zexu), Vol. 5; Wm. Theodore de Bary, Wing-Tsit Chan, and Chester Tan eds. Sources of Chinese Tradition, Vol. II. 5 Feng Guifen, Jiaobinlu kangyi (Timely Proposals). For a recent study on Chinese cultural transformation during the Yangwu period, see also Theodore Huters, Bringing the World Home: Appropriating the West in Late Qing and Early Republican China, pp. 23–42. 6 Writing in 1937, for instance, Quan Zenggu (T. K. Chuan) had pointed out that after China’s defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War, “the salvation of China” could not rely on Western military knowledge alone, and some “far-sighted people” were “firmly convinced that pure science and philosophy in the West could also be studied with profit by the Chinese.” See T. K. Chuan, “Philosophy Chronicle” in T’ien Hsia Monthly [Shanghai] 3 (1937): 290–291. chinese modernity 27 other as represented by the enlightenment discourses of Liang Qichao. A comparison of their discursive difference will highlight the problematic of Chinese modernity as we are enmeshed in today. Zhang Zhidong (1837–1909) was probably the most influential scholar- official at the moment of China’s unprecedented all-out confrontation with the modern powers of the West.7 His theory of “zhongti xiyong,” or “Chinese culture/learning/institution as subjectivity/foundation/ basis while complemented/assisted/strengthened with Western technological advances as utility,” is generally considered as a summary of the cultural strategies of a generation of reform-minded Confucian literati class in face of the Western challenge in the latter half of the nineteenth century. But Zhang’s Quan xue pian , or Exhortation to Learning, the most systematic exposition of the discourse of “Chinese subjectivity with Western utility,” was not published until 1898 after the First Sino-Japanese War. In writing and publishing Quan xue pian, Zhang Zhidong was fully aware of the weight his cultural discourses would bear upon the fate of China in face of the groundbreaking challenge of modernity from the West. The times were critical, so critical that, in Zhang’s words, “China has never faced such an all-encompassing change in her entire history, a change much more fundamental than what took place in the Warring States period, or in the transition between Qin and Han, or Yuan and Ming.”8 Zhang categorized the chaos of ideas into “the old” and “the new:” while the old does not know “tong,” or change/application/utility, the new does not know “ben,” or basis/foundation/subjectivity. In Zhang’s opinion, China’s threat does not merely come from the outside, but more significantly from within when the national soul is lost among deep suspicion of the foundation of one’s knowledge and culture. So Zhang writes Quan Xue Pian to clarify the muddle of ideas in order to present a coherent synthesis to the unprecedented cultural crisis China was facing. With such an ambitious goal, one would expect Zhang Zhidong to articulate a forceful discourse of “zhongti xiyong” in which Chinese and Western cultures would be integrated in a creative and powerful fashion in that Chinese Confucian values and practices would be

7 For biographical studies on Zhang Zhidong , see Xie Fang, Zhongti xiyong zhi meng: Zhang Zhidong zhuan (The Dream of zhongti xiyong: A Biography of Zhang Zhidong); and Feng Tianyu and He Xiaoming, Zhang Zhidong ping zhuan (Biographical Commentary of Zhang Zhidong). 8 Zhang Zhidong , Quan xue pian (Exhortation to Learning), p. 41. 28 chapter two able to assimilate and utilize Western technological advances. Upon close examination, however, Zhang fails to offer a substantive discursive argument for the rationale for such a ti-yong integration. In fact, Zhang even fails to establish any explicit relevance between the two. Apparently, the emphasis of Quan xue pian is on “Western utitlity,” which does not merely deal with the adoption and application of West- ern technological advances to China, as we usually understand what “xiyong” entails. Apart from calling for the utilization of Western technology such as in the building of railroads and mining, Zhang’s idea of “wutong” entails a comprehensive system of reform measures as engendered by “Western utility,” including adopting an open attitude towards new Western learning, encouraging Chinese students going abroad to study, opening new schools within China, setting up translation schools, launching newspapers to gather up-to-date information from abroad, encouraging commercial and industrial enterprises to be undertaken by common people, as well as arriving at sound and pragmatic diplomatic strategies. Most importantly, these reform measures also call for learning and adoption of the superior aspects of Western political system in terms of its administrative skills and techniques.9 It is quite apparent and understandable that Zhang Zhidong realizes the urgency for China to utilize these new measures in order to survive. The question is: what is the role of “zhongti,” or “Chinese subjectivity” in such a sweeping reform? In other words, why do we need the Chinese Confucian system as the “foundation” in order to adopt “Western utility?” And how can the Chinese foundation integrate/ incorporate/assimilate the Western utility so as to strengthen itself and maintain its own subjectivity? Far from articulating a logically sound “foundation” for the “utility” as such, what we ﬁnd in Quan xue pian is a strikingly nationalist discourse. The ultimate goal of the strategy of “zhongti xiyong” is spelled as “baoguo” (to defend/preserve the state), “baojiao” (to defend/preserve Confucian culture) and “baozhong” (to defend/preserve the Chinese

9 In traditional historiography, Zhang Zhidong has been dubbed as merely a cultural conservative, interested only in adopting Western technological advances to China. In fact, political institutional change is an important aspect of Zhang’s reform proposals. As Xie Fang has pointed out, for instance, Zhang Zhidong’s reform measures were quite similar to Kang Youwei’s. See Xie Fang, “Zhang Zhidong yu wuxu zhengzhi gaige” (Zhang Zhidong and the Politico-Institutional Reform Measures of the Hundred Days’ Reform), in Zhang Zhidong yu zhongguo jindaihua (Zhang Zhidong and China’s Modernization), p. 315. chinese modernity 29 race). To Zhang, these three goals are interconnected as one: “in order to defend the Chinese race, one must first defend the Confucian culture; and in order to defend the Confucian culture, one must first defend the State. This is because what preserves the race relies upon intelligence, which is in turn nurtured by Confucian education. And how can we make sure that Confucianism is to be practiced? One must enforce it with power, and to have power, one must have a strong army.”10 When Confucianism needs a strong army to defend and enforce, that is already quite a diversion from the Confucian ideal that emphasizes the inner power of moral force inherent in human nature. What is unsaid in Zhang Zhidong ’s statement is that it is precisely the military power that China lacks at the moment. And in Zhang’s scheme of things, that power would have to come from “Western utility.” It is quite ironical that what Zhang calls “ben” or “ti” is no longer the real subject, as his logical argument relies actually upon “tong” or “yong.” This should not be surprising in that the very notion of “bao” is necessarily a defensive one that leads to “passive” objectification of the “foundation” as such. What Zhang understands as “guo” is still the traditional Confucian “jia-guo,” or “family-state,” rather than “guo-jia,” or “nation-state,” as his idea of “preservation of the state” means loyalty to the Qing court. And his strategy for the preservation of Confucianism ( jiao) is one of tightening re-canonization. Zhang’s regressive and tightening strategy of cultural canonization is in fact a typical cultural strategy of modern nationalism. Throughout his argument, Zhang fails to mention in any way how Confucianism re-canonized as such could provide the foundation for integrating/incorporating/assimilating “Western utility.” Instead, the necessity of preserving the Confucian culture is articulated in terms of a Chinese identity. In Zhang Zhidong’s words: “The three ethical principles are what makes our sage the sage, what makes China China.”11 Zhang argues that the times made it very clear that one has to adopt Western learning in order to strengthen China and to preserve Chinese learning. But Chinese students must follow the order of learning Chinese classics first. Why? Because a Western- ized Chinese with no Chinese learning will no longer be Chinese: “If a Chinese student does not know Chinese learning, it’s like a person

10 Zhang Zhidong , Quan xue pian (Exhortation to Learning), p. 50. 11 Ibid., p. 70. 30 chapter two without a surname, a horse without a bridle, a boat without a helm. The more Western learning he possesses, the more hateful of China he will become. Even if he becomes a capable man of vast learning, how can he be of any use to the state?”12 Similarly, Zhang’s discourse on promoting racial consciousness (baozhong) is also a typical nationalist move. Zhang Zhidong of course understands that Confucianism promotes “you jiao wu lei” (no cat- egorical othering for the educated), but he now takes that as a high ideal. Since the world has been categorized into ﬁve racial groups by the West, it is most important for the Chinese to know who they are in this category and be proud of it. Without such racial consciousness, ordinary Chinese would not care a bit about the fate of China, but would only be concerned with their own personal well-being “by partnering with the Westerners, becoming Westernized merchants, immigrating to the West and joining the citizenship of Western countries.”13 In Zhang’s discourse on Chinese learning as the foundation, what seems most interesting is the theme of opium. Why is the problem of opium a matter of “Chinese foundation?” It is certainly true that opium had become a nation-wide phenomenon, but on surface at least, it is neither a matter of the state, nor of the culture, nor of the race. But once we understand that the central theme of Zhang’s inner chapters is in fact nationalism, as I argue here, it is not surprising at all that Zhang concluded his inner chapters on the issue of opium, because the problem of opium has been elevated into a matter of national survival, symbolic of the corruption and weakness of the state, the culture, as well as the race. In one word, opium had become for Zhang Zhidong a national shame . The last paragraph in the chapter is worth quoting in full: Confucius says: “Know thy shame, thou shall have courage.” Men- cius says: “If you are not ashamed of being inferior to others, how can you achieve what others have achieved?” Opium is a poisonous drug despised and prohibited by all other countries in the world, but in our China, the entire country is addicted to it as if to seek self-destruction. This is the most ridiculous affair that has ever happened in our history. To revive Confucianism, we must begin with the act of giving up opium by educating the people with a sense of shame.14

12 Ibid., p. 91. 13 Ibid., p. 75. 14 Ibid., p. 106. chinese modernity 31

It should be clear now that Zhang Zhidong’s discourse of “zhongti xiyong” is a juxtaposed piecework, rather than a logically integrated paradigm. The inner chapters which are supposedly to elaborate on the preeminence of Chinese cultural tradition fail to offer a convincing argument as to why it can serve as the “foundation” for the application of Western new learning. According to such juxtaposition, Chinese Confucian learning is actually important and essential for one’s self-cultivation (yi zheng renxin), while “Western application” is for strengthening the state. But it does not mean that Confucian- ism has no role to play. Zhang Zhidong has in fact found a new role for Confucianism—“Know thy shame.” Zhang has made this quite clear at the very beginning in the “Preface” where he summarizes the essential meaning of his book into five dimensions: Know thy shame, Know thy fear (fear to be colonized by the Western Powers), Know to change, Know the essentials (in both Chinese learning and Western learning) and Know thy Identity (of being Chinese). The resort to identity is certainly a nationalist discourse, and the theme of “shame” is also the defining element of Chinese nationalism. But a “foundation” that is based on a new discourse of nationalism is very new, and indeed, a very modern event for that matter. With the advancement of such a modern event, Confucianism as Chinese cultural foundation has already lost its original ontological significance and has been transformed into a functional and utilitarian discourse of nationalism. In that sense, there is really no “ti,” or Chinese subjectivity, to speak of in Zhang’s paradigm of “zhongti xiyong.” For the nationalism that is based on a defensive identity claim or a sense of shame is after all a negative deployment. It cannot serve as an encompassing cultural foundation that is open, confident and absorbing. Chinese modernity is thus characterized by the lack of Chinese subjectivity at its very beginning. By contrast, Liang Qichao’s enlightenment discouses as revealed in his Xin min shuo, or Discourses on New Citizen, were precisely to build up a new subjectivity for Chinese modernity on different grounds. In the post-1895 Chinese intellectual world, Liang Qichao (1873–1929) emerged as the intellectual leader and his voluminous writings, particularly his Xin min shuo (Discourses on New Citizen), exerted tremendous influence upon a whole generation of Chinese youth who would grow up during the post-Imperial Examination China and eventually become activists in the New Culture and May Fourth Movement. Liang’s Dis- courses on New Citizen, originally serialized in Xinmin congbao founded by 32 chapter two

Liang Qichao in 1902, was undoubtedly the most representative work of Enlightenment that helped to shape the Chinese modernity. While Joseph Levinson focused on the role of traditional Chinese culture in Liang’s new paradigm for Chinese modernity, Hao Chang’s study of Liang Qichao challenges the so-called “Western impact” approach and emphasizes “the dynamic qualities of traditional culture.”15 It is certainly true that Liang’s “New Citizen” values inherited much of traditional Chinese cultural elements. To Liang Qichao, traditional Chinese culture was by no means dead or antithetical to modernity, and that is where Liang differentiates from later generation of iconoclast May Fourth intellectuals. But on the other hand, it is also true that central ideas for Liang’s “New Citizen” were borrowed and transplanted from the West. It is not productive, however, to examine Liang’s discourse of “New Citizen” from a binary perspective of Western modernity vs. Chinese tradition. If we compare Liang Qichao’s discourse of “New Citizen” with Zhang Zhidong’s discourse of “Chinese Learning as Foundation, Western Learning as Applica- tion” in his Exhortation to Learning, their discursive difference is quite obvious. In Liang Qichao’s discourse of “New Citizen,” there is no long the juxtaposed formula of “ti/yong.” From the very beginning, Liang dispels the dichotomy between “the new and the old.” “To be a new citizen does not mean that Chinese ought to abandon all that is ‘old’ and follow others. There are two connotations to the term ‘new:’ to renovate what he already possesses and to adopt what he does not originally own.”16 Indeed, to Liang Qichao, the issue is not about the dichotomy between Chinese culture and Western culture, or a Chinese ti and a Western yong, but rather about instituting a new set of enlightenment values to the formation of a new citizen named “Chinese.” Liang’s concern was not with the transformational dyna- mism of traditional Chinese culture as such, and certainly not about “schizophrenic patriotism” (Levinson’s words). Whether renovated from the old tradition or adopted anew from the West, Liang’s new set of values attributed to the new Chinese citizen are meant to serve as the very subjectivity of Chinese modernity. And it is in that sense that Liang Qichao can be aptly called “father of Chinese modernity.”

15 See Joseph R. Levinson, Liang Ch’i-ch’ao and the Mind of Modern China and Hao Chang, Liang Ch’i-ch’ao and Intellectual Transition in China, 1890–1907, p. 1. 16 See Liang Qichao, Xin min shuo (Discourse on New Citizen), p. 54. chinese modernity 33

The series of civic virtues Liang Qichao identified as essential attributes to the formation of a “new citizen” include: public morality, nationhood, aggressive and adventurous spirit, rights and liberties, struggle and progress, self-rule and dignity, social utility and economic growth, civic responsibilities, military prowess, community spirit, and so forth. Liang’s idea of “public morality” ranks the first among his cluster of new civic virtues and is quite emblematic of his strategic intention to instill a new subjectivity for Chinese modernity. Accord- ing to Liang’s diagnosis, the lack of public morality lies at the center of China’s crisis. In other words, China’s crisis is first of all a moral crisis. That is a rather alarming statement given the fact that Confucian politico-cultural governmentality was fundamentally a moral scheme. Liang Qichao was of course aware of such scheme and he did not abandon the Confucian scheme altogether. But the main point is that Liang’s idea of “public morality” precisely arrives from a critique of the Confucian moral scheme, as the latter has become largely “private” in Liang’s eye. Out of the five cardinal ethical principles of Confucianism that defines the relationships between emperor and official, father and son, husband and wife, and between brothers, as well as among friends, three belong to the “family ethic,” and the emperor/official ethic contributes to part of the “state ethic” and the ethic of friends only part of the “social ethic.” In comparison to the “old” Confucian five ethics, Liang Qichao now employs the new Western categorization of “family ethic,” “social ethic” and “state ethic.” Liang would have no quarrel with Zhang Zhidong that cardinal Confucian ethics must be upheld, yet he believes the old and new ethics must be upheld at the same time, and to Liang, China’s current crisis does not lie in upholding the old ethics as it is, but rather in bringing the idea of “public morality ” to enrich the existing insufficient ethics. The traditional ethics are insufficient because they were not able to empower the Chinese state while the strength of Western powers precisely derived from public morality. In calling for the institution of “public morality” as a central modern value, Liang Qichao introduced two fundamental ideas that underlie his argument: the idea of “community” (qun) and the idea of evolutionary progress. As Liang sees it, morality must benefit the community, and morality should produce such effects as to “consolidate the community, better the community and improve the community.”17

17 Ibid., p. 65. 34 chapter two

And it is public morality that would assume such functions. It is also in public morality that lies the secret of the strength of Western nations. If traditional Confucian morality puts emphasis on private individual cultivation, then Liang sees nothing wrong to shift the emphasis on public morality since morality is now also seen as evolutionary in nature and changes over time in different historical contexts. When morality is taken as evolutionary in nature, it is no longer universal and ahistorical in Confucian terms. Liang’s “new citizen” is now required to assume a distinct new character to be worthy of the membership in the community. This new citizen should be aggressive and dare to take risk. In examining the rise of Western modernity, Liang Qichao identifies the aggressive and risk-taking character as the key element in advancing the modernity, and he compiles a long list of prominent historical figures as cultural heroes of Western modernity, including Columbus, Martin Luther, Magellan, Livingstone, Adolphus, Peter the Great, Gromwell, Washington, Napoleon, William Egmont, Lincoln, Mazzini, and so on. As Liang sees it, it takes the combination of hope, passion, wisdom and courage to attain the aggressive and risk-taking character, and those heroic figures were representative of such character that made Western cultural modernity possible. By contrast, as Liang loathes, contemporary Chinese were extremely conservative and had no adventurous spirit. “Over thousands of years of cultural lethargy, Chinese have become ghost-like, sickly, feminine and roguish. In such a large country, there is only femininity and no masculinity, only the sick not the healthy, only the roguish not the youthfulness, only the ghost and no human.”18 While progress characterizes the modern historical development of the West, China had been marred by a stifling conservatism. To shake off the stifling conservatism and to seek for progress, Liang calls on the “new citizen” to dare to “destroy”—not to destroy for the sake of destruction but to seek for the breakthrough to modernity. It is most interesting that Liang quotes in English a popular Western “song of youth progress” to encourage the “new citizen” to take on the aggressive and progressive spirit: Never look behind, boys, When you’re on the way; Time enough for that, boys,

18 Ibid., p. 83. chinese modernity 35

On some future day. Though the way be long, boys, Face it with a will; Never stop to look behind When climbing up a hill. First be sure you’re right, boys, Then with courage strong Strap your pack upon your back; And tramp, tramp along. When you’re near the top, boys, Of the rugged way, Do not think your work is done, But climb, climb away. Success is at the top, boys, Waiting there until Patient, plodding, plucky, boys, Have mounted up the hill.19 The ideas of rights and freedom also occupy a central place in Liang Qichao’s ideal of new citizenship. As Liang explicates, individuals are born with certain inalienable rights and that is what makes a human being a human being. The possession of a self-conscious sense of rights enhances and strengthens one’s character. Rights consciousness is seen as deriving from the idea of yi, or justice, and it also signifies a diversion from traditional Chinese ethical emphasis on the idea of ren, or benevolence. While Confucian idea of “benevolence” puts moral weight on others, Western emphasis on justice puts self at the center. To Liang Qichao, to be self-conscious of one’s rights does not merely mean one’s sense of obligations to oneself, but more importantly a sense of obliga- tion to the public community. And to ensure one’s rights are properly exercised, the implementation of the rule of law should be on top of the agenda. Only when each and every new citizen learns to fight for his own rights can the Chinese nation as a whole fight for her rights in the world. “If you want the equality of rights between China and other countries, you must first endow each Chinese citizen equal rights, and you must first ensure the rights our citizens enjoy in China to be equal to the rights others enjoy in their own countries.”20 Liang Qichao’s discourses of “New Citizen” is obviously intended to lay a foundation in establishing subjectivity for Chinese modernity

19 Ibid., pp. 83–84. 20 Ibid., pp. 96–97. 36 chapter two by instituting a new subject—the new citizen endowed with a cluster of values partly appropriated with the “old” Chinese tradition and largely adopted from progressive Western modernity. The key issue in Liang’s discourses of modernity is not the struggle between the “old” and the “new,” or “Chinese foundation” and “Western application” as it were apparently the case in Zhang Zhidong’s discourse. Liang’s discourses of “New Citizen” have surpassed the apparent dualism of Zhang Zhidong’s. If Zhang Zhidong’s discourses of “Chinese ti and Western yong” result in the actual lack of the subjectivity for Chinese modernity, the problem with Liang Qichao’s discourses lies in the validity of his proposed subjectivity. It is quite clear the cluster of values Liang attributed to the ideal of new citizenship rely on the necessity of the advancement of Chi- nese nationalism. In Liang’s introduction and interpretation of modern values for the modern Chinese subject, the underlying theme always comes down to the empowerment of the collective group—the national community. In elaborating on the idea of freedom, for instance, Liang acknowledges individual freedom is the source for group freedom, yet Liang argues that individuals in Chinese culture have been warranted too much wanton freedom. Therefore, for the Chinese “new citizen,” freedom means primarily to develop a strong character by shaking off the slave mentality in one’s heart and by overcoming oneself in order to commit oneself in the ﬁght for group freedom—national freedom from colonial encroachment. To Liang Qichao, the essence of freedom is not individual freedom but rather group freedom. Indeed, the teleology of nationalism for Liang’s discourses of the “new subject” was clearly spelled out at the beginning of his treatise. Like Zhang Zhidong ’s treatise on “Chinese ti and Western yong,” Liang Qichao’s discourses of the “New Citizen” started with an acute sense of China’s crisis in the contemporary world. But unlike Zhang’s chronological diagnosis from Chinese historical perspective, Liang’s sense of crisis was geographical in that he viewed China’s crisis in regards to her position in the global space of nation-state competition. For Liang Qichao, as Tang Xiaobing points out, “the urgent task of renovating the people and building the nation consists of developing a collective political consciousness and claiming a national space on the contemporary world map.”21 The fact that China was faced with the

21 See Tang Xiaobing, Global Space and the Nationalist Discourse of Modernity: The His- torical Thinking of Liang Qichao, p. 23. chinese modernity 37 threat of total colonization despite its enormous population and geographical magnitude was because the Chinese people had not become national citizens equipped with a set of modern values. In Liang’s eye, “the reason why Europe became developed and the world progressive is all due to the rapid and overwhelming growth of National- ism. . . . and the development of Nationalism further induced National Imperialism by the end of the nineteenth century.”22 To face the challenge of the power of Nationalism and National Imperialism, Liang’s strategy was to emulate and follow the Western examples, and to call each and every Chinese to become a “new citizen” to gather around the Chinese nation. For that purpose, therefore, the primary task is to create a new type of citizen with a new (and old) set of values that are aimed at developing a new national consciousness. In the course of the development of the Chinese modernity project, Liang Qichao’s enlightenment project of reinstituting a new Chinese cultural character in the form of creating a new citizen has been partially successful. While most of his ideals for a new citizen have become foundational values for Chinese modernity, Liang’s overall positive positing of the modern values was hijacked and superseded too quickly by a more radical modernity discourse of the later May Fourth generation. Indeed, the most immediate success for Liang’s Enlightenment discourse lies in educating a new younger generation of Chinese elite, the so-called May Fourth generation, who would eventually replace Liang to become dominant voices of Chinese modernity. Since the enlightenment values Liang prescribed for the new Chinese citizen arose from and aimed at the concerns of Chinese nationalism, these values are valid as long as nationalism is an indisputable requirement for modern China. In other words, in Chinese modernity, enlightenment values are no longer universal values. Rather, they are historical and utilitarian, and they are subject to re-examination. And it should come as no surprise that a later generation would take over Liang and push his nationalist discourse into a different direction. But before we go to the May Fourth dominant discourse of Chinese modernity, let us detour for a while to examine an important cosmopolitan discourse immediately preceding it.

22 See Liang Qichao, Xin min shuo (Discourse on New Citizen), p. 50. In the original Chinese text, the terms “Nationalism” and “National Imperialism” appeared in Eng- lish in brackets. 38 chapter two

Gu Hongming’s Cosmopolitan Citique of Imperialism

While Chinese nationalism is certainly the dominant discourse of Chi- nese modernity, cosmopolitanism constitutes a competing voice in shaping Chinese modernity out of Western military and cultural intervention. An examination of Gu Hongming’s works will help us foreground the tensions between nationalism and cosmopolitanism that characterize Chinese modernity. In facing the overwhelming power of the Western modernity, the Chinese intellectual response has been predominantly nationalistic. Chi- nese intellectuals gradually realized the precarious position of China in the global world dominated by the Western imperialist powers. While Zhang Zhidong ’s “Chinese foundation” actually constrained Chinese culture into the private realm of self-identity affirmation, Liang Qichao’s cultural strategy unabashedly embraces the Western nationalist values and ideals as his own remedy for empowering China. However, Chi- nese modernity in such dominant nationalist discourse is rather con- tradictory to the traditional Chinese universalist claims of knowledge and values. Given the Confucian emphasis on the unity of the world (tianxia), nationalism never constituted an ultimate value in itself. It should not strike one as a surprising strategy then to engage the new knowledge of the West to arrive at certain cross-cultural synthesis with final goal of achieving cosmopolitanism. But to Gu Hongming, such synthesis must be based on a critique of Western imperialism. Unlike most other Chinese intellectuals, Gu Hongming’s cosmopolitan disposition came from his peculiar upbringing and educational background—Gu was perhaps the first Western-educated Chinese intellectual in modern China.23 Born to an immigrant Chinese family in Penang, Malaysia, Gu was taken by an English missionary to Eng- land to attend boarding school at the age of ten. After receiving his M.A. from Edinburgh University, he went on to continental Europe and acquired fine education in Western letters and sciences. It was not until he became Zhang Zhidong’s “Secretary-Interpreter” that Gu began to devote himself in studying Chinese literature and philosophy by himself.24

23 Part of the reason that Gu Hongming’s critical cosmopolitanism was largely ignored in modern China was because most of his writings were in English. 24 There is little biographical information about Gu Hongming. According to Wen Yuanning, Gu Hongming came back to Singapore to work for the British Colonial chinese modernity 39

Dedicated to Zhang Zhidong, Gu Hongming’s book The Story of a Chinese Oxford Movement (1910) was his commentary on the difficult historical transition of China at the turn of the century. Having served as Zhang Zhidong’s foreign affairs secretary for many years, Gu had great respect for Zhang Zhidong’s integrity and dedication to the cause of China in deep crisis, yet he was rather suspicious of Zhang Zhidong’s formula of “zhongti xiyong” in his commentary. To Gu Hongming, Zhang tried to compromise two different ideals—the Con- fucian teaching and the new learning of modern Europe, and establish two different sets of moral principles for individuals and the state. In that scheme, Chinese as individuals “must remain Chinese, and continue to be the Confucian ‘superior man,’ but the Chinese nation— the State in China—must become European and be a carnivorous animal.”25 To Gu Hongming, however, this “European animal” was precisely the problem. To Gu Hongming, Western modernity as related to modern China is revealed first and foremost as imperialism. And imperialism was first of all a question of racial and cultural attitude.26 In Papers from a

Office after his study in Europe. Then a chance encounter with Ma Jianzhong, a Chi- nese government official, at a hotel in Singapore some time in the 1870s, completely changed Gu’s life. During their conversation conducted in French (for Gu could not speak Mandarin Chinese), Ma made Gu realize that there was such a thing as Chi- nese literature and thought. Gu later recalled the significance of this encounter in a dramatic fashion: My meeting with Ma Chien-chung [Ma Jianzhong] . . . was a great event in my life. For it was he,—this Ma Chien-chung, who converted and made me become again a Chinaman. Although I had come back from Europe for more than three years, I had not yet entered and did not know the world of Chinese thought and ideas . . . choosing to remain an imitation Western man. . . . Three days after my meeting with Ma Chien-chung, I sent in my resignation to the Colonial Secretary’s Office, and, without waiting for an answer, I took the first steamer to my old home in Penang. There I told my cousin, the head and senior member of our family that I was willing to let my queue grow and wear Chinese clothes. See Wen Yuanning, “Ku Hung-ming,” T’ien Hsia Monthly [Shanghai] 4 (1937): 387. 25 Gu Hongming (Ku Hung Ming), The Story of a Chinese Oxford Movement. 2nd Ed., p. 30. 26 In this sense, Gu Hongming would agree with Edward Said that imperialism requires the “idea of having an empire” in the first place, “as well as forms of knowledge affiliated with domination” in order to sustain the imperialist practices. See Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism, pp. 9–11. Seen from what Said calls “structures of attitude and reference,” Said argues that imperialism was distinctively manifest as a cultural attitude, and, so far as the idea of maintaining an empire was concerned, “there was scarcely any dissent, any departure, any demurral from them: there was virtual unanimity that subject races should be ruled, that they are subject races, that 40 chapter two

Viceroy’s Yamen (1901), a collection of essays occasioned by the aftermath of the Boxer Rebellion, Gu attributes the root of the so-called “Chinese problem” to the Englishmen’s “devil of pride” of “bastard imperialism.”27 For Gu, “the most ridiculous and insufferable” of Englishmen’s sense of superiority was most expressively revealed in a casual remark made to Gu by an Englishman in Shanghai: “You Chinese are very clever and have wonderful memories, but still, we Englishmen consider you Chinese as an inferior race.”28 For Gu Hong- ming, it was not that China did not have any problem at all at that time, but the real problem was the “European problem” of such racial and cultural attitude of this “bastard imperialism” and its pronounced logic. According to such logic, the Western Powers categorize Chinese into “progressives” and “reactionaries” by their standard and would support anyone who claims to be a “progressive,” regardless of his actual credentials. On the other hand, “whenever modern scientiﬁc men of Europe meet with any extraordinary manifestation of human soul which they cannot explain, [as in the case of the Boxer Rebellion] they call it fanaticism.”29 In Gu’s diagnosis, what lies at the very foundation of Western modernity, what constitutes as the root cause of the Western expansionist imperialism, is the modern economic worship of materialism, that is, Commercialism. In Gu Hongming’s analysis, that comes out of a social structural change in modern Western history in which a new large group of people, namely, the “half-educated” bourgeois class, had usurped the political power and taken control of the government. As Gu puts it: “The British Parliament was originally a witan, a meeting of wise men: it is now a meeting of interested men.”30 Since the interest of bourgeois businessmen is the accumulation of more interests, transnational expansion and exploitation of material interests are inherent and inevitable demands of the bourgeois development. As Gu

one race deserves and has consistently earned the right to be considered the race whose main mission is to expand beyond its own domain.” Said, Culture and Imperial- ism, p. 53. 27 Gu Hongming (Ku Hung Ming), Papers from a Viceroy’s Yamen, p. 105. 28 Ibid., p. viii. 29 Ibid., pp. 20–21. Other terms like “terrorism” and “fundamentalism,” as Edward Said points out, are still produced today by the West and circulated as “transnational” and “fearful images that lack discriminate contents or definition.” Said, Edward, Cul- ture and Imperialism, pp. 309–310; passim. 30 Gu Hongming (Ku Hung Ming), Papers from a Viceroy’s Yamen, p. 72. chinese modernity 41 explains the “Anglo-Saxon Ideals” sarcastically: “For what purpose did God create the four hundred million Chinese?—For the British to trade upon.”31 And since it is now the “interested men” who are in control of the government, the so-called “Kolonial Politik” was in place to protect and ensure their transnational interests. One of Gu’s “notes” on the “Kolonial Politik ” goes as follows: A boy in a Board school was lately asked to define Roman citizenship, when he gave this answer: “Roman citizenship was a ship on which the Romans went out ‘fishing free of charge.’ ” I wonder whether Lord Salisbury and the real Brit- ish nation know how many British subjects of the mean and greedy Cockney class have come out under the flag of the bastard Imperialism through the “open door” into China with the purpose of “fishing free of charge.”32 In Gu’s analysis, the conflicts of “fishing” interests in the “Kolonial Politik” were directly linked to the First World War. Contrary to the general belief that the war was caused by “militarism” practiced by rulers, soldiers and diplomats, Gu Hongming argued that it was “every plain man and woman—John Smith, editor of the ‘Patriotic Times,’ Bobus of Houndsditch, once in Carlyle’s time, sausage maker and jam manufacturer, but now owner of a big Dreadnought ship building yard, and Moses Lamp, money lender,”33 with their commercial interests in the name of raising “the standard of living,” who were the actual driving force for the War. Therefore, “militarism” was only a by-product and an inevitable means in carrying out the policy of “Kolonial Politik,” while the fons et origo of the War was Commercial- ism: “It is this spirit of Commercialism, in all countries of the world, especially in Great Britain and America, which is the real enemy of the world to-day.”34 Gu argues that, in order to estimate the value of a civilization, one should not ask what great cities, fancy houses or clever tools and instruments it has produced. The “standard of living” is only “the condition of the civilization, but it is not the civilization itself.”35 Instead, the proper question of civilization is “what type of humanity, what

31 Gu Hongming (Ku Hung Ming), The Spirit of the Chinese People, p. 114. 32 Gu Hongming (Ku Hung Ming), Papers from a Viceroy’s Yamen, p. 101. 33 Gu Hongming (Ku Hung Ming), The Spirit of the Chinese People, pp. 151–152. 34 Ibid., pp. 18–19. 35 Gu Hongming (Ku Hung Ming), Papers from a Viceroy’s Yamen, p. 178. 42 chapter two kind of men and women it has been able to produce.”36 Gu acknowledges that, “as Mr. Matthew Arnold points out, the prepossessingness of the personality of Jesus Christ and the directness and simplicity of his teachings in the New Testament—all these have gone into the bones, so to speak, of the best types of humanity which Europe has produced.”37 But the First World War has become a testing ground for the European Christian civilization. It is Gu’s main thesis that the problem of modernity is a European problem, not a Chinese problem—China is merely suffering from its effects. What the realities of the First World War have revealed is, as Gu appropriates a term coined by Bernard Berenson, an art critic, that the European civilization has become a “battlefield for divided interests.”38 It shows that Christianity has become ineffective as a moral force to maintain civil order. All society needs certain cultural mechanisms to keep civil order. As Gu Hongming sees it, arriving from the cultural conception that human nature is evil, the Europeans have been kept in order by the fear of God and the fear of the Law. To keep up with the fear of God, Europeans had first to create a large group of idle and expensive people called “priests.” With the Reformation and the coming of the modern age, priests largely lost their moral power. Then the Europe- ans tried to instill another group of idle and more expensive people called “policemen and soldiers” to keep up the fear of the Law, which turned out to be disastrous in the War. The modern Europeans are then in the dilemma of wanting a lost moral force that had proved to be ineffective. Gu Hongming’s remedy for the “European problem” was to call on the help from the Chinese Confucian civilization. In a number of occasions, for instance, in contrast to the “Kolonial Politik” of imperialism, Gu Hongming translates and proposes Confucius’ statement as the civilized rule governing the relations between nations: “when outside nations are dissatisfied with you, you should cultivate [your own] civil or Civic virtues (yuan ren bu fu ze xiu wende).”39 But it is important to note that Gu Hongming’s reference to Confucian civilization as a result of his critique of imperialism is not a nationalist move.

36 Gu Hongming (Ku Hung Ming), The Spirit of the Chinese People, p. 1. 37 Gu Hongming (Ku Hung Ming), Papers from a Viceroy’s Yamen, p. 184. 38 Gu Hongming (Ku Hung Ming), The Spirit of the Chinese People, p. 14. 39 Ibid., p. 7. chinese modernity 43

Gu’s claim of Confucianism does not result in any kind of identity assertion (Show me your Confucius!), but rather constitutes an essential part of his cosmopolitan strategy of cross-cultural alliance against modernity. In his critique of Western imperialism, not only has Confu- cian civilization become an important cultural resource for Gu Hong- ming, but he equally relies on the cultural critique of the Romantics, and particularly on the theory of Culture as expounded by Mathew Arnold . Gu Hongming’s translations of Lunyu and Zhongyong, for instance, were remarkably unique in that the translated texts were filled with notes and comments quoted from Arnold, Carlyle, Emer- son, Goethe, Kant, Ruskin, Shakespeare and Tolstoy, in addition to Gu’s own comments and long introductions and appendixes making the texts relevant to the contemporary socio-political world. And the aim of such cross-cultural alliance is to stand critically against the advance of Western modernity in its logic of commercialism and imperialistic “Kolonial Politik.” Here is an example of Gu’s translation of Confucius’ remarks: The Prime Minister in Confucius’ native State having on one occasion appointed an officer to be Chief Criminal Judge, the officer came to a disciple of Confucius for advice. The disciple then said to the officer: “Rulers have long failed in their duties, and the people have long lived in a state of disorganization. If you should discover enough evidence to convict a man, feel pity and be merciful to him; do not feel glad at your discovery.” [Note: (What a long way mankind must travel before they arrive at the stage when they know how to be tender to evil-doers, considerate to law-breakers, and human even to the inhuman. Truly they were men of divine nature who first taught this and who gave up their lives in order to make the realization of this possible and to hasten the practice of it.)—Goethe, Wilhelm Meister. People now speak of “Progress.” Progress, according to Goethe, here would seem to mean that mankind should “progress” towards being more and more human. Judged by this, China, two thousand years ago, seemed to have already made real progress in civilization.]40 To progress towards being more and more human, it requires real education and culture, but that is precisely what modern European civilization lacks in Gu’s critical judgment. It is interesting that Gu appropriates the Confucian idea “You jiao wu lei” in a creative and

40 Gu Hongming (Ku Hung Ming), The Discourses and Sayings of Confucius, pp. 173–174. I have omitted here the ﬁrst part of Goethe’s lines, which are presented in German. 44 chapter two modern translation and renders it as: “Among the really educated men, there is no caste or race-distinction,”41 or sometimes simply as “there is no race distinction.”42 To Gu Hongming, modern racial prejudice is a sign of lack of real education, which alone should serve as the criteria for cross-cultural and cross-racial alliance. Gu Hongming was particularly critical of the modern educational system, which only produces, in his words, “half education.” Following Goethe and Emer- son, he loathes that “the average product of the modern system of half education in Europe at the present day—is really an incarnate devil.”43 One group of these half educated devils, who were very close to Gu’s concerns, were those Orientalists in China, who love to discourse on “the true inwardness of the Oriental mind.” A good case in point was Rev. Arthur Smith , and his popular book on China entitled Chi- nese Characteristics. Gu Hongming called Arthur Smith a spokesman for “half-educated” “John Smiths” in China. As Gu sees it, “John Smith in China wants very much to be a superior person to the Chinaman and the Rev. Arthur Smith writes a book to prove conclusively that he, John Smith, is a very much superior person to the Chinaman,” and therefore, his book becomes a Bible to John Smith.44 As Gu puts it sarcastically: originally, John Smith’s father, the uneducated John Smith Sr., “alias John Bull,” made his fortune in China with the simple arithmetic formula 2 plus 2 equal 4. Now John Smith Jr. came to China and also wanted to understand “Chinese characteristics” with a presupposed philosophical proposition of a plus b equal c. And Gu Hongming’s advice to “John Smith” is to “put away all this nonsense about the true inwardness of the Oriental mind” and simply stick to his 2 plus 2 equal 4 and do his trade.45 In a cosmopolitan turn, Gu again calls on Goethe for his critical support as he quotes Goethe: “The Philistine not only ignores all conditions of life which are not his own but he also demands that the rest of mankind should fashion its mode of existence after his own.”46 Given Gu’s belief that “the disorder and derangement in China today is only a functional derangement, whereas the Anarchy in Europe

41 Ibid., p. 141. 42 Gu Hongming (Ku Hung Ming), Papers from a Viceroy’s Yamen, p. 171. 43 Gu Hongming (Ku Hung Ming), The Universal Order, Or the Conduct of Life: A Confu- cian Catechism (Being a Translation of One of the Four Confucian Books, Hitherto Known as the Doctrine of the Mean), p. 75. 44 Gu Hongming (Ku Hung Ming), The Spirit of the Chinese People, p. 111. 45 Ibid., p. 116. 46 Ibid., p. 111. chinese modernity 45 and America is really an organic disorder,”47 there is no wonder that Gu Hongming rejected in principle the wholesale introduction of technological advances into China. And such rejection is not a nationalist move, but rather out of cosmopolitan concern. It is not so much that Gu did not realize that China needed all those previously unheard of technological innovations from the West to fight for its mere survival as well as to improve the economic situation in China at the time. But Gu Hongming was deeply concerned with the consequences of the introduction of Western technological advances as propounded by Zhang Zhidong. In Gu’s view, the reason why Confucianism did not put much emphasis on the mechanical wit (gewu) is precisely because it foresees the possibility that mechanical innovations would lead people to indulge in material interests so as to forget about their moral being, just as “contemporary Westerners specialize in the advancement of technical machinery and become petty businessmen with unfettered desires.”48 Confucian morality thus contains for Gu Hongming a universal saving power for the moral degeneration characteristic of Western modernity, especially in terms of international relations. Gu Hongming’s relentless critique of “li” (interest) as a definitive trait of modernity applies to both Western and Chinese context. While Gu’s critique of commercialism in Western modernity emphasizes its inner connection with its imperialist “Kolonial Politik,” his reluctance to adopt the doctrine of “li” in China at the turn of the century relates to an egalitarian concern for justice (yi). Gu would sometimes admit, especially in Chinese-language writings, that given the weak economical situation in China at the time, certain technological development would be inevitable.49 Moreover, he would agree that a true Confucian should not leave aside the business of managing finance (licai).50 But he points out that what was happening with the advance of “li” in China was not a matter of “licai” but of “zhengcai” (competing for or plundering wealth), the result of which was not only a loss of concern for justice, but inevitably the emergence of a compradore class and corrupted officials in power. As Gu laments sarcastically, in addition to the Confucian ethics of “junjun chenchen, fufu zizi” (king/official, father/son), contemporary Confucian officials

47 Gu Hongming (Ku Hung Ming), Papers from a Viceroy’s Yamen, p. xii. 48 Gu Hongming, Gu Hongming wenji (Collected Writings of Gu Hongming), p. 18. 49 Ibid., p. 2. 50 Ibid., p. 20. 46 chapter two have developed a new “ethical” practice: “guanguan shangshang” (official/businessmen).51 Gu Hongming’s cosmopolitan alliance of Arnoldian Romanticism and Confucian humanism based on his critique of Western imperialism and modernity offers a unique thought-provoking discourse at the threshold of Chinese modernity when Chinese culture was forced to engage the unprecedented challenge of Western modernity. What is unique about Gu’s perspective is that he offers a critique of Western modernity from within deriving from his long-term diasporic immersion and education in it. While Zhang Zhidong represented the last generation of Confucian literarti bent toward Reform, Gu Hongming was perhaps the first fully Western-educated Chinese turned into a staunch defender of Confucian values. As secretary and advisor of foreign affairs to Zhang Zhidong, Gu Hongming must have been a disappointment to Zhang who needed Gu’s expertise in Western knowledge but found a critic of Western modernity. To Zhang Zhidong, Gu’s discourse may be philosophically appealing, but could not solve the pressing dilemma China found herself in. Gu Hongming of course understood Zhang’s nationalist impulse and admired Zhang’s efforts even though he differed from Zhang’s approach. In Chinese modernity, however, Gu Hongming’s discourse has not only been marginalized, but has in fact been demonized by the later generation of radical intellectuals in the New Culture and May Fourth Movement. Two decades after Zhang Zhidong’s Exhortation to Learning was published, China’s progress to modernity was in full force and culminated in the New Culture and May Fourth Movement. In this radical iconoclast movement, Gu Hongming, with his political loyalty to the Qing court and still wearing the queue after the downfall of the Qing Dynasty, became a clown figure in the eye of the iconoclast intellectuals grown up reading Liang Qichao’s inspiring works. Conse- quently, Gu Hongming has only been known in modern Chinese intellectual world as a weird eccentric defending concubinage against the progressive emancipating voice of the New Culture and May Fourth Movement. That is a prime example of the dominant and exclusive power of the New Culturalist discourse—the dominant discourse of the Chinese modernity. Before I begin to discuss the liberal cosmopolitan

51 Ibid., p. 20. chinese modernity 47 alternative, it is necessary to ﬁrst sketch out what I see as the main dilemma of this dominant discourse of Chinese modernity.

Anti-Traditionalism and the Negativity of Chinese Modernity

There have been many narratives characterizing the dilemmas of Western modernity. In Dilip Gaonkar’s account, for instance, there has always been “a tale of two intersecting visions of modernity in the West: the Weberian societal/cultural modernity and the Baude- lairian cultural/aesthetic modernity. Culture is the capacious and contested middle term. In the Weberian vision, societal modernization fragments cultural meaning and unity. The Baudelairian vision, which is equally alert to the effects of modernization, seeks to redeem modern culture by aestheticizing it.”52 Both visions offer a positive and negative side in assessing the historical advance of modernization in the West. In the Weberian social-cultural account, modernization has brought to the West significant improvement in material conditions of life in terms of material wealth, scientific innovations, emancipation of mind and personal freedom as heralded by Enlight- enment thought. On the other hand, the modern awakening is also accompanied by the instrumentalization of reason as experienced in one’s alienation and disenchantment of the world. Weber’s metaphor of living in “iron cage” or Foucault’s metaphor of living under “dis- ciplinary technology” captures such dilemma. In the Baudelairian cultural-aesthetic account, the urban secular modernity is the site of excitement, innovation, wonder and spectacle where the flaneur participates in its observation, engagement, critique and self-reflection. At the same time, the freedom the flaneur enjoys is always overshadowed by a sense of anxiety and groundlessness opened up by the absence of moral constraints that could easily lead to the meaning- less self-narcissism or the nihilistic Nietzschean overcoming of the superman. I am not concerned with dissecting the dilemma of Western modernity here, although Chinese modernity, as forced upon by Western modernity, is inevitably related to the defining features of Western modernity. Nor am I interested in analyzing Chinese modernity as a

52 Gaonkar, Dilip Parameshwar, ed. Alternative Modernities, pp. 8–9. 48 chapter two minority discourse alternative to Western modernity. Rather, what I intend to do is to outline the dilemma of Chinese modernity in order to look into the possibility of alternative responses to the dominant discourses of Chinese modernity. As such, the meaning of such notions as modernity, nationalism, cosmopolitanism, and liberalism have to be grounded, contested and sought in the historical context of modern China in the first place. The defining element in shaping Chinese modernity lies in the inter- play between imperialism, nationalism and cosmopolitanism. The rise of Chinese modernity can be seen on three dimensions: the socio-political, the socio-cultural and the cultural-aesthetic. The socio-political is concerned with the (re-)construction of a new nation-state against imperialist encroachment, as actualized in nationalist (as well as communist, in practice to a large extent) revolutions. The socio-cultural, as exemplified in the “New Culture and May Fourth Movement,” offers a predominantly cosmopolitan discourse aimed at a cultural revolution to achieve the socio-political goal of nation-building. The cultural- aesthetic dimension deals with the problematic of self and identity in relation to a confusing and chaotic world caught in between the legacy of tradition and a rapidly modernizing society. In so far as the socio-political goal of nation-building is concerned, there was in fact hardly any dissenting voice among intellectuals of different camps regardless of their political orientations. The difference lies in their political, social, cultural and aesthetic approaches towards achieving that goal. Politically, of course, the line was drawn and the battle was fought between the Nationalists and the Com- munists in modern China, but the historical and ideological origins of the two rival camps were very much intertwined together, and its diversion must be traced back to the New Culture and May Fourth Movement, when Marxist thought was introduced to China, nationalism was the manifest underlying theme and goal of the movement, and cosmopolitanism was the most distinctive characteristic of the movement. The issue of cosmopolitanism has attracted keen critical interest in recent cultural critique in the West, as the world becomes more global and transnational while nationalism retains its aura and power despite its traumatic historical experience in Western modernity. Criti- cal attempts focus on recuperating the theoretical trace of the cosmopolitan tradition from Stoics to Kant to Rawls in order to come to chinese modernity 49 terms with the contemporary globalizing realities.53 In modern Chi- nese context, however, cosmopolitanism took on a rather distinctive meaning. As Shu-mei Shih points out, “When applied to Third World intellectuals, ‘cosmopolitanism’ implies that these intellectuals have an expansive knowledge constituted primarily by their understanding of the world (read: West), but when applied to metropolitan Western intellectuals there is a conspicuous absence of the demand to know the non-West.”54 Indeed, as the defining feature of the New Culture and May Fourth Movement, cosmopolitanism means the all-out and wholesale adoption and engagement with Western knowledge on the part of a new generation of post-Civil-Examination intellectuals educated abroad, mostly in Japan and the West. Some two decades after Zhang Zhidong’s reform ideas and measures that called for the desir- ability of Western practical and cultural knowledge, a generation of Western-educated intellectuals had grown up. Frustrated with what they saw as the backward and depressing socio-political situation facing China, and now armed with newly-acquired Western knowledge, the new generation of intellectuals led by Chen Duxiu , Hu Shi and Lu Xun rallied them together around the journal The New Youth and called for a “Cultural Renaissance” by way of introducing Western social, political and cultural knowledge, as they believed now that the only way out for China’s rejuvenation under the shadow of Western imperialism was to follow the Western way, not only militarily and economically, but also politically and culturally, as exemplified in the ideals of “Mr. Science” and “Mr. Democracy” which were taken as of universal value. Sun Yat-sen, on the other hand, distanced himself from the discourses of “New Culture” and was particularly suspicious of the claim of universalism or “cosmopolitanism.” As Sun sees it, the question was not whether a theory of cosmopolitanism was transcendentally desirable but whether it was applicable and practical to the modern Chinese situation. Sun in fact contributes China’s lack of the consciousness of nationalism to the traditional political way of thinking

53 See Pheng Cheah and Bruce Robbins eds., Cosmopolitics: Thinking Feeling beyond the Nation; Martha C. Nussbaum, For Love of Country? Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmo- politanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. 54 See Shu-mei Shih, The Lure of the Modern: Writing Modernism in Semicolonial China, 1917–1937, p. 97. 50 chapter two which was actually cosmopolitan in nature. Sun admits that the Chi- nese notion of cosmopolitanism—datong is a noble ideal but what China needs at present is a strong awareness of nationalism so that she will be powerful enough to keep its own sovereignty so as to avoid being subjugated and colonized by the Western Powers in the ﬁrst place. As Sun warns, “[T]he strong states and the powerful races have already forcibly taken possession of the globe and the rights and privileges of other states and nations are monopolized by them. Hoping to make themselves forever secure in their exclusive position and to prevent the smaller and weaker peoples from again reviving, they sing praises to cosmopolitanism, saying that nationalism is too narrow; really their espousal of internationalism is but imperialism and aggression in another disguise.”55 While Sun’s nationalist stance against imperialist encroachment is certainly a legitimate concern, his suspicion and implicit suggestion that Chinese cosmopolitan intellectuals were collaborating with imperialist objectives can hardly be warranted. It is historically undeniable that the New Culture and May Fourth Movement was a patriotic movement, and both the Enlightenment intellectuals of the movement and the Nationalists led by Sun Yat-sen were anti-imperialists with the prime objective of saving the nation. And in that sense, Enlighten- ment cosmopolitan intellectuals were also nationalists in modern Chi- nese context. Likewise, Sun also acknowledged the patriotic nature of the movement and urged fellow nationalists to participate in and support the movement.56 The combination of cosmopolitan discourses of Enlightenment with nationalist narratives is a distinctive feature of Chinese modernity, and its legitimacy arises from their common objective to resist the imperialist encroachment upon modern China. Chinese nationalism has certainly constituted a grand narrative in Chi- nese modernity, but it had its own historical necessity and legitimacy, which any genealogical critique of Chinese nationalist narrative per se must put into perspective, as Ban Wang has warned us recently. “The nationalist impulse was part of May Fourth culture and was a collective struggle for the Chinese to assert their right to self-determination and survival as a collectivity. Although the notion of the nation-state

55 See Sun, Yat-sen. San Min Chu I: The Three Pinciples of the People, pp. 83–84. 56 See Chow, Tse-tsung. The May Fourth Movement: Intellectual Revolution in Modern China, p. 195. chinese modernity 51 is imported from the Enlightenment discourse, this borrowing need not be seen as another example of the colonized being duped by a colonial discourse.”57 In a sense, the difference between nationalist approach and the cosmopolitan approach in the modern Chinese context lies in their different assessment of the effect of imperialism upon the feasibility of the (re-)construction of a new modern Chinese nation-state. As China’s crises deepen and intellectuals become more and more radicalized, however, both the nationalist discourse and the cosmopolitan discourse became rigid and exclusive, forsaking the very liberal principles the Enlightenment movement intended to bring about. The Russian Revolution inspired a large group of Chinese youth and Chen Duxiu, one of the leaders of the New Culture and May Fourth Movement eventually became the ﬁrst secretary of the Chinese Communist Party. In embracing revolutionary cosmopolitanism, the primary concern for the Marxist new youth was still China’s own salvation from imperialism. What was sidelined and marginalized by both the Nationalist and the Communist revolutionaries were precisely the Enlightenment ideals of individual rights and integrity. In terms of the socio-political and socio-cultural aspects of Chinese modernity, the contention between revolutionary nationalism and revolutionary cosmopolitanism was more apparent than real. Rather, the dominant modern Chinese historical practice has been the advancement of illiberal nationalism and illiberal cosmopolitanism, and the alternative would have to be sought in liberal cosmopolitanism, which would include liberal nationalist concerns yet go beyond it. Before I turn to look at Lin Yutang’s literary and cultural practices in Chinese modernity and examine the possibilities of an alternative liberal cosmopolitan discourse, I need to characterize the dominant cultural-aesthetic mode of discourse that is essential to the dilemma of Chinese modernity. When Zhang Zhidong quotes Confucius’ saying: “Know thy shame, thou shall have courage,” he meant to strengthen the Confucian foundation by acknowledging the failure and the inferior status of China in face of the Western imperial powers. In a way, Zhang was very successful in injecting a powerful moral force in the mind of the modern Chinese intelligentsia. As Jing Tsu also points out recently, the sense

57 See Ban Wang, Illuminations from the Past: Trauma, Memory, and History in Modern China, p. 19. 52 chapter two of failure lies deep in the modern Chinese psyche in the very formation of modern Chinese identity, and that sense of failure was not a passive, but rather a very productive force in Chinese modernity.58 But little would he know that, after two decades of shame-swallowing, the new generation of Western-educated Chinese intellectuals of the New Culture and May Fourth era turned around and attacked the very foundation Zhang Zhidong wanted to uphold but now looked upon by the New Culturalists as the very source of their shame. Gu Hongming’s worry turned out to be true in that Zhang Zhidong’s theory in fact opened up the demise of the Confucian order. But his own cosmopolitan strategy to uplift Confucianism was completely overwhelmed and swept aside by the new iconoclast cosmopolitanism of the New Culture and May Fourth era bent on the total Westerniza- tion of Chinese culture. The New Culture and May Fourth Movement was certainly a piv- otal event in defining the mainstream cultural discourse of Chinese modernity. In Hu Shi’s projection, the movement is supposed to bringing about a “Cultural Renaissance ” to modern China. But unlike the Renaissance in the West, which was supposed to be a “rebirth” of the Greco-Roman culture hence linking the tradition in the West, the New Culture and May Fourth Movement was characterized by its manifest break with the Chinese tradition in its all-out assault against the Con- fucian order. The radical anti-traditionalism and total Westernization are in fact two sides of the same coin of the New Culture and May Fourth Movement. As Lin Yu-sheng has pointed out, anti-traditionalism and total Westernization were at the core of the leading thinkers of the New Culture and May Fourth Movement, namely Chen Duxiu, Hu Shi and Lu Xun. A returned student from America, Hu Shi rocked the Chinese intellectual world with his idea of “wholesale Westerniza- tion” as the only means to progress China into the modern world. Later he modified the term into “sufficient cosmopolitanism ” to shove off the criticism that, technically, China could not be “totally Western- ized.” But by “sufficient cosmopolitanism,” as Lin Yu-sheng explains, “he did not mean a conscious effort toward a creative synthesis or integration of all civilizations in the world. Rather, his usage of the term betrayed his assumption of the universal validity and viability of

58 See Jing Tsu, Failure, Nationalism, and Literature: The Making of Modern Chinese Identity, 1895–1937. chinese modernity 53 modern Western civilization.”59 Compared to Chen Duxiu whose cultural radicalism led him to revolutionary cosmopolitanism by becoming the first Secretary of Chinese Communist Party, Hu Shi remained a cultural radical throughout his life, but he also maintained a liberal political stance advocating piecemeal reform rather than revolution to progress China into modernity. While Hu Shi’s call for the Western- ization of Chinese culture exerted powerful influence upon modern Chinese intellectuals, his liberal political stance had unfortunately a rather weak following. Perhaps Hu Shi’s radical culturalism could be understood as a strategic move in that Hu believed that, in that historical junction, Chinese traditional culture deserved all the bashing and modern Western culture needed all the promoting in order to bring about a new civilization to China. The key component of the New Culture and May Fourth Move- ment is the Literary Revolution , and in shaping the new dominant cultural-aesthetic mode of discourse, none was more influential than its foremost writer Lu Xun. Lu Xun was the paradigmatic figure in Chinese modernity not because Mao elevated him to the statue of the god-like cultural icon in the Communist politico-cultural regime. In fact, Lu Xun was hailed as a cultural hero representing the “national soul” right after his death in 1936. Even after Mao’s political maneu- vering has been deconstructed, Lu Xun is still very much alive today, as modernity is still very much with China. The predominance of Lu Xun in Chinese cultural modernity lies in the fact that the literary and cultural discourse of Lu Xun supplied a “subject” for the Chinese modernity that had so far lacked subjectivity once the traditional cultural world was forced to open up to modernity. As Susan Daruvala put it, Lu Xun “managed to embrace two extremes found in the philosophical underpinnings of modernity—the Nietzschean view of the self and the Hegelian mode of history found in Marx.”60 When applied to the Chinese context, the Nietzschean/Hegelian subject Lu Xun fashioned for Chinese modernity relies on double negativity—radical antitraditionalism and a relentless self-critique resulting from a combative sense of inferiority complex. The two most well-known short stories of

59 See Lin, Yu-sheng, The Crisis of Chinese Consciousness: Radical Antitraditionalism in the May Fourth Era, p. 83, note 3. 60 See Susan Daruvala, Susan, Zhou Zuoren and an Alternative Chinese Response to Moder- nity, p. 39. 54 chapter two

Lu Xun , “A Madman’s Diary” and “The Story of Ah Q,” reveal such negativity most tellingly. Lu Xun became the leading writer in the New Culture and May Fourth Movement with his short story “A Madman’s Diary” (1918), the first piece of “New Literature” written in the vernacular language that won critical acclaim. The Chinese term for the protagonist—“kuangren” actually contains a double meaning: it could mean “a madman” but it could also refer to “an unconventional rebel,” which is precisely what the writer intends his protagonist to be: a cultural rebel disguised, or perceived, as a “madman.” Indeed, as the sole enlightened man living in a tradition-bound village, the “madman” indicts the entire traditional Chinese culture in the bleakest term by labeling the whole traditional Chinese culture and history as cannibalistic: “In ancient times, as I recollect, people often ate human beings, but I am rather hazy about it. I tried to look this up, but my history has no chronology, and scrawled all over each page are the words: ‘Virtue and Morality.’ Since I could not sleep anyway, I read intently half the night, until I began to see words between the lines, the whole book being filled with the two words—‘Eat people.’”61 Lu Xun’s metaphor for the Chinese traditional culture as “the iron house” was well-known. But what “A Madman’s Diary” tells us is not so much whether the “iron house” can or cannot, should or should not be broken down, but rather that every member of the village community helps to reinforce the “iron house.” Ordinary men and women, his neighbors, the doctor, the children, even the dog, and his own brother all conspire to “eat him” for no other reason than the fact that he dared to show that he was a rebellious iconoclast by “stepping on the old books.” As exemplified by this no-name village, the Chinese culture for thousands of years has been a cannibalistic feast, and everybody is implicated in it. And the “madman” is also self-critical for that matter—since his brother may have eaten his own sister, he himself may very well have participated in the cannibalistic feast. More significantly, the “madman’s diary” is preceded by a forward that is written in classical wenyan and tells us that the “madman” has long been cured and is now serving as an official elsewhere, that is, the lone enlightened rebel has returned back to the establishment again. Compared to such doubly negative vision of the

61 See Lu Xun, Lu Xun quanji (The Complete Works of Lu Xun), Vol. I, p. 447. chinese modernity 55 writer, the cry of the “madman” at the end of the “diary”—“save the children” seems feeble indeed. Lu Xun’s charge against the Chinese culture as “cannibalistic” constitutes a totalistic assault against Chinese cultural tradition where the dichotomy between tradition and modernity is posed irreversibly. In the text, the “madman’s” charge of “cannibalism” is documented by references to Chinese classical texts as well as contemporary popular practices. But Lu Xun was probably not aware that the discourse of cannibalism had long been a colonial discourse in which non-Western cultures were systematically labeled as “cannibalistic” for colonial conquest or “emancipation.”62 In fact, the ground for the “madman’s” call for arms against the “cannibalistic” Chinese culture was precisely Western modernity, because, as the “madman” put it, either the cannibalistic Chinese would eat each other up, or be wiped out by the “real man” even as the cannibals can be most regenerative and productive: “You must change, change from the bottom of your heart! You must know cannibals won’t be allowed to live in the world in the future.”63 In invoking the discourse of cannibalism, Lu Xun was certainly neither endorsing nor collaborating with the colonial discourse of cannibalism in its conquest of other cultures. Rather, according to Lu Xun’s self-proclaimed doctrine of cultural borrowing (nalai zhuyi), he employed whatever Western notions he found useful for his own purpose for a cultural revolution. In other words, Western appropriations are made to substantiate a modern Chinese subjectivity. How- ever, such a cross-cultural scheme takes neither the Chinese culture nor the Western culture seriously, and posits a utilitarian dichotomy of backward Chinese tradition and progressive Western modernity. It not only essentialises the Chinese culture in total negativity, but also severely underestimates the global/imperial effect of the West- ern discourse when applied in the modern Chinese context. A Nietz- schean/Hegelian subject for Chinese modernity will not be helpful for a creative transformation of Chinese culture into modernity. Though unintentional, Lu Xun’s discourse of cannibalism achieved what the colonial discourse of cannibalism would but perhaps could not achieve

62 The most well-known example is of course found in Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. See Defoe, Robinson Crusoe. 63 See Lu Xun, Lu Xun quanji (The Complete Works of Lu Xun), Vol. 1, p. 453. 56 chapter two in debunking traditional Chinese culture and blocking it from a fruitful modern transformation. And so was Lu Xun’s appropriation of the discourse of national character as notably shown in “The Story of Ah Q.” The theme of Chinese national character was originally a missionary discourse propounded by Arthur Smith in his inﬂuential The Chinese Characteristics, and it is well-known Lu Xun acknowledged his familiarity with Smith’s characterizations via Japanese translations. The issue here is not about establishing circumstantial link between Smith and Lu Xun’s discourses, but rather the fact that Lu Xun embraced the notion of national character for his own project of cultural self-critique. This move was quite in contradistinction with Gu Hongming’s critique of Smith’s characterizations of the Chinese culture and people, as I mentioned above. But since Gu Hongming has been marginalized as a clown ﬁgure with his political loyalty to the Qing court, Lu Xun’s discourse of Chinese national character, or guominxing, as dissected in “The Story of Ah Q,” has become a dominant discourse and an enduring obsession in Chinese modernity. A kind of village outcast, the protagonist “Ah Q” (or “John Doe”) is cast as a no-name every- man of the Chinese who lives an unconscious mundane village life with personal vicissitudes and eccentricities, constantly bullied by others and bullying the weaker ones. The psychological mentality of “Ah Q” is the so-called “strategy of spiritual triumph” ( jingshen shengli fa), that is, whenever he is bullied and beaten up by other villagers, he has a peculiar inward psychological self-deceiving reasoning through which he would come out as the victor in the end. That is of course a sarcastic comment on the contemporary failure of China in face of Western colonial encroachment. The “Ah Q” persona has been taken as the negative trait of Chinese national character par excellence, and such negativity has generated tremendous power in the modern Chi- nese critical discourse in terms of subject formation through relentless self-critique. As Jing Tsu sees it, “Ah Q’s recognition of self-failure connects much more intimately to Lu Xun’s preoccupation with the Chinese national character.”64 Indeed, the negativity of Nietzschean mode of self-overcoming quite resembles that of Ah Q’s self-absorbing psychological victory. If Ah Q’s “spiritual triumph” betrays a weakling’s

64 Jing Tsu, Failure, Nationalism, and Literature: The Making of Modern Chinese Identity, 1895–1937, p. 125. chinese modernity 57 self-deception, the Nietzschean self-overcoming calls for a hyper pessimistic, albeit a forceful and productive, superman. Such a cultural hero is never far from being an actual revolutionary. Mao Zedong was indeed a rather shrewd reader of Lu Xun after all.

Lin Yutang and the Liberal Cosmopolitan Alternative

Lin Yutang was not a founder of discursivity for Chinese modernity and he was not an active player of the New Culture and May Fourth Movement. When Hu Shi returned from America in 1917 with national acclaim to Peking University, Lin was an English Instruc- tor at Tsinghua College and was among the crowd to greet this hero of the Chinese Literary Renaissance. Lin’s only participation in the New Culture Movement was his contribution of his first Chinese- language essay on the reform of the Chinese language index system to La Jeunesse (The New Youth), the mouthpiece for the New Culture Movement. Right after the May Fourth Incident in 1919 and at the peak of national intellectual enthusiasm, Lin left China for America to pursue his graduate study first at Harvard University and then in Leipzig University, Germany. And he did not come back from Europe to join the faculty of Peking National University until 1923, when the May Fourth Movement was already over and China was entering into a different intellectual and socio-political scene opened up by the New Culture and May Fourth movement. But the intellectual revolution of the New Culture and May Fourth Movement left a formidable impact on Lin Yutang. The unique mode of engagement in which Lin associates himself with that movement profoundly affects his later modes of reaction towards Chinese modernity. On the one hand, Lin was excited by the vibrant intellectual atmosphere, which he calls “an electrifying experience,” and “felt instinctive sympathy for the whole progressive attitude of the movement.”65 This “instinctive sympathy” accompanied Lin all the way to Harvard University when Lin set himself apart from all other Chinese students who followed Irving Babbitt ’s teachings and formed the Xueheng cultural group later on in modern China, an important opposing camp to the mainstream New Culturalists. Indeed, Lin Yutang was perhaps the first commentator

65 Lin Yutang, From Pagan to Christian, p. 44. 58 chapter two and promoter, in English, of the New Culture and “new literature” in China with two of his English essays published in The Chinese Student’s Monthly. 66 On the other hand, however, Lin was at the same time deeply impressed and influenced by Gu Hongming, as Lin Yutang recalled later in his life, both Hu Shi and Gu Hongming were “two first-class minds which left an indelible influence upon [him] and which, in different ways, contributed to [his] further development.”67 This unorthodox attention to Gu Hongming might seem surprising for a modern Chinese intellectual, but an explanation can perhaps be sought in their similar educational background. Unlike almost all the leading proponents of the New Culture Movement such as Cai Yuanpei, Hu Shi, Chen Duxiu and the Zhou brothers who were all brought up in the classical educational training, and were now attributing the weaknesses of contemporary China to the very traditional culture and were going all out to denounce it for the sake of the salvation of the nation, Gu and Lin were both brought up in Western education. In fact, until his Beijing years in late 1910s, Lin had little knowledge about the traditional culture the new culturalists were trying to overthrow. He was born to a Chinese Christian family in Fujian province and went to St. John’s University in Shanghai, an Episcopalian missionary college with classes taught exclusively in English. In the middle of the New Culturalist enthusiasm for national salvation and denunciation and reevaluation of traditional socio-cultural values and systems, Lin was dealing with his own salvation—he had lost his faith in his Chris- tian education and felt he was cut off from his national heritage. So while feeling “instinctive sympathy for the whole progressive attitude of the movement,” Lin plunged himself into learning various Chinese classics, buying books from street vendors and inquiring about the authenticity and editions of thread-bound books from bookstore own- ers, being ashamed to ask such questions to his Tsinghua colleagues.68 Given Lin’s peculiar educational background and his unique take on the impact of the New Culture and May Fourth movement, he entered the intellectual scene of the post-May Fourth China with a dis-

66 Lin Yutang, “Literary Revolution and What Is Literature,” The Chinese Students’ Monthly (February 1920); “Literary Revolution, Patriotism, and the Democratic Bias,” The Chinese Students’ Monthly ( June 1920). 67 Lin Yutang, From Pagan to Christian, p. 44. 68 Ibid., pp. 41, 44–46. See also Lin Yutang, Memoirs of an Octogenarian, pp. 31–32. chinese modernity 59 tinct disposition. Now that Chinese modernity was inevitably opened up, the question remains, and it becomes much more urgent, that what kind of modernity was desirable for China, what kind of modern nation-state and society, what kind of cultural life should be constructed and through what means. And even though traditional discourses and practices had been seriously questioned and challenged during the New Culture and May Fourth movement, the question still remains whether, in constructing the Chinese modernity, “tradition” should be in theory totally discarded or appropriated and re-invented. As an elite representative of Western-educated (in America and Europe) intellectuals, Lin Yutang had extensive personal connections and shared ideological common ground with the mainstream Westernized intellectual class based in Shanghai (including, for instance, graduates of St. John’s) broadly and loosely called “Haipai” (Shanghai-style) group of writers and intellectuals. On the other hand, as a member of the “Yusi” group in Beijing (more or less mostly educated in Japan), Lin Yutang also maintained good relationships, both personally and intellectually, with the so-called “Jingpai” (Beijing-style) school of men of letters led by Zhou Zuoren. What Lin’s literary and cultural practices demonstrate is the attempt to seek for a middling alternative road, or a liberal cosmopolitan path, to Chinese modernity, different from the mainstream cultural discourse of Chinese modernity represented by Lu Xun. The ideological discourse and socio-political practices of the post- May Fourth China were characterized by the split between the Nationalists and the Communists. After Chiang Kai-shek purged the Communists from the coalition army of Northern Expedition and established Nanjing Government in the ensuing decade (1927–1937), the Communist Party as a political force was significantly shrunk, yet its Marxist ideology was by no means weakened in its influence among the intellectuals, especially the youth. In fact, with the establishment of the Left League under the CCP leadership in 1930, Marxian ideology arguably became the dominant voice in the intellectual arena. And both political camps resorted to “national salvation” as the overwhelming excuse to attack and exclude the other. Lin Yutang’s literary practices sought to go beyond the deeply politicized environment in socio-political critique and to escape from the suffocating narrative of “national salvation” in order that a free and liberal critical space was still viable and available. As early as 1927 in his war-time essays, Lin Yutang expressed his disbelief in the Marxist doctrine on the ground 60 chapter two that it did not fit with the actual realities of the Chinese society, as Lin put it: “The artificial creation of a class conflict between landlords and peasants and between capitalists and employees, where there are no real landlords and capitalists in the Western sense of the word, is bound to end in mere disorder and turmoil.”69 But during the Nan- jing Decade, Lin constantly tested the limit of liberal critique against the political censorship of the Nationalists while his critique of the Communists was not made explicit and intensified until the Leftists in the 1930s chose to launch critical campaigns against him. Lin’s liberal critique was made possible precisely because he remained vigilant and sensitive toward the overwhelming claim of the “nation-state.” Remaining vigilant and detached from the nationalist narrative were also Zhou Zuoren’s distinct literary practices in modern Chinese culture, which Susan Daruvala has identified as constituting an alternative response to Chinese modernity. Underlying Zhou’s approach was his innovative appropriation of traditional Chinese cultural sources, especially the marginal late Ming Neo-Confucian counter-tradition associated with thinkers like Li Zhi (1527–1602) and Jiao Hong (1540– 1620). As Daruvala notes, “In Zhou Zuoren, the use of traditional aesthetic concepts underpinned his turn away from politics to culture and, paradoxical as it may seem, fruitfully identified ways of constructing identity in relation to the nation-state.”70 In echoing Zhou Zuoren, Lin Yutang also believed that tradition can and should be negotiated and appropriated against the inevitable overshadowing Western modernity so as to bring forth a balanced and integrated modern Chinese culture. Following Zhou’s lead, Lin found a host of late Ming and Qing “xingling” (or expressive) school of writers such as Yuan Zhonglang, Yuan Mei, Jin Shengtan quite inspirational in constructing a modern aesthetics of life. Different from Zhou’s thorough detachment from the nation-state, however, which Lin believed ultimately contributed to Zhou Zuoren’s collaboration with the Japanese during the War of Resistance Against Japan, Lin’s liberal nationalist approach was still very much engaged with the nation-state, albeit in a critical and de- political manner, rather than a total cool detachment. Moreover, paradoxical as it may seem, Lin Yutang’s appropria- tive and innovative approach towards traditional cultural resources

69 Lin Yutang, Letters of a Chinese Amazon and Wartime Essays, p. 123. 70 Susan Daruvala, Zhou Zuoren and an Alternative Chinese Response to Modernity, p. 57. chinese modernity 61 significantly owes to his peculiar experience of being brought up with Christian education and his later thorough immersion with Western culture. Lin Yutang calls himself as one with “two feet crossed on both Eastern and Western cultures” and takes great pride in being called a cross-cultural critic. Given the impact of Gu Hongming’s critique of Western imperialism, Lin Yutang would not endorse the prescription of “total Westernization” for modern China, even less a total West- ernization in the Marxian fashion, though he felt instinctive sympathy toward the liberal progressive elements in the New Culture and May Fourth Movement. For Lin Yutang, Western modernity, like Chinese tradition, needs to be negotiated and integrated in the piecemeal fashion with concrete strategies. While Irving Babbitt’s Chinese disciples formed an influential “national essence” camp in modern Chinese intellectual scene, for instance, Lin somehow rejected his teacher’s philosophy and instead leaned toward Babbitt’s opponent J. E. Spingarn , whose theory of expression Lin appropriated to form a cross-cultural aesthetics together with the traditional Chinese cultural sources in late Ming as first promoted by Zhou Zuoren. To Lin, both Chinese and Western knowledge has to be selectively absorbed and contested in the process of its incorporation into modern China. Only by way of piecemeal reconciliation and contestation between traditional culture and Western modernity can the East/West dichotomy be successfully overcome so as to achieve the goal of reconstructing a mature and harmoniously integrated modern Chinese culture. To arrive at a mature modern Chinese culture, one must go beyond the negative “national soul” of Lu Xun and replace the Nietzschean/ Hegelian superman subject of hyper pessimism and evolutionary lin- earity with a confident cross-cultural critic capable of drawing out strategies of cultural integration from both Chinese and Western cultural resources. A cosmopolitan critic can be critical of both Chinese or Western culture, but does not hold a negative attitude for the sake of critique itself either against Chinese culture (all is “feudal” or “poison”) or against Western culture (nothing but imperialist aggression). In the “Chinese Preface” to Between Tears and Laughter, Lin lays out an interesting and revealing evaluative scheme containing four different intellectual attitudes toward the problematic of Chinese modernity: The highest type of intellectuals (shang shi zhi shi) will take modern culture as the shared culture of the whole world, a cosmopolitan culture belonging to all (quan shijie gongxiang gongyou zhi wenhua), while keeping their national culture from melting into the world culture, so that 62 chapter two

the self’s advantages can complement other’s shortcomings. . . . For the middle type of intellectuals, their vision is limited to their own country alone, which will not be enough to make any contribution to the world culture, but is advantageous in learning from others to complement self’s shortcomings. The lower type of intellectuals know only themselves and nothing about others. Given the existing advanced science and technology others have invented, they would not try to know and utilize for their own purpose. They are like unfilial children who know only to show their family treasures to others instead of expanding their family enterprise. But this type of people are at least Chinese. The lowest kind is the “yangchang nieshao” (compradore hacks in foreign settlement), who believe that the entire native culture should be abolished, because it is either “aristocratic” or “petty bourgeois,” and all traditional values such as “zhong” (loyalty), “xiao” (filial piety), “lian” (integrity), “jie” (chastity) are deemed as “feudal.” They are determined to destroy in toto Chinese traditional society, while they regard every Western novelty as valuable and flatter and follow them doggedly. To them, mere mentioning of Confucius and Mencius or Yijing (The Book of Change) is despicable. That is really the sign for national subjugation and genocide. They claim themselves as “modern,” but they are in fact compradore hacks, the lowest type of citizen.71

71 Lin Yutang, “Chinese Preface” to Tixiao jiefei, Chinese translation of Between Tears and Laughter, p. 5. CHAPTER THREE

ENLIGHTENMENT AND NATIONAL SALVATION: THE POLITICS OF A LIBERAL NATIONALIST

横眉冷对千夫指，俯首甘为孺子牛鲁迅：“自嘲”，1932 (Raising my head high, I take thousand attacks cold- heartedly Bending my head low, I offer my service whole- heartedly) Lu Xun “Zichao” (Self-Satire), 19321 现在有人对你们说：“牺牲你们个人的自由，去求国家的自由! ” 我对你们说“争你们个人的自由, 便是为国家争自由! 争你们自己的人格，便是为国家争人格! 自由平等的国家不是一群奴才建造得起来的! ” 胡适：“介绍我自己的思想”，1930 (Now some say to you: “Sacrifice your personal freedom to fight for the freedom of the nation!” But I say to you: “Fighting for your own individual freedom is fighting for the freedom of your nation! To fight for your own dignity is to fight for the dignity of the nation! A nation of freedom and equality cannot be built by a group of slaves! ) Hu Shi “Jieshao wo ziji de sixiang” (Introducing My Own Thinking), 19302 东家是个普罗，西家是个法西，洒家则看不上这些玩意儿，一定要说什么主义，咱只会说是想做人罢。林语堂：“有不为丛书序”，1934 (On the left is Proletariat, on the right is Fascism, but I am attracted to neither of them. If you demand I

1 Lu Xun, “Zichao” (Self-Satire), Luxun quanji (The Complete Works of Lu Xun), vol. 7, p. 151. 2 Hu Shi, “Jieshao wo ziji de xixiang—Hu Shi wenji zixu” (Introducing My Own Thinking—Preface to Collected Works of Hu Shi), Hu Shi wenji (Collected Works of Hu Shi), pp. 511–512, original emphasis. 64 chapter three

say what doctrine I believe in, I shall say I just want to be myself as a human being) Lin Yutang “Youbuwei zhai congshu xu” (“Preface to Do-Nothing-Studio Essays”), 19343

The Liberal Question

One of the most influential theses about modern Chinese liberalism was put forward in the 1980s by Li Zehou. In reflecting upon the nightmare of the Cultural Revolution, Li posited the theory that the autocratic madness of the Cultural Revolution was induced by the feudalist legacy of traditional Chinese culture. And that the revival of the feudal traditional Chinese culture was possible was because the modern Chinese project of Enlightenment as represented in the New Culture and May Fourth Movement had been hijacked by the call for “national salvation” as embraced by nationalism as well as socialism, which anticipated the dictatorial collectivism of the Cultural Revolution. In other words, the liberal strand in the New Culture Movement that emphasized such values as individual freedom and rights was short-lived and quickly consumed by the overwhelming concern for “national salvation” in which liberal values were sacrificed and replaced by collectivist ideologies. Li maintained that Chinese Marxist practice was an embodiment of such collectivist ideologies and inherited many feudal traditional Chinese elements by way of peasant revolutions. In such sweeping generalizations, liberal critics like Li in the Reform era were able to assume the renewed role of Enlightenment intellectuals re- pursuing the New Cultural route of iconoclasm and Westernization.4 However, Li Zehou’s thesis was challenged by later critics in the 1990s. Li Yang, for instance, pointed out that Li Zehou’s thesis fails to notice the modernity of the Chinese nation-state in his dichotomy of “national salvation” vs. “Enlightenment.” In other words, it was because Li understood the notion of “national salvation” as a long- held traditional Confucian concept that there arose the newly posited

3 Lin Yutang, “Youbuweizhai congshu xu” (“Preface to Do-Nothing-Studio Essays”), Lunyu (Analects) 48 (September 1, 1934): 1098. 4 Li Zehou, Zhongguo xiandai sixiang shi lun (Essays on the History of Modern Chinese Thought), pp. 7–49. enlightenment and national salvation 65 dichotomy of tradition vs. modernity in the form of “national salvation” and “Enlightenment.” But in fact, as Li Yang points out, “national salvation” was very much a modern event that went hand in hand with the construction of a new nation-state. “In modern China, the recurring theme of ‘national salvation’ was not to save an already well-established China, but rather referred to the constructive process of nation-building in the modern sense of the nation-state.”5 For the Confucian elite had always believed in the cosmopolitan ideal of “tianxia,” and the Confu- cian notion of “guo” (nation) had been consumed under the notion of “tianxia” thanks to the prolonged history of uniﬁcation. It was not until after the Opium War when the expanding and colonizing powers of the Western nation-states penetrated the land of the Celestial Dynasty that Chinese gentry began to rethink the applicability of Confucian cosmopolitanism. In other words, the crisis of China simultaneously signiﬁed the beginning of the struggle for a new modern nation-state for China. It is generally agreed that the reform-minded intelligentsia of the Self-Strengthening Movement still worked somehow within the general framework of the Confucian scheme as summarized in Zhang Zhidong’s dictum—“Chinese Learning as Foundation, Western Learn- ing as Application.” Only after the First Sino-Japanese War did there occur a paradigm shift among Chinese intellectuals who started to believe in the emergence of the new modern Chinese nation-state as the solution to the ever deepening crisis of China. To acknowledge the modernity of the discourse of “national salvation” is certainly a step in the right direction towards a better understanding of the complex relationship between nationalism and liberalism. To be fair to Li Zehou, like most liberal intellectuals in the 1980s, Li might very well be writing under political constraint in which any critique of Chinese Marxism was political taboo. Thus, traditional Chinese culture easily became a scapegoat for the loss of liberal principles in modern China, while the modernity of the discourses of “national salvation” and “Enlightenment” was underemphasized. But Li Zehou’s concern with the problematic of liberalism in modern China is a valid one despite Li Yang’s deconstructive analysis. The problem with Li

5 Li Yang, “Jiuwang yadao qimeng:” dui bashi niandai yizhong lishi “yuanxushu” de jiegou fenxi (“National Salvation Overcoming Enlightenment:” A Deconstructive Analysis on a “Metanarrative” in the 1980s), Ziyouzhuyi yu zhongguo xiandaixing de sikao (Liberalism and the Problem of Chinese Modernity), p. 125. 66 chapter three

Yang’s deconstructive appreciation of nationalism, typical of the deconstructive approach that became inﬂuential in the 1990s, was that it bypassed the modernity of the discourse of “Enlightenment” in the Chi- nese context and annihilated the issue of liberalism in modern China at all. Li Yang’s deconstruction of Li Zehou’s dichotomy of “national salvation” vs. “Enlightenment” turns out to be a refashioned defense of the orthodox dictum of Chinese Marxist historical determinism: only the Chinese Communist Party and socialism can save China!6 Moreover, Li Yang’s deconstruction of the dichotomy of “national salvation”/“Enlightenment” is successful only in the sense that it high- lights the modernity of the discourse of “national salvation,” but it by no means dissolves the dichotomy itself, instead reinforces it with “national salvation” understood as a modern event. While Li Zehou posited the dichotomy in that the discourse of “national salvation” was understood as inheriting traditional Confucianism, which was antagonistic to modern liberal values, Li Yang reinforced the dichotomy in that liberal claims in modern China were necessarily incompatible with and mutually exclusive to the discourses of modern nationalism in China. In fact, in the historical context of modern China, hardly any liberal intellectual was not at the same time a nationalist at heart and in practice. So the real issue of modern Chinese liberalism was not the dichotomy between “national salvation” and “Enlightenment,” whether the former was understood as a traditional or modern discourse. The real problematic of modern Chinese liberalism has to be sought in the tension between liberalist and nationalist claims as well as the intellectuals’ critical role in power relations.

The Left Turns of Lu Xun and Hu Shi

Hu Shi likes to call the New Culture Movement “Chinese Renaissance” in that it is meant for China to be reborn on a new set of modern values, basically liberal values, so that China could survive the colonizing powers of the West. In that regard, it was not so much the patriotic May Fourth Movement hijacked the liberal cosmopolitan New Culture Movement, as “national salvation” had always been part of the agenda of the “Chinese Renaissance.” A critical test for liberal intellectuals of the “Chinese Renaissance” came ten years later in the “Great Revolu-

6 Ibid., p. 146. enlightenment and national salvation 67 tion” of 1927 when the Nationalists and the Communists joined hands to launch the Northern Expedition to unify the country and build a new China. Even though KMT and CCP broke up in the middle of the campaign, both parties continued to demand, even increasingly so, the uniformity on the part of liberal intellectuals in the name of nation- building and national salvation. The Nanjing Decade saw a great deal of tension between nationalism and liberalism. Liberal intellectuals strug- gled to retain a public space for criticism against the tightening control of the nascent Nationalist government. Ironically, it was the rise of the Left in the name of national salvation and protest against governmental repression that sounded the death knoll of liberalism. An examination of the politics of “turning” of the two leading intellectuals—Lu Xun and Hu Shi—will help us understand the real issue of modern Chinese liberalism and situate our discussion on Lin Yutang’s liberal politics at the time. While Lu Xun’s turning to the left as signiﬁed by his heading the Left League in February/March of 1930 was well-known, actual historical account for such turning has hardly been highlighted and fully examined. As Leo Lee has demonstrated, during the period from 1927– 1929, Lu Xun’s writings were full of doubts and satires concerning the revolution and the connection between revolution and literature. To Lu Xun, the revolution of 1927 had certainly failed and he was in a shocked, bewildering and even cynical mood. At that time, the Creation and Sun societies announced the revolutionary progression “From Literary Revolution to Revolutionary Literature.” While these two groups were engaged in power struggles for the exclusive right of ﬁrst claiming the slogan of “revolutionary literature ,” they were united in targeting Lu Xun as the major obstacle to and enemy of enhancing “revolutionary literature”—with good reason. For Lu Xun’s mode of writing at the time was anything but revolutionary. In an essay entitled “Mini-Thoughts” written on September 24, 1927, as Leo Lee quoted, we read the following passage: Revolution, counter-revolution, anti-revolution; Revolutionaries are killed by counter-revolutionaries; counter-revolutionaries are killed by revolutionaries. Anti-revolutionaries are taken to be revolutionaries and killed by counter-revolutionaries, or taken to be counter-revolutionaries and killed by revolutionaries, or not taken to be anything and still killed by revolutionaries or counter-revolutionaries. Revolution, revolutionize the revolution, revolutionize “revolutionize ‘revolutionize . . . .”7

7 Leo Ou-fan Lee, Voices from the Iron House: A Study of Lu Xun, p. 139. 68 chapter three

To the Creation and Sun societies’ personal attacks and their claim of “revolutionary literature,” or “proletariat literature ,” Lu Xun’s answer was a consistent “eye-for-eye” ridicule. Even as late as 1929, in a speech given on May 22 at Yenching University titled “General Views on Current New Literature,” Lu Xun held firm to his ridicule of the Creation society and their “fashionable literature.” He argued that new revolutionary writers would only be born after the revolution had succeeded, and thus, the activities of the Creation Society were either utopia or sham slogans, and he even satirically compared Cheng Fangwu’s self-advertisement as the representative of the proletariat class to assuming an imperial order.8 But by autumn 1929, the sundry attacks against Lu Xun by the Creation and Sun societies suddenly stopped. That was a direct result of the intervention of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). As Yang Hansheng recalled, the order came from Li Fuchun, then director of the Propaganda Bureau of Jiangsu CCP Branch in charge of cultural affairs in Shanghai. The CCP instructions were threefold: to condemn the attacks against Lu Xun as a strategic mistake; to stop the attacks immediately and unite with Lu Xun; to win over Lu Xun and pre- pare to form a united leftist front. Since most members of the Creation and Sun societies were CCP members, even though there was some discontent with the directive, Party order prevailed. Three CCP members Feng Xuefeng, Feng Naichao and Xia Yan were designated to inform Lu Xun of the CCP resolution and to coordinate with Lu Xun concerning the establishment of the Left League. As Xia Yan recalled, he was hesitant at first and asked Pan Hannian in charge of the Propa- ganda Bureau at the time: “What if Lu Xun does not approve of our suggestion?” Pan replied: “Don’t worry. This affair has been brewing for a long time. Men-in-charge from the CCP Central Committee have already talked with Lu Xun and won his consent.”9 We do not know who “the men-in-charge from the CCP Central Committee” were, but we do know that at that time two CCP members Rou Shi and Feng Xuefeng were already closely working with Lu Xun as his disciples. Feng, especially, played an important role in winning over Lu Xun. In Lu Xun’s widow Xu Guangping’s memoirs, we find the following lines:

8 Lu, Xun, “Xianjin de xinwenxue de gaiguan” (General Views on Current New Literature). In Luxun quanji (The Complete Works of Lu Xun), Vol. 4, pp. 139–140. 9 Xia Yan, “‘Zuolian’ chengli qianhou” (Before and After the Formation of the Left League). Zuolian huiyilu (Memoirs of the Left League), p. 39. enlightenment and national salvation 69

Sometimes listening to their conversation, I ﬁnd it really interesting. F [referring to Feng Xuefeng] says, “Master, you can do such and such.” Master says, “No, such I cannot do.” F says again, “Master, you can do that way.” Master says, “Doesn’t seem right, either.” F says, “Master, please give it a try.” Master says, “OK, I’ll just give it a try.” Thus in such tenacious contention, F achieved his purpose.10 Whatever happened between Feng and Lu Xun, the end result was: Lu Xun came out as the “head” (“mengzhu”) of the Left League. It is therefore quite clear that to win over Lu Xun was a well-orchestrated strategy on the part of the CCP organizers of the Left League. The question is on what ground Lu Xun agreed to the offer on his own part. In his detailed discussion of the politics of the formation of the Left League, Wang-chi Wong dispels as unsound a number of interpretations or allegations for the motives of Lu Xun’s turning, and concludes that Lu Xun was in fact Communist-oriented all along and the CCP’s reconciliatory approaches simply suited his needs.11 On the other hand, according to Feng Xuefeng, the Communist agent chieﬂy responsible for Lu Xun’s turning left, the basic source for Lu Xun’s transformation must be located in his translating Marxist literary theorists like Lunacharsky and Plekhanov. After all, Lu Xun devoted most of his time engaged in such translation work in these years while he only wrote a few essays compared to the voluminous number of “zawen” (miscellaneous essays) composed after he became the head of the Left League. But these two explanations are rather problematic. As shown above, Lu Xun himself ridiculed the notion of “revolutionary writers” before his turning. And translating Marxist literary theory does not necessarily mean endorsing it. And Lu Xun nowhere in this period acknowledged his belief in the veracity of the Marxist theory. Indeed, one may well suspect whether Lu Xun engaged in translations in order to “know the enemy,” as he would later advise the Leftist writers to do the same in the inaugural meeting of the Left League.12

10 Xu, Guangping, Xinwei de jinian (In Warm Memoriam), p. 89. 11 Wang-chi Wong, The Politics and Literature in Shanghai: The Chinese League of Left-Wing Writers, 1930–1936, p. 42. 12 See Lu Xun, “Duiyu zuoyi zuojia lianmeng de yijian” (Suggestions to the League of Leftist Writers), Luxun quanji (The Complete Works of Lu Xun), vol. 4, pp. 241–242; Also, Yang Hansheng, “Zhongguo zuoyi zuojia lianmeng chengli de jingguo” (The Pro- cess of Formation of the Chinese League of Left-Wing Writers), Zuolian huiyu lu (Memoirs of the Left League), p. 67. 70 chapter three

Perhaps the most appealing interpretation is the claim that Lu Xun’s turning left was a “moral act,” as Lin Yu-sheng put it. Lin Yu-sheng argued that even though politics as such was despised by Lu Xun, he “approached the problem of politics through his moral commitment. It was a moral duty for Lu Xun to keep going on a road when even he was not sure where it would lead.”13 The notion that Lu Xun represented the moral conscience of modern Chinese intellectuals in face of darkness has been the main reason that Lu Xun is still considered as the exemplary ﬁgure even by liberal Chinese intellectuals today despite his association with the totalitarian ideology dominant in 20th century China. In a recent debate among Chinese intellectuals on whether Lu Xun or Hu Shi offered a better route for contemporary Chinese intellectuals, for instance, Lu Xun’s appeal is still paramount. In answer to the question suggesting inherent connection between Lu Xun’s style of relentless critique and the communist practice of “class struggle,” Lin Xianzhi, a recent biographer of Lu Xun, perhaps offered a most representative defense—their chief difference lies in the fact that Lu Xun’s pen “always represents the interests of those who are under humiliation, deprivation and suppression.”14 The case of Lu Xun’s “moral conscience” gives a revealing footnote to Foucault ’s charge against what he calls the “universal intellectuals.” “For a long period,” Foucault tells us, “the ‘left’ intellectuals spoke and was acknowledged the right of speaking in the capacity of master of truth and justice. He was heard, or purported to make himself heard, as the spokesman of the universal. To be an intellectual meant something like being the consciousness/conscience of us all.”15 As “universal intellectuals” always speak for truth and justice, they also speak against power and suppression as if the intellectual is necessarily outside power relations. Foucault’s point is that “truth isn’t outside power, or lacking in power . . . [rather] it induces regular effects of power. Each society has its regime of truth, its ‘general politics’ of truth.”16 Lu Xun’s involvement with the Left League certainly shows that Lu Xun’s practices were by no means outside such regime of truth. The issue here is not so much whether Lu Xun’s critical stance represents the moral

13 Lin Yu-sheng, “The Morality of Mind and Immorality of Politics: Reflections on Lu Xun, the Intellectual,” Lu Xun and His Legacy, p. 126. 14 See Xie Yong ed., Hu Shi haishi Lu Xun (Hu Shi or Lu Xun), p. 23. 15 Michel Foucault, “Truth and Power,” The Foucault Reader, Paul Rabinow ed., p. 67. 16 Ibid., pp. 72–73. enlightenment and national salvation 71 conscience of modern Chinese intellectuals, but rather how it affects our understanding the problematic of modern Chinese liberalism. In fact, the chief objective of the Left League was to grasp power in the cultural arena by means of inventing a neologism “puluo” (proletariat) with which to achieve class distinction. The single most important theoretical event of the Leftist movement was the positing of the “proletariat” class distinction. The neologism “puluo” became such a powerful trope that all the major ideological struggles launched by the Leftists were fought in that name. It was no wonder that, to the different types of “liberalists” ranging from the pre-Leftist Lu Xun, Liang Qichao, Liang Shiqiu, Hu Qiuyuan and Lin Yutang, the imposition of a “proletariat” class concept, first propounded by a German philosopher and then empowered by the Russian revolutionaries, to the Chinese culture and society was a most unacceptable intrusion. Yet, without such an invention and its “proletariat” distinction, the Left- ists would be unable to distinguish and empower themselves and justify their “cause.” Thus, when the Creation and Sun societies launched their propaganda slogan of proletariat/revolutionary literature, they chose Lu Xun as the “imagined enemy”17 in contradistinction to themselves. The focus of the attack was to nail Lu Xun down to a particular non-proletariat class, which turned out to be rather difficult. Lu Xun of course retorted such absurdities as shown as late as in his essay “Stiff Translation and the Class Nature of Literature” and ridiculed those self-proclaimed “proletariat” writers: “Say, for instance, the class I belong to, it is still not decided even today. Sometimes I am a petty bourgeois, then suddenly I am a ‘bourgeois,’ other times I am even elevated to be a ‘feudal dreg.’”18 This essay was not written in a systematic Marxist theoretical framework, but rather in his normal “thorny” style to reproach his opponent Liang Shiqiu, but it did signify Lu Xun’s turn to the Left. The essay was first published in March, 1930 in the third-issue of the first-volume Mengya, an official periodical of the Left League, when Lu Xun was already hailed as the head of the Left League. It is in

17 See Wang Yao, Zhongguo xinwenxue shigao (A Draft History of New Chinese Lit- erature), p. 148. 18 Lu, Xun, “‘Yingyi’ yu wenxue de jieji xing” (Stiff Translation and the Class Nature of Literature), Luxun quanji (The Complete Works of Lu Xun), vol. 4, p. 213. It is interesting to note that Lu Xun was not poor. When he was in Shanghai, he stayed in a three-story house and had girl servants after his son was born. He frequently went to the movies and went out usually in a taxi. More discussion on this topic in the next chapter. 72 chapter three this essay that the term “class” appeared for the first time in his writings, even though it was only mentioned twice in passing, apparently a result of the “collaboration” between Lu Xun and Feng Xuefeng. In the beginning years, the major activities of the Left League were devoted to actual practices of propaganda such as spreading pamphlets, pasting slogans and organizing mass gatherings. In fact, the Left League was considered by the CCP leadership as just one other mass movement organization. Strategically speaking, the “proletariat” class distinction was for the sake of accumulating power, and to achieve that effectively depended on the unity of the class as a whole in exclusive distinction, and thus, various enemies need to be singled out, fixed, excluded and smashed. Tactically speaking, however, the exclusivity of the class distinction could also be a matter of “tongzhan” (winning over a potential enemy as a friend or ally). In Lu Xun’s case, the former “bourgeois,” “petty bourgeois” or man of the “leisure class” could be won over by means of a “tongzhan” tactic in the interest of power accumulation. While Lu Xun was a “tongzhan” object to be won over and then tactically deployed to lead the camp in name, Liang Shiqiu, for instance, was deemed to be a distinctive opponent to be crushed. After Lu Xun joined the Left League and became its “head,” he did not participate in street power struggle by spreading pamphlets and so forth. Instead, he became the League’s most powerful warrior—with his pen. His years on the Left (1930–1936) saw the publication of a voluminous number of his zawen mostly of polemical nature intended as fierce “bishou” (daggers) to sting the enemies. At least several of them were the results of the collaboration between Lu Xun and Feng Xuefeng (who also served as the CCP chief of the Left League for some time). In Xu Guangping’s memoirs, she mentioned “how he bothered Lu Xun with every minor detail about the publications of the League, drove him to write on assigned subjects, never gave an inch in argument until the old man was convinced.”19 When this collaboration was done in the context of a congenial personal relationship as in that between Lu Xun and Feng Xuefeng or Qu Qiubai, Lu Xun had no complaint. But after 1933 when Zhou Yang became the CCP secretary of the Left League, Zhou made it clear that he was the real boss and did not show much personal respect for Lu Xun. Lu Xun’s bitter complaint was only

19 See T. A. Hsia, The Gate of Darkness, p. 111; as well as Xu Guangping, Xinwei de jinian (In Warm Memoriam), p. 88. enlightenment and national salvation 73 known posthumously as recorded, in particular, in a letter he wrote to Hu Feng published by Lu Xun’s widow Xu Guangping, which has since become well-known. Of particular interest here is the last paragraph, which was left out in both T. A. Hisa and Leo Lee’s quotes: Today I have to write the “forum series” for the journal Literature. I myself know clearly that I should not have written the second and the third essays (in the series), yet I had to “fight” (“pengchang”) for the marshal, and, in the meantime, I had to consider the “Third Category” people and could not show weakness before them. This is really a case of “the dumb man eating bitter pills (‘huanglian’)—he cannot even utter the bitterness.”20 In the recent debate on whether Hu Shi or Lu Xun offered a better model for modern Chinese intellectuals, as mentioned above, critics like Li Shenzhi have acknowledged the exemplary significance of Hu Shi as the leading modern Chinese liberal intellectual. But they have failed to answer the criticism widely held among critics as well as supporters of Hu Shi that he, after all, collaborated with the government even though he tried to criticize it. In our understanding of modern Chinese liberalism, it is a rather pervasive myth that a liberal intellectual must stand outside power and against the government, otherwise his independent stance and even his integrity as a liberal critic are in question. But modern Chinese liberalism has never been divorced from nationalism. The liberal question is not so much whether the liberal critic stands outside power and against nation-building, as that is merely a historical myth. When Hu Shi claims that “fighting for your own individual freedom is fighting for the freedom of your nation!” he is defining the liberal stance towards the relationship between the

20 Lu Xun, “Zhi Hu Feng” (To Hu Feng), Luxun quanji (The Complete Works of Lu Xun), vol. 13, p. 544. Both T. A. Hsia and Leo Lee quoted the first paragraph: About San Lang [i.e., Xiao Jun], I can without hesitation state my opinion: better not join at present. What happened in the beginning (with my joining the League) would make a long story, so I won’t talk about it . . . Once a man has joined, he will be forever involved in petty squabbles and be virtually dead. Take myself as an example, I always feel that I am bound in an iron chain while a fore- man (referring to Zhou Yang) is whipping me on the back. No matter how hard I work, the whip will fall. When I turn my head and ask what are really my faults, the man will clasp his hands and politely shake them and say that I am doing an extremely fine job; that he and I are surely the best of friends; and what a fine day, ha, ha, ha . . . That so often disconcerts me. I dare not speak to the outsiders about ourselves; to the foreigners, I simply avoid the subject. If I have to speak, I only lie. You see what a predicament I am in. T. A. Hsia, The Gate of Darkness, pp. 112–113; Leo Ou-fan Lee, Voices from the Iron House: A Study of Lu Xun, pp. 182–183. 74 chapter three individual and the nation. Indeed, to be a liberal in the modern Chi- nese context means to insist upon individual freedom and integrity while engaging in nation-building and at the same time being vigilant towards the totalitarian claims in the name of “national salvation.” It does not mean an atomistic individual autonomy totally divorced from social and national concerns. Rather, it defines an appropriate relationship between the individual and the nation. A comparison of Hu Shi and Lu Xun’s political attitude in the Republican period will highlight the fact that the real liberal question is whether the liberal critic is vigilant towards the erosion of liberal principles while engaged in the discourses of national salvation and nation-building. It is quite clear that Hu Shi never claims that his politics is detached from the acute concern of nation-building in modern China. In fact, his liberal criticism is always meant for a liberal reconstruction of a new nation. Indeed, his political attitude toward the government shifts according to the changing political circumstances of the time, but Hu Shi never forsakes the liberal principles of individual freedom and rights in the name of collectivist ideologies of nationalism or proletariat class struggle. As a public intellectual, whether in the period of Nuli Zhoubao or Xinyue, Hu Shi wrote his political commentary in the hope of bringing about a “good government” that could eventually take China on the road of modernization in which democratic principles and human rights would constitute the foundation of a new nation. In his famous essay entitled “Which Road Shall We Take?” published in the Dec. 10, 1929 issue of Xinyue journal, Hu Shi outlined his liberal attitude most clearly at a critical junction in the history of modern China. To an engaged liberal critic, the most crucial thing to arrive at one’s political attitude relies on a sound assessment upon historical specificities rather than on a particular ideology. Which road China should take depends on a critical judgment of the current situation of China. Thus, at the beginning of the essay, Hu Shi identified “five devils” of modern China: poverty, disease, ignorance, corruption and disorder. Once these “five devils” are eliminated, then “a peaceful and well-governed, a generally prosperous, a civilized, a modern and unified nation” will be born, and Hu Shi declares that that should be the objective of modern China.21 To achieve that goal, Hu Shi clearly states that the best approach is through evolutionary piecemeal reform rather than violent revolution. It is not that revolution is necessarily

21 Hu Shi, Hu Shi wenji (Collected Works of Hu Shi), p. 356. enlightenment and national salvation 75 not desirable. Hu Shi argues that revolution in history is usually a result of process of evolution, but most importantly, to reject revolutionary method is a critical judgment based on a realistic assessment of contemporary situation of China. Here Hu Shi resolutely rejects the Left- ist resort to ideological class distinction. To Hu Shi, either the notion of “feudal class” or the notion of the “bourgeois class” ill fits China’s historical and actual situation. In Hu Shi’s words, “revolutionary targets at the present time are largely ideological fabrications.”22 In his study on Hu Shi’s political attitude in the 1920s and 1930s, Luo Zhitian argues that, contrary to the general belief that Hu Shi remained a steadfast liberal intellectual throughout his life, Hu was actually attracted to socialism the Soviet-style following the general intellectual trend of the times. But Luo also acknowledges that Hu’s praise for socialism appeared largely in his English essays published overseas, thus “Hu Shi’s positive appraisal of socialism comes from a ‘world civilization’ perspective and is meant to help Westerners see the values they could not perceive.”23 Indeed, that is a crucial point. In terms of Hu Shi’s “thought,” he was not excluded from the influence of the Leftist attraction at the time. But the fact that Hu Shi chose to express such ideas in his English essays targeted at Western audience is not to be taken for granted. Besides the resort to ideological class distinction, another key element in Leftist attraction is its critique against imperialism, as can be shown, for instance, in Liang Shu- ming’s discussion of Hu Shi’s essay “Which Road Shall We Take.”24 Hu Shi’s reply to the question of imperialism seems rather terse and brief—Chinese should bracket the question of imperialism and shall not blame others for their own defects. In his English essays, however, Hu Shi explained the rise of socialism with much sympathy against the imperialist encroachment upon underdeveloped countries. What China needed most, however, was a constitutional government that guarantees the citizens’ civil rights. The series of political essays published in Xinyue journal articulate a simple yet difficult liberal belief that, unfortunately, is yet to be realized in China today.

22 Ibid., p. 361. 23 Luo Zhitian, Minzu zhuyi yu jindai zhongguo sixiang (Nationalism and Modern Chi- nese Thought), p. 283. 24 Hu Shi, Hu Shi wenji (Collected Works of Hu Shi), pp. 363–372. 76 chapter three

The Liberal Critic

The different political attitudes of Lu Xun and Hu Shi will certainly help us situate our examination of Lin Yutang’s literary politics in the 1930s China. Such examination must go beyond the sectarian politicizing game of positioning either from the left or from the right. While revisionist critics in the Reform Era could not get away from the constraint of the Leftist legacy, the same logic of politicization was also clearly reflected, for instance, in the first systematic historical account of modern Chinese literature that came out of Taiwan in its political positioning of Lin Yutang. In his Xiandai zhongguo wenxue shihua (A His- torical Account of Modern Chinese Literature), Liu Xinhuang devoted three chapters in his discussion of 1930s literature to Lin Yutang. The time of 1930s China, according to Liu, was a highly depressing one: it was characterized by a pervasive helpless sentiment of the public in face of Japanese aggression—a feeling exacerbated by the Nationalist government’s exercise of tight control on political expression. Because the time in which Lin lived was a highly politicized one split between the Nationalist government on the right and the Communist rebels on the left, as Liu argues, Lin’s middle-road aesthetic position was bound to have social consequences in the political context. Seen from the right, Lin’s humorous and sometimes satirical essays of social critique, though troublesome and disturbing, contained much less threat than the outright, vicious attacks by the Leftist writers, and for that reason, the government tolerated the existence of Lunyu (Analects), Renjianshi (This Human World) and Yuzhou feng (Cosmic Wind), journals launched by Lin Yutang in the 1930s. Seen from the left, however, the very gesture to refrain from party politics and to engage in only mild and covert social criticism was already a political act that was disadvantageous to the Left, for their interest was in instigating political enthusiasm for discontent. The consequences of Lin’s advocation of “self-expressive” literature and a lifestyle of “leisurely enjoyment” at the time were, if not actual support for the government policy, at least a diversion from the realities of the fierce political struggle. From such reasoning, Liu Xinhuang concludes that Lin Yutang’s political position was actually middle-favoring-the-right. And such positioning was perhaps characteristic of Lin’s political status in Taiwan.25

25 Liu Xinghuang, Xiandai zhongguo wenxue shihua (A Historical Account of Modern Chinese Literature), pp. 571–613. enlightenment and national salvation 77

However, when we go beyond the utilitarian politicizing game of positioning, it is not difﬁcult to see that Lin Yutang’s literary practices in the 1930s offer us invaluable liberal experience in contradistinction to the totalitarian sectarian politics in Chinese modernity, as I will argue here. Very much in line with Hu Shi’s, Lin Yutang’s liberal practices did not mean to stay outside the power politics of the time, but strived to maintain a public space for liberal discourses in face of the increasing partisan sectarian demand for positioning. Their difference lies only in their different styles of presentation, as Lin Yutang’s liberal views were enunciated in humorous ways. Starting from the third issue, the journal Lunyu published every issue on the inside front “Ten Rules of the Analects School Colleagues,” which were spelled out all in negative terms. The ﬁrst four of them, as listed below, reveal the political strategy of the journal behind its humorous negativity:

1. We do not oppose revolution. 2. We do not comment on those we despise, but criticize, the best as we can, those we love (such as our nation, modern warriors, hopeful writers and not yet hopeless revolutionaries). 3. We do not curse (tease without cruelty; of course it’s not right to take national traitors as fathers, but it’s not necessary to call them sons of bitches, either). 4. We do not take money from others, do not speak for others (do not engage in any paid propaganda for any side, but it’s OK to do free propaganda, or even anti-propaganda).26

The humorous manifestation of the journal actually contains a rather serious message—the journal intends to cut open its own space for political enunciation precisely against the political environment of the time. In face of the suppressive censorship of the Nationalist government on the one hand and the Leftist “proletariat” distinction that took literature as weapons and tools for power struggle on the other, Lin Yutang’s literary practices intended to show that an alternative space was indeed possible. Its ﬁrst requirement was to undermine the pre-eminence of politics, “not against revolution,” as Lin put it. The negative style of presentation leaves one much room for imagination:

26 Lunyu (Analects) 3 (October 16, 1932), inside front page. 78 chapter three we are not necessarily against revolution, but, Is it time for revolution now?—What kind of revolution?—Revolution for what? In other words, the negative style induces a host of questions concerning the issue of “revolution” that remain unclear, yet it is precisely such uncer- tainty that breaks up the strict partisan lines and leaves room for liberal discourses. In “Editor’s Afterword: The Style of Lunyu,” Lin emphasized again that the style of the journal should be: “(1) do not ignore the absurdities in thought and culture, but should talk less about politics because we do not want to sacrifice our lives for our nation . . . (2) we will decrease satirical essays and increase instead carefree humorous familiar essays.”27 This humorous approach undermined the politics of both national salvation and proletarian revolution. Behind the light humour, Lin’s statements for the principles of running his journals translate into an insistence on the necessity of an open and broad- minded pluralism as well as the integrity of self-independent individual autonomy toward politicizing mandates from both the right and the left.28 To insist on liberal principles that embrace openness and pluralism is certainly not to shun away from social critique. In fact, for Lin Yutang, to be a critic was a defining identity for a modern intellectual. In an important lecture delivered in Chinese (later self-rendered into Eng- lish and entitled “The Function of Criticism at the Present Time”) before a group of university students at the World’s Chinese Students’ Federation in Shanghai in 1930, Lin credited Chinese culture with a wonderful literary history as well as a fine scholarly tradition. It was certainly true that there emerged a host of great men of letters and fine scholars in Chinese cultural history. Yet, since Han Dynasty, there were few critical thinkers. What flourished in China was scholarship and belles-lettres, or “mere literature,” rather than creative and critical ideas—“a nation which composes too much ceases to think at all.”29 But Lin Yutang argues that the crown of modern civilization lies in criticism: “Today our leaders in thought are our greatest critics, men

27 Lunyu (Analects) 6 (December 1, 1932): 210. 28 Employing Maurice Blanchot’s notion of “infinite conversation,” Diran Sohigian characterizes “the discourse of youmo in the 1930s as unending laughter, a laughter that erupts again and again, and actively ‘unends.’” See Diran John Sohigian, “Con- tagion of Laughter: The Rise of the Humor Phenomenon in Shanghai in the 1930s,” p. 142. 29 Lin Yutang, “The Function of Criticism at the Present Time,” The China Critic, III (January 23, 1930): 80. enlightenment and national salvation 79 like Renan and Taine, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, Ibsen and Shaw, Tolstoi and Dostoeivski . . . we may characterize our culture as a critical culture. This culture does not belong to any nation, but to the modern world as a whole, in which all nations are members of the world republic of letters and of thought.”30 The fact that traditional Chinese culture excels in producing belles-lettres is because critical endeavors have been denied in its cultural mechanism in which predominant reliance has been fixed on the groundbreaking thought of the sages. But modern culture has come to base our maturity upon our critical and self-critical faculties. And Lin Yutang claims that criticism, as “the disinterested effort to see the object as it really is,” is “the guardian angel of modern culture.” “To be disinterested and to see the object as in itself it really is, is by no means easy, but unless it were so, our thinking would not be worthy of the name of criticism. In fact, I like to think of criticism as the highest intellectual effort that mankind is capable of, and above all, I like to think of self-criticism as the most difficult attainment of an educated man.”31 It is in this spirit of modern criticism that Lin Yutang carried out his literary practices and retained his intellectual integrity. In his journals Lin Yutang published many politically charged essays, including “Zarathustra and the Jester,” “On Political Sickness,” “On Freedom of Speech,” “For a Civic Liberty Union,” “More Prisons for Politicians,” etc. To the Nationalist government’s tight control of press freedom, Lin’s “humorous” approach was a means of social critique constantly testing the limits of censorship. In most cases, the “humor” Lin Yutang employed in socio-political critique was in every sense “black humor.”32 For instance, in “On Freedom of Speech”—a speech he delivered in a public forum, Lin started out by acknowledging that there was no such thing as freedom of speech, “because speech is a nuisance, it is human nature that when one wants to speak, he will prevent others from speaking. As a result, in a country where democracy has not been realized, whoever has a bigger palm will have freedom of speech by sealing off others’ mouths.”33 The “bigger palm freedom” for which Lin expressed unabashed envy could be incredibly enjoyable, as for instance,

30 Ibid. 31 Ibid., p. 81. 32 A detailed discussion of Lin Yutang’s overall theoretical articulation of “humor” as an aesthetic way of existence is to be discussed in Chapter Five. 33 Lin Yutang, “On Freedom of Speech,” Lunyu 13 (March 16, 1933): 452. 80 chapter three in the case of a certain general from his hometown who, “when feeling a headache or unhappy, would write a note to have a couple of prison- ers taken out and shot to cure his headache. What a pleasant thing to do indeed.”34 Starting from issue No. 17 of Lunyu, Lin launched a special column entitled “Fortnightly News in Brief” in which his pungent social critique was undertaken in the most laconic manner. Here are two examples: Wang Jingwei made a thousand-word “old speech” explaining the government’s appeasement attitude. Major points read: “Because (we) cannot fight, (we) have to resist, because (we) cannot appease, (we) must negoti- ate. The government is not not appeasing not fighting, it is resisting and negotiating at the same time.” The more one tries to understand, the more confused one becomes. The legislators worked out a new constitution, one item reads: “People have the duty to show filial piety to their parents.” It is amazing that no clear stipulation was made as to how many dishes should be served at each meal.35 Contrary to the suppressive and exclusive politics of the right and the left, Lin’s liberal criticism followed the principle of an open and all- inclusive pluralism in literary practices. This can be clearly seen from the list of contributors to Lin’s journals. These contributors constituted a truly wide range of writers with different kinds of political orientations: right, left, middle, Nationalist, Communist, anarchist, “progressive,” etc. One of the “most rightist” articles was a translation of Song Meiling’s “Fighting Communists in China.”36 An impressive number of contributors were from the left, including leading members of the Left League such as Lu Xun, Guo Moruo, Ah Ying (Qian Xingchun), Xu Maoyong, etc. Lu Xun contributed no less than seven articles to Analects, in addition to five reprinted articles. Worth mentioning also is that Guo Moruo’s long memoirs “Ten Years Overseas” and “North- ern Expedition Stopovers” were published not only when the official order for his arrest had not yet been lifted, but also at a time when the Left League had already launched its polemical campaign against Lin Yutang. Sometimes in the same issue of Renjianshi one can read a polemical essay by Lin against the Leftist camp, but also an essay by Ah

34 Ibid. 35 Lin Yutang, “Fortnightly News in Brief,” Lunyu (Analects) 17 (May 16, 1933): 585. 36 See Song Meiling, “Ji you feiqu” (Fighting Communists in China), Renjianshi (This Human World) 25 (April 5, 1935): 30–34. enlightenment and national salvation 81

Ying or Xu Maoyong. Of course, the greatest number of contributors to Lin’s journals consisted of those who did not have strong political inclinations. One outstanding writer in this group was Lao She, whose well-known novel Luotuo xiangzi (The Rickshaw Boy) was ﬁrst published periodically in Yuzhou feng (Cosmic Wind). In this light, Lin Yutang’s journals in the 1930s inherited and enhanced the tradition of modern Chinese journalism in providing a public space for critical discourses, as pointed out, for instance, by Leo Lee in discussing the social function of the “Free Discourse” column in Shen Pao. Lee argues that many essays that appeared in “Free Dis- course” column were playful in nature, yet it was precisely such play- fulness that allowed contemporary intellectuals a free critical space, marginal as it may be. By contrast, Lu Xun’s essays that appeared in the column were rather tight and cynical in nature. And Lee concludes that Lu Xun’s political essays fail to utilize the “public space” offered by the “Free Discourse” column.37 Indeed, as Head of the Left League at that time, Lu Xun played a very different role as a public intellectual, not only failed to enhance and enlarge public space for critical discourses, but helped to tighten up and suffocate the fragile public space available at that time, as shown in the Leftists’ effort to crush Lin’s journals. By contrast, in defying the Leftists’ attacks, Lin Yutang left us a most valuable liberal legacy in modern Chinese culture. Actually, Lu Xun and Lin Yutang had been close friends since their years in Beijing together in the 1920s.38 But in the 1930s after Lu Xun turned left, and when Lin Yutang launched a series of popular magazines, their relationship got strained and eventually broke up, mostly because the Left League had identiﬁed Lin Yutang’s literary practices detrimental to their ideological goals. The launching of the journal Lunyu by Lin Yutang and his colleagues in September 1932 was an instant success in Shanghai’s literary world at the time. While Lu Xun contributed essays to the journal at Lin’s request, he did not hesitate to

37 Leo Ou-fan Lee, “Piping kongjian de kaichuang—cong Shen Pao ‘ziyou tan’ tanqi” (Opening up of the “Critical Space”—On “Free Discourse” Column of Shen Pao), Ershiyi shiji (Twenty-First Century) (October, 1993): 50. 38 On the evening of August 28, 1929 at a friends gathering dinner, Lu Xun and Lin Yutang broke up over a triviality. For Lin Taiyi’s explanation on the event, see Lin Taiyi, pp. 77–78. It is interesting to note that it was at this time that the Left League was in preparation and the CCP was trying to win over Lu Xun. Lin Yutang’s name did not appear in Lu Xun’s diary again until January 11, 1933 and disappeared again after August 29, 1934. 82 chapter three state clearly his disagreement with Lin’s advocation of “humor.”39 The harshest critique during this period can be seen in the essay “Xiaopin- wen de weiji” (The Crisis of Familiar Essays) in which Lu Xun deemed the humorous essays advocated by Lin as “little ornaments” ultimately exerting the social effect of “anesthesia.” Lu Xun wanted satire, not humor: “Familiar essays that exert life force must be daggers, spears, must be able to kill and fight out a bloody road of existence together with the readers.”40 During this period, however, the Left League has apparently not decided to engage in polemics against Lin Yutang, so Lu Xun’s criticism was still mild in nature. On April 5, 1934, Lin Yutang launched another journal Renjianshi, advocating “self-expressive” “leisurely” familiar essays. At this time Lin’s popularity was at its peak and both journals were quite influential among the youth and college students. But from that time on, Lin’s journals have become the target for ideological struggle by the Leftists. The launching of Renjian- shi occasioned various polemical attacks from the Left, including, for instance, Liao Mosha’s “Renjian heshi?” (What World Is This Human World?) and Hu Feng’s “Guoqu de youling” (The Past Soul). By Sep- tember 20, 1934, the Leftist camp found it necessary to launch their own “familiar essay” journal Taibai specifically for the sake of attacking Lin’s journals. In the Leftist campaign against Lin Yutang, Lu Xun remained the major warrior. The timing of his final breaking up with Lin, this time over no personal trivia, coincided with that of the launching of the journal Taibai, after which his critical essays about Lin took on a different tone: that of daggers thrown at enemies.41 The seven polemical

39 Lu Xun’s essays relating to Lin Yutang during this period include: “Cong fengci dao youmo” (From Satire to Humor), Luxun quanji vol. 5, pp. 46–47; “Cong youmo dao zhengjing” (From Humor to Seriousness), Luxun quanji vol. 5, pp. 48–49; “Lunyu yinian” (Analects One Year), Luxun quanji vol. 4, pp. 582–589; “Xiaopinwen de weiji” (The Crisis of Familiar Essays), Luxun quanji vol. 4, pp. 590–593; “Huaji lijie” (A Note on the Comical), Luxun quanji vol. 5, pp. 360–362; “Xiaopinwen de shengji” (The Vitality of Familiar Essays), Luxun quanji vol. 5, pp. 487–489; “Yi si er xing” (Think Twice), Luxun quanji vol. 5, pp. 499–501; “Wanxiao zhi dang ta wanxiao” (Take the Joke as a Joke), Luxun quanji vol. 5, pp. 547–555; “Mai ‘xiaoxue’ daquan ji” (On Buying the Complete Collection of Xiaoxue), Luxun quanji vol. 6, pp. 55–63. 40 Lu Xun, “Xiaopinwen de weiji” (The Crisis of Familiar Essays), Luxun quanji vol. 4, pp. 590–593. 41 Lu Xun’s polemical essays in this group include: “Yinshi” (Recluse), Luxun quanji vol. 6, pp. 231–234; “Zhaotie ji che” (Tear Down Labels), Luxun quanji vol. 6, pp. 235–237; “Lun suren ying bi yaren” (On the Necessity of the Vulgar Avoiding Gentle- men), Luxun quanji vol. 6, pp. 211–215; “Xun kaixin” (Seeking for Fun), Luxun quanji enlightenment and national salvation 83 essays entitled “Wenren xiangqing” (Men of Letters Disparaging One Another), for instance, were all occasioned by and mainly targeted at Lin Yutang. Lu Xun’s articles were never argumentative and theoretical, but were rather composed of witty and satirical remarks only meant to nail the enemy, such as pointing out a defect in Lin’s scholarship in the “yuluti” he was promoting. To the Leftists, Lin Yutang was now clearly someone to be excluded and crushed, and Lu Xun was not miserly of his pen. But we now know that at least the seven essays in the series “Wenren xiangqing” were a matter of “pengchang,” or written somewhat unwillingly to answer the call of the Party chief of the Left League. In the Leftists’ polemical campaign against Lin Yutang, Hu Feng, Lu Xun’s close disciple, became perhaps the most theoretical and inﬂuential warrior with his long article entitled “Lin yutang lun” (On Lin Yutang) written in 1934 and published in Wenxue (Literature), an ofﬁcial journal of the Left League. In that essay, Hu Feng argues that Lin’s recent aesthetic interests in “self-expression,” “leisurely enjoyment,” “yuluti” writing style, Croce and Yuan Zhonglang constituted a historical regression, “more or less coming close to or entering the National Essence camp (i.e. Babbitt’s Chinese disciples group).”42 To Hu Feng, what makes Lin lagging behind historical progress is precisely his philosophical infatuation with Crocean aesthetics, which Hu Feng calls Lin’s “gexing zhishang zhuyi” (personality fetishism). The problem with such “personality fetishism” is that it neglects the social dimension of individual being and literary creation. Thus, abstract notions like “personality,” “expression,” and “xingling” contain no relevance to the social realities of the time. Lin’s aesthetics was individu- alistic, and therefore bourgeois in nature, ignoring the current social

vol. 6, pp. 279–282; “Tiansheng manxing” (Innate Obstinacy), Luxun quanji vol. 8, pp. 432–433; “Longtang shengyi gujin tan” (On the Street Business Present and Past), Luxun quanji vol. 6, pp. 318–320; “Youbuwei zhai” (House of Non-Action), Luxun quanji vol. 8, p. 436; “Liangzhong ‘Huangdi zisun’” (Two Kinds of Descendants of the Yel- low Emperor), Luxun quanji vol. 8, p. 437; “Wenren xiangqing” (Men of Letters Dis- paraging One Another) (a series of seven essays), Luxun quanji vol. 6, pp. 308–311, pp. 347–349, pp. 385–386, pp. 389–392, pp. 393–398, pp. 413–416, pp. 417–421; “Ti weiding cao (2)” (Title Undecided, A Draft, No. 2), Luxun quanji vol. 6, pp. 364–367; “Zatan xiaopinwen” (On Familiar Essays), Luxun quanji vol. 6, pp. 431–434. 42 Hu, Feng. “Lin yutang lun” (On Lin Yutang), Wenyi bitan (Essays on Literature and Art), p. 18. 84 chapter three environment in which the proletariat, united as a class, was ﬁghting for the revolution.43 While Hu Feng deemed Lin Yutang as politically degenerated from a progressive writer to a bourgeois aesthete, some revisionist critics in the 1980s intended to rescue Lin’s politics towards the Left by claiming that Lin never took the initiative in attacking the Left League. In fact, he was always on the defensive and often conveyed, as Chen Jingan put it, “a certain sense of being wronged [weiqu qingxu]. He mumbled again and again: ‘I like Yuan Zhonglang, but the Leftists would not allow me to like Yuan Zhonglang.’”44 Actually, Lin Yutang’s political attitude toward the Leftist ideology in modern China had been quite consistent, and was quite outspoken in his criticism against it when called upon. Like most intellectuals of his generation, Lin Yutang participated enthusiastically in the Great Revolution of 1927, or the Northern Expedition, and wrote two political essays in English in the heyday of revolutionary zeal that revealed his political stance that would accompany him for life. In “Marxism, Sun Yat-senism, and Communism in China,” Lin pointed out that according to the market sales of books at the time, Dr. Sun Yat-sen and Karl Marx were the two most popular authors in China, and then went on to elaborate their similarities and differences, as well as their relevance to China. In Lin’s view, Sun Yat- sen was attracted to Marxian principles because he interpreted communism in terms of his San Min Doctrine. Marx views social history as an evolutionary process following materialistic principles, which was quite in agreement with Sun’s principle of People’s Livelihood. In other words, Sun sees in Marxism a basis for collaboration because of their shared economic materialism. But Lin was quick to point out their differences. Even though Sun was attracted to Marxian economic principles, he disagreed with the Marxist method of class struggle and proletariat dictatorship, because China’s actual situation—her general poverty demands that the economic emphasis should be put on creating wealth of the nation, as there was no “capitalist class” to

43 The intellectual history of modern China was to tell Hu Feng, though, with a dear price through his own personal experience, that once you submit your individual personality to a certain collective cause, it is really not possible to retrieve it after that cause is realized. See Kirk A. Denton, The Problematic of Self in Modern Chinese Literature: Hu Feng and Lu Ling. 44 Chen Jingan, “Ping Lunyupai” (On the Analects School), Xuzhou shifan xuebao 3 (1979): 4. enlightenment and national salvation 85 speak of. “It follows naturally that, instead of militant communism, Dr. Sun believes in peaceful methods of economic reform.”45 And in Sun’s economic program, as Lin tells us, “state socialism is the only way by which China can pass from present primitive industrial stage to modern industrialism without causing the growth of a capitalist class.”46 After a comparative analysis of Sun’s and Marxian principles as applied to the Chinese situation, Lin concludes that Chinese Com- munist practices were no solution to China’s problems. For one thing, since the goal of the Chinese Communist Party in allying with KMT was to carry through the national revolution to its ultimate end and to convert it into a proletariat revolution and consequently subjugate national control to international control, it would go directly against Sun’s first doctrine of nationalism. Second, in substituting class struggle for national struggle, the Chinese communists were imposing a Marxian principle to an alien society “where the social and economic conditions loudly proclaim its inadequacy for such a system.”47 And Lin conjectures that even if Marx himself were to face the Chinese situation, he would not automatically apply his theory to China. “The artificial creation of a class conflict between landlords and peasants and between capitalists and employees, where there are no real landlords and capitalists in the Western sense of the word, is bound to end in mere disorder and turmoil.”48 In another essay entitled “Making China Safe for the Kuomintang,” Lin’s anti-communist stance was most clearly and forcefully stated. Appropriating US President Wil- son’s call “to make the world safe for democracy,” Lin claimed it was high time “to make China safe for the Kuomintang,” as “the Chinese Kuomintang is a strictly democratic party, and that to make China safe for the Kuomintang is identical with making China safe for democracy.”49 To achieve that presupposes “the elimination of Bolshevism” in China. As Lin explains, “Bolshevism is a form of class dictatorship, and more particularly of proletarian dictatorship, and is therefore the natural enemy of democracy which is governed by all the classes of the people, for which the Kuomintang at present stands.”50

45 Lin Yutang, Letters of a Chinese Amazon and Wartime Essays, p. 108. 46 Ibid., p. 110. 47 Ibid., p. 121. 48 Ibid., p. 123. 49 Ibid., p. 132. 50 Ibid., p. 134. 86 chapter three

And Lin Yutang warns here that the system of proletarian dictatorship would bring in Fascism in China as a reaction to Bolshevism: “with Fascism established, democracy is also out of the question, so that the nation stands between the devil and the deep sea wherever Bolshevik influence has established itself.”51 Unfortunately, as Lin Yutang’s famous line “on the left is Proletariat, on the right is Fascism” shows, the political environment degenerated just as he was most worried about in 1927. In the following years, Lin fought for liberal space as he could and focused his critical attention on governmental encroachment on civil liberties. Lin’s silence on the communist ideology did not mean, however, that he had any fantasy or deliberations about it, it was simply because communist practices were still rather marginal compared to the Kuomintang establishment. When at a certain point the Left League singled out Lin Yutang as an ideological enemy, however, Lin did not yield to the proletariat dogma, and became one of the first outspoken and farsighted liberal critics against Chinese communist practices in modern China. In defending his literary practices, Lin’s chief argument against the proletariat distinction was his insistence on giving literature a break from political indoctrination in whatever name, either for the proletariat power struggle or for national salvation. The public slogan of the Left League at the time was “national salvation,” invented for the sake of amassing the maximum amount of public support and distinctive power.52 In the name of “national salvation,” the Leftists in 1930’s China were supposedly the most audacious fighters for freedom of speech, yet from the very beginning the Left League was most exclusive both in theory and in practice. To the Leftist goals of literary propaganda, Lin’s promotion of either humor or the familiar style, which became so popular among the youth, somehow amounted to “avoiding the social realities and ruining the country.” Lin’s reply can be rather sarcastic: “The Leftists see in leisurely enjoyment the crime of idleness, just as the Sichuan warlords regard Ma’s Grammar as Marx’ works.”53 Lin Yutang’s defense was precisely against such exclusivity that defined literature as nothing

51 Ibid., p. 135. 52 As Xia Yan recalled, the situation of the Left League suddenly changed after “Jan. 28 War Against Japan” in 1932 in Shanghai when popular sentiment changed from resenting Communist activities to accepting Communists as “anti-Japanese activists.” See Xia, Yan. “‘Zuolian’ chengli qianhou” (Before and After the Formation of the Left League), Zuolian huiyilu (Memoirs of the Left League), p. 52. 53 Lin Yutang, “Yanxie” (Smoke Dust), Yuzhou feng 7 (December 16, 1935): 353. enlightenment and national salvation 87 but a propaganda tool for a “noble” cause. Because the proletariat writers had already deemed literature in the “Theoretical Principle of the Left League” as a political tool serving the interests of the proletariat class, literature was propaganda and propaganda was literature, which had become a very “modern” notion at the time. And propaganda always boiled down to power struggle, and any divergent trend was rightly singled out as challenging the “cause” of the proletariat distinction. It was perhaps not coincidental that Lin Yutang chose to rebuttal the Leftist attacks on the “Free Discourse” column of Shen Pao. In a long article published therein entitled “Fangjinqi yanjiu” (A Study on Pseudo-Moralism), Lin stated clearly at the very beginning of the article: “When I launched the journal Analects, I believed that pseudo-moralism was the uncompromising enemy of humor.”54 Lin condemned the ideological-functional use of literature by the Leftist theorists as inheriting the “pseudo-moralist” (“fangjinqi” or “daoxueqi”) tradition—the traditional Neo-Confucianist moralism which the May Fourth Enlightenment project of “literary revolution” took pains to shake away from. Such pseudo-moralists, as Lin described, “must be damn serious all day long, fearing the loss of morals at the smell of the fra- grance of ﬂowers, shivering at the singing of birds, worrying of the national subjugation over a couple of jokes, hating its leisureliness at reading a familiar-style essay.”55 Even if certain types of “serious” literature should remain dominant, to which Lin did not have any objection, there still should be room for the existence of humorous and familiar-style essays, for modern cultural life was multi-dimensional and should not be reduced to a mere politics of existence. It was not that Lin Yutang was not concerned with the hardship and sufferings of the people in face of national crisis. What Lin did not yield to was precisely the kind of “speaker’s beneﬁt” that “proletariat” writers intended to exert by claiming to be the exclusive spokesmen for the “nation” and the “puluo,” because such politics of distinction violated the very pluralist principle of “kuanda” (open and broad-minded). As Lin reminded us: “some time ago Lin Qinnan, Gu Hongming, Hu Shi and Chen Duxiu all taught at Peking University at the same time and it won Peking University its greatness. That was the principle of

54 Lin Yutang, “Fangjinqi yanjiu” (A Study on Pseudo-Moralism), Shenbao (April 28, 1934): 70. 55 Ibid. 88 chapter three kuanda and freedom.”56 Without such an open and plural attitude, Lin argued, any seriousness in ﬁghting for a “noble” moralist cause in the name of the “nation” could only be a sham, a perverted mentality of the stalest kind. “Therefore, although such pseudo-moralist critics were suppressed and full of complaints, cursing ‘cultural uniformity’ and ‘news censorship,’ when they themselves become censors, wait and see their suppression of others.”57 It should be clear now that Lin Yutang’s liberal politics is not a matter of political positioning left or right based on the directives of Marx- ist historical materialism, but rather an alternative position to the Leftist power politics of distinction to which Lu Xun had regretfully fallen. Dismayed with the “Fascist” censorship of the government on the one hand and the “Proletariat” ideology of distinction on the other, Lin Yutang’s literary practices in the 1930s sought for a political sensibility that emphasizes the principles of pluralist openness, reasonable tolerance, and intellectual independence. As a “modern critic,” Lin Yutang fought against both the right and the left for a liberal public space where critique can be made with intellectual integrity and free will. In such struggle, Lin Yutang was certainly in line with the liberal line opened up by Hu Shi in modern China and saw the Enlightenment project still a very much incomplete one in the 1930s China. What is particularly noteworthy in Lin’s liberal politics in the 1930s lies in his outspoken criticism against the dogmatic exclusivity of the Leftists who presented themselves as speaking against the power by ﬁghting for the suppressed “proletariat” class and rallying for public appeal in the name of “national salvation.”

Defending Pearl S. Buck

It was certainly true that China was faced with acute national crisis in the 1930s, and anti-imperialist sentiment was running very high, especially with the Japanese encroachment upon China. Both the Nation- alist government and the CCP revolutionaries made use of the popular nationalist sentiment to gain political support. In their competition

56 Lin Yutang, “Linbie zeng yan” (Farewell Remarks), Yuzhoufeng (Cosmic Wind) 25 (September 16, 1936): 79. 57 Lin Yutang, “Fangjinqi yanjiu” (A Study on Pseudo-moralism), Shenbao (May 3, 1934): 20. enlightenment and national salvation 89 for more political power and control in the name of “national salvation,” liberal principles of freedom of speech and critical autonomy were constantly being violated. But to liberal intellectuals like Hu Shi and Lin Yutang, liberalism and nationalism do not necessarily have to go against each other. What was at issue was that the discourse of “national salvation” had become political tools for different ideological strategic deployment. In the 1930s, Lin Yutang complained constantly that he had become most weary of hearing the term “jiuguo” (national salvation), as it was so pervasive and abused that it ceased to mean anything. That does not mean, however, Lin Yutang was not a nationalist in the broad sense of the term, just as Chinese intellectuals of the May Fourth generation were. As Western-educated elite, Lin Yutang was also particularly sensitive to the effects of imperialism in China, and was sometimes rather blatant in his criticism against imperialism. In “Anti-Sinoism: A Modern Disease,” for instance, Lin defended the nationalist revolution and rebuked the charge of “anti-foreignism” of the nationalist revolutionaries as prejudice of foreigners against the Chinese. In Lin’s view, the issue was not “anti-foreignism” of the Chinese, but rather the anti-sinoism in the West: “this type of bigoted antiforeignism, of inability to understand the foreigner, is, contrary to all expectations, to be found in the West. The man in the street in the United States or England is not able to think of the ‘heathen Chinee’ without conjur- ing up a picture of a crunching ﬁgure, with a queue, an opium pipe, and a hidden dagger (witness current cartoons, Western geography books, and ‘shilling shocker’ cover illustrations in European railway stations).”58 Yet, during the 1930s as a whole, Lin Yutang took a liberal nationalist attitude towards imperialism. In line with Hu Shi’s liberal approach, Lin did not see imperialism as an overwhelming discourse superseding all other matters of national reconstruction, but rather focuses on self-strengthening and self-examination as productive endeavor for national revival, which also assumes an open and unsentimental attitude toward foreign criticism. His defense of Pearl S. Buck in the controversy of latter’s reception in China was a good case in point. Born to an American missionary family stationed in China, Pearl S. Buck grew up in China and her novel The Good Earth published

58 Lin Yutang, Letters of a Chinese Amazon and Wartime Essays, p. 101. 90 chapter three in 1931 became a runaway bestseller in America, winning her the Pulitzer Prize in 1932. But her reception in China was quite mixed. Kiang Kang-hu , for instance, published a critical article entitled “A Chinese Scholar’s View of Mrs. Buck’s Novels” on the January 15, 1933 issue of The New York Times, accusing Buck of misrepresenting China “with a half-black and half-white face.” In his essay entitled “The China in The Good Earth,” Hu Feng downplays the signiﬁcance of the issue of cultural authenticity and exoticism. To Hu, even though The Good Earth shows a genuine sympathy towards Chinese peasants in depicting vividly their love of land, the author fails to understand the economic structure of rural China and thus cannot show the root cause for the poverty and suffering of Chinese peasants. According to Marxist critics like Hu, the reason for the depravity of rural China lies in class exploitation and imperialist plunder. In Buck’s narrative, however, there is no trace of imperialist invasion and exploitation in China and its devastating effects upon Chinese rural life. Most curi- ously, there is hardly any depiction in the novel as to the real impact of missionary activities upon the lives of Chinese peasants. Given Buck’s own missionary background, perhaps she does not have the courage to reveal the link between imperialist aggression and missionary intervention. Not surprisingly, Buck’s critical exposé of Chinese character shows no sympathy towards Chinese revolutionary cause that aims at the liberation and emancipation of Chinese peasants.59 While Hu Feng’s essay represents a Marxist theoretical analysis, it was Lu Xun’s passing remarks on Buck that determined the fate of Buck’s reception in China. In one of Lu Xun’s letters to a friend, he had this passing remark on Buck: “Now you want to write novels, I support that idea whole-heartedly. Only when Chinese are doing (writing about) Chinese things can the truth be revealed. Take Mrs. Buck for example, she received a big welcome in Shanghai, and she also claims that she regards China as her fatherland. But when you read her works, you can see hers is after all the position of an American female missionary who happened to grow up in China. It’s understandable that she calls herself a ‘sojourner,’ as what she touches upon is merely the superﬁcial. Only when we write about Chinese things can one see the

59 Hu Feng, “Dadi li de zhongguo” (The China in The Good Earth), Wenyi bitan (Essays on Literature and Art), pp. 295–318. enlightenment and national salvation 91 truth.”60 Lu Xun’s strategy here is merely resorting to certain crude nationalist identity politics, which excludes Pearl S. Buck as a foreigner, hence her truthfulness. Pearl S. Buck, on the other hand, was actually quite sensitive to her bicultural role in writing about China, and critically engaged modern Chinese intellectuals on the very issue of nationalism and modernity. In her article entitled “The New Patriotism” to The China Critic as early as June 1931, as well as another one entitled “China and the For- eign Chinese” that appeared in the Spring 1932 issue of Yale Review, Buck articulated her own critical stance towards the nascent Chinese nationalism. Pearl S. Buck claims that, throughout her life experience in China, she has detected a change in all realms of life which is quite unsettling and disturbing—for the first twenty-seven years of her life (that would be up to 1920, not surprisingly corresponding to the May Fourth Movement of 1919), she lived in a rural and old China while for the later years she lived in a city suddenly full of “modern Chinese.” As she puts it: “My neighbors, my friends, my associates today are three- fourths of them modern Chinese who have been abroad, who speak English, French, German, Italian, Russian, who know more about the literature of the West than I do, who know more about the life of those countries than I do, whose demands are far more western than mine, who eat more western food, speak more in a foreign tongue, live in a more western manner, than I do myself.”61 Buck calls them “foreign Chinese,” for these returned students, once been abroad, could not help longing for going back to the West, and thus, they built a “foreign culture” within China—with foreign furniture, foreign music, foreign books, foreign food and foreign ideas, so that their children are also being brought up “in a strange, hybrid atmosphere.” What Buck finds most objectionable is that, together with the emergence of these “foreign Chinese,” there also arose a “new patriotism” that is definitive of being modern Chinese intellectuals. Buck’s criticism of this “new patriotism” relies on two assumptions. First, it is not native of China and China does not need it. Up until the present generation, ordinary Chinese have always possessed a natural sense of love of their own country. Unlike the new patriots who love their

60 Lu Xun, “Zhi Yao Ke” (Letter to Yao Ke), Luxun quanji, vol. 12, p. 496. 61 Pearl S. Buck, “The New Patriotism,” The China Critic 6 (1933): 1003. 92 chapter three country “for an artiﬁcial cause,” the older generation of Chinese simply loved their country for what it is, for China was too great to them to need any defense. Secondly, the “new patriotism” of the “foreign Chinese” is really doing China a great deal of harm, for, in the name of patriotism, these “foreign Chinese” divorced themselves from the majority of the Chinese on the one hand, and tried to hide the “real” of China from the foreigners on the other. Due to their experience in the West, the modern Chinese have developed a helpless inferiority complex which results in “chauvinism” towards foreigners—all they wanted to be represented of China was high Confucianism—as well as shame, instead of real pride, of their own people. Buck gave the following example to illustrate her point: Once I saw a foreign sailor strike his ricksha puller very cruelly and then kick. I was just running forward to stop this when a young Chinese in foreign dress came by and he spoke in excellent English to the sailor and with proper indignation stopped the affair. The sailor left their ricksha and went away. Here was the strange thing. After this foreigner had gone—I was watching from inside a house—the Chinese himself kicked the ricksha puller angrily, and shouted, “You worthless animal, why will you pull those devils?” And he walked away hating the man almost as much as he had the foreigner—hated him for being ignorant and poor and at the mercy of the foreigner.62 It is important to note that, as a second generation missionary brought up in China, Buck has already developed a rather cosmopolitan identity and was quite self-conscious of that. In her speech “The New Patriotism” delivered at the welcome reception in Shanghai in 1933 co-sponsored by The China Critic, the Wednesday Discussion Group, the Pen Club and the Association for the Study of Modern Literature (what Lu Xun refers to as the “big Shanghai welcome”), Buck took pains to explain her position as a “dual nationalist.” She began by pro- claiming that fate had compelled her to be a sort of internationalist in the sense that she had to belong to two countries. But if internationalism means some kind of utopia where all the nations are uniﬁed under one government with the same language and culture, Buck could not call her an internationalist in that sense. In order to claim China as her own, she calls herself an “ardent Chinese nationalist.” “If America

62 Ibid., p. 1004. enlightenment and national salvation 93 is my motherland and gave me her body, China is my fatherland and gave me his spirit and his mind. My heart they share.”63 And it takes a Chinese cosmopolitan to appreciate the significance of Buck’s critique of newly emerged nationalism in China. Although Buck’s criticism was targeted at Westernized Chinese intellectuals, The China Critic, the journal consisting of a board of editors who are all Western-educated returned students, was on the whole quite balanced in providing Buck with a forum for her views. After it published Buck’s first “The New Patriotism” in 1931, the journal quickly followed an editorial endorsing Buck’s article, while also pointing out “not once have we expressed a scorn for our farmers, our wheelbarrow-men, our ricksha coolies.”64 The editors of The China Critic envisioned a “liberal cosmopolitan club” to consist of “internationally minded people, who come together for the purpose of better understanding one another’s point of view and culture, and for discussing problems of life common to the modern world. It will be exclusive in the sense of having for its members only such people as have the liberal cosmopolitan mind, people who are more interested in the examination of ideas than in national glorification, more in the common problems of modern life than in any patriotic propaganda.”65 One of the editors of the journal was Lin Yutang, who became the most influential supporter of Buck’s critique of “new patriotism.” In his essay entitled “The Greatness of Mrs. Buck,” Lin Yutang gives credit to Buck’s humanitarian compassion towards the Chinese in her novels, but what he finds most remarkable is Buck’s critical insight and he calls Buck “a bold and cool critic.” Buck’s cosmopolitan critique of Chinese nationalism constitutes a meaningful difference in the discourses of Chinese modernity not in the sense that modern Chinese project of nation-building and reconstruction was inherently undesirable and implausible, but rather in the sense that Buck has pointed out an inherently negative weakness in the way modern Chi- nese nationalism was constructed. In the name of the nation, modern Chinese intellectuals posit themselves as agents of change and harbingers of progress. On the one hand, when the nationalist goal was to emulate Western values and power, the desire for change and progress

63 Ibid., p. 1003. 64 Pearl S. Buck, “The New Patriotism,” The China Critic 4 (1931): 579. 65 “Proposal for a Liberal Cosmopolitan Club in Shanghai,” The China Critic (Sep- tember 13, 1930): 1086. 94 chapter three necessitates the negation of the past, that is, Chinese cultural tradition as a whole, and the present, as especially shown in the ignorance of common folks. On the other hand, to search for a national origin and to afford the new nation with a glorious history, elite traditional culture was reinterpreted and reconstructed as national essence while contemporary reality and defects in society were taken as insults to their sense of national identity when pointed out by foreigners. Conse- quently, such construction leads to a psychological weakness as shown in a heightened sense of inferiority complex. That is what Lin Yutang means when he proclaims Buck to be greater than Chinese patriots. These patriots who regard themselves as modern and progressive and therefore elite and superior would not identify themselves with ordinary Chinese folks while Buck who grew up with them could understand their sufferings as well as their strength. “Because Chinese elite fail to recognize the greatness of honest and diligent common folks, they become weak and hollow inside while putting on a show of force outside, calling for the downfall of imperialism while secretly longing to be born of white parents.”66 In echoing Buck’s critique of Chinese patriots, Lin Yutang certainly goes one step further: “To be weak and hollow inside while putting on a show of force outside, to be ashamed of wearing Chinese-style clothes in front of foreigners, to pretend to be extremely clean and civilized when talking to foreigners…these are all signs of a slave mentality.”67

66 Lin Yutang, “Baike furen zhi weida” (The Greatness of Mrs. Buck), Lunyu 24 (September 1, 1933): 880. 67 Ibid., p. 881. CHAPTER FOUR

“LITTLE CRITIC:” “RETURNED” PROFESSIONALS AND THE COSMOPOLITAN MODERN

“倚徙华洋之间，往来主奴之界，这就是现在洋场上的 ‘西崽相’ ” 鲁迅，“题未定” 草 (二) (1935) Swimming in between Chinese and Westerners and dealing in between the master and the slave, such is the ‘air of the Westernized bastard’ in today’s Shanghai bund. Lu Xun, “Ti weiding cao (2)” (Title Undecided, A Draft, No. 2) (1935)

I want a home where I can be myself; I want the freedom to be myself. Lin Yutang, “What I Want.” (1933) On the ﬁrst page of the inaugural issue of Lunyu is a kind of editor’s note entitled “Yuanqi” (Origin), which is supposed to explain how and why the periodical came into being. However, written in humorous semi-classical ( yuluti ) style, the article appears to deliberately confuse and tease readers rather than to explain the reasons for launching the periodical. Instead of offering a direct and realist account, it says basically that a group of idle and learned friends were bored and so they thought of putting out a journal. These friends like to use the names of Confucius’ disciples as their nicknames. One day, in a conversation among “Zi Lu,” “Yan Hui,” “You Zi” and so forth, they suddenly somehow felt guilty of their smoking all day long and doing nothing else, so they decided to launch a journal “to make some contributions to society and the nation.” But their idea did not get the approval from “Zi Lu’s” mother-in-law. Not until this July when she suddenly died were they able to carry out their original plan, and call the journal “Analects” (Lunyu), which was obviously a tongue-in-cheek-style loan- word from Confucius’ Analects.1

1 “Yuanqi” (Origin), Lunyu (Analects) 1 (September 16, 1932): 1–3. 96 chapter four

If we listen carefully to these half-joking remarks, we may actually find some relevant background information in regard to the genesis of Lunyu. In fact, it was true that the journal came out of a group of friends’ casual gatherings and conversations. According to Zhang Kebiao , one of the original friends present at the time, the initial expenses for launching the journal was covered by Shao Xunmei ’s Shidai shudian (Times Bookshop)—the reference to “Zi Lu’s mother-in-law” was of course a joke, but “Zi Lu” may very well refer to Shao Xunmei.2 The second part of “Yuanqi” takes on the form of an enquiry, between various kinds of interrogators and the I-narrator, about the objectives, ideological principles, and financial backing of the periodical. These “interrogations” actually reveal two important aspects of the journal: it claims to be both financially and politically independent. Critics today seem to agree that with the publication of Lunyu in 1932, there appeared in modern Chinese literary scene a “Lunyu pai” (Analects School) formed by “Lunyu she” (Analects Society).3 But in fact, it is very difficult to define what “Lunyu School” or “Lunyu Society” actually means. In a sense, “Lunyu Society” may very well be a misno- mer because there was no “society” as such with a set organizational structure: membership, rules and regulations, political agenda, and so forth. According to “Yuanqi,” the periodical Lunyu was launched by a group of “Lunyu Society friends” (Lunyu she tongren), but it was not clear who exactly constituted this “Lunyu Society.” Lin Yutang himself later on had this explanation: “Lunyu has always been open to everybody. The so-called ‘society’ simply means the periodical was launched and sponsored by Mr. Quan, Mr. Pan, Mr. Li, Mr. Shao, Mr. Zhang and others together.”4 Thus the word “society” only has a nominal function and the term “tongren” does not indicate that these friends were bound by any discipline of the society or even shared similar ideas or tastes. No wonder when the successive periodical Renjianshi appeared, “Lunyu Society” became “Renjianshi Society.” Likewise, there was no explicit definition for its constitution.

2 Zhang Kebiao, “Xianhua Lunyu banyuekan” (On Lunyu Fortnightly), Duzhe Liangyou 5, No. 6 (December 1986): 63. 3 Chen Anhu ed, Xiandai wenxue shetuan liupai shi (A History of Modern Chinese Literary Societies and Schools), pp. 454–464. 4 Lin Yutang, “Yu Tao Kangde shu” (Letter to Tao Kangde), Lunyu 28 (November 1, 1933): 173. Mr. Quan refers to Quan Zenggu (or T. K. Chuan), Pan is Pan Guangdan (or Quentin Pan), Li is Li Qingya, Shao is Shao Xunmei, Zhang is Zhang Kebiao. “little critic” 97

While it is difficult to talk about “Lunyu Society” or “Lunyu School” as such, there certainly emerged what I call a “Lunyu phenomenon” in the modern Chinese literary scene.5 It refers to the literary and cultural discourses and practices of Lin Yutang in particular and the “Lunyu group” in general, as articulated and demonstrated by means of a series of journals edited by or associated with Lin Yutang, including Lunyu, Renjianshi, Yuzhoufeng, Xifeng, and The China Critic. It should be noted that the “Lunyu phenomenon” is not confined to the journal Lunyu alone. In fact, when Lin Yutang launched Renjianshi in 1934, his attachment to Lunyu loosens though he still contributes to the journal. After Lin moved to America in 1936, his practical involvement with these journals was basically suspended, even though the periodical Lunyu, now edited by Yu Dafu and Shao Xunmei, continued publication until 1937 and was re-launched after the War, whereas Yuzhoufeng, Xifeng and The China Critic ran all the way through the war period. Another important aspect of the “Lunyu phenomenon” is of its bilingual nature. While most of critical attention has so far been put on the Chinese-language magazines, I will show that Lin Yutang and the “Lunyu group” had a lot to do with the English-language journal The China Critic. In addition, Xifeng , edited by Huang Jiade and Huang Jiayin with Lin Yutang as the consulting editor, was a journal of translation designed to publish select articles translated from Western newspapers and magazines. Instead of using the term “Lunyu society,” I will use “Lunyu group” to designate the group of people who made the “Lunyu phenomenon” possible. In a sense, “Lunyu group” simply refers to those who contributed to the series of journals edited by Lin. While it is true that all those journals were “open to everybody,” upon close examination, we can still find the distinctive feature of the main contributors to these journals. The composition of these main contributors is closely related to Lin Yutang’s own background. Because of his connection with Yusi members in the 1920s in Beijing, Lin was able to invite these old friends to contribute to his new journals. These include Lu Xun, Zhou Zuoren, Yu Dafu, Sun Fuyuan and so on. One of the most frequent contributors at this time was Zhou Zuoren, accompanied by his

5 This is similar to what Diran Sohigian calls the “humor phenomenon” in the 1930s. See Diran John Sohigian, “Contagion of Laughter: The Rise of the Humor Phenom- enon in Shanghai in the 1930s.” 98 chapter four so-called Jingpai (Beijing School) group of writers. On the other hand, as a St. John’s graduate and with a MA from Harvard and PhD from Leipzig, Lin had wide connections with a group of Western-trained elites in Shanghai at this time. Regular contributors in this group include Shao Xunmei, Pan Guangdan, Quan Zenggu, Li Qingya, Zhang Yiping, Zhang Kebiao, Lin Yu and others. Some of them were members of the Xinyue group and most of them can be considered as Haipai (Shanghai School) writers at large. It should be interesting to note that before the Chinese-language periodical Lunyu was launched, some from this group, such as Pan Guangdan, Quan Zenggu, and Lin Yu, had originally gathered around The China Critic, an English- language journal run by a group of “returned” Humanities/Social Science scholars/professionals trained in the West. Thus, the “Lunyu group” hosts a unique combination of Jingpai (mostly Japan-trained) and Haipai (mostly Western-trained) writers. Moreover, Lin’s journals also attracted a number of talented contributors who became well- known or more famous, such as Lao She, Lao Xiang, Xu Yu, Hai Ge, Huang Jiade and Huang Jiayin, thanks to their association with Lin’s periodicals. Last but not least, Lin’s journals also published a number of Leftist writers, particularly Ah Ying and Guo Moruo, even though there were serious and even nasty debates between them and Lin Yutang. It is the “Lunyu group” who made the “Lunyu phenomenon” possible. The “Lunyu group” has three major features: first, it is a truly open group with diverse ideological and educational backgrounds; second, it is a unique collaboration between Jingpai and Haipai writers, and since it is after all based in Shanghai, what I identify as the “core group” consists of a number of Western-trained scholars/professionals who were fluent in both Chinese and English; third, given the diverse nature of the group, it is Lin Yutang alone through his literary practices who unites the group and gives it distinction in 1930s Shanghai. In this chapter, I will engage in a socio-(cross-)cultural reading of the “Lunyu phenomenon,” focusing on Lin Yutang’s literary and cultural practices in 1930s Shanghai with reference to similar echoes by members of the core group. I will show that the emergence of the “Lunyu phenomenon” in the 1930s owes to the fact that Lin Yutang and his friends identified with themselves and promoted through their journal writings a distinctive cosmopolitan attitude or sensibility that was suggestive of a certain middling alternative modernity, attractive and desirable for a readership that was experiencing the anxieties of “little critic” 99 rapid social modernization.6 Such an attitude can be approached and analyzed from many perspectives. In this chapter, I will examine the social, cultural and linguistic/literary implications of this attitude.

The Little Critic

During the years from 1930 to 1936, except for the period from May 1931 to May 1932, Lin Yutang was a columnist for The China Critic, an English-language weekly run by a group of Western-trained Chi- nese intellectuals. From May 1931 to May 1932, Lin was touring and visiting Europe as a delegate of the Academia Sinica on a cultural exchange mission. Shortly after his return, the periodical Lunyu was launched in September 1932 and as it became an instant success, Lin Yutang’s name also won national acclaim in the literary world. But this was not such an unexpected sudden turn of events. For a bilingual reader, Lin’s success would not seem that surprising, for many of his “humorous essays” that made him so popular were in fact rewrites/ translations of his English essays written for his column in The China Critic, which had already won him considerable recognition among an English-language readership. The importance of Lin’s contributions to The China Critic cannot be underestimated, since most of these English writings appeared in Chinese version in Lin’s series of journals, and since they also contain the main ideas and attitudes for his later bestsellers in America such as My Country and My People and The Importance of Living. Interestingly, Lin named his column “The Little Critic.” This title quite aptly captures the nature of the social role Lin assumes in the 1930s. In order to understand what he means by this self-identiﬁcation, it is necessary to situate it in the socio-cultural background of the time. The China Critic was launched in 1928 and lasted till 1945. It was the only English-language weekly run by Chinese—a group of

6 Cf. Susan Daruvala’s notion of “alternative modernity” through her study on Zhou Zuoren in Zhou Zuoren and an Alternative Chinese Response to Modernity. If Zhou Zuoren can be seen as initiating a Jingpai (Beijing School) alternative modernity, Lin Yutang’s had a much stonger Haipai (Shanghai School) ﬂavour, although Lin’s Haipai style had much more in common with Zhou Zuoren than with those modernist Haipai writers as studied in Leo Ou-fan Lee’s Shanghai Modern. 100 chapter four

Western-educated professional intellectuals.7 Although its circulation was by no means as large as Lin’s later Chinese-language journals, its targeted audience were rather special and unique: the English-speaking or reading public in China. It is important to note that to be able to write and/or read English in China signiﬁes the acquisition of a considerable amount of social capital. The English-reading public in fact forms a special elite class in China, and “returned students” with their special training and degrees from England and the US certainly enjoyed an elite status among the elites of the English-literate. Though the readership of The China Critic certainly includes foreign residents in China, the journal was not primarily foreign-oriented. In other words, The China Critic was not solely designed to introduce China’s politics, economy, culture and the week’s events to the West. Rather, Chinese editors and contributors had a cosmopolitan orientation and made comments and reports on the social, political, economical and cultural happenings of the week in China from within. Its regular columns included Editorials, Special Articles, The Little Critic, Arts and Letters, Facts and Figures, Chief Events of the Week, From Chinese Press, From Foreign Press, Book Review, Overseas Chinese, Public Forum, etc. Lin Yutang was the columnist for The Little Critic (later on T. K. Chuan became its alternate columnist), Pan Guangdan was responsible for Book Review and Lin Yu for Overseas Chinese. The China Critic was not a literature magazine, but rather a comprehensive weekly run by a group of West- ern-educated Humanities professionals—its Editor was an economist, and other contributing editors include a philosopher, a eugenicist, a philologist, an ethnologist, and a legal expert. That the weekly was launched in 1928 was not merely fortuitous. No matter how unstable and even chaotic the socio-political situation of the country might have been, a uniﬁed government was in place, and there was the promised much needed reconstruction for a war-torn country. As can be clearly seen from their “Editorials,” these “The (China) Critic gentlemen,” as the editorial group was sometimes referred to at the time, saw their role as contributing to the healthy development of the reconstruction

7 Its Editor was Kwei Chung-Shu (桂中枢), an economist, and Associate Editors were Lin Yu (林幽) and T. K. Chuan (全增嘏), Contributing Editors include D. K. Lieu (刘大钧), Quentin Pan (潘光旦), H. Y. Warren Chen (陈华寅), Kan Lee (李幹), Miss V. T. Bang (彭望荃女士), Y. C. Ma (马寅初), Durham S. F. Chen (陈石孚), Chang Hsin-Hai (张欣海), Chin-Jen Chen (陈钦仁), P. T. Chen (陈炳章), T. King (金子刚), Thomas M. H. Chao (赵敏恒), Lin Yutang, and others. Members of this editorial committee change from time to time. “little critic” 101 of the country. After all, the Nanjing Decade (1927–1937) witnessed rapid progress in social modernization as Western-trained professionals were put at the forefront of social building. The China Critic offered an independent liberal voice of elite intellectuals whose stakes were nevertheless very much tied up with the government’s reconstruction project. Liberal critique, so long as it is allowed to be articulated at all, is never revolutionary, but evolutionary in nature. The China Critic was primarily interested in liberal commentary on every aspect of the social reconstruction in the hope of putting the country on the track of modernization.8 Lin Yutang’s association with The China Critic group is rather critical in our understanding of the Lunyu phenomenon. Previous critical attention has been paid almost exclusively to Lin’s association with the Zhou brothers as a member of the Yusi group in Beijing.9 In fact, because of differences in educational background and training, that relationship is surprising. The Zhou brothers were from a declining gentry family in Jiangnan, and received traditional education in their childhoods. Later they studied in Japan. Lin Yutang, on the other hand, was born to a Chinese Christian family with Bible study as the norm for his childhood. He was a top graduate from St. John’s University in Shanghai, an Episcopalian mission school with courses taught exclusively in English. Even before his study in America and Europe, Lin Yutang was already a model Westernized man in the eyes of his May Fourth peers. According to Chih Meng, “At Tsing Hua, Lin was an instructor in English. To us, he seemed to behave more like an American than a Chinese. He wore western clothes, knew how to use knife and fork at dinner, and even walked…with his bride, arm in arm.”10 After Lin’s return from the West in the 1920s, it was rather “strange,” as Lin himself recalls, that he did not belong to Hu Shi’s Contemporary Review group but rather to the Yusi group.11 Their attraction might very well be their difference, as he depicts the fortnightly meetings of the Yusi group “under the glorious pine groves area of the Central Park [in Beijing]:”

8 For a recent study and more detailed discussion of The China Critic, see Shuang Shen, Cosmopolitan Publics, Chapter 1, pp. 33–57. 9 See Wan Pingjin, Lin Yutang ping zhuan (Biographical Commentary on Lin Yutang), pp. 54–76. 10 See Meng, Chih, Chinese American Understanding: A Sixty-Year Search, p. 100. Thanks go to Diran Sohigian for pointing out this reference to me. 11 Lin Yutang, Memoirs of an Octogenarian, p. 60. 102 chapter four

Chou Tsuo-ren [Zhou Zuoren] was usually present. Like his writing, he talked in his usually slow voice, could never be moved to raise his voice in an excitement. His elder brother (Lu Shun) [Lu Xun], on the other hand, would laugh and guffaw when he was enjoying his verbal criticism against any of his enemies. Short and with a prickly beard, with sunken cheeks, and dressed always in Chinese, he looked much like an opium-smoker. Very few people would guess he was known for his master-like, poignant satires, which would “draw blood with every prick” of his pen.12 Lin Yutang’s return to Shanghai in 1928, after his brief sojourn in Wuhan as Foreign Affairs Secretary for Eugene Chen during the height of the Northern Expedition in 1927, was in a way a homecoming. Lin Yutang started to contribute to The China Critic in 1928, though he did not have his own column until 1930. Lin was associated with The China Critic group from quite early on, and this was an association of similar educational background and professional expertise, not literary taste or political ideology. “The China Critic gentlemen” can be aptly called “professional intellectuals.” “Professional intellectuals” are professionals first, in that their social value is accorded to them through their special field and training, usually from the West. When they assume the role of intellectuals, speaking and working for social interests, they can be either “specific intellectuals” or “universal intellectuals” in Foucauldian terms.13 While some contributors to The China Critic are “specific intellectuals” in that they write as, for instance, economist or statistician, on economical or statistical issues, those who later became main contributors to Lunyu, such as Pan Guangdan (eugenicist) and Quan Zenggu (philosopher), are rather “universal intellectuals” in that they write on other issues of general interest aside from their specialty. In whatever case, they were very different from wenren (men of letters) writers in 1930s Shanghai. Shanghai wenren writers were also a modern phenomenon, as there were no longer any wenren, or men of letters in the traditional sense by the 1930s. If China entered modernity around the turn of the 20th century, the Nanjing Decade witnessed another period of rapid socio- economic changes, especially in urban areas, with Shanghai as the center. Along with these socio-economic changes, the social formation and role of the intellectual class also took on a more resolutely modern

12 Ibid., p. 61. 13 Michel Foucault, “Truth and Power,” The Foucault Reader, pp. 69–70. “little critic” 103 dimension. Generally speaking, to be a “wenren” in the traditional sense means to be part of the elite class in society when their elite status does not rely on the commercial return of their writing. On the contrary, along with the general structural changes of modern society, there appeared a class of professional writers who lived on royalties from their contributions to journals. In other words, the “profession” of these writers is writing itself. The emergence of “professional writers” must be seen as part of the general structural change of the educated class from their central role of “shi” (scholar-official) in traditional society to their marginal role in modern times. With the termination of the examination system in 1905, the traditional role of the “shi” class, symbolized through writing and materialized through officialdom, conceded their predominance in society to a host of different social groups including professional politicians, soldiers, merchants, engineers, scientists and Western-trained professionals. Except for the very few who won national fame, “professional writers” became a group without an actual profession in modern society, even though they inherited the traditional symbol of writing ascribed to “wenren.” There seem to be two different accounts of the living conditions of these “professional writers” in Shanghai in the 1930s. The popular perception has been that the living conditions of writers in 1930s Shanghai were far from comfortable. In fact, they were given a special name: tingzijian wenren, or “writers from terrace houses,” as they lived in tingzijian, tiny rooms with cheap rent of “terrace houses” in the crowded linong (alleyways). For example, in writing a history of the press in China, Lin Yutang attributed the poor quality of journalistic writing to the poor living conditions of the writers “living in garrets in the terribly inhuman residences of Shanghai alleyways called ‘terrace houses.’”14 Lin claims that, compared to American journalists who were paid “anywhere from a hundred to two thousand dollars for an article… the Chinese magazines pay their contributors an average of three or four dollars per thousand words. The writing profession is one of the poorest paid in China, so that the average writer who lives by contributions to magazines makes much less than a first-class mechanic in a motor garage.”15 In his recent study on 1930s Shanghai culture, Leo Lee also points out the tingzijian milieu: “A poor Shanghai

14 Lin Yutang, A History of the Press and Public Opinion in China, p. 161. 15 Ibid., p. 160. 104 chapter four writer might live and work in the so-called tingzijian (pavilion room), usually a small room upstairs in the passageway between the front and back sections of a typical Shanghai townhouse, often just above the kitchen. The room was hot in summer and cold in winter, owing to its poor ventilation and year-round lack of sunshine (its windows faced north). Consequently, the rent was cheap: for less than four yuan per month, two or three writers could squeeze into a space no larger than ten square meters.”16 On the other hand, Li Jin argues that the fact that a writer can live on his contributions is of great historical significance. It means that writers now have become an economically independent group in society “living on their words” alone. It is true that a writer got paid two or three yuan per thousand words, but a printing worker at that time lived on an average monthly wage of fifteen yuan, so a diligent writer could manage a fairly decent living standard.17 Take Lu Xun for an example—of course, Lu Xun was an exceptional case—as Lu Xiangyuan tells us, his income for the year of 1933, which is an average year for him, amounts to 10,104.89 yuan. And it was in 1933 that Lu Xun moved to his new apartment in Dalu xincun which was equipped with gas and running water—such modern facilities are not enjoyed by every Shanghai resident even today.18 However, these two accounts do not contradict each other, but rather reveal two sides of the same event—the disappearance of wenren as such and the emergence of “professional writers.” Except for very few celebrity writers like Lu Xun who could enjoy an elite socio-economic status, most writers only manage to eke out a living. It is true that modern “professional writers” are independent in that they do not have to rely on officialdom for a living, but a life in between a first-rate mechanic and a printing worker is far from occupying the central role the traditional wenren used to enjoy in society. Ironically, “tingzijian writers” do not write about tingzijian as such, instead, they “can spin out long yarns of grandiloquent discussions on abstract theories or collect their material by quotations from quotations from books ancient and modern.”19

16 Leo Ou-fan Lee, Shanghai Modern, p. 33. 17 Li Jin, Haipai xiaoshuo yu xiandai dushi wenhua (Shanghai School Fiction and Mod- ern Urban Culture), p. 320. 18 Lu Xiangyuan, Gaochou zenyang jiaodong wentan—shichang jingji yu zhongguo jinxiandai wenxue (How Did Royalties Affect the Literary World: Market Economy and Modern Chinese Literature), p. 3. 19 Lin Yutang, A History of the Press and Public Opinion in China, p. 161. “little critic” 105

In his debate with the Leftist writers in 1935, Lin Yutang wrote an essay entitled “Zuo wen yu zuo ren” (To Write and To Be a Man), in which he claims that one can write or be a common man, but one should not become a wenren. For one thing, wenren are accustomed to, and even proud of, being poor, but Lin does not believe wenren should be poor. Rather, he thinks poverty of wenren makes them more likely to become “literary prostitutes.” More importantly, Lin contends that contemporary wenren produce very serious and high-sounding words while their own personal actions often fail to qualify them as ordinary upright men. Lin proposes that that situation should be reversed, that is, in one’s personal behavior one should be more upright and serious with a sense of moral decency while one’s literary writings can be humorous, self-indulgent and elaborate. Although Lin Yutang does not seem to think of himself as a wenren, I will show that Lin Yutang himself was actually closer to being a wenren in the classical sense precisely because he was not a “professional writer.” In terms of training and socio-economical status, Lin belonged to The China Critic group—an elite class of Western-trained professionals with native-level command of English. By profession, Lin Yutang was trained as a philologist. After he had got his Ph.D. and returned to Beijing in 1923, he was an English professor at Peking University. During his Shanghai years, it was true that Lin devoted most of his time to writing and editing journals, but he did not have to make a living out of it. For one thing, he had a prestigious but rather idle job, with a monthly salary of 300 yuan, as English secretary at Academia Sinica under President Cai Yuanpei. More importantly, Lin converted his profession into real capital and made himself quite a successful textbook writer. In 1929, Kaiming Bookstore published a series of English-language textbooks written by Lin, which became probably the most popular textbooks for learning English in the 1930s. According to Zhang Kebiao, Lin Yutang demonstrated much business acumen in ensuring the success of his textbooks, including winning a lawsuit over plagiarism, making publicity through newspaper ads, and gaining crucial government support from the Ministry of Education.20 The commercial success of Lin’s series of textbooks earned him the nickname “King of Royalties” and

20 Zhang Kebiao, “Lin Yutang zai Shanghai” (Lin Yutang in Shanghai), Wenhui yuekan (October, 1989): 35–36. 106 chapter four consequently caused much jealousy among writers at the time.21 It should be clear, though, that Lin’s royalties came from his profession as philologist, not from his literary production. Precisely because his professional expertise offered him financial security and success, Lin might have taken a quite different attitude toward royalties from literary production. It is well-known that Lu Xun and Lin Yutang had been quite close but broke up suddenly for the first time at a friends’ dinner on August 8, 1929, somehow involving Lu Xun’s dispute with his publisher over his royalties. Neither Lu Xun nor Lin Yutang ever made it explicit about what exactly happened and who said what over dinner. But according to Lu Xiangyuan’s interpretation, Lu Xun was very firm on getting paid properly for his literary production, while Lin Yutang was said to be rather “critical” on that.22 It is likely that Lin Yutang, as a professional who lived on his expertise or skills, made some unfavorable remarks about a professional writer who lived on royalties from literary production alone, even though they might not be meant to refer specifically to Lu Xun. In the same light, it is credible that when Lin Yutang and a group of friends launched the journal Lunyu, it was not meant to be a commercially-oriented popular magazine at all. When it did become popular, it was a surprise to the Lunyu founders themselves. The success of Lunyu was not the result of careful marketing. But rather, the cosmopolitan style Lin and others promoted in Lunyu was quite attractive to urban readers in the 1930s Shanghai who were undergoing rapid modernization process. The Lunyu style was first cultivated by Lin Yutang in the “Little Critic” column for The China Critic. The “Little Critic” brackets, or remains detached from, the grand historical development of the time and the self-righteous political struggle of the day; he shifts his critical attention to social commentary of everyday life practices in its myriad ways under changing conflicts of modernity. The “Little Critic” con- cedes the responsibility of making judgment or decisions on the “big picture” of historical tide to others. He concentrates, instead, on personal accounts of the “small” quotidian aspects of society. However, the fact that the “Little Critic” can remain detached from the “big

21 Lin Taiyi, Lin Yutang zhuan (Biography of Lin Yutang), p. 63. 22 Lu Xiangyuan, Gaochou zenyang jiaodong wentan—shichang jingji yu zhongguo jinxiandai wenxue (How Did Royalties Affect the Literary World: Market Economy and Modern Chinese Literature), p. 245. “little critic” 107 picture” of the time and refrain from right/wrong judgment is precisely because he enjoys the professional status in the emerging society, unlike self-styled wenren who as a whole have been marginalized as, ironically, “professional writers.” In his “Preface” to a collection of his “Little Critic” essays, Lin Yutang reiterates his initial expectations of the style of these essays. Indeed, at the very beginning, Lin was self-conscious of the title, which was employed deliberately to divert the reader’s attention from “big issues” such as the “London Naval conference” or the “progress of Nationalism in China” to more natural and human aspects of life. As Lin puts it, “in this unbuttoned mood shall we speak.”23 In putting these essays together in book form, Lin believes his essays have followed his original intentions, but with one significant correction: the editorial “we” has been most inappropriately used in the original speech, and it must be replaced by the personal “I.” In examining the collection of Lin’s “Little Critic” essays, one cannot help noticing that a large portion of these essays center around Lin’s own personal life: “How I Bought a Tooth-Brush,” “Ah Fong, My House-Boy,” “Once I Owned a Car,” “My Last Rebellion Against Lady Nicotine,” “How I Moved Into a Flat,” “How I Became Respectable,” “What I Want,” “Spring in My Garden,” “A Trip to Anhwei,” “How I Celebrated the New Year’s Eve,” and so on. The focus on the personal and private “I” would seem trivial if such self-indulgence did not arouse sympathetic identification from the readers. When Lin “unbuttons” himself, what is presented is in fact everybody’s everyday experience of emerging modern life. For the Chinese readers in the 1930s (and for that matter, even today), things like buying a car, moving into a new flat and going on an outing are novelties indicative of an emerging urban middle class lifestyle. Lin’s sense of humor in these essays, affecting a certain Western gentlemanly tone, brings forth a distinctive attitude that is critical of modernity but already takes for granted many of the assumptions of modern life. In his celebrated essay “How I Bought a Tooth-Brush,” for instance, Lin takes issue with the modern phenomenon of advertisements. In meticulous detail, he tells the story of how he is mislead by deceptive ads, pronouncing in the name of science and hygiene, into first buying

23 Lin Yutang, The Little Critic: Essays, Satires and Sketches on China (First Series: 1930– 1932), p. iv. 108 chapter four a toothbrush with a concave surface and then changing to one with a convex surface. In terms of searching for the proper tooth paste, Lin tells us that he has tried powder, liquid, and paste in succession, including “Dr. Lyon’s Powder, Sozodont, Squibbs Dental Magnesia, Pepsodent, Chorodont, Kolynos, Colgate, Listerine, Euthymol, and Ipana, (each claming to be “the only” safe and effective preparation that really cleans),” only to be told by his dentist that it is the water and the brush that really clean the teeth—“The cream or paste only makes the work of cleaning more pleasant and professional.”24 By presenting himself as a modern man “of fair education and with a good middle-class conscience,” Lin enables his readers to laugh at themselves, to the effect of not merely awakening their own self-consciousness but also allowing them to see through their modern identities and vulnerabilities—their acute sen- sitivity for health, devout trust in science, enthusiasm for novelty, a sense of inquiry and calculation, and so on. Lin’s essay “Ah Fong, My House-Boy” was also quite appealing to the emerging middle class urbanites as it exemplifies a modern gentlemanly attitude. While it appears to talk about the traditional master/ servant relationship, the essay actually reveals its reversal. “Ah Fong,” Lin’s servant “boy,” is shown to be a very intelligent youngster who by all accounts is not qualified to be a servant—he is carefree and naughty, careless and disobedient. But he has one precious quality that wins over the “master”—he manages to fix a broken typewriter on his own. What we see in this story is in fact not so much about the “boy,” but the “master” who still appreciates the “boy” spirit, a gentleman with a liberal mind and attitude, and most of all, a modern man who is himself obsessed with mechanical gadgets.25 Among these “Little Critic” essays with personal identification, the one entitled “What I Want” offers a clear and ideal manifestation of a modern consciousness by listing a number of quotidian desires of a seemingly average modern “I.” It is worth quoting in more detail here as it is representative of the modern cosmopolitan sensibility that must have found much echo and emulation from urban readers at the time: I want a room of my own, where I can work. A room that is neither particularly clean nor orderly… a room comfortable and intimate and

24 Ibid., pp. 192–194. 25 Ibid., pp. 241–246. “little critic” 109

familiar . . . An atmosphere full of smoke and the smell of books and unaccountable odors . . . I want some decent gentlemen’s clothing that I have worn for some time and a pair of old shoes. I want the freedom to wear as little as I care to . . . I want a home where I can be myself. I want to hear my wife’s voice and the children’s laughter upstairs when I am working downstairs, and downstairs when I am working upstairs. I want children who are children, who will go with me to play in the rain, and who enjoy a shower bath as much as I do. I want a patch of ground where my children can build brick houses and feed chicken and water ﬂowers. I want to hear a cock crying cock-a-doodle-do in the morning. I want tall, old trees in the neighborhood. I want some good friends, friends who are as familiar as life itself, friends to whom I need not be polite, and who will tell me all their troubles . . . I want a good cook, who knows how to cook vegetables and make delicious soups . . . I want a good library, some good cigars and a woman who understands and who leaves me free to do my work. I want some bamboos in front of my study window, a rainy climate in summer, and a clear, blue sky in winter, like what we have in Peking. I want the freedom to be myself.26

“Westernized Bastard” ( Xizai)

The “Little Critic’s” self-reflection on everyday life is meant to be a social commentary on the emerging pattern of modernity. But a social commentary on the conflicts of modernity in 1930s China is also at the same time a cross-cultural commentary on the conglomeration of things Chinese and Western. Indeed, cross-cultural commentary constitutes a major feature and attraction in the series of periodicals launched by the Lunyu group. A major portion of Lin’s “Little Critic” essays is also specifically concerned with various aspects of cross-cultural critique between East and West. This should come as no surprise as these bilingual “Critic gentlemen,” given their Western-training and expertise, regard themselves and are regarded as cosmopolitan intellectuals bridging East and West. What is interesting, however, is that in the 1930s literary world, Lin Yutang and his journals were known

26 Lin Yutang, The Little Critic: Essays, Satires and Sketches on China (Second Series: 1933– 1935), pp. 103–104. 110 chapter four for initiating a number of cultural moves, notably the rediscovery of Yuan Zhonglang, which were condemned as regressive and therefore intolerable by the Leftists. Just like other debates in the 1930s, the one between Lin Yutang and Lu Xun and other Leftists soon degenerated into name-calling—each accusing the other of being “Westernized bastards” (xizai ). Actually this debate reveals a big difference in terms of their attitude toward the “West” between Lin Yutang and Lunyu professional intellectuals, on the one hand, and Lu Xun and Leftist wenren, on the other. In the height of the polemics between Lin Yutang and the Leftists led by Lu Xun, Lin published an essay entitled “Jin wen ba bi” (Eight Sicknesses of Today’s Literature), which is a scathing critique of what Lin considers the ills of the literary world as a whole but with the main target aimed at the ideology and operations of the Leftists. In the essay, Lin satirizes the attitude of imitating everything Western while denouncing all that is Chinese as the “knack of a xizai (colonial boy, or Westernized bastard).”27 This gets a response from Lu Xun who, in his typical satirical tone, names Lin Yutang and the like as real xizai. Since it is Lu Xun’s words that hold sway in modern Chinese literature, the notorious tag of xizai has been stuck with Lin Yutang. The strategy of Lu Xun’s attack, as usual, is rather personal. He tells us that after coming to Shanghai, he personally knew many xizai, who spoke perfect English but would not mix Chinese with English terms just to be fashionable. In fact, they can be quite Chinese and old-fashioned in their aesthetic taste, since their good English was used for their professional purposes in serving their foreign masters. Lu Xun claims that what is obnoxious is not their profession per se, but rather their xizai xiang (air): Such “air” means that they know Westerners are powerful and superior to common Chinese, and since they know Westerners’ language, they are closer to Westerners, so they are superior to common Chinese. Yet since they are also descendents of the Yellow Emperor and part of an ancient civilization, and know the Chinese way of things better than Westerners, so they are superior to the Westerners who are superior to common Chinese, and therefore certainly superior to common Chinese who are under Westerners . . . swimming in between Chinese and West-

27 Lin Yutang, “Jin wen ba bi” (Eight Sicknesses of Today’s Literature), Renjianshi (This Human World) (May 20, 1935): 28. “little critic” 111

erners and dealing in between the master and the slave, such is the “air of the Westernized bastard” in today’s Shanghai bund.28 Lu Xun’s critical strategy represents a negative essentialist attitude toward modernity prevalent among modern Chinese intellectuals, especially the Leftists. Such an attitude is inherently conflicting. On the one hand, its proponents believe they are harbingers of historical progress, while the notion of progress is rigidly understood cross-culturally to the extent that they maintain a nihilistic attitude toward Chinese culture as a whole. In this respect, there is a difference between Lu Xun and other Leftists armed with Marxist ideology. While the latter offers a clear direction and destination of such historical progress, Lu Xun puts his emphasis on the critical endeavor of targeting the old and the backward. It is thus quite understandable why Lu Xun’s approach is so enduring—it is perhaps still the mainstream approach in China today, even though orthodox Marxism has long lost its appeal. The appeal of Lu Xun’s critical strategy is also due to another important factor—the critic poses himself as speaking for and identified with the “common Chinese.” What is intriguing about such a supposition is that “common Chinese” can be excused from bearing the banner of historical progress, but that does not affect the authenticity and truthfulness of the critic’s voice. To be identified with the “common Chi- nese” is of course an effective way attacking Western-trained “elites.” In his attack against Lin Yutang and the like, Lu Xun positions himself as “coming from the countryside,” which he differentiates from Lin as a “Gaodeng huaren” (Upper-class Chinese) who speaks fluent English. Of course, such critical posing does not need to explain why it is such a bad thing to be bi-culturally educated, as if to be bilingual and bicultural is not a positive sign of Chinese modernity. In terms of cultural capital, Lu Xun is certainly right on the target. There is no denying that Lin Yutang and Lunyu group professional intellectuals represent the elite in Chinese society in the 1930s with their Western training and knowledge and command of the English language. However, Lu Xun’s deployment of “speaker’s benefit,” to use a Foucauldian term, only reveals his own negative essentialist claim toward modernity, and is not helpful in understanding the cross-cultural attitude of these professional intellectuals themselves. What Lin

28 Lu Xun, “Ti weiding cao (2)” (Title Undecided, A Draft, No. 2), Luxun quanji vol. 6, pp. 366–367. 112 chapter four

Yutang represents is a cosmopolitan attitude, which assumes the legitimacy of a great deal of the Western modernity due to their training and experience abroad while at the same time strives to retrieve those aspects of Chinese culture that are compatible and complimentary to modernity in order to arrive at a middling style of modernity. Precisely because Lin Yutang and other Western-educated elites have identified themselves with the modern culture and are secure in their knowledge and command of Western modernity, they do not have to emphasize the preeminence of what they have in command. Instead, they seem to be quite enthusiastic about rediscovering traditional Chinese cultural elements. In other words, their seemingly “regressive” turn must be understood as an effort to compliment and enrich their beliefs in and identification with Western modernity. The cosmopolitan attitude of cross-cultural integration rejects a nihilistic approach to Chinese culture. Obviously, the emergence of Western-educated English-speaking intellectuals is very much a product of Chinese modernity. And the opening up of Chinese modernity itself means the introduction of Western modernity to China based on the premise that traditional Chinese culture is insufficient, even inherently inadequate, to cope with the demands of the modern world. At the initial stage of cultural clashes, extreme rhetoric, even actual measures, eulogizing or degrading one culture or the other are understandable. Along with the advance of Chinese modernity into the 1930s, however, groups of Western-trained professionals returned home. To these bilingual “returned students,” Western culture and modernity is no longer alien or exotic. In other words, the “West” is no longer an imaginary, but rather part of their experience. Indeed, they have been assimilated into this culture to a considerable extent. Precisely because of this assimilation, they no longer need to debase their own cultural roots in order to be identified with the power and glory of the “West.” On the contrary, to be able to quote Yuan Zhonglang while speaking English only enhances their cosmopolitan way of being—to be bicultural is indeed superior to those monolingual colonialists in Shanghai who did not bother with Chinese culture and language. The cosmopolitan attitude of cross-cultural integration can be seen as a sign of the beginning of maturity for Chinese modernity. Unfortu- nately, while it does have much appeal for the emerging urban middle class, it was not the predominant ethos at the time. The drive for catching up with the latest trend in the West—“to be more modern than thou”—results in a conflicting negative essentialist attitude “little critic” 113 toward Chinese modernity. As Lin Yutang complains, on the one hand, imitation of Western culture is rampant—even transliteration of Western literary terms becomes the norm—while “everything from the Chinese legacy is condemned as feudal, and reading any classical books is accused of belonging to the leisure class—the only solution seems to lie in the next life to be hopefully born to white parents.”29 On the other hand, there exists fervent, or even morbid, nationalism where everything is said to be related to “saving the nation.” In his essay—“A Defense of Chinese Girls,” for instance, Lin Yutang mocks such “sophomoric” nationalism. The essay is written in the form of a letter addressed to a certain M. Dekobra, a French artist who apparently published an article praising the beauty of Chinese girls. Such comments induced protests from Chinese college girls who believed M. Dekobra was being sarcastic. So Lin wrote the essay to his French artist friend trying to analyze the psychology of Chinese college girls. According to Lin’s analysis, the fact that Chinese cannot accept any positive comment on their own culture and lifestyle is all due to the “inferiority complex .” The Chinese inferiority complex comes from the indoctrination of “Shanghai Club white superiority,” where “Sun- day School gospellers who by their clean-shaven superiority and by their hatred of dirt and the yellow skin and the flat face make us think we are children of the devil, and don’t mind telling us so until we half believe it ourselves.”30 Consequently, “what with all this white superiority, and what with nudist pictures and Mae West and Greta Garbo, the Chinese college girls are all but dying to have curly hair and blonde blue eyes.”31 In this respect, their nationalist protest against a foreign artist’s positive claim about Chinese beauty and culture merely justifies such self-colonizing mentality. For Lin Yutang and other professional intellectuals, their compe- tence in the English language and familiarity in Western culture allow them in return to appreciate cultural difference and thus to obtain a renewed appreciation of their native Chinese culture and the people. Lin’s essay “Buying Birds” quite tellingly reveals his compassion toward common Chinese in a humorous way. In a familiar style, the narrative

29 Lin Yutang, “Jin wen ba bi” (Eight Sicknesses of Today’s Literature), Renjianshi (This Human World) (May 20, 1935): 28. 30 Lin Yutang, The Little Critic: Essays, Satires and Sketches on China (Second Series: 1933– 1935), p. 182. 31 Ibid., pp. 182–183. 114 chapter four

“I” first recounts how he is bewildered by Westerners’ love of dogs, and then contrasts that with Chinese love of birds. The essay elabo- rates on his experience of buying birds: how wherever he goes—to the market to buy the bird, on the street, to a restaurant on his way back and on a taxi cab—he is gazed upon, followed and commented by ordinary folks in a most natural and persistent manner. In their love for birds, the Chinese become most loving themselves—their natural inclination, their dunhou (honest and sincere) character and their little vanities are sketched with a great sense of humor. That little essay is in fact the narrative I’s gaze upon ordinary Chinese, which entails much understanding and appreciation. Similarly, in the essay “On Chinese and Foreign Dress,” Lin satirizes “dog-collar” Western dress and eulogizes Chinese dress whole-heartedly. As Lin puts it: I don’t find Hu Shih wearing foreign dress and I would be hanged if any one could persuade Lusin [Lu Xun] to put on a dinner jacket. The Chinese dress is worn by all Chinese gentlemen. Furthermore, all the scholars, thinkers, bankers and people who made good in China either have never worn a foreign dress, or have swiftly come back to their native dress the moment they have “arrived” politically, financially or socially. They have swiftly come back because they are sure of themselves and no longer feel the need for a coat of foreign appearance to hide their bad English or their inferior mental outfit. No Shanghai kidnapper would think of kidnapping Chinese in foreign clothes, for the simple reason that he is not worth the candle. For who are the people wearing foreign clothes today in China? The college students, the clerks earning a hundred a month, the political busybodies who are always on the point of landing a job, the tangpu young men, the nouveaux riches, the nincompoops, the feeble- minded, and the nephews, brothers-in-law and ne’er-do-well uncles who hang on to their rich relatives the successful bankers, opium-smugglers, warlords and millionaire thieves in Chinese dress. It is the latter that the kidnappers want.32 Behind the humor, however, we see on a closer look that the reasoning Lin offers in defending the advantages of Chinese dress is scientific and logical. In other words, a Western-educated writer is using scientific and logical reasoning to spell out an interesting phenomenon of cultural difference. Apparently, Western-educated professional intellectuals’ return to “Chinese dress” is by no means an essentialist move. On the contrary, an open attitude toward and even appreciation of hybridity constitutes

32 Ibid., pp. 75–76. “little critic” 115 a fundamental feature of the middling style of modernity. In terms of English language, for instance, Lin Yutang holds a surprisingly unorthodox and liberal view. Given his professional background as a philologist, and given the fact that the mastery of English earns him much real and cultural capital, one would expect him to keep to the standard of something like the King’s English. In his “In Defense of Pidgin English,” however, we find an eloquent defense of pidgin, as a good example of East-West hybridity. Lin wagers that, given its inherent logical soundness precisely due to its hybrid nature, pidgin English will be the “only respectable international language” by the year 2400, when words like “telegraph,” “telephone,” “cinema” and “radio” will simply be replaced by “electric report,” “electric talk,” “electric picture” and “no-wire-electricity.”33 Of course this is meant to be taken humorously, but it is no mere fantasy either, as these are re-translations of Chinese translation of those modern neologisms. Hybridity is very much part of Chinese modernity, as it is demonstrated in the modern Chinese language itself. The city of Shanghai in the 1930s probably offers the best example of hybridity. In the July 17, 1930 issue of The China Critic, T. K. Chuan wrote an essay “The Terrible City,” comparing Shanghai with Ptole- maic Alexandria, and Lin Yutang followed with his own essay “A Hymn to Shanghai.” Shanghai is a terrible city, according to Chuan, because, like Alexandria, it is a cosmopolitan city where you find peoples of many nationalities and of all kinds, where you find “youths from missionary colleges and returned students from England or America proudly holding forth, sometimes lamentably, in the King’s English.”34 Shanghai is terrible also in terms of its decadent culture, where you find “everywhere advocates and preachers of mysticism, sensualism, skepticism, estheticism, proletarianism, etc, etc…Tons of books are being turned out annually by third rate men, which are imitated by the fourth rate and read by the fifth rate.”35 But terribleness is the very sign of modernity—whatever it is, or going to become, it is not essential- ism. It is precisely due to its hybridity, with its distraught contrast, that Lin Yutang suggests, humorously, that we could actually sing a hymn to Shanghai that hosts “successful pien-pien-bellied merchants,”

33 Ibid., pp. 56–57. 34 T. K. Chuan, “The Terrible City.” The China Critic ( July 17, 1930): 682. 35 Ibid., p. 682. 116 chapter four

“masseuses, naked dancers,” “retired tao-tai and tufei and magistrates and generals,” “wealthy, degenerate opium-smokers,” “nouveaux riches,” “nouveaux modernes,” “girl students,” “haughty, ungentlemanly foreigners,” and so on.36 When you sing a hymn to the terrible city, the singer is already taking a tolerant attitude toward the terribleness of modernity, accepting the fact that to be a cosmopolitan modern is to live in the middle. Apparently, celebrating hybridity suggests two-way cross-cultural ﬂows. Apart from promoting Yuan Zhonglang, Lin Yutang and Lunyu group intellectuals were equally keen on introducing Western cultural values to China. In this regard, the translation journal Xifeng (West Wind), edited by Huang Jiayin and Huang Jiade, was launched “for the purpose of introducing European and American life and society by way of translating select articles from Western journals,” as the journal logo puts it. The publication of Xifeng was an important aspect of the Lunyu phenomenon although little critical attention has been paid to it. In a sense, Xifeng was an offspring of Lin Yutang’s literary ideals as he believed that a gentlemanly style of modernity must be approached by re-appropriating Yuan Zhonglang from the Chinese tradition, and at the same time by introducing familiar style of journalistic writings from Western popular magazines and journals. But Lin only lent his name (as “consulting editor”) and spiritual support to the journal as the actual editing and running was in the hands of the Huang brothers. It was one of the long-lived journals of the Lunyu group—it survived the War of Resistance Against Japan since its publication in 1936. But more importantly, the journal had exerted long-lasting inﬂuence upon the shaping of Chinese cultural modernity. Lin’s re-appreciation of Yuan Zhonglang may have been forgotten, but the kind of middle-class gentlemanly ethos as propounded by West Wind is still very much appreciated today. In the 1930s, West Wind was considered as containing the best articles translated from Western journals. It was taken to be China’s “Reader’s Digest,” the best journal in China for introducing Western ideas and lifestyles.37 The fact that the journal was able to survive the war period was not so much because the journal maintained a detached stance

36 Lin Yutang, “A Hymn to Shanghai,” The Little Critic (First Series), pp. 217–219. 37 Such praises came from Shen Pao, probably the most inﬂuential Chinese-language newspaper at that time, and The China Critic, which were quoted by Xifeng (West Wind) 16 (1937): 291. “little critic” 117 towards the war. Almost every issue selected and translated articles related to the war situation. But the overall focus of the journal was neither political nor apolitical. War-related articles were selected because the war was an inescapable part of the contemporary life. To the journal editors, modern Western life had larger scope and appeal to Chinese readers. In terms of the selection criteria, the editors clearly adopted a kaleidoscopic approach, covering such areas as war reports, science and technology, social exposé, biographies, education, psychology, culture, exotica, book reviews and so on. The editing principles of the journal seem to suggest that a cosmopolitan reader ought to know bits and pieces of everything that was going on in the Western world. It is interesting to note that it was the names of the translators that were listed as authors on the table of contents. It seems as if the editors wanted the readers to believe that they were reading “reader’s digest,” instead of a translation of the Western Reader’s Digest. Eclecticism and hybridity were certainly main features of West Wind, but if we look carefully, the journal still has a clear emphasis. The issues the editors were most concerned with center around family, marriage, relationships, psychology, sex education, women and so on. Such attention to the personal everyday life practices was a salient feature of the Lunyu phenomenon. It is through such personal attention that the journal translates and attempts to establish a modern ethos. Among the journal’s columns, “Letters to the Editor” was the only column that was not of translated articles, and most of the questions the editors addressed were of a personal nature. In an issue entitled “Restless Life,” for instance, a high school girl student wrote to the editor about her bewilderment over the sexual awakening of her body. She complained that she was tortured by the secret desire aroused by her maturing body, yet she had no physiological knowledge and had nobody to turn to for help and advice. So she regarded West Wind as her intimate friend and asked the journal to publish an article “describing the formation and changes of female sexual organs with advice on the proper ways of sexual intercourse.”38 The editor’s reply may seem quite common and unsentimental, but given the Chi- nese context in the 1930s, it certainly suggests a tellingly modern attitude toward sex education. It praised the girl student’s brevity and honesty

38 “Zuowobuan de shenghuo” (Restless Life), Letters to the Editor, Xifeng (West Wind) 20 (1937): 211. 118 chapter four in coming forward to writing the letter and condemned the societal hypocrisy in still keeping sex education a taboo topic. To the journal editor, sex education should be openly practiced in the family, in the school and in society, so that youth need not suffer from ignorance and twisted sense of shame imposed by society. Of course, the editor did not go into details to describe the physiology of the female body, but rather referred her to some professional books, and ensured her that her sexual desire was most “natural and reasonable.”

Yuluti/Dazhongyu

“To live in the middle” does not mean a certain medium measurement in the evolutionary scheme of things. Rather, it suggests an alternative attitude toward Chinese modernity. Of course, to claim that “Lunyu phenomenon” suggests an alternative road to Chinese modernity is a historical hindsight. To the contemporary practitioners involved, their difference may not indicate such a clear direction. An examination of Lin Yutang’s proposal of yuluti (vernacular classical style) and the Leftists’ promotion of dazhongyu (popular language of the masses) may reveal interesting shared assumptions as well as pointed differences between the two camps. It should be pointed out that it was Lunyu that first promoted the use of simplified Chinese characters. On the Nov. 16, 1933 issue of Lunyu, Lin Yutang set up a discussion forum gathering public opinions about the reform of Chinese characters. Although that discussion did not finalize the standardization of simplified Chinese characters, many of the viewpoints and choices anticipated the final version implemented by the PRC government. It is well-known that language reform constituted one of the essential elements of Chinese modernity. In a sense, Chinese modernity opened up with the introduction of the vernacular baihua as acceptable common language. In fact, Lin Yutang, as a philologist, was one of the first to advocate the reform of the Chinese language. Lin’s first appearance in the Chinese intellectual world was his article contribution, entitled “A Note on the Index System for Chinese Characters” (Hanzi suoyin zhi shuoming), to the journal La Jeunesse—the mouth organ of the New Culture Movement. To promote the simpli- fication of Chinese characters in the 1930s is certainly a step further in the direction of popularization of the Chinese language from the classical to the modern vernacular. However, after several decades of actual “little critic” 119 practice, baihua itself was under much criticism from many angles by the 1930s. The Leftists under the organization of the Left League, who saw themselves as the most progressive inheritors of the May Fourth spirit, now began to advocate dazhongyu, or popular language of the masses, which is taken to be more modern and progressive than baihua. Lin Yutang and Lunyu, on the other hand, were promoting yuluti, or vernacular classical style, to rectify the baihua in contemporary practice. Unlike their promotion of the simplified characters, the promotion of yuluti appeared to be very much a regressive turn. The promotion of dazhongyu was apparently a policy decision by the Left League as part of its general policy of “popularization of literature and the arts.” The issue of the popularization of literature and the arts was first discussed within the Left League in the pages of its own journal Dazhong Wenyi (Popular Literature and the Arts), while the particular issue of dazhongyu was later debated throughout the country in various newspapers and journals. For the advocates of dazhongyu, the succession of baihua by dazhongyu was just like the replacement of wenyan with baihua—it is based on the same logic of evolutionary development along the line of popularization of the Chinese language. However, the main reason why baihua was able to replace wenyan successfully in a matter of just a few years was because baihua had been in practice for several hundred years in various forms such as yuluti, drama narratives and popular fiction narratives. By contrast, the irony of the dazhongyu debate was that the subject matter of the discussion never existed. Indeed, dazhongyu was very much an ideological construct. An axiomatic definition of dazhongyu, according to one critic, would be “the language spoken by the masses and comprehensible and understandable to the masses.”39 Yet such an axiomatic definition does not work simply because the majority of the “masses” in China were illit- erate. Then some critics put emphasis on the colloquial slang and dialect, but obviously, it was a naïve idea to create a new language based purely on slang and dialects, for the very definition of dialect is local and regional. Consequently, the only successful definition of dazhongyu is a negative one, namely, it is taken as what it is not. According to Hu Yuzhi, for instance, the reasons for advocating dazhongyu are mainly threefold: the classical wenyan is still not totally dead; baihua has been

39 Chen Zizhan, “Wenyan—Baihua—Dazhongyu” (Classical—Vernacular—Popu- lar Languages), Dazhongyuwen lunzhan (Debate on dazhongyu), p. 51. 120 chapter four hijacked by such popular fiction writers as Zhang Hengshui to prolong feudal lifestyles; and the revival of yuluti in the name of xingling and “style.”40 Thus, for Hu, the most important definition for dazhongyu is that it must be the language that “represents the ideology of the masses.”41 The point about dazhongyu is that it must be first imagined— from the perspective of Marxist ideology. The Marxist ideological construct of dazhongyu, however, is not convincing. In outlining the targets of dazhongyu creation, Hu actually fails to mention one crucial element: the creation of dazhongyu was imagined to rectify the Europeanized style of baihua, which became a dominant force in baihua due to Chinese translations of Western literary and philosophical texts including, especially, the translation of German and Marxist philosophical texts. The leading Chinese Marxist theorist Qu Qiubai was quite aware of this fact when he put forward the idea of popularization of Chinese language and literature. Qu rightly points out that since the May Fourth Movement and the success of baihua over wenyan, there has emerged a new elite who write in a new kind of wenyan, that is, baihua with a Europeanized structure and terminology, which is quite removed from ordinary speech of the masses. But, as Xu Yu, an important member of the Lunyu group, rightly reveals, Qu Qiubai is simply slapping his own face—because the language Qu uses to utter that criticism is an example par exellence of the European- ized style baihua.42 Lu Xun, on the other hand, understood such faux pas in advocating dazhongyu very well. Unlike Mao Dun who was rather suspicious of the new idea of dazhongyu—for good reason, as Mao Dun’s style of writing is typical of Europeanized baihua, Lu Xun, even though he was well established as the first major baihua writer, now stands again at the forefront of the idea of dazhongyu. In his article “Hanzi he ladinghua” (Chinese Characters and Their Latinization), Lu Xun first attacks the opponents of dazhongyu as ill-intentioned. But he admits that those who

40 Hu Yuzhi, “Guanyu dazhongyuwen” (On Dazhongyu), Dazhongyuwen lunzhan, p. 57. 41 Ibid., p. 57. 42 Xu Yu, “Cong Yutang wenji tanqi” (Thoughts on the Publication of Collected Essays by Lin Yutang), Zhuanji wenxue (Biographical Literature) 34, No. 6 (1979): 51–54. Here is Qu Qiubai’s line quoted by Xu Yu: “现在我们需要的是彻底的俗话本位的文学革命, 没有这一个条件, 普罗文学就没有自己的言语, 没有和群共同的言语。” (What we need today is a thoroughly vernacular-based Literary Revolu- tion, for without such a condition, proletarian literature will not have its own language that speaks the tongue of the masses.) “little critic” 121 are advocating dazhongyu are not writing in dazhongyu. Nonetheless, in a typical Lu Xun-style sleight of hand, he assumes its presence and affirms its legitimacy by comparing dazhongyu to a “cripple” wanting to engage in “healthy sports,” while those who are against dazhongyu are called “natural and strong women” desiring “foot-binding.” And Lu Xun’s ultimate solution to the dilemma of dazhongyu is also representative of the Leftists’ imagination. Lu Xun believes that the final success of dazhongyu lies in the Latinization of Chinese characters, that is, the elimination of Chinese characters altogether. As he poses the dichotomy: “To sacrifice us [modern Chinese] for Chinese characters, or to sacrifice Chinese characters for us? One can make the right choice immediately as long as he is not morbid and insane.”43 Although in advocating dazhongyu, the Leftists named Lin Yutang’s yuluti as one of their targets, Lin was not in principle against the popularization of Chinese language. Of course, Lin Yutang did not take seriously the imagined proposal of dazhongyu based on Marxist ideology. But besides Lunyu’s initiative in promoting the simplified characters, Lin was also quite prone to the idea of authenticity of local/dialect flavor. For instance, Lin thinks highly of Lao She’s style of writing with an authentic Beijing local flavor, and Lao She became one of the most frequent contributors to Lunyu and other periodicals launched by Lin Yutang. Interestingly, however, in his Chinese writings in the 1930s, Lin Yutang promoted through his journals and practiced through his own writing a distinctive style of Chinese—yuluti, or vernacular wenyan, which is in a way a vernacular form of wenyan, a more authentic form of baihua different from what was in practice at the time. Lin defends his choice by arguing that yuluti is more like the “familiar style” in Eng- lish. But that is an odd and unconvincing argument. What is “familiar style” in English is hardly comparable to a certain style of writing in Chinese, because in between the two languages there is the unavoid- able medium of translation. Take Lin’s own English writing for example. When his The Importance of Living became a runaway bestseller in the US, it was immediately translated by Huang Jiayin and Huang Jiade, with the authorization of Lin Yutang according to their claim, and serialized in West Wind as a special feature column. What is interesting is that the Huang brothers’ style of translation is hardly yuluti

43 Lu, Xun, “Hanzi he ladinghua” (Chinese Characters and Their Latinization), Lu Xun quan ji, Vol. 5, pp. 584–587. 122 chapter four when you compare it to Lin’s own Chinese-language essays. Although the Huangs’ translation was reasonably fluent and somewhat different from the convoluted Europeanized Chinese that Lin hates, it is still identifiably of a translated style. In order to show the difference between yuluti and Europeanized baihua and their relationship with Lin’s familiar style English, I will quote here three versions of the opening paragraph of Lin’s essay “Ah Fong, My House-Boy”—the first being Lin’s original in English, the second Lin’s own yuluti Chinese version and the third a Europeanized baihua translation of Lin’s original English version: My House-boy is a real “boy,” not only in the colonial, but also in the physiological sense of the word. He is just a kid, but an unusually bril- liant kid. Two years ago, when I picked him up at a small exchange shop where I used to change my money, he was but fifteen, or at most sixteen. Today he is probably eighteen, and his voice has so changed that it reminds me of a young rooster that has just learnt to crow in the morning. But in spirit, he still remains a kid, and kiddish spirit, plus his brilliance, forms a combination which makes all discipline impossible in the household, and successfully baffles all my attempts at establishing a master’s diginity.44 我家里有个童仆，我们姑且叫他阿芳，因为阿芳不是他的名字。他是一位绝顶聪明的小孩子。由某兑换铺雇来时，阿芳年仅十五，最多十六岁。现在大约十八岁了，喉管已经增长，说话听起来已略如小雄鸡喔喔啼的声调了。但是骨子里还是一身的小孩脾气，加上他的绝顶聪敏，骂既不听，逐又不忍，闹得我们一家的规矩都没有, 主人的身份也不易支撑了。45 我的书僮倒的确是个“童子”，这不但由于等第的关系，也由于生理上的意义。他还是一个童子，然而却是一个能干的童子。我把他从一家烟兑店里领出来的时候，他还只十五六岁。在他十八岁时, 他的声音的变化使我想起那些在早晨学啼的雄鸡。可是在精神上他依旧是个孩子，他的稚气和他的才能形成了一种破坏家庭纪律的混合物，而我想树立起主人的尊严的企图也因此挫折了。46 In the eyes of the “progressive” Leftists, to write in yuluti in the 1930s may already seem “archaic” and “quaint,” if not downright “reactionary.” On the other hand, it seems that the connection between yuluti and “familiar style” in English is employed to cloak the use of yuluti

44 Lin Yutang, “Ah Fong, My House-Boy,” The China Critic III (September 4, 1930): 853. 45 Lin Yutang, “A Fang,” Lunyu (Analects) 2 (October 1, 1932): 10. 46 “A Fang,” Lin Yutang mingzhu chuanji (A Complete Collection of Lin Yutang’s Famous Works), Vol. 15, Jin Wen trans., p. 106. “little critic” 123 under the dominant discourse of modernity—by comparing yuluti to the English “familiar style,” yuluti immediately takes on the legitimacy of being modern. However, the significance of the yuluti intervention in modern Chinese literature lies precisely in the fact that, seen in the light of the bilingual and bicultural perspective, it offers an alternative medium for Chinese modernity. Actually, Lin Yutang was aware that the practice of yuluti in the Chinese context in the 1930s was not following the progress of modernity. In his essay entitled “Lun yuluti zhi yong” (On the Use of Yuluti ), he begins with the following rhetorical question: “I was asked: why are you writing in the classical wenyan, isn’t that against the historical tide [of evolution]? Well, it’s not that I am fond of writing in wenyan, but I don’t have any other choice.”47 What Lin means is that he cannot follow the baihua in practice at that time. Lin’s objection is that after a couple of decades of practice, baihua has been superseded by a new form of dogma mainly due to Western influence via translation. The consequence was a Europeanized vernacular Chinese with convoluted sentences, vague diction and intolerable redundancy. In a number of essays, such as “Lun yuluti zhi yong” (On the Use of Yuluti ), “Ke- zeng de baihua siliu” (Disgusting Dogmatic Baihua), “Yizhang zitiao de xiefa” (How to Write a Note), “Yu Xujun lun baihua wenyan shu” (A Talk With Mr. Xu on Baihua and Wenyan), Lin cited concrete examples of such dogmatic baihua for satire. Thus, Lin claims that he much pre- fers the “simplicity” (bai ) of wenyan in the form of yuluti and hates the “literariness/opaqueness” (wen) of baihua in the way it has been practiced. Nonetheless, it is still hard for Lin to rationalize his modernity, if modernity is understood merely on the evolutionary line of historical development, as after all, yuluti is still considered contemporaneous with wenyan, no matter how vernacular it can be. Seen from a different light, however, Lin’s insistence on writing in yuluti was a conscious choice and it reflected a different attitude to Chinese modernity, which had much to do with Lin’s own identity as a bilingual writer with elite Western training. On one occasion, Lin flatly points out that the reason for the degeneration of baihua into a Europeanized dogma was because of modern writers’ “ill digestion of

47 Lin Yutang, “Lun yuluti zhi yong” (On the Use of Yuluti), Lunyu 26 (October 1, 1933): 82. 124 chapter four foreign influence” (shi yang bu hua).48 That is consistent with Lin’s point that a key problem for modern Chinese intellectuals was their lack of confidence in the face of Western modernity. On the contrary, for an already Westernized Chinese intellectual like Lin, who has experienced Western modernity and was well-equipped with Western knowledge and skills and had even mastered its language, he has confidence to look back at his own tradition in a different light, with compassion, tolerance and realism. Given the fact that Lin Yutang reproduced most of his “Little Critic” essays in English into Chinese and published them in his Chinese periodicals, he must have felt acutely the problem of “translation” as a cross-cultural act. To claim that yuluti is compatible with the English “familiar style” suggests that Lin believes Chinese modernity has its own distinctive subjectivity even though it is inevitably entangled with Western modernity. To avoid translating his own English into Europeanized Chinese, which he could have easily done, Lin rejects a leveling translation of Western modernity into modern China. In doing so, he does not have to feel regressive or backward. On the contrary, writing in yuluti offers him a sense of “style” that is at the same time “modern” and “Chinese.” Such a middling attitude toward Chinese modernity also enables him to avoid a negative essentialist stance toward Chinese culture. In insisting on the validity of yuluti, Lin Yutang emphasizes the futility of the dichotomy of wenyan and baihua, pointing to the complexity and diversity of the Chinese language in the process of modern change.49 Historically speaking, although the creation of an actual dazhongyu in place of baihua never occurred, the idea of dazhongyu has successfully penetrated into baihua in many aspects. For a long time, and to a large extent even today, modern Chinese has become heavily ideological. Europeanized style of translated Chinese is very much in vogue, if not the norm. Lightness and plainness seem to have become predominant traits of modern Chinese. On the other hand, yuluti seems to have become a thing of the past. Yet, it is perhaps more valuable than ever in our re-thinking of Chinese modernity, because the practices of

48 Lin Yutang, “Kezeng de baihua liusi” (Disgusting Dogmatic Baihua), Lunyu 26 (October 1, 1933): 85. 49 Lin Yutang, “Yu Xujun lun baihua wenyan shu” (A Talk With Mr. Xu on Baihua and Wenyan), Lunyu 63 (April 16, 1935): 722–725. “little critic” 125

Lin Yutang and the Lunyu group offer us a rare look into what might have become of Chinese modernity—a middling Chinese modernity with its own subjectivity out of a synthetic cross-cultural integration from the vantage point of a conﬁdent Western-trained professional intellectual.

CHAPTER FIVE

A CROSS-CULTURAL AESTHETICS OF LIFE: TRANSLATING “XINGLING” INTO “SELF-EXPRESSION,” “XIANSHI” INTO “LEISURE,” AND “HUMOR” INTO “YOUMO”

茶话一语，照字义说来，是喝茶时的谈话。但事实上我绝少这样谈话的时候，而且也不知茶味，——我只吃冷茶，如鱼之吸水。周作人，“茶话” 序言，《自己的园地》(1927) ‘Tea Chat’ literally means chatting while drinking tea, but actually I have hardly ever chatted this way; besides, I am not a connoisseur of tea—I merely drink cold tea like a ﬁsh sucks water. Zhou Zuoren, Preface to “Cha Hua” (Tea Chat) in My Own Garden (Ziji de yuandi) (1927)

Humor is a state of mind. More than that, it is a point of view, a way of looking at life. Lin Yutang, My Country and My People (1935) Discussions on cosmopolitanism have usually focused on the cultural politics of particularism vs. universalism while few have paid attention to the aesthetic dimension.1 But aesthetic issues should be legitimate and important concerns of cosmopolitanism. In the context of Chinese modernity, the transition and transformation from traditional Chinese aesthetics to a modern sensibility accommodating Western inﬂuences constitute an important aspect of the making of the modernity project. That is especially true in the case of Lin Yutang’s cosmopolitan practices. While his cosmopolitan politics brought him controversy and criticism whether in China or in America, it was his unique type of aesthetics out of a particular cross-cultural fusion that won him popularity and fame both in China and in America. In this chapter, I will interpret Lin Yutang’s literary and cultural discourses and

1 An interesting exception can be found in Michel Foucault who, in his later years, was keen on searching for an “aesthetics of existence” in reference to a “Greek formula” and a “Chinese formula.” See Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. 128 chapter five practices surrounding his translating “xingling ” into “self-expression,” “xianshi” into “leisure” and humor into “youmo ,” which constitute, as I will show, a distinct aesthetics of life through his cross-cultural mediation and appropriation of traditional Chinese and modern West- ern aesthetics.

“Xingling” As Self-Expression

In 1934, Zhou Zuoren published his series of lectures given at Furen University in 1932, entitled Zhongguo xin wenxue de yuanliu (Sources of New Chinese Literature) in which he traced the origins of modern propositions of “New Literature” to the late Ming and Qing “xingling” school as represented by three Yuan brothers, Yuan Zongdao, Yuan Hongdao (popularly known as Yuan Zhonglang, the most distinguished among the three) and Yuan Zhongdao of the “Gong’an school.” At the same time, Shen Qiwu compiled a companion book Jindai sanwen chao (A Selection of Essays of Recent Times) in which major writings of this “xingling” school, starting from the Yuan brothers to Jin Shengtan and Li Liweng, were represented. These literary moves by the so-called “Jingpai” (“Beijing school”) writers at the time were immediately echoed and promoted by Lin Yutang, then already a prominent writer in the Shanghai circle, so-called “Haipai” (Shang- hai school). In the journals he launched in Shanghai, Lin wrote a number of essays, including “Lun wen” (On Literature), “Shuo ziwo” (On Self), “Ji xingling” (On “xingling”), “Xinjiu wenxue” (New and Old Literature), advocating “xingling” literature. And with his promotion, The Complete Works of Yuan Zhonglang was published in 1934, making “xingling” and Yuan Zhonglang suddenly the talk of the town, to the dislike of many, especially the Leftists.

The very translation of “xingling” into English, which James J. Y. Liu rendered as “native sensibility,”2 is an interpretive act itself, of which Lin Yutang’s effort will be the focus of our discussion here. But ﬁrst, let us take a look at the theory of “xingling” according to Yuan Zhonglang in his historical context. Yuan’s literary theory, to schema- tize succinctly, comprises of mainly three elements: Historicity (shi),

2 Liu, James J. Y. The Art of Chinese Poetry, p. 74. a cross-cultural aesthetics of life 129

Authenticity (zhen) and Taste (qu).3 The literary thought in Ming dynasty was dominated by a regressive dogma that put exclusive emphasis on the imitation of the classics in every aspect, as propounded by the so-called “former and latter seven masters.”4 To the regressive imitators at this time, it was not just that the classics embody idealist values so that they should be modeled upon, but also that the social customs represented as well as the diction employed in the classics that had already become out of date in Ming Dynasty should be preserved in contemporary writing. Thus it was against this imitative and regressive milieu that Yuan called for an unabashed recognition of the present. The positing of the theory of “xingling” was first of all an awareness of historicity that defied the eternal value of the classics. Two of the most quoted passages by Yuan expressing this historical awareness go as follows: The ancient has the times of the ancient while the present has the times of the present. Copying the trace of the ancient’s language is like wearing summer clothing in winter.5 Poetry and prose have become extremely shallow in recent times. Prose must be judged by the criteria of Qin and Han, poetry High Tang. Copying and imitation become the predominant influence. Once a word is detected as not in strict accordance, it was denounced by everybody as ‘wild fox heretics.’ But if prose must follow Qin and Han, did people of Qin and Han model the Six Classics word by word? If poetry must follow High Tang, did people of High Tang model Han and Wei word by word? If Qin and Han imitated the Six Classics, where could there be the prose of Qin and Han? If High Tang imitated Han and Wei, where could there be the poetry of High Tang? Dynasties succeed one another and their styles do not remain the same, each advancing with changes, each searching for its own taste. That is what makes each special. It is not a matter of whether one is better than the other.6

3 For the 20th century scholarship on Yuan Zhonglang and the Gong’an school, see Chih-p’ing Chou, Yuan Hung-tao and the Kung-an School; Guo Shaoyu, Zhongguo wenxue piping shi (History of Chinese Literary Criticism); Ren Fangqiu, Yuan Zhonglang yanjiu (Study on Yuan Zhonglang); and Jonathan Chaves, “The Panoply of Images: A Reconsideration of the Literary Theory of the Kung-an School,” “The Expression of Self in the Kung-an School: Neo-Romantic Individualism.” 4 Guo Shaoyu, Zhongguo wenxue piping shi (History of Chinese Literary Criticism), p. 171–231. 5 Shen, Qiwu. ed. Jindai sanwen chao (A Selection of Essays From Recent Times), p. 13. 6 Ibid., pp. 15–16. 130 chapter five

It should be noted that Yuan Zhonglang’s understanding of historicity as of a successive nature, hence his affirmation of the present, bears an unprecedented significance, given the fact that the orthodox Con- fucianists always find the highest virtue in previous dynasties and ultimately in Confucius, who in turn tried his best to restore the virtue of Duke Zhou before his time. But Yuan Zhonglang was neither iconoclastic nor anti-traditional. He merely affirmed the validity of the present. And his awareness of successive cyclical historicity did not lead him to nihilistic historical relativity either. For Yuan, literary value does not lie in the regressive canonization of the classics, but rather in the authenticity of the literary heart/mind. To achieve such authenticity, one should “follow the wrist, follow the mouth,” as Yuan put it. Good writing is always the natural flow of one’s own heart/mind, “without any restraint in literary conventions. If not overflowing out of one’s own heart, one would not put down his pen. But when one’s feeling meets the situation, thousand words in a moment, like water flushing eastward, arousing breath-taking awe.”7 Thus, the rejection of the imitators’ dogmatic endeavor in the canonization of the classics becomes a precondition for the attainment of authenticity. Once one lets go of the canonical restrictions in writing and fully attends to what one’s “wrist” and “mouth” dictate, the next step, or the highest stage, in achieving literary excellence is to acquire taste or style (“qu”). The notion of “qu” is certainly one of the most elusive ideas in Yuan’s literary theory. A succinct explanation by Yuan himself can be seen in his “Preface to Chen Zhengfu’s Collection of Intuitions,” which goes as follows in Lin’s translation: What is difficult to obtain is Taste. Taste is like hues on the mountains, flavour in water, brilliance in flowers, and charm in women. Even those who are skilled at speech cannot explain it in words, and only those who have a heart for understanding will know it. It is common nowadays to find people who affect a taste in certain diversions. Some cultivate a love for painting, calligraphy and antiques, and others are fascinated by the mystics and the recluse and the life of a hermit. Still others are like the people of Suzhou who make a hobby of tea and incense, turning it almost into a cult. But these are all superficial and have nothing to do with the real spirit of Taste. Taste is more of a natural given than an acquired learning. Children have most of it. They have never heard of

7 Ibid., p. 15. Yuan’s emphasis on authenticity was obviously inﬂuenced by Li Zhuowu’s theory of child’s heart/mind, while Li was in turn inspired by Wang Yang- ming’s philosophy of heart/mind. a cross-cultural aesthetics of life 131

“Taste” but they show it everywhere. They ﬁnd it hard to look solemn; they wink, they grimace, they mumble to themselves, they jump and skip and hop and romp. That is why childhood is the happiest period of a man’s life, and why Mencius spoke of “recovering the heart of a child” and Laozi spoke of “becoming a baby.” And that is the ultimate Taste.8 Although Yuan Zhonglang and his theory of “xingling” made a signiﬁ- cant rectifying impact on the dominant didacticism of his time, Yuan was marginalized and almost forgotten in the following three centuries. There is no question that it was Zhou Zuoren and Lin Yutang who revived Yuan Zhonglang in the 1930s, and this revival directly enhanced the modern scholarly interest in Yuan. It is interesting to note, however, that recent scholars on Yuan seemed to be rather critical of Zhou and Lin’s understanding of Yuan. Both Jonathan Chaves and Chih-p’ing Chou, for instance, point out that Yuan was neither iconoclastic nor anti-traditional but in fact shared many traditional assumptions with his didactic opponents. Thus, Zhou and Lin’s view, in Chaves’s words, “ultimately distorts our understanding of the full range of their [Yuan brothers’] achievement.”9 Chaves attempts “to show that the truth is more complex,” and the alleged coinage of Yuan brothers as “self-centered ‘romantics’” by Zhou and Lin is simply misleading. Similarly, Chih-p’ing Chou points out that both Qing and modern critics share the same approach in erroneously opposing Archaist and Gong’an schools as black and white dichotomies, and concludes that “If Yuan Hongdao was unfairly condemned in the Qing dynasty, then he was also unfairly applauded in the 1930s. In other words, Yuan Hongdao was not as radical and destructive as the Qing critics thought, nor was he as unconventional and progressive as the scholars in the 1930s believed him to be.”10 In Chou’s view, therefore, Yuan Zhonglang “has to a great extent been treated by modern scholars as a tool to support or denigrate modern literary theories.”11 While both Chaves and Chou have certainly offered a richer and more detailed presentation of Yuan Zhonglang, their criticisms actually

8 Ibid., p. 18; Also, Lin Yutang, The Importance of Understanding, p. 112, translation modified. 9 Jonathan Chaves, “The Panoply of Images: A Reconsideration of the Literary Theory of the Kung-an School” in Theories of the Arts in China, Eds. Susan Bush and Christian Murck, Princeton: Princeton UP, 1983, p. 341. 10 Chih-p’ing Chou, Yuan Hung-tao and the Kung-an School, pp. 89–90. 11 Ibid., p. 4. 132 chapter five help to show that Zhou Zuoren and Lin Yutang’s interpretation of Yuan Zhonglang were indeed modern appropriations. Just as Yuan Zhonglang says of his brother Zhongdao’s poetry “even his flawed lines possess great originality and creativity . . . it is the flawed lines that I truly take delight in,”12 I find precisely the “distortions” by Zhou and Lin worth examining in light of our understanding the unique modern cosmopolitan aesthetics. In the 1930s, Zhou Zuoren, quite surprisingly in the above mentioned book, not only re-discovered Yuan and his theory of “xingling” but also established it as the precursor of the New Literary Movement: [Yuan brothers’] ideas were quite simple, they can be said to be quite similar to those of Mr. Hu Shi. What is different is that they lived in the sixteenth century when Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) had not come to China yet, so they lacked Western influence. Hu Shi’s modern ideas minus his Western influence in every aspect such as science, philosophy, literature and thought, that would be the proposals of the gong’an school.13 At first glance, Zhou’s rediscovery of Yuan was rather ironical in that, in the first place, the new literature or new culture movement was initiated and defined by the Western influence and there would not be any new literature minus the Western influence. Secondly, given the evolutionary theory of history prevalent in the new culture movement, Zhou’s invocation of Yuan Zhonglang, who advocated against regressive trend at his own time, appeared very much as a “regressive” act. On a closer look, however, Zhou’s re-evaluation of Yuan Zhonglang reveals a significant change of direction in Zhou’s own thought as well as in the project of the new literature movement. Zhou Zuoren started out as a major theorist of the new literature and new culture movement, of which one of the defining events was the enhancement of the evolutionary understanding of History posited by the intellectuals of an earlier generation such as Yen Fu, Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao, according to which Chinese culture hitherto was leveled into “traditional” or “premodern” and therefore “backward” and the cause of the devastating status of China in the world of European powers, while “progress” was identified with the modernity of European culture since Renaissance. Zhou Zuoren and his brother Lu Xun

12 Shen Qiwu ed., Jindai sanwen chao, p. 15; Chih-p’ing Chou, Yuan Hung-tao and the Kung-an School, p. 46. 13 Zhou Zuoren, Zhongguo xin wenxue de yuanliu (Sources of Chinese New Literature), p. 43. a cross-cultural aesthetics of life 133 were both chief promoters of this History. By the early 1930s, however, both began a “turning.” The Zhou brothers were both initially attacked by the Marxists who, armed with the teleology of historical materialism, now claimed to be more “progressive” than they were. While Lu Xun eventually joined the camp and thus became “progressive,” Zhou Zuoren announced that he was going to “close his door and read books” in his “Bitter-Rain-Studio.”14 The Zhou brothers’ respective “turnings” have usually been interpreted in political terms, but they also meant a different shift in their evolutionary understanding of History. On the part of Zhou Zuoren, his rediscovery of Yuan Zhonglang was on the one hand a further enhancement of the New Culture Movement, because, if new culture meant exclusively the borrowing of modern Western culture, it would not be entitled the “Chinese Renaissance”—there would be nothing to be reborn from. The rediscovery of Yuan Zhonglang whose proposals were made to identify with those of the New Culture Movement was thus Zhou’s nativizing effort to make the movement rooted and therefore reinforced. Seen from the evolutionary perspective, however, this would ironically constitute a “regressive” turn. It is quite important here to understand how Zhou Zuoren understands Yuan Zhonglang’s understanding of historicity (shi). While Chih-p’ing Chou cautions us against the possible misunderstanding that Hu Shi was directly inspired by the “Gong’an school,” a misunderstanding Chou believes could arise out of Zhou Zuoren’s connection of the two, he nevertheless holds that Hu Shi’s “conception of literature as an evolving entity to the inﬂu- ence of Darwin’s evolutionism . . . is, historically, quite Chinese [as can be seen in Yuan Zhonglang’s literary theory].”15 But it does not mean that Yuan’s notion of “historicity” is “evolutionary” in the Darwinian sense. Yuan Zhonglang merely afﬁrms the validity of the present. In rejecting the regressive understanding of history, Yuan does not necessarily reject the value of the ancient classics, as Chou and Chaves have emphasized, but nor does Yuan hold a “progressive” understanding of history, which would be really alien to Yuan. Zhou Zuoren adds another dimension to Yuan’s understanding of history. While echoing with Yuan the validity of the present, Zhou also translates that into the validity of the new literary movement. Rather than seeing the Chinese

14 Qian Liqun, Zhou Zuoren zhuan (Biography of Zhou Zuoren), p. 351. 15 Chih-p’ing Chou, Yuan Hung-tao and the Kung-an School, p. 121. 134 chapter five literary history as a linear development towards modern new literature, Zhou outlined it as a cyclical succession revolving around two trends: didacticism (“zaidao,” carrying the Tao) and expressivism (“yanzhi,” speaking the heart/will). Thus, “Hu Shi’s ‘Eight No-ism’ is the rebirth of the proposals of the ‘gong’an school’ that calls for ‘express xingling only, defy all the rules’ and ‘trust the wrist, trust the mouth, and all will become a style of its own.’ ”16 This way, Zhou Zuoren was also able to justify his discovery of Yuan Zhonglang, historically. But it also meant that Zhou had now abandoned the evolutionary understanding of History and in that sense, The Sources of New Chinese Literature also meant a significant modification of the beliefs and proposals of the new culture movement. Lin Yutang would so far completely agree with Zhou Zuoren’s rediscovery of Yuan Zhonglang. However, while Zhou established Yuan Zhonglang as the “source” of new literature, Yuan was significant to new literature only in so far as that which is “minus” Western influence. That was a considerable reduction given the fact that the West- ern influence had penetrated into all aspects of socio-cultural life at the turn of the century. In his turn, Lin Yutang tried to rejuvenate Yuan Zhonglang and make him into “modern” by aligning Yuan with Western expressive critics, that is, with Benedetto Croce by way of J. E. Spingarn. Before Lin was inspired by Zhou Zuoren’s discovery of Yuan Zhonglang, Lin had already published in 1930 a book of translation entitled Xin de wen ping (New Literary Criticism), including selected essays by Spingarn, Croce, Oscar Wilde, E. Dowden and Van Wyck Brooks. As a graduate student in Comparative Literature at Harvard in 1919 and 1920, Lin had studied under Irving Babbitt who exerted great influence upon modern Chinese culture through his Chinese students at Harvard. But Lin felt distant from Babbitt’s teaching and instead “took up cudgels” for Babbitt’s opponent J. E. Spin- garn. As a dedicated follower of Crocean aesthetics, Spingarn became the leading spokesman of the expressive school in American criticism in the early 20th century, challenging the “Neo-Humanist” moralists led by Babbitt. In his most controversial essay “The New Criticism,” translated by Lin, Spingarn propounds his theory of expression in a series of “done-with:”

16 Zhou Zuoren, Zhongguo xin wenxue de yuanliu (Sources of Chinese New Literature), p. 92. a cross-cultural aesthetics of life 135

In the first place, we have done with all the old Rules . . . . We have done with the genres, or literary kinds . . . . We have done with the comic, the tragic, the sublime, and an army of vague abstractions of their kind . . . . We have done with the theory of style, with metaphor, simile, and all the paraphernalia of Graeco-Roman rhetoric . . . . We have done with all moral judgment of art as art . . . . We have done with the confusion between the drama and the theater which has permeated dramatic criticism for over half a century . . . . We have done with technique as separate from art . . . . We have done with the history and criticism of poetic themes . . . . We have done with the race, the time, the environment of a poet’s work as an element in Criticism . . . . We have done with the ‘evolution’ of literature . . . . Finally, we have done with the old rupture between genius and taste. . . .17 The result of such radical approach to criticism is not only anti- moralist but almost anti-criticism.18 To Spingarn, external social moral values should not be imposed to judge literary works, and furthermore, critical jargon in literary conventions is also mere fetters in the free expression of writers. Actually, Spingarn merely falls short of pronouncing the death of the critic, whether moralist or professorial or both. If one concludes from “art is expression” to “all expression is art,” which Spin- garn believes is the core of Crocean aesthetics, there is really no place for the critic to pass either moralist or technical judgment on literary works. The critic as such assumes in a sense a minimalist role, as H. L. Mencken, who applauds Spingarn’s view enthusiastically, explains: But what is the anarchistic ex-professor’s own theory? . . . In brief, what he offers is a doctrine borrowed from the Italian, Benedetto Croce . . . the doctrine that it is the critic’s first and only duty, as Carlyle once put it, to find out “what the poet’s aim really and truly was, how the task he had to do stood before his eye, and how far, with such materials as were afforded him, he has fulfilled.” . . . So I dare say, did Shakespeare . . . Well, what is this generalized poet trying to do? asks Major Spingarn, and how has he done it? That, and no more, is the critic’s quest.19

17 J. E. Spingarn, ed., Criticism in America: Its Function and Status, pp. 27–43. It is interesting to note that Hu Shi’s proposal for “Literary Reform” was also entitled “Eight No-ism.” 18 It is no wonder that in A History of Modern Criticism (Vol. 6 American Criticism, 1900–1950) by Rene Wellek, Spingarn was only mentioned in passing in no more than two pages and dismissed as “never practiced criticism.” See Rene Wellek, A His- tory of Modern Criticism: 1750–1950. 19 J. E. Spingarn, ed., Criticism in America: Its Function and Status, pp. 179–180. 136 chapter five

The minimalist role of the critic on the other hand translates into an unfettered creativity and freedom of the author. Since “art is expression,” it is then the artist who should be given full freedom to realize his expressive capability that is endowed in his individual personality. Only when freed from various constrains on literary creation, either external or internal which are merely concerns of “schoolmasters, pedants, moralists and policeman,” can the author fully attend to the abundance and diversities of “Life, teeming life, with all its ardors and agonies” round him. Thus, Spingarn calls on the creative writers of America: Express what is in you, all that serene or turbulent vision of multitudi- nous life which is yours by right of imagination, trusting in your own power to achieve discipline and mastery, and leave the discussion of ‘American ideals’ to statesmen, historians, and philosophers, with the certainty that if you truly express the vision that is in you, the statesmen, historians, and philosophers of the future will point to your work as a ﬁne expression of the ‘American ideals’ you have helped to create . . . For you America must always be not old but new, something unrealized, something to be created and to be given as an incredible gift to a hundred million men.20 Although Spingarn insists that creative writing should not be judged by its moral and social consequences, his own critical approach is nevertheless connected with its own socio-historical context. In fact, the debate between moralists represented by Babbitt and expressionists represented by Spingarn, broadly deﬁned, was called “The Battle of the Books,”21 bearing a certain resemblance to the current debate on multiculturalism in America. While sharply critical of the advancement of modernity as characterized in the idea of progress, Babbitt calls for a Neo-Humanist criteria and standards as embodied in the Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian traditions (as well as civilizations in the world somehow including China). Spingarn, on the other hand, in promoting his theory of expression, appeals to the diversities of a “Young America.”22 Interestingly, this “Battle of the Books” in the American context was directly connected to the battle fought over

20 Ibid., p. 303. 21 Robert E. Spiller, et al. Literary History of the United States, p. 1135. 22 Diran John Sohigian points out that Spingarn was no other than the founder and President of the N.A.A.C.P. See Diran John Sohigian, “The Life and Times of Lin Yutang,” p. 270. a cross-cultural aesthetics of life 137 the validity of the New Culture Movement in the Chinese intellectual world in the early 20th century. The “xueheng school ,” formed by the returned Chinese disciples of Babbitt, became an influential dissent to the New Culture Movement, and one of the most well-known con- tentions between them was exemplified in the polemic between Lu Xun and Liang Shiqiu. In this respect, Lin Yutang was an important ally to the “yusi” group led by the Zhou brothers. In fact, Lin’s translation and promotion of the theory of expression can be seen as a theoretical footnote to the free-lance individual style of the “yusi” group. But when Lin translated Spingarn, he had not learned of Yuan Zhonglang and the theory of “xingling.” In his “Preface to New Literary Criti- cism,” Lin fully appreciates the unbound freedom and individuality given to the artist and art work in Spingarn’s theory of expression: Spingarn’s expressionist criticism imposes no outside standards or disciplines whatsoever . . . This criticism fully recognizes the individuality alive in every work and only asks whether or not it reaches its own goals of expression; the rest is unrelated to our understanding of art. Art is only the expression of a certain state of mind, of a certain idea of a certain author, at a certain place, at a certain time. Not only is it so with literature. Painting, sculpting, music, even an utterance, a kiss, a “Damn!” a glance and a knit in the brow—are all a form of expression.23 Apparently, Lin was already predisposed to find in this “Preface” literary theorists in the Chinese tradition who hold similar views, and he found Wang Chong, Liu Xie, Yuan Mei and Zhang Xuecheng worthy to be called “romantic or quasi-romantic critics,” for their theories also propose “ren qing shuai xing” (let go of the feeling and follow your own personality). The juxtaposition of the words “xing” and “qing” is significant since, in another combination, it leads to “xingling.” Among the four critics Lin mentioned, Yuan Mei was in fact a staunch follower of the “xingling school” in the Qing Dynasty, and Lin even quoted Yuan Mei: “Poetry is just the xingqing of each person.” But apparently, these references did not mean much to Lin Yutang at the time. For instance, he mentioned the term “xingling” while expressing dissatisfaction in his comments on Yuan Mei: “Yuan Mei who believes in xingling still loves to engage in uninteresting technical pedagogy as in Remarks on Poetics.”24 However, after Zhou Zuoren’s systematic

23 Lin Yutang, Xin de wen ping (New Literary Criticism), pp. 3–4. 24 Ibid., p. 15. 138 chapter five

introduction of Yuan Zhonglang and the theory of xingling, Lin was overjoyed, as he expressed it in his “Autobiography at Forty:” Recently I have known Yuan Zhonglang How I am wild with delight!25 The reason for Lin’s wild delight in knowing Yuan Zhonglang is that he believes that he has found a cross-cultural affinity between East and West that carries a modern significance. In “Lun Wen,” (On Litera- ture) Lin points out that Yuan Zhonglang, his “xingling” school and the Western expressionist criticism have both arrived at the same insight from different historical and cultural backgrounds concerning literary creation. The “xingling” school’s rejection of imitating the ancients is just like the Romantics’ rejection of neo-classicism in the West. But if Zhou Zuoren’s contribution in re-discovering Yuan Zhonglang lies chiefly in appropriating Yuan’s notion of historicity, hence both rein- forcing and modifying the proposals of the New Culture Movement, Lin Yutang focuses his interpretation of “xingling” as an expression of one’s Individuality (gexing), another important new idea of the New Culture Movement. To Lin, the concept of “xingling” is both very clear and yet undefinable. He interprets “xingling” most succinctly as follows: “Xingling” is Self (“ziwo”).26 Each person has his own “gexing,” this “gexing” (Personality) [originally in English] unrestrainedly and freely expressed in literature is called “xingling.” In literature, what calls to give free rein to one’s personality has always been called “xingling,” “xingling” is Personality.27 On the other hand, precisely because “xingling” is self and one’s own personality, it is also undefinable. One’s own personality is particular to each individual, and as Lin puts it, “‘gexing’ includes a person’s bodily build, nerves, reason, emotions, learning, viewpoints, experience, sophistication, likes and dislikes, habits and hobbies, extremely complicated. Probably half is inborn, half acquired in life.”28 There- fore, “what is ‘xingling,’ only I know it. Parents who gave me birth

25 Lin Yutang, “Sishi zixu” (Autobiography at Forty), Lunyu 49 (September 16, 1934): 6. 26 Lin Yutang, “Lun wen” (On Literature ) Lunyu 15 (April 16, 1933): 533. 532–536; 28 (November 1, 1933) 533. 27 “Ji xingling” (On “xingling”) Yuzhoufeng (Cosmic Wind) 11 (February 16, 1936): 525–526. 28 Ibid. a cross-cultural aesthetics of life 139 do not know, my wife in the same bed does not know, either. Yet, that is where the life of literature really lies.”29 It is important to note that Lin’s interpretation of “xingling” as self does not lead him to the analytical questioning of self-identity, that is, to ask the question “Who am I?” which is so characteristic of modern Western literature. In fact, to resort to such rational self-analysis itself would already mean an unnatural imposition on one’s personality. “Xingling,” whether inborn or acquired or both, is a given. One’s personality can be improved through learning or experience in life, but the question is not to probe into your self, but to express it. The crucial element in producing creative literature is to be creative by giving full play to one’s own unique personality. But the theory of “xingling” also contains a normative principle, which would be inherent in Spingarn’s argument but not theoretically explicit there. That is the principle of Authenticity (“zhen”). Spingarn believes that if a writer truly expresses what is in him, future generations would consider him worthy of quality. In the theory of “xingling,” as Lin interprets, this idea is ontologically based in the notion of Authenticity. The only standard in creative writing would be the dictum “True to yourself.” It is this authenticity, most manifest in the child’s heart (tongxin), that enables to give full play to one’s individual personality. The deﬁnitive criteria in judging the quality of creative writing is to see if the author is true to his self. But then how could the reader “see” the author’s authenticity? Should not we bring in social moral concerns and technical rhetorical devices to aid us in the analysis? The theory of “xingling” would answer that it is precisely not a matter of analysis, and so long as the author expresses his personality with Authenticity, the reader will presumably see it. And that is called “huixin” (understanding-of-heart/mind), an important notion of literary reception frequently employed by “xingling” critics which in fact has a long tradition originating from Liu Xie’s well-known notion of “zhiyin” (one who knows the tone). Lin Yutang cites the success of Zhou Zuoren’s familiar essays as a prime example of authentic self- expression that meets the reader’s heart/mind.

While Spingarn’s theory of expression appeals to a multicultural “Young America,” Lin Yutang’s mediating interpretation of Yuan

29 Lin Yutang, “Lun wen” (On Literature ) Lunyu 15 (April 16, 1933): 533. 140 chapter five

Zhonglang and Spingarn signifies a distinct cosmopolitan attitude towards a young China. By the early 1930s, the New Culture Move- ment, which had prompted the emergence of a young China, came to a cross-roads. On the one hand, the ethos of the New Culture Move- ment had already become a fait accompli, with its original opponents retreating to the back stage. On the other hand, with swift socio-political changes, members of the New Culture camp were regrouping and going in different directions. One of the most well-known split was between the Zhou brothers, Lu Xun and Zhou Zuoren. To Lin Yutang, whatever the socio-political circumstances at the time, one of the most fundamental ideals of the New Culture Movement, that is, the ideal of “geren” (individuality) or “gexing” (personality) should first of all be upheld and reinforced, not dismissed and abandoned. To highlight the distinctness of Lin’s attitude, it is helpful to examine comparatively the different attitude assumed by Liang Shiqiu, a disciple of Babbitt and an influential liberal writer in modern China. Liang Shiqiu first appeared in the modern Chinese literary world in the late 1920s and early 1930s not as a member of the “xueheng” school, formed by returned Chinese disciples of Babbitt, but as a literary critic in “Xinyue she” (Crescent Moon Society), a loose literary group identified not by any uniform doctrine but rather by the British and American educational background of the members who more or less favor a certain kind of moderation. Before Liang went to America, he was in fact a follower of the Romantic Creation Soci- ety, especially appreciative of Guo Moruo. But something in Babbitt’s classroom at Harvard in 1925 completely changed Liang’s outlook. In his “turning” treatise “Xiandai zhongguo wenxue zhi langman de qushi” (The Romantic Trend in Modern Chinese Literature) written in America in 1926, Liang launched an all-out attack on new literature, employing faithfully the neo-classic ideas of Babbitt. Liang characterizes new literature as derivative of foreign literature, especially Romantic literature, because Romantics always seek for novelty and exotica. The result of such passion for exotica is the “Romantic chaos.” Even though Liang admits that what is favored in foreign literature tends to be Ibsen and Bernard Shaw , and that the Romantics have a “modern addiction” and take whatever “modern” as good and progressive, he concludes that such choice is ultimately not based on any standard and results in the introduction of third or fourth rate foreign writers instead of masters such as Shakespeare and Sophocles. Lack of standards and restraint leads to decadence and pseudo-idealism. a cross-cultural aesthetics of life 141

Undisciplined emotionalism fills every piece of writing, causing the chaos of genres since everything has become lyrical. Instead of resorting to reason, the Romantics worship, contradictorily, the genius and the primitive. One example Liang cites is the flourishing of children’s literature in new literature. The celebration of the naivety of the child, in Liang’s view, is really symbolic of the naivety of the whole new literature, because a mature adult arrives at perfection only through an exercise of restraint and discipline. Liang’s attack met severe counter-attack from Lu Xun. The issue in a series of polemics between Liang and Lu Xun is really a question of “Personality,” both theoretically and personally. Lu Xun never engages Liang on theoretical terms, but instead attacks the opponent’s personality with his sharp satirical biting pen. In his argument, Lu Xun always reminds the reader that Liang is “carrying the banner of Babbitt,” an American Professor at Harvard, and always addresses Liang as “Professor Liang,” even though Lu Xun enjoyed much more fame in the literary world at the time than Liang. While Lin Yutang did not resort to satirical attack on Liang’s personality, he definitely lent a hand to Lu Xun in this respect, by offering a theoretical defense of Personality through his translation of Spingarn. Lin Yutang would have serious criticism elsewhere of modernity, as shown, for example, in its materialist faith in progress, yet he simply did not believe that the moralist restraint and discipline of Babbitt’s style was the answer. Lin Yutang was the only Chinese student who was not convinced by Babbitt among those who attended Babbitt’s classes. To Lin, Babbitt’s Neo-Humanism bears a striking resemblance to Neo-Confucianism of the Song Dynasty,30 which was the target of new culture.

“Xianshi” (Leisure) As a Life-Style

Another notion Lin Yutang promoted in his popular journals in the 1930s in close association with “xingling” was called “xianshi,” or “leisure.”31 If “xingling” mainly refers to the backbone spirit in literary creation, the best literary form to reveal “xingling” is “xiaopinwen,”

30 Lin Yutang, Xin de wen ping (New Literary Criticism), p. 2. 31 For a recent study on the literature of leisure in modern China, see Charles A. Laughlin, The Literature of Leisure and Chinese Modernity. 142 chapter five a genre popular to Yuan Zhonglang which Lin translated as “familiar essays” in reference to the Western literary tradition, in a personal leisurely (xianshi) style. Lin’s journal Renjianshi (This Human World) was launched specifically to promote such “familiar essays” “with self as center, and ‘xianshi’ as style . . . [which] in content can cover everything from the big universe to tiny flies.”32 Apparently, neither “xingling” nor “xianshi” should be taken as mere terminologies in literary criticism. When Lin Yutang advocated and mediated such notions as “xingling” and “xianshi,” he meant not merely as a theory of literary criticism but more importantly as an aesthetics of existence, a philosophy of Life. This orientation of literature as life is of course inherent in the theory of expression or “xingling.” When “all expression is art,” creative writing relies very much upon the realization of the author’s personality. Thus, Yuan Zhonglang’s personality as an unorthodox and unique character was appreciated as much as his nonconforming creativity in writing. Indeed, it is the theory of “xingling” that best exemplifies the notion of “wenruqiren” (one’s writing reveals one’s character). Similarly, Spingarn also recognizes that a philosophy of life is at the heart of any philosophy of art. It is the diverse actual practices of life, instead of a definite set of moral codes, that a poet should attend to and realize himself through his expressive act of writing, as Spingarn puts it, “Life, teeming life, with all its ardors and agonies, is the only limit within which the poet’s vision can be cabined and confined.”33 However, the analogy between Spingarn’s expressive emphasis on life and Lin Yutang’s promotion of familiar essays as a life style stops there. While both take literary theory as relating to the actual practices of human life, they differ on what kind of life a poet should lead. To cultivate oneself towards a particular style of life is a matter of taste. As we have mentioned, taste is in fact an important dimension of Yuan Zhonglang’s theory of “xingling.” Spingarn too stresses the importance of taste in a philosophy of life and he even concludes that “If there is anything that American life can be said to give least of all, it is training in taste.”34 By taste, Spingarn means “that creative moment of the life of the spirit which the artist and the enjoyer of art share alike.”35

32 Renjianshi (This Human World) 1 (April 5, 1934): 1. 33 J. E. Spingarn, ed., Criticism in America: Its Function and Status, p. 302. 34 Ibid., p. 306. 35 Ibid., pp. 306–307. a cross-cultural aesthetics of life 143

Thus, Spingarn’s aesthetic enjoyment out of training in taste tends to encourage a life of creativity and vitality promising of a “Young America.” But Lin Yutang endorses a rather “old” taste, “xianshi,” a leisurely and detached style of life, deeply embedded in the Taoist tradition which served, it can be said, as the guiding spirit of Chinese men of letters for ages. The man who epitomizes such taste in modern China through his exquisite “xiaopinwen” (“little-taste-essays,” or “familiar essays” in Lin Yutang’s translation) was however not Lin Yutang, but Zhou Zuoren. In 1930s literary world in China, the Zhou brothers, Lu Xun and Zhou Zuoren, were leading two very different trends. The former wrote sharp satirical “zawen” (miscellaneous essays), residing in Shanghai while the latter simple secluded “xiaopinwen,” residing in Beijing. This marked difference transcends of course the mere literary realm, but more importantly manifests two distinct aesthetics of existence in face of Chinese modernity. What Lu Xun posits has been often called, aptly, a “modernist” aesthetics of existence. According to Xu Shoushang , Lu Xun’s life-long friend, Lu Xun’s philosophy of life is best expressed in his prose poems collected in Yecao (Wild Grass).36 In the “Foreword” to Wild Grass, Lu Xun writes: Wild grass strikes no deep roots, has no beautiful flowers and leaves, yet it imbibes dew, water and the blood and flesh of the dead, although all try to rob it of life. As long as it lives it is trampled upon and mown down, until it dies and decays. But I am not worried; I am glad. I shall laugh aloud and sing. I love my wild grass, but I detest the ground which decks itself with wild grass. A subterranean fire is spreading, raging, underground. Once the molten lava breaks through the earth’s crust, it will consume all the wild grass and lofty trees, leaving nothing to decay. But I am not worried; I am glad. I shall laugh aloud and sing.37 Such statements make explicit the image of Lu Xun as an alienated and pessimistic “fiery” fighter against the nothingness of the world. Lu Xun compares himself to “wild grass,” but his love for “wild grass” is a “groundless” one, bearing “no deep roots,” for he detests any orna- mental ground. Rid of the ornaments such as “beautiful flowers and leaves,” the ground is a world of decay and a constant annihilation

36 Xu Shoushang, Wo suo renshi de luxun (The Lu Xun I knew), p. 42. 37 Lu Xun, Wild Grass, p. 3. For an elaborate discussion of Yecao, see Leo Ou-fan Lee, Voices from the Iron House: A Study of Lu Xun, pp. 89–109. 144 chapter five of the life of “wild grass” by the living and the dead. But “I” shall not succumb to such ground of decay. Instead, I shall “laugh aloud and sing” heroically in front of decay. With “fire” “spreading, raging” inside me, I shall fight against such ground of decay, not to save the precious life of “wild grass,” but knowing that this “fire” will eventually destroy both me and everybody else while the ground will be a world of nothingness even for decay. It is due to such fighting spirit that Lu Xun was hailed as the conscience of the modern Chinese intellectuals and the “national soul” of the Chinese people, because in such fighting, and only in such fighting, could Lu Xun live his life in the dark realities of the world, exposing evils whenever and wherever he was confronted with it. In “The Awakening,” the last prose poem in Wild Grass, Lu Xun contrasts this “rough” style of “living in the world of men” to the “leisurely” style of life “in the garden:” Their spirits are roughened by the onslaught of wind and dust, for theirs is the spirit of man, a spirit I love. I would gladly kiss this roughness dripping with blood but formless and colorless. In elegant, far-famed gardens filled with rare blossoms, demure and rosy girls are leisurely whiling away the time as the stork gives a cry and dense white clouds rise up . . . This is all extremely enthralling, but I cannot forget I am living in the world of men.38 Zhou Zuoren entitled the first anthology of his essays as Ziji de yuandi (My Own Garden). By 1924, Zhou openly announced that he was going to “shut the door and study” in his “Bitter-Rain-Studio.” A large photo of Zhou in plain cloth shirt appeared in the inaugural issue of Lin Yutang’s This Human World and Zhou’s role as a leading “xiaopinwen” writer in the “xianshi” style was thus established. Obviously, “xianshi” here refers to both the writing style and its corresponding style of life. Zhou’s manifestation to lead a life behind the door, that is, to be a sedate urban recluse, is an important prerequisite to his writing the “little-taste-essays.” In this sense, Zhou may very well be living in a “garden,” but it is one without any “rare blossoms” or “rosy girls.” On the contrary, a secluded life à la Zhou Zuoren means first and foremost a life of simplicity. Since writing is taken as an expression of one’s personality, Zhou’s ideal of a simple life is also best shown in his writing style which is characterized by clarity and simplicity of diction and sentence structure. In Zhou’s own words: “Simplicity is

38 Lu Xun, Wild Grass, p. 67. a cross-cultural aesthetics of life 145 the highest standard of writing.”39 It is little wonder that Zhou chooses “xiaopinwen” as his favored literary form for its compact, plain and free structure. But it would be a gross reduction to take Zhou’s understanding of “simplicity” as merely identical with the short and compact structure of “xiaopinwen.” Even Zhou’s stylistic emphasis on the clarity of diction and the easy and smooth flow of sentences is ultimately of secondary importance. What is essential is certain particular aesthetic moods as revealed in Zhou’s prose. The aesthetic style of Zhou’s art of prose writing is often described as “qingdan,” “pingdan,” and “chongdan.” The recurring character “dan” can be literally translated as “light,” which, as Wolff explains: denotes the purity of a liquid that has not been adulterated, spiced, or excessively flavored. Ch’ing-tan [Qingdan] then seems to emphasize mild- ness and purity, freedom from adulterations, admixtures, or heavy one- sided flavoring. The term “p’ing-tan” [pingdan] has added in p’ing [ping] a vision of an unruffled expanse of water, while the “ch’ung” [chong] in ch’ung-tan [chongdan] conveys the idea of rinsing out all hard and harsh colors to leave behind only shades of pastel lightness.40 Apparently, such an aesthetic style inherits a long Taoist tradition in which Yuan Zhonglang’s philosophy of taste was an immediate past. Zhou’s writing is often compared to a brook, a rivulet which mean- ders and flows freely and naturally, reminiscent of Yuan’s metaphor of good writing as flowing from one’s heart/mind “like water flushing eastward” without any restraint. Another reference is often made to Zhou’s remarks on tea drinking as an explanation of his sense of taste. In an essay entitled “Tea Drinking,” which Wolff translated in its entirety,41 Zhou illustrates in detail the appropriate manner of drinking light tea, referring to its casual and relaxed setting, several kinds of accompanying bean curds as desserts, as well as a folk ballad yelled

39 Shu Wu, “Preface” to Zhitang xiaopin (Selected Essays by Zhou Zuoren), p. 7. 40 Ernst Wolff, Chou Tso-jen [Zhou Zuoren], p. 26. Lin Yutang, in “Appendix B: A Chinese Critical Vocabulary” to his The Importance of Living, explains “dan” as following: tan [dan]: mild, pale in color, as of a misty lake. Probably the quality in a painting or writing that gives the greatest pleasure to a man of mature taste is ch’ingtan [qingdan] (lucid and mild), p’ingtan [pingdan] (“even and mild,” the natural aroma of simple writing), or tanyuan [danyuan] (. . . mild-toned and “distant” in perspective, either in painting or in style of thought). A man of a retiring mild temperament is t’ientan [tiandan] (quiet and easily contented, or loving simple joys); he adopts an attitude toward money and fame described as tanpo [danbo] (mild and thin). See Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living, p. 442. 41 Ernst Wolff, Chou Tso-jen [Zhou Zuoren], pp. 73–76. 146 chapter five by street-vendors selling those bean curds. However, Zhou has pointed out in a number of occasions that he himself does not drink tea that way and is not a “connoisseur of tea,” as he reveals, for instance, in his explanation of the meaning of “Cha Hua” (Tea Chat), a subtitle of one of his self-selected anthologies: “Tea Chat” literally means chatting while drinking tea, but actually I have hardly ever chatted this way; besides, I am not a connoisseur of tea—I merely drink cold tea like a fish drinks water. The heading “Tea Chat” shall only indicate that these are clear, calm, and unconcerned talks, as one would chat over a cup of tea, and not the muddled, heavy talk after wine.42 But Wolff, who quoted and translated the above passage, seems to have failed to understand Zhou’s deliberate emphasis that he drinks tea just like a fish drinks water. In contrast to what Yuan Zhong- lang calls “people of Suzhou who make a hobby of tea and turn it into a cult,” Zhou’s point is not tea per se and in fact one does not have to practice tea drinking in that manner to achieve a “light” and “leisurely” [xianshi] aesthetic taste. The simple lightness of being or an insouciant aesthetic attitude towards life bears a twofold significance for Zhou. On the one hand, Zhou’s “xiaopinwen” reveals an acute interest in the daily practices of ordinary life in all dimensions. One of Zhou’s well-known series of essays is entitled “Plants, Trees, Insects, Fish,” in which all kinds of seemingly insignificant subjects such as pickled vegetables, goldfish and bats, are discussed in a casual and insouciant manner to suggest certain aspects of a “light” and “leisurely” life. One of the most cited essays is “Wupeng Boat,” also translated in Wolff’s Chou Tso-jen,43 in which a type of black awning boat special to Zhou’s home town area is described in detail together with Zhou’s idea of what leisurely enjoyment is like in an unhurried boat ride. Another subject that best expresses Zhou’s acute interest in ordinary life is of course on food and drinks, especially those folk practices involved therein that suggest the taste and elegance of a simple life. In “Wild Vegetables of My Home Town,” another well- known essay by Zhou, four kinds of wild vegetables, “jicai” (shepherd’s purse), “malan” (acanthaceous indigo), “shuqucao” (affine cudweed) and “ziyunying” (Chinese milk vetch) are lightly and delightfully discussed

42 Ibid., p. 27. 43 Ibid., pp. 70–72. a cross-cultural aesthetics of life 147 in no more than two pages.44 The popularity of this little essay is of course not due to the nutritious facts of these wild vegetables. The essay does not even mention whether or not they taste delicious. It is rather the simple and easy-going folk atmosphere surrounding these wild vegetables that appeals to the reader’s heart. As Zhou describes, these wild vegetables are common dishes in spring in his home town area and they grow right in one’s back yard. Women and children would go and enjoy picking them out of the weeds while children would sing the rhymed ballad: “Jicai malan tou, zizi jia zai houmen tou” (“Jicai” and “malan,” sister married next door). The innocence of a simple lifestyle associated with wild vegetables in Zhou’s home town is here vividly portrayed. But Zhou is by no means nostalgic about his home town, as one would normally assume. While Zhou’s essays undoubtedly show an acute concern with ordinary life practices, they are also characterized by a cold unconcern for and aloofness from normal human emotion and toil. By reading the delightful passages on the wild vegetables, one would be naturally attracted to his “home town.” Yet Zhou starts the essay by de-emphasizing the very notion of “home town.” To him, “home town” is simply a place where he happens to stay for some time, including Nanjing and Tokyo, and now that he lives in Beijing, he calls Beijing his home town. Such an unconcerned tone set at the very first paragraph of the essay produces a chilling effect that contra- dicts his love of ordinary life expressed in the following paragraphs. This irony is in a sense quite characteristic of Zhou’s aesthetics of “light leisure.” Zhou’s announcement of “shutting the door to study” does lead him to retire from the socio-political world but does not make him other-worldly. On the contrary, his “leisurely” mood enables him to open up an acute interest in the simple pleasure of ordinary life, which is, however, overshadowed at the same time by a chilling “lightness” that permeates the “leisurely” taste. Indeed, the cold irony of Zhou’s “light leisure” is diametrically opposed to Lu Xun’s fiery spirit of pessimistic fighting.45

44 Zhou Zuoren, Zhitang xiaopin (Selected Essays by Zhou Zuoren), pp. 67–69. 45 In discussing Zhou Zuoren’s aesthetic taste (quwei), Susan Daruvala sees it as constituting Zhou’s “poetics of locality” that lies at the center of Zhou’s alternative response to the discourse of nation: “It is only by writing as ‘sons of soil,’ not by relying on the empty, doctrinaire dreams centered on the concept of the nation, that genuine literature can be produced.” See Susan Daruvala, Zhou Zuoren and an Alternative Chinese Response to Modernity, p.142. But I believe this is where Lin Yutang would differ 148 chapter five

Seen from a comparative perspective, Lin Yutang’s aesthetic attitude differs from that of either Lu Xun or Zhou Zuoren. Of course, Lin appreciates Zhou’s aesthetics of “light leisure” and promotes Zhou’s “xiaopinwen” in his periodicals, and his aesthetic inclination is much closer to Zhou Zuoren than to Lu Xun, but Lin never identiﬁes himself with Zhou as a sedate “leisurely” urban recluse. In order to understand the signiﬁcance of “xianshi” in Lin’s overall aesthetic theory, we need to examine Lin’s introduction and re-interpretation of “humor,” since the former is incorporated into the latter.

“Youmo” (Humor) As an Aesthetic Attitude

“Youmo” (Humor) is one of hundreds of neologisms that appeared in modern Chinese.46 It was Lin Yutang who ﬁrst introduced and coined this term as early as 1924. Lin’s translation of humor into “youmo,” though apparently a transliteration out of phonetic concerns, already indicates Lin’s own interpretive appropriation: the character “you” denotes being secluded, quiet and serene while “mo” could mean “tacit understanding” as in “moqi.” It was not until 1930s, however, when Lin’s periodical Lunyu (Analects) launched to promote humor became an instant success and Lin was thereafter called “Master of Humor,” that “youmo” began to have a philosophical signiﬁcance for Lin, and together with “xingling” and “xianshi,” contributed to form a distinct aesthetic attitude toward life. To Lin Yutang, “youmo,” just like “xingling” and “xianshi,” is more than merely a literary technique or style. “Humor is a state of mind. More than that, it is a point of view, a way of looking at life.”47 In other words, it is a unique attitude toward life, a philosophy of life. Therefore, my interpretive objective here is to show what constitutes such an attitude, as well as the ways in which Lin constructs such an attitude.

from Zhou Zuoren, as Lin is only interested in resisting the excesses of the discourse of nation and would not characterize modern Chinese “dreams” for nation-building as “empty and doctrinaire.” 46 Many modern Chinese neologisms arrive from Japanese translations of Western terms, but not the term “youmo.” For a list of modern Chinese neologisms, see Lydia H. Liu, Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity, China 1900–1937, especially Appendix A–F, pp. 265–378. 47 Lin Yutang, My Country and My People, p. 62. a cross-cultural aesthetics of life 149

In an essay entitled “Lun youmo,” (On Humor) considered by Lin himself as one of his best treatise, his understanding of humor is most systematically explained. According to him, he wrote the essay “based on” Essay on Comedy by George Meredith, an important nineteenth- century English writer. But what Lin means by “based on” is very much a cross-cultural appropriation. Originally a lecture delivered at the London Institute entitled “The Idea of Comedy and the Uses of the Comic Spirit,” Essay on Comedy is Meredith’s only sustained piece of literary theory. Though still considered by some as a classic treatise on the theory of comedy, Meredith’s ideas are not entirely consistent and coherent throughout the essay, as already pointed out by his contemporary critic J. B. Priestley.48 In any case, the essay conveys Meredith’s concerns with national literatures, historical progress, the equality of the sexes, and above all, of course, what Meredith calls the “Comic Spirit.” To Meredith, the comic spirit comes out of an appreciation of common sense, sound reason and fair justice as opposed to any affected moods of folly, as he explains in the following, also quoted and translated into Chinese by Lin in his essay “On Humor:” If you believe that our civilization is founded in common sense (and it is the ﬁrst condition of sanity to believe it), you will, when contemplating men, discern a Spirit overhead . . . It has the sage’s brows, and the sunny malice of a faun lurks at the corners of the half-closed lips drawn in an idle wariness of half-tension . . . Men’s future upon earth does not attract it; their honesty and shapeliness in the present does; and whenever they wax out of proportion, overblown, affected, pretentious, bombastical, hypocritical, pedantic, fantastically delicate; whenever it sees them self- deceived or hoodwinked, given to run riot in idolatries, drifting into vanities, congregating in absurdities, planning short-sightedly, plotting dementedly; whenever they are at variance with their professions, and violate the unwritten but perceptible laws binding them in consideration one to another; whenever they offend sound reason, fair justice; are false in humility or mined with conceit, individually, or in the bulk; the Spirit overhead will look humanely malign, and cast an oblique light on them, followed by volleys of silvery laughter. That is the Comic Spirit.49 It is important to Meredith not to conﬂate this “Comic Spirit” with either satire or humor. Not only is the comic different from mere joking, or “huaji” in Chinese, although the comic is closer to humor than

48 Joseph Moses, The Novelist as Comedian: George Meredith and the Ironic Sensibility, p. 38. 49 George Meredith, An Essay on Comedy and the Uses of the Comic Spirit, pp. 141–142; See also Lin Yutang, “Lun youmo” (On Humor), Lunyu 33 ( January 16, 1934): 437–438. 150 chapter five satire in spirit, it still differs from humor in Meredithian analysis. After he explains and differentiates the notions of satire, irony and humor, which Lin also quoted and translated, Meredith goes on to say where Lin’s translation has ended: The comic, which is the perceptive, is the governing spirit, awakening and giving aim to these powers of laughter, but it is not to be confounded with them; it enfolds a thinner form of them, differing from satire and in not sharply driving into the quivering sensibilities, and from humor in not comforting them and tucking them up, or indicating a broader than the range of this bustling world to them.50 To Lin Yutang, however, Meredith’s exposition of the Comic Spirit is the best interpretation of humor he has known so far in Western literature. While Meredith differentiates humor from the comic, Lin does not. In this sense, Lin has already elevated the position of humor to an ontological level parallel to that given to the Comic Spirit by Meredith. Lin’s ontological elevation of humor is prompted first of all by a cosmopolitan consideration. To Meredith, whether the Comic Spirit is discernible in a national culture or not is a defining element to judge the maturity of that culture. In the Meredithian scheme, Molière and the French rank at the top, and the English somehow lack a genuine comic perception even with Shakespeare as a great exception, while the German still lower with their rather “monstrous” laughter. And looking “Eastward,” Meredith finds a “total silence of comedy among a people intensely susceptible to laughter,”51 simply because the women’s faces are veiled. Meredith is here of course referring to the Arabs. Lin Yutang agrees with Meredith that indeed “One excellent test of the civilization of a country [is] the flourishing of the comic idea and comedy; and the test of true comedy is that it shall awaken thoughtful laughter,”52 and it is with this quote that Lin starts his essay “On Humor.” 53 But Lin certainly does not agree with the Meredithian scheme of classifying cultures according to geographical difference or status of women. Lin is more concerned with another more immediate question. As he puts it: “The abysmal ignorance of the foreigner about China and the Chinese cannot be more impressive than when

50 George Meredith, An Essay on Comedy and the Uses of the Comic Spirit, p. 134. 51 Ibid., p. 116. 52 Ibid., p. 141. 53 Lin Yutang, “Lun youmo” (On Humor), Lunyu 33 ( January 16, 1934): 434. The quote is in English. a cross-cultural aesthetics of life 151 he asks the question: Do the Chinese have a sense of humor?”54 If the answer is positive, there would not be then any question of the Comic Spirit in the Meredithian sense. But to limit the deﬁnition of humor merely in the realm of literary technique is also limiting the cultural implication involved. Thus, Lin’s discussion of humor is also a cross- cultural comment. The result is not a simplistic counter-discourse for the sake of eulogizing the Chinese culture. Instead, Lin’s understanding of “youmo” is based on a re-interpretation of the Chinese culture in the context of Chinese modernity. Hence a much fuller understanding of humor, with the Meredithian notion of the Comic Spirit as a starting point. The originality of Lin’s understanding of humor lies in the double integration of “youmo” (humor) and “xianshi” (light leisure), both to make humor “leisurely” and to humorize leisure, so to speak.55 It is such associative integration that makes Lin’s understanding of “xianshi” different from Zhou Zuoren’s style. It also enables Lin to enrich the notion of humor to reach a philosophical level by drawing from his re-interpretation of Chinese culture. But Lin’s promotion of humor in this way, just like that of “xingling,” comes primarily from the modern Chinese context. At the beginning of his Essay on Comedy, Meredith attributes the difﬁ- culty of the emergence of the comic poet to the fact that he is opposed by two types of foes right and left: the Puritans on the one hand who are incapable of laughing at anything and Bacchanalians who would laugh at anything. While Lin Yutang also takes pains to differentiate “youmo” from the popular notion of “huaji” (merely trying to be funny), he believes what really prevents a healthy sense of humor lies in Chinese Puritanism, that is, the didactic and dogmatic tradition of the Song Neo-Confucianism: “When I launched Analects, I knew the didactic pseudo-moralism was the demonic enemy of humor.”56 Again, like his promotion of “xingling,” Lin’s “youmo” is meant to contribute to a modern ethos in line with the “New Culture” spirit whose enemy is the Neo-Confucianist pseudo-moralism. To Lin Yutang, the

54 Lin Yutang, My Country and My People, p. 63. 55 The phrases “Youmo xianshi hua” and “xianshi youmo hua” ﬁrst appeared in Peng Li, “Sanshi niandai Lin Yutang wenyi sixiang lunxi” (An Analysis of Lin Yutang’s Artistic Thought in the 1930s), Wenxue pinglun [Beijing] 5 (1989): 88. 56 Lin Yutang, “Fangjinqi yanjiu” (A Study on Pseudo-Moralism), Shenbao (申报) (Shen Pao) (April 28, 1934): 17. 152 chapter five

humorless and deadly serious moralism of the Neo-Confucianists are the root of the stagnation of the Chinese culture, and the injection of a sense of humor is, if not crucial, at least very beneﬁcial to a healthy modern spirit of the Chinese. By the 1930s, however, the old-type Con- fucianists, though certainly still present, had already retreated pretty much to the back stage. It was those younger revolutionary writers who thought themselves as the most advanced and most progressive in pushing forward the “New Culture” ideals who were in fact rejecting Lin’s introduction of humor as a viable means of constructing Chinese modernity. But Lin holds that those Leftists who treat literature as a means of ideological propaganda in the name of national salvation are in fact inheriting the Neo-Confucianist pseudo-moralism. Since satire is a usual means employed by the radical revolutionary writers, with Lu Xun as their leader and its practitioner par excellence, Lin Yutang is thus particularly emphatic about the difference between satire and humor. Lao She, probably the best humorist writer in modern Chi- nese literature, most perceptively explains that difference in an essay entitled “Tan youmo” (On Humor): [Satire] must be said in an extremely sharp tongue, giving out a very strong freezing irony . . . The satirist deliberately does not want us to be sympathetic to the people and things he describes . . . The mentality of the satirist is as if he has seen through this world, so as to very cleverly attack the shortcomings of the mankind . . . While the heart of the humorist is warm, the heart of the satirist is cold; Therefore, satire is largely destructive . . . A satirical play or novel must have a moral purpose . . . Because of its moral objective, satire has to be sinister and merciless while humor is more tolerant and sympathetic . . .57 And Lao She cites Mark Twain and Swift as prototypes of the humorist and the satirist. Lin Yutang would fully agree with Lao She that the difference between satire and humor is fundamentally a difference in “xintai” (heart-attitude, psychological mentality). And he would add that the dangers of satire lie precisely in its cold-heartedness and its strong moral imperative, because they can easily lead to cynicism. To attack everything with a moral imperative and a deep cynicism at heart, that is inheriting the Confucianist pseudo-moralism and is far

57 Lao She, “Tan youmo” (On Humor), Lao She wenji (Collected Writings of Lao She), Vol. 15, pp. 232–233. a cross-cultural aesthetics of life 153 from what Lao She and Lin Yutang perceive to be a more tolerant attitude of humor. Lao She may very well be the best practitioner of humor in modern Chinese literature, and his understanding of humor as fundamentally a matter of “xintai,” a philosophical attitude of life, broad-minded and tolerant, is all in good agreement with Lin’s.58 But compared to Lin, Lao She is short of articulating a theoretical interpretation that bears a philosophical signiﬁcance. Lin Yutang is able to achieve that by integrating the notion of “xianshi” through a re-interpretation of the Chinese culture. Lin’s basic ideas concerning a theory of humor have already matured in his bilingual writings in the 1930s China, but it was most systematically articulated in his American best-seller The Importance of Living. Indeed, Lin’s philosophical best-seller can be seen as an American re-orientation and systematization of his cross-cultural ideas already contained in his bilingual essays written in China. In The Importance of Living, Lin articulates what he calls a “lyrical philosophy” out of his own experience of life and thought. To maintain human dignity in an age of cynicism and totalitarian threats to democracy and individual liberty, Lin argues that the ideal of the “scamp” is probably the saving spirit of the age. What Lin meant by the “scamp” is not just a traveling wanderer, but rather a free individual in spirit equipped with an aptitude towards life that is characterized by a detached sense of realism and a good sense of humor. By glorifying the spirit of the “scamp,” Lin is in fact invoking the Taoist tradition in interpreting the “leisurely” attitude into what he understands as humor. In summarizing the best of the Taoist tradition as expressed in Chinese literature and philosophy, Lin comes to the conclusion that [The] highest ideal of Chinese culture has always been a man with a sense of detachment (“daguan”) toward life based on a sense of wise disenchantment. From this detachment comes high-mindedness, a high-mindedness which enables one to go through life with tolerant irony . . . And from this detachment arise also his sense of freedom, his love of vaga- bondage and his pride and nonchalance. It is only with this sense of freedom and nonchalance that one eventually arrives at the keen and intense joy of living.59

58 For a discussion of humor and Lao She’s works, see Diran John Sohigian, “Con- tagion of Laughter: The Rise of the Humor Phenomenon in Shanghai in the 1930s.” pp. 155–157. 59 Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living, pp. 1–2. 154 chapter five

In this scheme, a keen and joyful attitude toward life is taken as the ultimate aim attainable by a cultured individual. To arrive at such an enlightened position, the crucial disposition one needs to possess is a sense of “tolerant irony,” which comes along with certain “high-mindedness.” What generates such a sense of “tolerant irony,” however, is a more basic requirement: the so-called “detachment.” And this is a significant connection in that the notion of “tolerant irony” is a defining element in what Lin understands as humor while “detachment” is a most important characteristic traditionally attributed to the Taoist way of life. The Taoist notion of “detachment” is usually understood in its narrow sense as a strategy of living resulting from disillusionment from the socio-political affairs and thus leading to a secluded life style often in the mountains. Lin Yutang’s interpretation is significantly broader. “Detachment,” which usually translates “chaotuo,” but “daguan” in Lin’s “youmo” (humorous) appropriation, should be understood as having a free relationship towards life’s tragedy. It means the ability to transcend from feeling first life’s tragedy to seeing life’s comedy. The tragic nature of human vicissitudes is in this perspective fundamentally comic at the same time. And Lin calls such ability to shift from a tragic perspective to a comic perspective a sense of “wise disenchantment.” The notion of “disenchantment,” as we know it in the Western tradition, usually connotes a feeling of alienation that enhances one’s pessimistic and tragic belief. It is certainly true that not everybody is able to make such transition. Qu Yuan, the first great poet in Chinese literature, stands aloof as a prime example of the tragic hero who committed suicide after addressing a series of questioning towards “Heaven” and getting no answer. What does one need to acquire, then, to be enlightened to undergo such transition? Lin Yutang argues that that is what the Taoist tradition has always been teaching. The fact that after Qu Yuan, no poet ever committed suicide again in over two thousand years indicates that Chinese poets have, according to Lin, successfully made that transition largely due to their adopting the “daguan” attitude, or a free relationship towards life’s tragedies. Lin cites Zhuangzi, Tao Yuan- ming and Su Dongpo as examples of ideal personalities with “daguan” aptitude in different dynastic periods. And Lin Yutang shows that it is in these characters that humor abounds. In addition to being usually considered the father of Taoist thought and of Chinese literary writing, Zhuangzi is now called by Lin Yutang the father of Chinese humor. Probably nothing is more revealing about the Zhuangzian humor in its “daguan” sense than the story about his death as recorded in Zhuangzi: a cross-cultural aesthetics of life 155

When Zhuangzi was about to die, his disciples expressed a desire to give him a sumptuous burial. Zhuangzi said, “I will have heaven and earth for my coffin and coffin shell, the sun and moon for my pair of jade discs, the stars and constellations for my pearls and beads, and the ten thousand things for my parting gifts. The furnishings for my funeral are already prepared—what is there to add?” “But we’re afraid the crows and kites will eat you, Master!” said his disciples. Zhuangzi said, “Above ground I’ll be eaten by crows and kites, below ground I’ll be eaten by mole crickets and ants. Wouldn’t it be rather bigoted to deprive one group in order to supply the other?”60 We do not know if Zhuangzi ever had any funeral in the end. Most Chinese people do. But as Lin Yutang points out, it is precisely in Chinese funerals that the Chinese sense of humor is supreme. If life is a huge farce and human beings are mere players in it for a short time, there is really no need to take death seriously. Therefore, in the Chinese mind, as Lin tells us: A funeral, like a wedding, should be noisy and should be expensive, but there is no reason why it should be solemn. Solemnity is already provided for in the grandiloquent gowns, and the rest is form, and form is farce.61 And Lin holds that Western observers who fail to appreciate the humor of a Chinese funeral are probably in want of humor. In Lin’s view, Tao Yuanming is an epitome of having attained “wise disenchantment” and “represents the most perfectly harmonious and well-rounded character in the entire Chinese literary tradition.”62 To Lin Yutang, what enables poets like Tao Yuanming to enjoy a leisurely life is due to their possession of certain “high-mindedness,” which “came from, and was inevitably associated with, a certain sense of detachment toward the drama of life; it came from the quality of being able to see through life’s ambitions and follies and the temptations of fame and wealth.”63 To support his family, Tao first accepted an official job and served as a magistrate of a small county. But before long, he found himself disgusted with the petty vanity of an official life. He proclaimed that he “cannot bend and bow for the sake of five bushels of rice,” quit the office and returned to his farm, writing that famous

60 Ibid., p. 361. 61 Lin Yutang, My Country and My People, p. 66. 62 Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living, p. 116. 63 Ibid., p. 153. 156 chapter five poem “Ah, Homeward Bound I Go!” What Tao’s disenchantment differs from Qu Yuan’s is that the former’s disillusionment did not lead him to be psychologically paralyzed and cynical. Instead, Tao finds peace and harmony tilling his farmland. In other words, Tao’s “disenchantment” is a “wise” one in that he becomes quite content with his existence without being either unquestionably complacent or idealistically cynical. Such “wise disenchantment” reaches full maturity of character in the spirit of “tolerant irony:” Tao is “detached” (daguan) enough to tolerate the general vanity of human existence and takes an ironical stance towards it. Tao’s style of detachment is best expressed in the following lines: I built a hut in human dwellings Yet hear no noise of passing carts and horses.64 What has been most appreciated in Tao’s detached world is the fact that his reclusion is not a misanthropic total isolation. He still lives in this world. Indeed, he finds joy in life. But that is no longer the “noise of passing carts and horses,” rather the joy of simplicity in life: the chrysanthemums at hand and the mountains nearby. And his entire poems are written in a simple and “leisurely” style to convey his appreciation of the simplicity in life. “Leisurely” here means a state of repose half way off the farcicality of human toil. It does not mean mere idling around. On the contrary, as a poor peasant the rest of his life, Tao works hard on the land. But thanks to his detached state of mind, when the work is over and a cup of wine in hand, Tao was able to write a little poem on his unworthy sons, which Lin takes as a fine example of Tao’s humorous spirit: My temples are grey, my muscles no longer full. Five sons have I, and none of them likes school. Ah-shu is sixteen and as lazy as lazy can be. Ah-hsuan is fifteen and no taste for reading has he. Thirteen are Yung and Tuan, yet they can’t tell six from seven. A-tung wants only pears and chestnuts—in two years he’ll be eleven. Then, come! let me empty this cup, if such be the will of Heaven.65 What Lin Yutang calls “leisurely humor” as represented by Tao Yuan- ming constitutes one side of the double integration of “xianshi” and

64 Tao Qian, Tao yuanming ji (Collected Works of Tao Yuanming), p. 89. See also The Poetry of T’ao Ch’ien, p. 130. 65 Tao Qian, Tao yuanming ji (Collected Works of Tao Yuanming), p. 106; See also Lin Yutang, My Country and My People, p. 64. a cross-cultural aesthetics of life 157

“youmo,” the other side is the “humorization of leisure.” While the former is based on a reinterpretation of the Taoist tradition, the latter is more of a re-appropriation of the Confucian humanism. If “leisurely humor” puts more emphasis on the “ironical” raison d’etre, the “humorization of leisure” offers ontological grounds for “tolerance” by way of Lin’s re-appropriation of the Confucian humanism. Lin Yutang’s notion of “youmo” (humor) is based on such synthesis of “tolerant irony.” To Lin Yutang, to be tolerant is to have a reasonable understanding. Once one has attained a free relationship with life’s tragedies and farcicalities, the natural tendency is to be forgiving and sympathetic. And this attitude is ontologically grounded in the humanistic aspect of the Confucian tradition, what Lin calls the “Spirit of Reasonable- ness.” “Ontological ground” here does not refer to a system of thinking based on logical or metaphysical reasoning. Contrary to that, what Lin calls a “humorous thinking” or “humanized thinking” is oppo- site to the “scientific thinking” strictly based on logical and objective method. While “scientific thinking” leads to compartmentalization of specialized knowledge, “humanized thinking” leads to a reasonable understanding of the problems of living. “Humanized thinking” is not a matter of “logical necessity,” because there is no logical necessity in human affairs. Rather it is rooted in mere common sense. In Lin’s view, this “Spirit of Reasonableness” represents the essence and best side of Chinese civilization, a crystallization of the general Confucian emphasis on humanity. In this light, the only criterion for judging right or wrong in a quarrel, for instance, is to see whether one is “jiangli” (talk reason) or not. As Lin explains, “reasonableness” translates “qingli,” which is composed of “qing” (human nature) and “li” (eternal reason). Thus, “jinqing” (“to be human,” or “to be reasonable”) becomes the highest goal. Anything that goes beyond reasonableness is immediately condemned as “bu jin qingli” (moving far away from human nature). Lin believes that this reasonable spirit has afforded the Chinese with a sound realism that even the emperor, unlike the Japanese emperor who assumes himself as a semi-divine being, is regarded as an earthly figure who rules by a mandate from Heaven. And in a similar light, “the sage is no more than a reasonable person, like Confucius, who is chiefly admired for his plain, common sense and his natural human qualities, i.e., for his great humanness.”66

66 Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living, p. 423. 158 chapter five

Confucius as a great human and humorous character is Lin Yutang’s own unique interpretation, which is radically different from the con- ventional picture of Confucius as presented by the austere Song Neo- Confucianist doctrinaires. To Lin Yutang, the Confucian “spirit of reasonableness” is exemplified by the genial humor in the character of Confucius himself. It is such human quality, not the austerity and ste- rility of Neo-Confucianism, that makes Confucius and Confucianism still relevant and important in modern times. In his re-appropriation of Confucius, Lin takes pains to point out the genial humor of Con- fucius, which Lin believes is the best kind of humor in general, the humor of laughing at his own expense, in various sayings and historical anecdotes. What Lin particularly appreciates is the Confucius who always does what he knows cannot be done, constantly finds himself at a loss and laughs at his own effort. In one instance when one of his disciples remarked, “Here is a piece of precious jade, preserved in a casket and waiting for a good price for sale,” Confucius replied, “For sale! For sale! I am the one waiting for a good price to be sold!” Lin holds that the failure to see the humor of Confucius the Man in these lines results in a number of ridiculous efforts by orthodox Confucian- ists to explain away the obvious. One of Lin’s favorite anecdotes of Confucius goes as follows, in Lin’s own translation: Once the Master and his disciples had lost track of each other. The disciples finally heard from the crowd that there was a tall man standing at the East Gate with a high forehead resembling some of the ancient emperors, but that he looked like a homeless wandering dog. The disciples finally found him and told him about this remark and Confucius replied, “I don’t know about my resembling those ancient emperors, but as for resembling a homeless, wandering dog, he is quite right! He is quite right!”67 Apparently, Lin Yutang’s re-appropriation of Confucian humanity is by no means a return to Babbitt’s kind of neo-humanism, as one of Lin’s biographers tends to think.68 To Lin Yutang, his interpretation of Confucian humanity in the spirit of reasonable tolerance is quite different from Babbitt’s Neo-Humanist emphasis on restraint and discipline which Lin takes to be resembling the Song Neo-Confucianism. Lin’s effort in bringing out the human and humorous characteristics in

67 Lin Yutang, The Wisdom of Confucius, p. 30. 68 In discussing Lin’s interpretation of Confucian humanity, Sohigian remarks that “Professor Babbitt would have been proud of him.” See Diran John Sohigian, “The Life and Times of Lin Yutang,” p. 557. a cross-cultural aesthetics of life 159 the personality of Confucius the Man is consistent with his belief in the free expression of one’s “xingling.” Indeed, Lin believes the free expression of “xingling” is a precondition for attaining the essence of Humor in the spirit of tolerant irony. Only when one’s “xingling” is naturally developed and given full play, as in the case of Confucius, can one achieve a high-mindedness and become broad-minded and tolerant toward life with a “smile out of a understanding-of-the-heart/mind,” (huixin de weixiao) which Lin takes to be one of the best deﬁnitions of “youmo.” Thus, as I have shown, Lin Yutang’s appropriations of “xingling,” “xianshi” and “youmo” contribute to a complementary and integrated whole that constitutes a unique kind of aesthetics of life. Such an aesthetic attitude is arrived at through a consciously selective East-West cross-cultural mediations. It should be noted that the basic theoretical formulations for such an aesthetic attitude was ﬁrst worked out in the cross-cultural context of modern China. When the directions of the cosmopolitan New Culture Movement were at a crossroads, Lin Yutang believed that a “leisurely” humorous attitude in the spirit of reasonableness based on free expression of individuality would be a good sign for the maturity of modern Chinese culture. Lin’s aesthetics was quite attractive to the emerging urban reading public in modern China, but it did not win much applause from the elite intellectual class obsessed with the “salvation of the nation.” However, when such aesthetics was articulated and re-oriented towards the American audience, it won Lin Yutang the crown title of a wise “Chinese philosopher” from both the elite and the public. I will discuss the different implications of the American reception of Lin Yutang’s philosophy of life in the next chapter.

CHAPTER SIX

ORIENTAL OTHER: THE BUSINESS OF TRANSLATING CHINESE AND AMERICAN CULTURES

You are a Chinese. Your great reputation in this country is built upon your skill in presenting a Chi- nese point of view and in the Chinese manner, even though you write in English. Richard Walsh, Letter to Lin Yutang, March 9, 1942

I have always felt myself a modern, sharing the modern man’s problems and pleasures of discovery. Whenever I say ‘we,’ I mean ‘we moderns.’ Lin Yutang—Preface to On the Wisdom of America (1950) During a major part of the twentieth century, to the Western world and the world at large, the most well-known Chinese writer/intellectual was neither Lu Xun, who is still upheld as the unquestionable master in mainland China today, nor Hu Shi, who is widely regarded as the leader on the Liberal front in modern China, but rather Lin Yutang. In a sense, Lin’s success was a powerful attestation to the cosmopolitan triumph. In 1930s China, Lin’s aesthetics of existence out of his own unique cross-cultural translation attained much appeal to the emerging urban middle class, but it was misunderstood, criticized and even ridiculed by the dominant Leftist intellectuals in the name of the cultural politics of the nation. Now once Lin stepped out of the nation, the essentially same kind of philosophy of life out of East- West fusion of horizon, when translated to American audience, won him the crown title of a wise and witty “Chinese philosopher,” not only widely popular and attractive to ordinary readers at large, but also warmly embraced and respected by elite New York intellectual circles. From a mountain village boy in China to a renowned author of international stature, Lin Yutang was probably the most influential and prolific Asian writer/intellectual in America and the world from the 1930s to the 1960s. Today in America, Lin Yutang’s name has largely been forgotten. Compared to Pearl S. Buck, whose status in American letters 162 chapter six still arouses some critical controversy, little critical attention has been paid to Lin’s enormous corpus of English writings, even though ethnic writings have gained remarkable ascendancy in terms of critical significance.1 In China, however, despite lingering critical reservation concerning Lin’s cultural politics in modern China, few disagree that Lin’s greatest contribution lies in his introduction and translation of Chinese culture to the world.2 His politics may still be questionable, his philosophy may be arguable, but one cannot doubt his achieve- ments in enhancing cross-cultural understanding between East and West and in promoting Chinese culture to the world. It is true that since 1936, New York was Lin’s main residence for the next 30 years during which he produced the main corpus of his writings, including translation, fiction, essays and journalistic writings, all in English. It is also true that Lin’s literary practices during his American years were the least understood. The nationalistic acclaim that Lin made good for Chinese culture to the world merely reflects a wishful and self- deceptive mode of thinking as it forecloses, rather than opens up, the critical inquiry. Lin Yutang’s literary practices in America offer a most interesting case for cross-cultural study. It raises many questions and has to be approached in the historical context of Chinese-American diasporic interpenetration. To travel from a cosmopolitan writer in Shanghai to a cosmopolitan writer in New York, is that path as smooth as it appears? What kind of role does a Chinese cosmopolitan assume, once transplanted to the Western world, in translating his native culture? What is the mode and strategy of such cross-cultural translation and what are the effects to the target culture? What kind of relationship is assumed, challenged, or consolidated between the two cultures out of such cross-cultural translation and interpenetration? This chapter will examine the strategy and effects of Lin Yutang’s cross-cultural representation of Chinese culture (as well as American culture) in relation to the problem of the cosmopolitan identity he assumed in playing the role of the cross-cultural agent. My discussion will be aided by

1 See Peter Conn, Pearl S. Buck: A Cultural Biography. The scant critical attention paid to Lin Yutang in the newly developed Asian American literary criticism was largely negative. See Elaine Kim, Asian American Literature, pp. 104–106. 2 Lin Yutang zhuan (The Biography of Lin Yutang), written by Lin Yutang’s daughter Lin Taiyi, certainly holds this view, which is shared by almost all other critical commentary, including the not-so-favorable one—Lin Yutang pingzhuan by Wan Pingjin. oriental other 163 an abundance of intimate correspondences between Lin and Richard Walsh, publisher of the John Day Company, who was responsible for publishing and marketing Lin’s best-sellers in America.

Collaboration between Lin Yutang and Richard J. Walsh/Pearl S. Buck

Lin Yutang’s literary practices in America were very much related to his friendship with the Walshes, namely, Richard J. Walsh , publisher of the John Day Company and his wife Pearl S. Buck. This relationship between Lin Yutang and the Walshes was more than an ordinary professional relationship between an author and a publisher. Rather, it was quite a complex and comprehensive one where the professional is entangled with the personal. On the personal level, the Lins became very close and attached to the Walshes who in fact became their host. Professionally, Richard Walsh was Lin’s editor, publisher, literary agent, press agent and public relations adviser. Not only did Walsh personally edit (in some cases heavily) all of Lin’s works in the 1930s and 1940s, but the choice of subjects, sometimes even character shaping and plot development in a novel, were very much collaborative acts between Walsh and Lin. It is crucial to foreground this relationship in order to understand Lin’s literary identity and practices in his American years. In his article introducing Lin Yutang to American readers at the height of Lin’s popularity in America in 1941, Ernest Hauser revealed that it was Pearl S. Buck who “discovered” the great potential in Lin and Richard Walsh who made it possible for Lin to realize that potential: “Both Dick and Pearl are equally responsible for Lin’s spectacular success. They can claim the credit for having ‘put across’ a writer who was a nobody with a funny Chinese name.”3 According to Hauser, Buck thought the “little critic” was wasting his pungent criticism and was playing, as the Chinese saying goes, his zither to the oxen in China before he was “discovered” to American readers. But that was only partially true. By 1933, Lin Yutang had established himself as one of the foremost intellectuals in China, especially known for his sophistication in the English language and Western culture. He was the editor for the widely popular Chinese-language periodical Lunyu, introducing

3 Ernest O Hauser, “Wise Guy from the East,” Who magazine, (October, 1941): 54. 164 chapter six

“humor” to Chinese literature and culture, and was regarded as one of the leading essayists in contemporary China. Equally significant was the fact that Lin had been a columnist for the English-language weekly The China Critic, run by a group of returned professionals trained in the West. In many ways, Lin was a model of Westernized cosmopolitan intellectuals of modern China whose identification and values are grounded in their training in the West. Perhaps the climax of Lin’s fame in Shanghai’s intellectual circles can be shown in his hosting of Bernard Shaw in Shanghai in 1933, together with such left/liberal intellectual dignitaries as Cai Yuanpei, Madame Song Qingling and Lu Xun. In 1933, in addition to Shaw’s visit to Shanghai, Shanghai intellectual circles also hosted another guest of honour—the Pulitzer Prize winner Pearl S. Buck. This event was less publicized but more significant to Lin Yutang, as it was in that reception held by the staff of The China Critic that Pearl Buck and Lin Yutang met each other for the first time.4 With the publication of The Good Earth in 1931, Pearl Buck found herself famous in America overnight. Born to an American missionary family stationed in China, Pearl Buck grew up in China and did not go back to America and settle down there until she was forty. Part of the reason for the immense popularity of her novel The Good Earth was due to the fact that she was a credible writer of China telling her story from the “inside,” so to speak. But at the height of the running sales of The Good Earth, there were also some dissent voices from the Western-trained Chinese students and scholars questioning its authenticity, which could throw doubt in the mind of American readers in terms of Buck’s representation of the Chinese. As discussed in Chapter Three, it was Lin Yutang who stood up to defend Pearl Buck’s writings on China. According to a Herald Tribune report on June 11, 1933, entitled “Chinese Writer Praises Stand of Pearl Buck,” for instance, Lin Yutang was even said to have issued a statement specifically to praise Pearl Buck for “her courageous, honest speech and writings.”5 Of course, a positive support from one of the leading intellectuals in China, especially from the group of the Western-trained “returned students,” immediately got the attention

4 Pearl S. Buck, My Several Worlds: A Personal Record, pp. 287–288. 5 Victor Keen, “Chinese Writer Praises Stand of Pearl Buck,” Herald Tribune, ( June 11, 1933): 2-II. oriental other 165 of Pearl Buck as well as her publisher Richard Walsh. It turned out that, for Pearl Buck, she had been familiar with Lin Yutang’s writings as she had been an avid reader of The China Critic. And shortly after Buck’s meeting with Lin at the reception, Walsh and Lin also met, as Walsh followed Buck to China for both personal and business reasons. It was Richard Walsh, a shrewd publisher familiar with New York publishing and intellectual world, who first “discovered” Pearl Buck. Shortly after they came back to America from China in 1934, both Walsh and Buck got divorced and married each other, and their marriage was seen as an ideal match between a novelist and a publisher in the New York intellectual circles at the time. Another purpose for Walsh’s visit to China in 1933 was to identify and recruit more China writers. Since Pearl Buck’s China writings had proved to be a huge success, Walsh realized there was a great market for China writings in America at the time. When in a dinner party Lin Yutang told Buck he had always wanted to write a book to tell the world his own views of Chinese culture, he was offered a book contract by Richard Walsh right away. And the consequent book My Country and My People turned out to be a runaway bestseller in America, so much so that Walsh sent a telegram to Lin to urge him to come to the States to meet his enthusiastic readers. As soon as the Lins embarked on American shore, however, the Walshes became their host and the Lins became their guest. In the eye of the American public, according to Ernest Hauser, the Lins were “probably the world’s most extraordinary family. If Lin is a literary curiosity, the Lin family is a downright curio, straight from the shelves of a Chinese curio shop.”6 Such a “downright curio” was protected by the Walshes, as their extensive relationship affects all aspects of Lin’s life in America. For instance, in looking for a rental apartment in New York, it was the Walshes who would furnish the Lins with a recommendation letter. The Lins would go to spend the weekend quite frequently on the Walshes’ farm in Pennsylvania. More significantly, since Walsh was Lin’s publisher, he was also responsible for Lin’s financial situation in America—Lin would advance, borrow or deposit money in the John Day Company’s account as the situations arise, especially in terms of tax considerations. In addition, Richard Walsh also acts as Lin’s publisher, literary agent, press agent and

6 Ernest O Hauser, “Wise Guy from the East,” Who magazine (October, 1941): 54. 166 chapter six

public relations adviser. In one of Lin’s daughters’ word: “Mr. Walsh does everything for us.”7 In that case, it would not be surprising that the Walshes would feel they were kind of benefactors and patrons to Lin Yutang. In one of Walsh’s letters to Lin Yutang, Walsh writes: Dear Y. T.: This letter is to put on record certain ideas we discussed the past weekend...... 4. I am to begin now the preparation of manuscript of a book to [be] called tentatively LETTERS OF AN AUTHOR: To his Publisher and Others. This book will consist chiefly of your letters, with a considerable amount of explanatory comment written by me, and perhaps some extracts from my letters to you. You will have complete authority to exclude any in whole or in part, and all of my comment must be approved by you before publication ...... The main point will be the progress of an author from the unknown to best-sellerdom, with any points which should be helpful to aspiring writers; but there will also be a good deal of general interest about life, literature and your family and travels, and about the war. I shall show you up as a well-rounded person, and to some extent the book will be a section of your biography. Perhaps in future years I might write a full- length biography of you. What about that?8 Walsh never wrote a biography of Lin Yutang, nor did the book of correspondence ever appear. But apparently, that idea was entertained for a long period of time, as in 1948, we still find the following reference from Walsh: “Whenever I am not pressed with immediate work I go on with the review of our correspondence. I have now reached the end of 1937. I still do not quite see the form the book would take, and indeed, am trying not to let my ideas fixed until I have gone through to the end, right up to our latest exchange of letters.”9 On the whole, between Lin Yutang and the Walshes is a unique collaborative cooperation between cosmopolitan intellectuals East and

7 Dalgliesh to Walsh, November 10, 1942, the John Day Company Archive. 8 Walsh to Lin Yutang, October 20, 1941, the John Day Company Archive. 9 Richard Walsh to Lin Yutang, November 8, 1948, The John Day Company Archive, Box 163, Folder 15. Perhaps one of the consequences of the idea of the book was that the John Day Company archive deposited at Princeton University only contains their correspondence starting from 1941. It is likely that the previous letters that had been reviewed for the purpose of the book have been taken out and put aside. But the extensive collection of the remaining letters up to 1953 gives us a pretty good idea about the extent and the nature of their friendship and collaboration. oriental other 167

West. Richard Walsh was an able and broadly liberal publisher well- connected in the New York intellectual circles. As Editor of Asia magazine, he was also very active in promoting the awareness of Asia in American public mind during the war period. He was open and broad- minded enough to see the talent in both Pearl Buck and Lin Yutang, and all three of them shared many of the liberal cosmopolitan ideals. Most importantly, they worked as a team in a sense and complemented each other in the production of China writings in America. As the most popular writer on China at the time, Pearl Buck concentrated her writings on the farmers and popular Chinese scenery, while her authenticity was validated by the native Chinese writer Lin Yutang. On the other hand, Lin Yutang concentrated his portrait of China on the more elite culture and its philosophy of life, and Pearl Buck added a preface to situate Lin’s writings in American perspectives. And Richard Walsh is responsible for the production of their works, including their planning, editing and the publicity work. Together, they changed and created a new horizon in American understanding of China. It is in this light that we will examine Lin Yutang’s representation of Chinese culture in his American writings. In other words, to understand Lin’s American success, it is necessary to situate it comparatively in the context of the popular reception of Pearl Buck’s China writings.

“Human” Chinese Peasant in an American Province

Recent cultural studies on the history of the American understanding of China and the Chinese have focused on the racialization of such negative images as the ﬁgures of Charlie Chan or Fu Manchu in popular American imagination.10 Yet according to Harold Isaacs’ study, the most inﬂuential writer on China and the Chinese in America during the 1930’s and the War Period was Pearl S. Buck: “No single book about China has had a greater impact than her famous novel, The Good Earth. It can be said that for a whole generation of Americans she ‘created’ the Chinese.”11 In Isaacs’ opinion, Buck’s portrayal of the Chinese has produced largely positive images of the Chinese and

10 See William F. Wu, The Yellow Peril: Chinese Americans in American Fiction, 1850–1940; Elaine Kim, Asian American Literature. 11 Harold R. Isaacs, Scratches on Our Minds: American Images of China and India, p. 155. 168 chapter six has contributed to generating tremendous good will of the American public for the Chinese. However, a simple dichotomy of positive or negative images is not congenial to a more productive understanding of such cross-cultural representation. A comparative look at the strategic effects and manner of production of such images by Pearl S. Buck and Lin Yutang may reveal quite unsettling questions. The publication of The Good Earth in 1931 proved to be a landmark event in the history of American representation of China and the Chinese. It became one of the most famous bestsellers not only in the history of American fiction, but in the world at large—it has been translated into more than thirty different languages. The novel basically tells a very simple story of the life of an ordinary Chinese peasant named Wang Lung: how he got a wife named O-lan, how they raised a family, ploughed the land, suffered from drought, and with a piece of luck and mostly hard work, how they eventually became well- to-do farmers. It is amazing that such an unsentimental novel about a farmer’s life could capture the imagination of millions of Ameri- can readers. Perhaps we can find some clues in an “advance report” published in the Book-of-the-Month Club Newsletter, written by Henry Seidel Canby, Chairman of the Club’s Editorial Board: Fiction, which is our history of the present, slowly extends its bounds. Quietly and almost unnoticed, the art of skillful realism has passed beyond our own people, beyond our own civilization, and has begun to deal with strange cultures, which we have never tried to know from the inside, as they see themselves. The Chinese, the South Sea Islanders, the Africans are no longer merely quaint or picturesque. The novelist begins to look at them as the scientist observes them, with industrious attempts to understand and explain. Mrs. Buck is an American long resident in China. Her The Good Earth is a superb example of this intuition, and in its way a unique book. China is the mysterious cloud on the horizon for all of us . . . The Good Earth is China. In this story . . . , Wang Lung, the hero, knows of no desire so strong as the Chinese desire for land, which means security; his customs are the only right customs; his misfortunes China has always suffered; he gets rich by Chinese industry, and his happiness is Chinese happiness. The people in this rather thrilling story are not “queer” or “exotic,” they are as natural as their soil. They are so intensely human that after the first chapter you are more interested in their humanity than in the novelties of belief and habit.12

12 Henry Seidel Canby, “Advance Report on The Good Earth,” Book-of-the-Month Club News, p. 1. oriental other 169

Canby’s concise but sharp observations need a little elaboration. First of all, the significance of Buck’s novel is directly attributable to the opening of the cultural horizon in fictional narratives that begin to encompass “strange cultures.” When non-Western cultures have become proper objects of study for anthropology, Pearl S. Buck’s “Chi- nese” adds an important dimension to the range of “strange cultures” such as African and South Pacific. However, in Canby’s projection, “going beyond our people, going beyond our civilization” does not mean to create an alternative space of meaning. Rather, the meaning of Buck’s “thrilling” “Chinese” ethnography lies in the extension of our boundary of imagination as such. As Carl Van Doren puts it succinctly: “Pearl Buck had added to American fiction one of its larger provinces.”13 Within such enlarged province, the “Chinese” are just like us on the same level of universal humanity. Such projection of human universality diverts from the representation of the “strange cultures” as “quaint,” “queer” or “exotic.” The Good Earth is an ethnographic novel. As such, it approaches its narrative subjects through scientific realism. In this respect, Buck’s representation of Chinese is certainly different from the popular images of either the villainous and queer Fu Manchu or the wise and quaint Charlie Chan. The ethnographic novelist’s gaze upon her subject matter is identical with the human scientist’s—anthropologist’s—observation of the natives in that its methodological assumption has to be based upon scientific objectivity. The criteria of ethnographic objectivity are ultimately not concerned with the value judgment of the “strangeness” of the peoples represented. If, according to William Wu, the duality of the “evil” Fu Manchu and the “good” Charlie Chan is a racial representation with the former embodying the threat of yellow power and the latter supporting white supremacy, Pearl S. Buck’s Wang Lung offers a scientifically realistic alternative to the popular images of the Chinese. The primary objective of ethnography is production of hitherto unknown and unfamiliar knowledge upon territories beyond our boundary. What The Good Earth offers is “China,” a panoramic view of the vicissitudes of ordinary Chinese life through the rise and fall of an archetypical peasant family. What is most interesting about Buck’s representation of the Chinese is the intricate complex of identity and difference in the presentation

13 Carl Van Doran, The American Novel 1789–1939, p. 353. 170 chapter six of an ethno/graphic knowledge about “China” enveloped in a discourse of universality of being “human.” The Chinese being “elevated” to the level of human status, the ethnographic novelist clears the cloudy mystery surrounding “China” and offers a realistic portrayal of the different—for home (American) consumption. Thus the character of Wang Lung is seen as an archetype of ordinary Chinese people—not necessarily less moral—morality is universally human, but certainly self-effacing, which is sympathetically different. And his desire is “Chinese desire,” his diligence is “Chinese industry,” and his happiness is also “Chinese happiness”—as if these notions were self-explanatory. While the discourse of universality requires a realistic graphic portrayal of the ethnos, the sympathetic difference adds a romantic charm of the far-away to the self-realm of cognitive identity. Therefore, “the strange is made familiar, and the familiar is made pleasantly strange.”14 The blending of the familiar and the strange is also a marketing strategy. Actually, the success of the novel owes, first of all, to the marketing strategy of the John Day Company, especially its publisher Richard Walsh. Before it went to the general public, Walsh had already known it would be a bestseller, as he explains in his letter to Buck who was residing at the time in Nanjing, China: Your characters are drawn with such fidelity that the reader has no dif- ficulty in forgetting that they are not of his own race and in sharing their emotions as human beings. By your choice of incidents you have somehow succeeded in making us feel that we are seeing almost the whole of the life of the plain people of China in all its details from birth to death. Over and above all this, I believe that you have here written a book of permanent importance, one that will rank with the great novels of soil which have come out of other lands.15 To a shrewd publisher like Walsh, who had to face the general prejudice against books about China in the market at that time, it is of primary importance to emphasize the universal appeal of the novel. The manuscript of the novel went through little editing either in terms of its content or style except for one significant detail: Pearl S. Buck originally called her novel Wang Lung, but according to Walsh, that

14 Paul A. Doyle, Pearl S. Buck, p. 37. 15 Richard Walsh to Pearl S. Buck, July 25, 1930, the John Day Company Archive. oriental other 171 was impossible as a book title because it does not mean anything and sounds awkward in English. Walsh then suggested the title The Good Earth, which brings about the universal appeal in terms of one’s affec- tion towards the land and soil. The fact that publishers and critics need to emphasize the appeal of universal humanity betrays the underlying assumption that they are reading an alien story. After all, readers have to forget that Buck’s characters are not of their own race to appreciate its universal appeal, but such temporary “forgetting” by no means negates, but rather only enhances, the ethnographic appeal of the novel. One year later, however, when the interest in China was rising, the novel took on a new jacket design with a colorful Chinese girl on it.16 Without changing a word in the narrative, the reader’s structure of feeling could already be predisposed depending on the swing of the familiar and the strange in the complex of identity and difference. The American nationalist reception of Buck’s ethnographic portrayal of China also corresponds to the assumed American identity of Pearl S. Buck. Given the fact that Pearl S. Buck grew up in China and did not come back to settle down in the US until she was forty, one may suspect that her identification with both China and America may be rather complex and subtle. When we look at Pearl S. Buck’s own pronouncement concerning her Chinese-American identifications, the picture becomes indeed quite mosaic. When Buck came to the US for the first time after she had already become a celebrity, she gave an interview with S. J. Woolf on The New York Times, which became virtually her first self-introduction to the American public. In that interview, Buck explains that there are three kinds of foreigners in China: legation colonial officials, businessmen and missionaries, all of them live in big cities, socialize in their own circles separate from the local Chinese. She, however, has few friends and little to do with them, since all her life she has lived closely with the local Chinese. “Except for one sister younger than I, all my play- mates were the children of natives,” and she was also brought up by an old Chinese nurse who would tell her all sorts of incredible stories, tales and legends in the Chinese folklore, so that “by the time I was sent to school at Shanghai I had ceased to think of myself as different from the Chinese, if indeed I had ever thought so. China was a part

16 Richard Walsh to Pearl S. Buck, May 7, 1931, the John Day Company Archive. 172 chapter six of me so inbred that I do not think I shall ever lose it.”17 Buck’s first “culture shock,” not surprisingly, was when she was sent to Randolph Macon College when she was seventeen: When I got home to Virginia—for, no matter where we were, Virginia was always home to my mother—I was a very lonely girl. My fellow students at college had their friends and interests, which were all foreign to me. It was some time before I could adjust myself, and I think it was from them rather than from my Chinese friends that I first learned that, after all, race and color were not insurmountable. I felt closer and more akin to my friends whom I had left than to these girls of my own race. It is hard to explain the position in which I found myself. Yet little by little I began to see that the girls from Richmond were essentially the same as my friends in Ching-kiang. Circumstances might affect some of their ideas, but basically they were alike. Despite this, however, I did not enjoy my college life very much. I can easily understand how a Chinese girl feels when she comes here, for during a large part of the time I went to college I was always an object of curiosity to many of the students. To each newcomer I was pointed out as a freak who had lived in China all her life and who could speak Chinese as well as English.18 The fact that Buck lived all her life in China, not regarded as “Other” but as “one” among the Chinese, proficient in both Chinese and Eng- lish, was apparently very important to Buck’s self-consciousness. A good case in point is concerned with Buck’s style of writing. Richard Walsh always appreciated her simple style, which attracted him to her first book East Wind West Wind, and he never explained why a simple style from Buck is commercially attractive. To certain contemporary Asian American writer growing up reading Pearl S. Buck, for instance, The Good Earth may read like “a children’s story for adults.”19 Does Buck’s simple style contribute to the effect that Chinese speak a (childlike) “Chinese speech” fit only for a primitive native? The critics who hailed and promoted The Good Earth will not admit that, of course. Instead, a certain Mr. Peffer commented that the novel echoes with Biblical effects. When this review was forwarded from Walsh to Buck, the latter acknowledges, as an afterthought, the influence of King James Bible she used to read as a child, so that in the consequent

17 S. J. Woolf, “Pearl Buck Talks of Her Life in China,” New York Times 17 (August 22, 1932): 7. 18 Ibid. 19 Sigrid Nunez, A Feather on the Breath of God, p. 17. oriental other 173 promotion of Buck’s novel, “biblical prose” became the standard phrase to describe her style. But what Buck had originally explained to her agent David Lloyd was the following: When I read my work over critically, I see the book is written in a style that may seem a little stiff, or somehow not quite like other books. This, I suppose, is because in my mind the story spun itself in the Chinese language and I translate as I wrote. Of course I am quite bi-lingual in English and Chinese—in fact, I believe I spoke Chinese first and was taught English. I was not conscious of this style as I wrote, and afterwards was puzzled to know what to do about it, since the Americans may not like it. But when I tried, as I did, to re-write it, the people were all wrong. It was though I dragged them into a foreign house and they did not know how to behave.20 What we have here is a case where a bilingual writer, whose profi- ciency of either language could be rather different from that of either native writer, writing and translating between the two languages, seems to have some definite idea about how speakers of one of her languages should be represented authentically in another. She may, or may not, be aware of what kind of effect such a translated product may produce in the public reception of the speakers of the targeted language. Of course, Buck’s worry proved unnecessary as the Americans loved her style. However, the American nationalist reception, which embraces Buck’s “China” as one of its enlarged provinces, neglects Buck’s essential identity as a bilingual translator who may not fit for the assigned residence in that province. In the light of the nationalist assumption, the special persona of Pearl S. Buck the author was always important in the public eye. The special appeal of Buck’s “China books” was partly due to the author’s own China-bearing. The fact that Buck was writing China “from the inside” lends the best of anthropological authenticity to her China portrayal. As Canby puts it, “It is not necessary to question Mrs. Buck’s knowledge of these Chinese people. It is guaranteed by her experience.”21 Indeed, in promoting Pearl S. Buck, Richard Walsh created a special kind of aura surrounding Buck’s China-ness—her remoteness in the interior of China, her shun- ning away from publicity, and the fact that she signed her letter with a Chinese seal in her Chinese name, and so forth. However, Pearl S.

20 Pearl S. Buck to David Lloyd, June 25, 1930, the John Day Company Archive. 21 Henry Seidel Canby, “Advance Report on The Good Earth,” Book-of-the-Month Club News, p. 1. 174 chapter six

Buck was never taken as an “informant,” so to speak, but rather as an “anthropologist” par excellence, that is, her American-ness was never in question, even though she was virtually born and brought up in China.22 To award Pearl S. Buck the Pulitzer Prize, for instance, the board changed the criteria that it should be for a book on American subject matter to “for the best novel by an American author.” Perhaps the opening line of a review for Buck’s ﬁrst book East Wind West Wind best captures the public perception of Buck’s identity: “Only one, who like the author, has lived all her life in China, yet being American still holds to western concepts of romantic love, marriage and the scope of ﬁlial duty—only a lover of China, but no convert to her code of

22 When The Good Earth was running wild, there was much public demand concerning the author so that the John Day Company solicited biographical information concerning Pearl S. Buck. A letter from a certain Dorothy Tardy Perry reads: I understand that you wish information for a publicity or personality story about Pearl S. Buck. A recently returned missionary has given me this information: her father is the Reverend Sydenstriker, a member of the Southern Presbyterian mission, and lived for many years at Tsing Chiang Pu, on the Grand Canal. Mrs. Buck was born in China, and was married in 1917 to J. Lossing Buck, a representative of the Northern Presbyterian Church, who is on the faculty of Nanking University, in the department of agriculture. (Dorothy Tardy Perry to Richard Walsh, July 19, 1931, the John Day Company Archive) Another letter from Pearl S. Buck’s agent David Lloyd to the John Day Company, concerning the eligibility of Pearl S. Buck for the Pulitzer Prize, reads: Referring to your enquiry: Mrs. Pearl S. Buck was born on June 26, 1890, in Academy (now Hillsboro) Pocahontas Co., W. Virginia. What I had in mind about the Pulitzer Prize is the limitation by the terms of the deed to American subject matter, at least in so far as the novel receiving the award is expected to present the wholesome atmosphere of American life and the highest standard of American manners and manhood. Of course the terms for all such prizes are subject to interpretation under successive awards, but my feeling has been that the terms laid down for the novel would make it difficult to go so definitely into a non-American situation and atmosphere as presented in Mrs. Buck’s book. However, if an exception can be induced so much the better. (David Lloyd to Richard Walsh, November 17, 1931, the John Day Company Archive) However, a letter from Pearl S. Buck to Richard Walsh states the following: I am so astonished by the number of places in which I seem to have been born and the varying years of my birth that for accurate information may I say that I was born in Hillsboro, W. Va., June 26, 1892? Will you see that your files have this information accurately? (Pearl S. Buck to Richard Walsh, June 16, 1932, the John Day Company Archive) Buck does not provide any evidence here, and the story that was later circulated and accepted was that she was taken back to China when she was four months old. It is interesting to note that Buck’s accidental birth on American soil, if that was the case, proved to be rather useful to her. oriental other 175 family and clan supremacy over the individual, could have written this beautiful novel.”23

Chinese Happiness and Chinese Philosopher

When Pearl Buck’s China writings had opened up a new horizon for American imagination and understanding of China, Lin Yutang timely entered the vista and became another most popular China-author for the American public. However, Lin’s strategy for cross-cultural intervention and the manner in which he was received in terms of his agency were not entirely the same as Buck’s. Lin’s first English book My Country and My People was written when Lin was in China. Although that book was Lin’s first best-seller in the US, it was his first book written in the US—The Importance of Living— that actually established his literary status in the US. It was not only the Book-of-the-Month selection, but also the No. 1 national best-seller for the entire year of 1938. With such popular reception, Lin Yutang won the honorable name of “Chinese philosopher.” It is actually not that surprising for the American public to see philosophical significance in Lin’s writings. The Importance of Living and My Country and My People were in a sense crystallization of Lin’s ideas already expressed in his Little Critic essays. In other words, the kind of philosophy of life contained in these books had already been worked out in Lin’s literary practices in Shanghai, as I have discussed in previous chapters. As philosopher, Lin Yutang was not original as he frankly admitted himself. What is original about Lin’s philosophy is that it is derived from his unique cross-cultural synthesis out of East-West fusion of horizons. What is interesting about Lin’s American success is that the displacement of Lin’s philosophy of life achieves a much more positive effect. While Lin’s style of aesthetics of existence was attractive to the emerging urban readers in China, his re-appropriation of traditional Chinese culture, as exemplified in his rediscovery of Yuan Zhonglang, met severe criticism and even ridicule, and was regarded as a regressive turn in historical progress of modern China. In America, however, the middle-class reading public not only appreciate his urbane philosophy

23 “Chinese Life,” Rev. of East Wind West Wind by Pearl S. Buck, New York Times 8 (April 20, 1930): 2. 176 chapter six of life as a whole, but particularly adore the part of Chinese cultural wisdom Lin translates. The impact of Lin’s philosophy of detachment and tolerable irony upon the American middle-class reading public has been enormous: “Your book, The Importance of Living, has become my bible,” writes a lady from Wallace, Idaho; “I keep it near my bed and I could not imagine living without it.” “Your books have changed my life,” says a soda clerk from Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn; “I have been commuting for years, being in a mad rush practically all the time. Now I know that something is wrong. I am reading your books and I think I am beginning to understand life.” “That chapter on the thirty-three Happy Moments,” a big industrialist in Pittsburgh has his secretary type—“I read it every evening before retiring. Thank you for having written it: it makes me feel thirty-three times more wisely about life.”24 The “Thirty-three Happy Moments” was from a piece of familiar writing by Jin Shengtan, an important member of the “xingling” school that Lin was most enthusiastic to rediscover and promote in China. According to Lin’s fan mail, this little piece was the most popular bit of writing he ever did, to Lin’s own amazement. For it was not even his own writing, he merely translated a seventeenth-century Chinese scholar, yet through his translation, the classical writing of the Chinese scholar got a belated hit in another culture. What Jin noted down as his happy moments were very simple things in life that surely convey universal appeal: sudden shower on a hot stuffy day, meeting an old friend unexpectedly, tearing up old I.O.U.s from people who were either dead or unable to repay the money, or “a magistrate orders the beating of the drum and calls it a day.”25 In that light, Lin’s translation of Chinese culture has successfully struck a universal echo in modern American readers. This is quite an unprecedented event in the cross-cultural interpenetration between China and America. Historically, due to the inﬂuence of European Chinoiserie, American transcendentalists showed an interest in classical Chinese culture while the nineteenth-century missionary exposition of Chinese culture, as exempliﬁed in Arthur Smith’s Chinese Charac- teristics, was meant to reveal the inadequacies of Chinese culture in comparison to the Christian religion so as to demonstrate the necessity of the mission in China. Pearl S. Buck tried to distance herself

24 Ernest O Hauser, “Wise Guy from the East,” Who magazine (October, 1941): 52. 25 Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living, p. 135. oriental other 177 from such missionary arrogance, but her attempt to humanize Chinese peasant on a universal ground still betrays the underlying patronizing assumption that the Chinese are of a different race whose happiness is “Chinese happiness.” By contrast, Lin Yutang’s translation was able to convince American readers that a seventeenth-century Chinese scholar’s happiness could also be their happiness. The effect of Lin’s cross- cultural translation was such that traditional Chinese culture, taken at certain level of universality, had become something to be absorbed and emulated by the target culture. Indeed, Chinese culture through Lin’s translation may have offered real alternative space of meaning for the receiving culture. Unfortunately, Lin’s representation of Chi- nese culture relies on certain shaky and perplexing assumptions. At the outset, Lin’s American writings were results from a carefully market-oriented strategy under the advice of his publisher the John Day Company. When My Country and My People became a bestseller, what the readers were most enthusiastic about was not the “characteristics of the Chinese,” but the short chapter on the Chinese “Art of Living.” So Richard Walsh believed that it was most feasible for Lin to follow on the topic in his next project. As Lin himself explains to his Chinese audience in his letter to Tao Kangde : That one can appreciate snow, listen to the sound of the rain, echo with the wind, fondle the moon, view the mountain, play with the water, look at the cloud and differentiate and enjoy the stone, these are wonderfully enticing topics for the Westerners. The emphasis in My Country and My People was not on that, yet most readers paid most attention to the short chapter on the “Art of Living” that mentions food and house and gardens. Especially American ladies are said to hold that as guides to their life. Indeed, in the appreciation of ﬂowers and the moon lies the Chi- nese poets’ philosophy of life that promotes an attitude of detachment, a sense of high-mindedness, leisure and recluse, nonchalance and tolerance. That is precisely the right prescription for the hustle and bustle of American life. Because many readers like to know the secret of the proper ways to appreciate the wind and the moon and to enjoy family life, my publisher asked me to write this book The Importance of Living. The focus is not on Laozi and Zhuangzi, yet the spirit of Taoism permeates; nor on Confucius and Mencius, yet Confucianism lies within. That is the genesis for my writing the book.26

26 Lin Yutang, “Guanyu Wuguo Wumin” (On My Country and My People). Yuzhoufeng (Cosmic Wind) 49 (October 16, 1937): 31. 178 chapter six

It is quite clear that the production of The Importance of Living was to serve some very practical ends—American ladies’ desire for a more enjoyable and colorful family life. What differentiates Lin’s bestseller from other self-help books that offer specific techniques to achieve a good life is that Lin blends Chinese philosophical wisdom into the “art of living.” Through the act of translating, Lin became the “Chinese philosopher” for millions of middle-class American readers. Likewise, average American readers were able to feel uplifted with “culture” instilled into their normal life. In other words, Lin Yutang brought “culture,” classical Chinese culture for that matter, to contemporary middle-class American audience. Unlike Lin’s own reclaim of traditional Chinese culture as a returned Western-trained intellectual in China, which affords him a bilingual and bi-cultural identity, American readers’ take on classical Chinese culture rests on a different kind of assumption. While American readers see the universal wisdom in classical Chinese culture that they could well emulate, both the publisher and Lin knew that Chinese culture will always be the Other in the eye of the American readers. In Lin’s cross-cultural mediation of Chinese culture, the complex of identity and difference surely applies. Two strategic moves in the production of The Importance of Living may reveal the complex of identity and difference in practice. As Lin tells us, he originally did not plan to write a book. Rather, he intended merely to translate several classics that are sufficient to represent Chi- nese art of life and cultural spirit. But Richard Walsh insisted that he should write his own book first. Both the straight translation and the original work are supposed to serving the same end, yet Walsh and Lin did not explain why the latter is more desirable. Another interesting detail during the process of writing the book, as Lin tells us, is that after some 260 pages into the book and two months of hard work, Lin suddenly burned all his drafts and began anew, “because the whole framework was based on an overall criticism of modern West- ern materialist culture, and the criticism became deeper and deeper and the style became more and more argumentative.”27 Indeed, these two moves were essential in ensuring the popular success of the book. The key to the success of translating an alien culture regarded as the Other is to achieve a subtle balance in the representation of identity and difference. A straight translation of Chinese classics may not work

27 Ibid. oriental other 179 because it lacks the kind of intimacy a living author could convey, so that American readers could easily identify with. It takes a cross- cultural agent to translate the message to make it work. On the other hand, an overall indictment of the fundamentals of the Western culture would inevitably alienate the native readers, no matter how wonderful and attractive the Other culture may be. Lin’s strategy of translating Chinese literature and culture is not confrontational, but rather complementary, poised to achieving the subtle equilibrium in the representation of identity and difference. In translating Jin Shengtan’s thirty-three happy moments, for instance, Lin employed the familiar style approach to translate the seventeenth-century semi-classical Chi- nese so that American readers feel as if they were having a personal communication with a contemporary friend. To achieve the personal intimate effect, Lin’s translation was by no means literal or faithful and the translated English does not have any sense of archaism as it certainly does in the original. But strangely, Lin translated the 1–33 numbering as identical “I, I, I . . . .” followed by a footnote which reads: “When a Chinese draws up a set of seventeen or eighteen regulations, it is his custom (the idiom of our language) to set down as ‘Articles 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1,’ etc.”28 One wonders why the entire semi-classical Chinese text was translated into modern familiar English while the numerical ordering was translated into a strange and abnormal format, which was apparently not faithful to the original since Jin’s original style was perfectly normal in the semi-classical Chinese context. It is as if to remind the reader, with an exotic format, that they are after all reading a text translated from a different culture—in case they were lost in their identification with the fluent familiar English and the sound universal wisdom contained in the text. A most crucial aspect in Lin’s cross-cultural representation of Chi- nese culture is the problematic of the identity of the agent. In embracing Pearl S. Buck as a “China-writer,” the American reading public on the whole did not take Buck as the Other. “China” in Buck’s writings was assumed as the Other, and was intended to be shown as sharing universal human values—just like an enlarged “American province,” while the author’s American-ness was taken for granted, even though she grew up and lived in China for her first forty years. By contrast, Lin Yutang grew up in a Chinese Christian family, was first known

28 Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living, p. 131. 180 chapter six in China as representing the elite group of Westernized intellectuals, but he was unquestionably regarded as the Other—as a most agree- able, witty and wise “Chinese philosopher.” As cross-cultural writers, both Buck’s “Chinese-ness” and Lin’s “Western-ness” were duly recognized. But Buck’s “Chinese-ness” was that of an anthropologist doing his fieldwork. Lin’s “Western-ness” was certainly shown in his fluent English, but that was taken as a “native” who has acquired the minimum requirement for communication. As such, Lin’s cosmopolitan identity as bilingual and bicultural elite in China got displaced in America into an ethnic identity of otherness where his “Chinese- ness” assumes paramount significance. Such displacement in the role of agency underlies the problematic of Lin’s cross-cultural translation and representation in America. It is this tension between a self-styled modern cosmopolitan and a perceived oriental Chinese that lies at the root of Lin’s many frustrations in his literary practices in America. Ironically, Lin Yutang himself contributes much to such tension in his role play as a cross-cultural agent. The first time Lin posed himself to American audience was in his “Preface” and “Prologue” of My Country and My People. Together with Pearl Buck’s “Introduction,” they form an interesting set of arguments in which we find a carefully carved disposition of Lin’s agency. In his short “Preface,” Lin starts out by claiming that he is not one of those “patriots,” as their kind of patriotism only belittles China by way of their whitewashing. Lin may also love his own country, but he is not ashamed of her and believes China is “bigger than her little patriots.”29 This certainly reminds one of Pearl Buck’s stance and Lin’s defense of it against modern Chinese intellectuals as I outlined before. In the “Prologue,” however, Lin positions himself against Western observers of China, the so-called “Old China Hands.” With a sense of humor, Lin charges that it is a great pity that those so-called Old China Hands are the authorities on China. Whether they are businessmen, missionaries or journalists, they share the same feature—their experience in China is so removed from real Chinese life that their knowledge of China is at best jejune, if not prejudiced. Since they live in their own circles, their knowledge of China is limited to their contact with their Chinese cooks and amahs and their pidgin. It is not that they are in need of sympathy towards the Chinese, Lin contends, it is precisely

29 Lin Yutang, My Country and My People, p. xiii. oriental other 181

“his humanity that cannot stand the sight of human misery and poverty, as understood in his own terms.”30 Such humanity is disguise for otherness that in turn blocks the perception into real humanity in Chinese life. Lin hastens to add, however, to be Chinese does not guarantee that he be the best interpreter of China, since a Chinese interpreter may be too involved in his own world to maintain a clear vision—“Self-knowledge is proverbially difﬁcult, much more so in a circumstance where a great deal of wholesome, sane-minded criticism is required.”31 As modern educated Chinese are most likely to be torn from their love of China and their admiration of the West, they may be even more biased than the foreign observer. So the task for interpreting China in the true light falls on a different kind of native Chinese—the modern cosmopolitan Chinese who has re-discovered his Chinese-ness. This modern Chinese will have the cool detachment necessary to acquire critical self-knowledge, as he has already seen the world, so to speak, yet he has also “returned home” and re-connected to his Chinese father and Chinese mother—“He explores the beauties and glories of the West, but he comes back to the East, his Oriental blood overcoming him when he is approaching forty.”32 In a sense, Lin’s critical posing of his role as a cross-cultural agent is quite in accordance with his bilingual identity as a returned cosmopolitan intellectual in China. But taken in the American context, Lin’s discourse on his cross-cultural identity takes on a different effect, especially when we consider Pearl Buck’s “Introduction” as constituting the framing effect in introducing Lin Yutang to American audience. Buck’s thesis here is consistent with her argument with modern Chinese intellectuals. Modern Chinese educated abroad had become “foreign Chi- nese” in that they have been deeply affected by the modernity of the West and have thus removed themselves from the “sturdy medieval- ism” of the Chinese masses. Typically they suffer from the inferiority complex which leads to a twisted personality of fancy admiration and hatred of the West. However, Buck tells us that there is a new wave of self-discovery going on among certain young generation of intellectuals where they begin to take a second look at their own Chinese roots and to really appreciate old Chinese philosophy of life. “They are

30 Ibid., p. 9. 31 Ibid., p. 12. 32 Ibid., p. 14. 182 chapter six beginning to feel themselves happy that there is this great solid foundation in their nation, and to turn to it eagerly for fresh inspiration. It is new to them, it is delightful, it is humorous, it is worth having, and above all, it is purely Chinese.”33 In Buck’s view, this return to the Old China is a necessary condition for a detached interpreter of China to the West. Lin Yutang ﬁts the prescription perfectly. As we can see now, in the American context, Lin’s “Chinese-ness” has become a precondition for his cross-cultural agency. While being an oriental native adds to the power of authenticity in his translating act, such a prescribed role is ultimately limiting. When Lin and the Walshes agree on their particular strategies of interpreting China to America, the close “entente cordiale” works just ﬁne. But when Lin’s stay in America prolongs and their disagreements do occur, the tension concerning the displacement of Lin’s cosmopolitan identity comes to the forefront. The incident concerning the fate of what Lin Yutang called his “deepest book,” as well as the actual production of Lin’s selection and commentary on American culture—On the Wis- dom of America, as revealed in their correspondences kept in the John Day Company archive, highlight the different cosmopolitan role the “American Lin Yutang” had been conditioned to assume.

Lin Yutang’s Masterpiece

According to Lin’s correspondences with Richard Walsh, Lin had finished his novel A Leaf in the Storm by October 1941. His next book The Wisdom of China and India did not appear until 1942. Actually their correspondences show that between November 1941 and May 1942 Lin Yutang had composed another book, written entirely in verse, which Lin calls “the deepest book I have written, and the most inspired.”34 It was first tentatively entitled “A Man Thinking,” later it was also referred to as “Journey to Peace,” and Lin also pondered upon a couple of other alternative titles: “Listen, Amelia!” and “Eirenicon—A Journey to Peace.” “Written under the terrific emotional impact of the whole Malay campaign, the Cripps mission and especially the

33 Pearl S. Buck, “Introduction,” My Country and My People, p. x. 34 Lin Yutang to Richard Walsh, June 2, 1942, the John Day Company Archive. oriental other 183

Burma campaign,”35 the book is emotionally charged with a Vision, a critical commentary and philosophical meditation upon the human condition and the character of the age at the height of the Second World War, as well as the conditions and possibilities of peace in the post-war era. When the first thirty-five pages of “A Man Thinking” were presented to Richard Walsh, he replied (speaking for Pearl Buck as well) with a caution. He first acknowledged that Lin had a great idea to begin with, but then raised their objection to producing a long book in verse since neither of them cared much for blank verse for one thing, and nor did the American readers in general. Most importantly, Walsh reminded Lin of his public image in America, as he put it: “You are obviously writing under two influences—one, Nietzsche and the other, Whitman. This may be all right for a passage here and there. But I think that you will make a great mistake writing a whole book under any Western influence, either in thought or style. You are a Chinese. Your great reputation in this country is built upon your skill in presenting a Chinese point of view and in the Chinese manner, even though you write in English. When you write in European or American vein, you are doing the very thing which has made the work of John Wu impossible for publication here, the thing of which other Western-reared Chinese have so often been accused, and which you have successfully avoided hitherto.”36 Apparently, Walsh did not feel inappropriate at all to remind Lin “You are a Chinese.” Rather, he took it as his job to protect Lin’s reputation as well as, of course, the sale of Lin’s works. Nor did Lin seem to mind Walsh’s friendly reminder and caution. In fact, Lin replied graciously, as usual, that he would be flexible towards the form the book will take as he wrote on, letting the final form, whether entirely in verse or in part, be decided later. And then Walsh replied quite enthusiastically, admir- ing “the large sweep and penetration of the ideas” Lin was putting in his book, and encouraged him to “go right along, without worrying about form or details, letting the ideas carry you.”37 By May 19, 1942, Lin had finished the manuscript, and in a note to accompany the manuscript sent to Walsh, Lin cautioned: “The

35 Ibid., May 19, 1942. 36 Richard Walsh to Lin Yutang, March 9, 1942, the John Day Company Archive. 37 Ibid., May 13, 1942. 184 chapter six

character of the book will probably surprise you, in spite of what you have read already.”38 Lin went on to defend that he had made inten- sive study on verse composition and believed that he had mastered the technique. But he also conceded that, “in regard to diction, I still feel dependent on your sense of English—whether a phrase is trite or not, etc.”39 And Lin urged both Dick and Pearl to give him the benefit of their advice. They did, and their “advice” turned out to be quite negative. In Pearl Buck’s response, she complained that she could not really see the theme or the meaning of “a man thinking.” Not surprisingly, however, the main criticism was still concerned with Lin’s identity as a bestselling author in America: “Three fourths of the book seems to me derivative, that is one can spot here and there and too often what Y.T. has been reading. There are bits that make one think of Poe, there are bits that make one think of Longfellow, there are bits that make one think of James Joyce...... A book of this sort would have eminent value if it came out of Chinese sources. We are all too familiar with the western sources not to recognize them here and to feel them stale. But the Chinese sources people do not know. If it could be a Chinese man thinking, out of Chinese wisdom, with Chinese philosophy, it might seem fresh and original.”40 What is most interesting is a page of mar- gin comment written either by Richard Walsh or Pearl Buck: “P.167. Now, this is really good poetry! And it is Chinese in feeling and topic. If all this book were like this, it could be published as poetry and would have a reason for being. But too much of what goes before is a feeble imitation of European and American styles of writing, which are not appropriate and can not be well adapted by a Chinese philosopher.” Right next to this passage we find another one apparently added later: “Y.T. Forgive me! I honestly wrote this comment thinking that the pages 160–167 were your own verse. Now, looking back, I see that it is a translation by Waley.”41 Richard Walsh’s reply pretty much confirmed Pearl Buck’s opinion, emphasizing the fact that American public simply did not buy any books of verse, and he tried to be more diplomatic: “I repeat that I stand ready to publish anything you write. No book of yours would lose money for us. I am convinced that this

38 Lin Yutang to Richard Walsh, May 19, 1942, the John Day Company Archive. 39 Ibid. 40 Pearl S. Buck, “Report on Y.T.’s book manuscript,” May 31, 1942, the John Day Company Archive. 41 Ibid. oriental other 185 book, in anything like its present form, would have only a small sale. But worse than that, I fear it would damage your standing and the sale of your next book. Therefore I must, as your friend, do everything I can to persuade you from it.”42 That was no doubt a serious blow to Lin Yutang. In his reply to Richard Walsh dated June 2, the next day Walsh sent his letter, Lin let out his frustrations openly and straightforwardly: “You know I am naturally disappointed, because I value your opinion so much. Still I think you missed the point entirely, having a congenital prejudice against verse because it is verse. Either you are wrong, or I am wrong about the book, and I think most likely it is the former. Of course I appreciate all the same your very sincere advice as a friend, more than as a publisher, thinking primarily for my own good. Still I think the friend is wrong, in this case.”43 Lin afﬁrmed that this was “the deepest book” he has ever written and that the theme of the book was not only clear and timely, but also lasting in its signiﬁcance, as the book “deals essentially with the character of the time we are living in, trying to dissect the roots of the ills of modern civilization.”44 On the issue of verse, however, he had a mellow tone: “Concerning verse, I am humble as a beginner. How verse strikes the native English ear is such a subtle thing I don’t presume to be the arbiter of my own book.”45 But he still defended his use of verse and rejected Walsh’s suggestion that he would compose in prose and discard the vision and the imaginary, as he would not “write a school matron’s resume of what I felt most intensely and vividly the last three months.”46 Lin reminded Walsh: “in the end I said that in this book I am trying to communicate a passion, not an idea. The passion is the whole thing. Therefore there is this further thing to be said for the form of my book—That I never intended to write in poetry, but was compelled to do so under the impact of the emotion, and the effort was therefore utterly sincere.”47 It is interesting to note that, even though Lin accused Walsh of being prejudiced against verse, he did not seem to question the validity of their judgment at all in this

42 Richard Walsh to Lin Yutang, June 1, 1942, the John Day Company Archive. 43 Lin Yutang to Richard Walsh, June 2, 1942, the John Day Company Archive. 44 Ibid. 45 Ibid. 46 Ibid. 47 Ibid. 186 chapter six respect. Finally, it was their friendship that Lin called into question: “The publication of this book raises a problem. What you say in your letter amounts to this: that it is a folly on my part to publish it at all; that you will publish it only because it is written by me and against your better judgment and out of concession to a friend, or that it must be so entirely written that its present character is altered. I do not feel that is the right thing to do. If a publisher honestly does not believe in a book, he ought not to publish it; furthermore, he cannot do it with proper enthusiasm.”48 That sounds very much like a hint Lin would seek another publisher, yet Lin assured Walsh right away that, even though they “disagreed violently” in this case, “I will never submit it to another publisher unless with your approval.”49 From Walsh’s reply dated June 4, 1942, we know that Pearl Buck had already had a “good telephone talk” with Lin Yutang, and the whole thing seemed to be resolved. Lin “will put entirely out of mind the thought of submitting this book to another publisher,” and he would go ahead to revise basically on the terms suggested by Buck and Walsh.50 In the future correspondences, however, we do not see any further mentioning of the book. Lin Yutang’s “deepest book” never appeared.51 It is interesting to note that in Lin’s letter of defense, he was totally silent on Walsh and Buck’s major objection that he was not being “Chinese” in the book. Did he agree with the Walshes’ friendly advice “You are Chinese” as he of course considered himself Chinese? Or, did he ﬁnd it ironical that, a self-acclaimed cosmopolitan proud of his Western training when in China, he now found that he must be “Chinese” as his Western learning had become a liability?

Inside Inside America

Of course, Walsh’s “You are Chinese” does not mean that Lin Yutang’s cosmopolitan appeal was not appreciated. In fact, after the success of his ﬁrst two books My Country and My People and The Importance of

48 Ibid. 49 Ibid. 50 Richard Walsh to Lin Yutang, June 4, 1942, the John Day Company Archive. 51 It is possible that Lin’s Between Tears and Laughter might be a revised version of A Man Thinking, but given the extent of such revision, it must be a totally different book. I have been only able to ﬁnd a fragment of the verse in the Dr. Lin Yutang House in Taipei, which was, unfortunately, not sufﬁcient to have a feel of the book. oriental other 187

Living, Lin not only enjoyed wide popularity among middle-class ordinary readers, but was also well-received and respected by the elite American intellectual circles. Even Eleanor Roosevelt, for instance, fell for Lin’s charm and became his avid reader.52 Lin’s philosophical wit and charm were so attractive that Walsh thought Lin could write another book on “The Wisdom of the West.” In other words, in Walsh’s opinion, Lin’s prestige as “Chinese philosopher” could very well qualify him to be a commentator on “the wisdom of the West” and the book would be equally marketable to the American audience. The consequent book On the Wisdom of America, published in 1950, is the only book Lin wrote in his American years that was not of the Chinese theme. After the publication of The Importance of Living where Lin established himself as the wise man from the East, Lin also compiled in 1942 a big anthology—The Wisdom of China and India, which also became a bestseller. It is thus quite reasonable for Walsh to capitalize on the universal appeal of Lin’s “wisdom.” The idea for a book on “the wisdom of the West” was proposed after the success of The Wisdom of China and India, but it was not until September 1, 1948 when Walsh seriously suggested to Lin that he do “The Wisdom of the West” as his next writing project as he was living in Paris at the time serving as a director for the UNESCO. In his reply dated December 12, 1948, Lin proposed a number of possible writing projects including Walsh’s suggestion for “The Wisdom of the West.” But Lin thought perhaps “The Wisdom of America” might be a better idea. “It is an enticing theme, the essay- ing of American nuggets by a Chinese. . . . It is a more concrete and manageable, less vague, proposition than Wisdom of the West.”53 Five days later, Walsh replied: “I think you are right that The Wisdom of America would be better. You could follow up later with The Wisdom of France, The Wisdom of Britain, Scandinavia, Italy, etc. There’s the big idea for you! I believe that The Wisdom of America is your most promising prospect for big sales. . . . A wonderful opportunity. Please snatch it.”54 Lin basically spent the year of 1949 reading and selecting the best

52 “Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt on Lin Yutang,” The Chinese Christian Student, 5–6 (April-May, 1941): 14. 53 Lin Yutang to Richard Walsh, December 12, 1948, the John Day Company Archive. 54 Richard Walsh to Lin Yutang, December 17, 1948, the John Day Company Archive. 188 chapter six works representing the American spirit. Walsh and in fact the whole team in the John Day company offered their suggestions and sent him books during the selection process. It is of course Lin Yutang himself who made his own selections and wrote the commentary. As Lin got deeper into the project, he apparently got quite excited. On March 6, 1949, he wrote to Walsh: “The idea of the book is getting more and more interesting. You and I are agreed on the general idea, which is what strikes a foreigner like myself as containing or representing Ameri- can wisdom. But it is more than that. It may be the best book about America as self-revealed by its best writers—a discovery for the Ameri- cans themselves. . . . That such a book will be Inside Inside USA.”55 Appar- ently, Lin was not satisfied with a mere “foreigner’s look at America,” so to speak, but rather, he intended to produce the best anthology of American culture as it is. At one point, Lin even questioned: “Is there ever a truly American anthology, of American writers on American themes?”56 When Lin finished his research and was ready to write, he was all excited to produce “the best anthology of thought-provoking literature of the US.”57 It turned out, however, Lin’s expectations were not quite shared by Richard Walsh. When Lin first sent part of the manuscript to the Walshes, the latter’s response was quite positive on the whole, assuring Lin that he was writing in his best vein. Yet, both Pearl and Richard Walsh had one criticism: “Nowhere in the manuscript so far before us is there any indication that you are writing as a Chinese. We think it most essential that you should establish that. Very clearly, in the preface, and frequently throughout the book, you should make references which will keep it constantly in the mind of the reader that your selections from American writing are made from the Chinese point of view and that your comments are inspired by Chinese philosophy. I think that the names of Lao Tse and Confucius and other Chinese sages should appear now and then, perhaps with brief quotations from them for purpose of contrast. If you do this, you will cut the ground from under any critic who may want to challenge your choice, say, of David Grayson or of a particular passage from Emerson or anybody else. The way these chapters are now, you even say ‘we’ as if including

55 Lin Yutang to Richard Walsh, March 6, 1949, the John Day Company Archive. 56 Ibid., March 14, 1949. 57 Ibid., June 28, 1949. oriental other 189 yourself with Americans. But you must stand in the absolutely unique position which you and you alone can occupy of judging the wisdom of American (sic) through Chinese eyes.”58 After Walsh read the whole manuscript, he reassured Lin that it was a splendid job as a whole, but he again expressed his primary concern: “We want very much to keep before the reader the fact that you are writing from a Chinese point of view. Could you ﬁnd a nice tricky way to introduce into the Preface a few Chinese characters?”59 As we can see here, to be fair to Walsh, it is not so much that Walsh himself treats Lin as the oriental other, but rather their business demands it. This time, however, Lin Yutang seems quite clear and ﬁrm on the issue. In his reply to Walsh, Lin stated his position as follows: “I do not feel I can or should introduce a few Chinese characters in the Preface. About this important point of reminding the reader that I am a Chinese, I think I should not consciously do so. Most readers know I am Chinese anyway and require no reminding, and I should not keep on saying I am a Chinese. The publisher may repeat it as often as he likes.”60 And in the actual Preface, what we read is, quite surprisingly, a rare statement of self-identity as a cosmopolitan agent: “In looking at American as well as at Chinese thought, I have always felt myself a modern, sharing the modern man’s problems and pleasures of discovery. Wherever I say ‘we,’ I mean ‘we moderns.’ ”61 Despite Lin’s great enthusiasm and expectations, as well as Walsh’s assessment that Lin did a splendid job on the whole, On the Wisdom of America only enjoyed a very mediocre sale, quite a disappointment compared to his commentary on Chinese culture—The Importance of Living.

The Business of Cross-Cultural Translation

By pleading to American readers that he be taken as a cosmopolitan “modern,” Lin Yutang must have felt the sweet-bitterness of his reputation as a “Chinese philosopher,” since the essential assumption of that name is the role of an oriental other. Such nature of Lin’s cross-cultural

58 Richard Walsh to Lin Yutang, November 14, 1949, the John Day Company Archive. 59 Ibid., January 4, 1950. 60 Lin Yutang to Richard Walsh, January 19, 1950, the John Day Company Archive. 61 Lin Yutang, “Preface” to On the Wisdom of America, p. xv. 190 chapter six agency severely undermines the effect of Lin’s translation of Chinese culture into the target language. And despite his uneasiness, Lin himself participated in the making of such a “Chinese philosopher.” The issue here is not so much self-orientalization, but rather that Lin’s act of cross-cultural translation in America became heavily commercially oriented and market-driven. It is quite ironical that American Lin Yutang (or “Y.T.” as he was called by his American friends) became very much a “professional writer,” a role he differentiated himself from when in China, as I argued in Chapter Four. As a bilingual and bicultural intellectual educated in the West, Lin’s rediscovery and retrieval of traditional Chinese culture offered him a real alternative space of meaning against the tide of nihilistic overcoming in modern China. However, his translation of classical Chinese culture to America fails to bring about such an effect because, as a professional writer, the primary concern for his translation practices has been, in collaboration with Richard Walsh, the marketability of their production. Translation understood as a cross-cultural act no longer bears the traditional assumptions of innocence, as if it were merely a matter of substitution from one language to another whereby one ponders upon its “inevitable loss” as such. Rather, critical attention is drawn to the problematics arising from the act of crossing itself. When the application of language is seen as deeply embedded in the world of a particular culture, translation as cross-cultural communication necessarily involves re-contextualization of meaning as well as power relations in between the worlds. Since non-Western cultures are normally regarded as the “Other” of the West, to translate a non-Western text into a Western culture often means to domesticate that “Other” as its own. The consequent imbalance of power relations between the source culture and the target culture predetermines not only who and what gets translated, but also how it is translated. As Anuradha Ding- waney points out in a recent cross-cultural study on translation, West- ern translations of non-Western texts often “proceed, not surprisingly, in a predictable, even predetermined, direction: alien cultural forms or concepts or indigenous practices are recuperated (translated) via a process of familiarization (assimilation to culturally familiar forms or concepts or practices) whereby they are denuded of their ‘foreignness.’”62

62 Anuradha Dingwaney, “Introduction: Translating ‘Third World’ Cultures,” Between Languages and Cultures: Translation and Cross-Cultural Texts, pp. 4–5. oriental other 191

Of course, cross-cultural translation is not supposed to highlight the “foreignness” of the source culture, but rather to enhance mutual understanding between cultures. As a Chinese translator of the West, Lin Yutang did not resort to the strategy of accultural familiarization where Western culture was leveled all in terms of Chinese reference, but endeavored to arrive at an alternative space of meaning out of a fusion of horizon of Chinese and Western cultures. As a non-Western translator of Chinese culture, Lin Yutang was also in a unique position to achieve the same in the American context. In fact, Lin’s translations of Chinese culture have shown potentials to that effect. But when his translation practices are overwhelmingly market-oriented, they have little bearing on the enhancement of cross-cultural understanding as such. Instead, they easily fall into the nexus of power relations already prevalent between the two cultures. One more example of the actual process of the production and publishing of Famous Chinese Short Stories can further illustrate this point. Lin Yutang had entertained the idea of compiling a collection of Chinese short stories for some time, as it is relatively an easy job for him. In his letter to Richard Walsh dated Nov. 29, 1948, Lin suggested again the compilation of “Great Chinese Love Stories:” “The stories will have to have a special Chinese atmosphere, while the appeal is of course universal.”63 But Walsh rejected that proposal on the ground that there is simply not much market in America for any collection of short stories—even a most successful book will only have a moderate sale. So Lin concentrated on his commentary on American wisdom, hoping that they could follow it up with Wisdom of England, Wisdom of France, Wisdom of the Greeks, and so on. But On the Wisdom of America turned out to be quite a disappointment, and naturally the “Wisdom series” came to a dead end. Then Lin thought of the short stories proposal again and suggested to John Day if Pocket Books would take a collection of “Great Chinese Love Stories,” or even “The Best Chinese Short Stories” to make it more inclusive and appealing. While most of Lin’s American books were market-oriented, the production of Famous Chinese Short Stories was particularly market- driven. Lin was eager to complete it knowing it would only mean modest sales because it would also mean a quick and guaranteed

63 Lin Yutang to Richard Walsh, November 29, 1948, the John Day Company Archive. 192 chapter six return. For at that particular time, Lin was especially in dire financial trouble, as the failure of his typewriter business left him a huge debt, and on top of that, he owed IRS a huge sum of back tax—Lin was literally writing to make ends meet. In fact, he was living in France at the time because it was cheaper, and he literally could not afford to coming back to live in New York with his family and friends. As Lin explains to Walsh: “I am doing it because I am in need of certain cash, but it is going to cut in my time for the big novel, which should be ready for fall publication . . . . [but] it won’t do to wait till the big novel is out next fall, with royalties coming in in 1952, even if it makes a hit. I am thinking of the more immediate future. I really would like to have a book out next spring, and one that would sell, even though modestly.”64 Pocket Books did accept Lin’s proposal and even offered him $2000 advance. Pocket Books seems to have full confidence in Lin’s cross-cultural skills to ensure the marketability of his selection. “Mr. Alexander of Pocket Books,” Walsh writes to Lin, “when asked what kind of stories he wanted, stated ‘Who knows better than Lin himself what the Western taste is.’ This agrees with your own judgment that you know what appeals to Western readers.”65 The appropriations to make his translations appeal to Western taste involve what kind of stories should be included, how the stories are to be translated, as well as the very choice of the book title itself. The choice of the title is always important to the publisher. In this case, Pocket Books knew from the beginning they wanted a book entitled “Best Chinese Short Stories,” instead of “Great Chinese Love Stories,” to ensure a broader appeal. Later Lin also suggested two other titles: “Tales of Wonder” or “After Tea and Wine,” as that reflects more vividly the nature of the collected stories, for they are meant to be “fanciful and light and certainly pleasant reading,” and to produce “relaxing and refreshing” effects, just like after drinking tea and wine. But the publisher maintained that it is very important to indicate in the title that it is a collection of “Chinese” stories. Yet Lin’s idea of “Chinese stories” are quite modern, as he explains, “I regard as a true short story any piece of writing which gives unified, single effect and is acceptable if it has strong

64 Ibid, October 7, 1950. 65 Richard Walsh to Lin Yutang, September 12, 1950, the John Day Company Archive. oriental other 193 characterization and good details. This is my criterion for making the accompanying list of selections.”66 Therefore, Lin tells Walsh that he did not take much material from Jingu qiguan—the traditional authoritative collection of the most famous short stories throughout the dynasties, because he believes that those stories would be difficult to appeal to American readers. Perhaps the collection was originally intended to be of love stories, so we find the following cautionary remark by Walsh to Lin: “It seems to me that there is too large a proportion of stories having to do with sex. In a book to be entitled ‘The Great Chinese Short Stories’, editors, critics and readers will expect more variety in subject matter, and I believe the general impression is that Chinese literature does not deal so largely with matters of sex as your selections indicate.”67 So the issue here is not so much about familiarization as such, but rather about how to achieve equilibrium between the familiar and the foreign. In other words, the stories should be “Chinese,” offering fanciful illusions of fantasy, but they should not be too foreign and weird so as to offend American sensibilities. The style of writing always plays a critical role in ensuring the translations to be desirable and appealing. Perhaps due to long-time residence in the US, Lin Yutang likes to use American slang, for which Walsh adamantly opposes because he believes that American slang coming out of a Chinese character simply kills the illusion of the reader. When the manuscript was sent to Pocket Books, Walsh has this note to its copy editor: He has always counted on us to touch up his English and as a consequence he does not always choose his words as carefully as he is really capable of doing—knowing that we will fix it. You will see on the manuscript a good deal of editing by me and some by him. This indicates the sort of changes that you can feel free to make. We always have to watch him for use of American slang and Ameri- can idiom, which are out of place in a translation from the Chinese. We don’t like to have him use contractions such as ‘we’ll’ and ‘can’t’, although occasionally we might pass a ‘don’t’. You will see that in some places I have transposed sentences to make the story clearer or more interesting.68

66 Lin Yutang to Richard Walsh, October 16, 1950, the John Day Company Archive. 67 Richard Walsh to Lin Yutang, May 4, 1951, the John Day Company Archive. 68 Richard Walsh to Miss Hunekens, October 15, 1951, the John Day Company Archive. 194 chapter six

The most radical strategy Lin adopted to achieve the widest appeal was simply not to call it a translation as such but a “retelling.” He makes this no secret and admits that in the “Introduction” of the book, which also corresponds to his remarks to Walsh: “I shall not try to translate, but allow myself great liberties in the telling of them. I have for each story an idea of the idea as a modern short story, in other words, what the effect is which to be achieved by that story. It will be, I believe, pre- ponderantly a work of translation, but not entirely so. On the whole, the word ‘retold’ will apply to some, perhaps many, of them.”69 It is perhaps helpful to examine one short story in the collection—“The Jade Goddess”—to see what such retelling entails. “Nianyu Guanyin,” rendered as “Jade Goddess” by Lin, was originally a well-known Song dynasty story, and Lin had it published first in Woman’s Home Magazine before it was included in this collection. In the translator’s note that appears at the beginning of the text, Lin informs the reader that “the original story ends quite differently . . . I have followed the first part of the story only, and developed the story according to the simple theme of whether a great artist should destroy his art to cover his identity, or let his art betray him.”70 However, if a bilingual reader compares Lin’s version with the original Song story-version, one realizes that Lin’s note was quite an understatement as the English version has hardly anything to do with the original. Lin’s retelling is almost all his own creation. The most obvious relation seems to be Lin’s claim that it is based on a story bearing the same title, which is assured by his own Chinese calligraphy on the front pages. The kind of Song dynasty taste and structure with traditional Chinese story-telling techniques has been radically transformed in Lin’s re-telling. Now the story begins with an I-narrator in search of fine art in a remote inland area where he is received by a sophisticated high official who happened to be also a shrewd art-collector. The major change lies in Lin’s creation of the theme of the story: the tension between art and the artist. But if this story is merely about the spirit of the art and the artist’s identity, it would be too familiar to the Western reader. Part of the appeal of the story must still lie in the reader’s illusion that they are reading translation of a “Chinese” story. So Lin Yutang makes sure, for

69 Lin Yutang to Richard Walsh, October 26, 1950, the John Day Company Archive. 70 Lin Yutang, Famous Chinese Short Stories, p. 67. oriental other 195 instance, the love story (which has already been romanticized) takes place between cousins, something very “Chinese.” Moreover, one of Lin’s favourite “Chinese” motifs is “nun,” and a nun creeps in this story as well. And of course, the characters must all be unquestionably Chinese, therefore not to be named as John or Jane, but “Chang Po” and “Meilan.” They are not called “Xiu Xiu” and “Cui Ning” as in the original because these names would sound too weird to American sensibility. In all of Lin’s ﬁctions in English, Chinese names are what can be called Anglophone Chinese.

In an interview with Lin Yutang by an Indian intellectual in 1946, the interviewer S. Chandrasekhar comments on Lin’s contribution to changing the American attitude towards China with much admiration and envy. Historically, American images of China had been reprehen- sible while prejudice against the Chinese has been institutionalized in the Chinese Exclusion Act. But Chandrasekhar observes that the present American attitude had remarkably changed for the better. That was of course due to a number of complicated factors related to changing socio-political and international environment, but he holds that the combination of Lin and Buck’s writings made a big difference: “When China produced a Lin Yutang and converted Pearl Buck to her cause she acquired a pair of most articulate, mellow and moving voices in what had been before a voiceless wilderness, at least to the Western World.”71 Chandrasekhar’s point is well-taken. Equally true, however, is the fact that Lin’s popular representation of Chinese culture did not exert any lasting effect on the enhancement of American understanding of China. American attitude towards China has changed many times since Lin Yutang and that was of course also due to a number of historical factors, in which the combination of Lin and Buck’s writings were powerless. It seems that a more solid ground for cross-cultural understanding between America and China need yet to be sought elsewhere than what we see in the commercially-oriented collaboration between Walsh and Lin Yutang. When Chinese culture has become through translation mere Anglophone Chinese “Chang Po” and “Mei- lan,” that ground for cross-cultural understanding must be very shaky. Lin’s literary practices in America show that cross-cultural translation

71 S. Chandrasekhar, “I Meet Lin Yutang,” The Aryan Path XVII, No. 10 (October 1946): 367. 196 chapter six always participates in the power relationships between the source culture and the target culture. The cosmopolitan agent need to be at least self-aware and be vigilant of the power effects of his translation upon the two cultures. What is perhaps out of Lin Yutang’s expecta- tion is, for instance, his American translations of “Chang Po” and “Meilan” were re-translated literally back into Chinese just as their market appeal began to wane in America from the 1950s onwards. It is indeed ironical that Lin Yutang’s American translations have left a legacy of recycled Orientalism where “Xiu Xiu” and “Cui Ning” have retreated further into oblivion. CHAPTER SEVEN

COSMOPOLITAN DIFFERENCE: CRITIQUE OF IMPERIALISM AND DEBATING “CHINAHANDS”

What shocked me as a traveler is the existence of caste in a land dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Americans laugh at the hopeless ignorance of Hindus in their attitude toward untouchables. But if the white treatment of Negroes in America is not caste, I do not know what caste is. Lin Yutang: “East and West Must Meet,” Survey Graphic, November, 1942

Liberty for Americans is their life blood, but for Chinese, what does it matter anyhow?. . . . [T]he consigning of 500 millions to totalitarian rule does not even arouse a ripple in their phlegm. . . . What I was going to say is that I have no country to return to. I suppose Edgar Snow and Agnes Smedley think I am a fool not to jump into the communist heaven at this moment, in my own country. Lin Yutang: Letter to Richard J. Walsh and Pearl S. Buck, September 2, 1949 To American public at large, Lin Yutang was most well-known as a wise and witty “Chinese philosopher” introducing Chinese cultural wisdom to America. The formation of this image of the “most cultured man” was partly due to the cross-cultural attraction of Lin’s aesthetics of life he constructed in his bilingual writings in Shanghai and perfected in his American bestsellers, and partly due to the collaborative making between Lin and his publisher/friend Richard Walsh, as we have discussed in the last two chapters. However, what is little emphasized concerning Lin’s public role in America, but is evident in his published works and highlighted in the unpublished correspondences between Lin and Walsh, is the fact that Lin was far from being a mere cultured world citizen removed from worldly politics, but rather engaged, even ﬁercely, in the cosmopolitan politics during the wartime 1940s. After Lin Yutang achieved his American success with his cultural bestsellers such as My Country and My People and The Importance of Living, he quickly turned his fame and status into use for political activism and became 198 chapter seven outspoken on issues not just related to China but international relations in general. Lin frequently delivered public speeches on various occasions, appeared on radio talk shows, had interviews and participated in town hall meetings, and most importantly, contributed to various newspapers and magazines, in particular, The New York Times. It is in these miscellaneous essays, in addition to published books such as Between Tears and Laughter , The Vigil of a Nation and Peace Is in the Heart, that we see a passionately political Lin Yutang who takes his words and ideas quite enthusiastically. Lin’s passion in world politics seems to be quite a contrast to his de-political stance towards national politics in the 1930s China, as discussed in Chapter Three. Now living in diaspora and writing for American and world audience, it seems that not only his cross-cultural aesthetics of life gained much wider appreciation and market, but his political enthusiasm was also aroused and rejuvenated. However, while Lin’s political black humor pleased neither the Left nor the Right in China in the 1930s, his cosmopolitan politics in America in the 1940s was also quite controversial, even to the extent that many of his views had to be (self-)censored. Lin’s political passion during the wartime 1940s consists of two interrelated dimensions of liberal cosmopolitan practices: critique of Western imperialism and defense of liberalism in regards to Ameri- can representation of China. Just like in the 1930s when Lin’s de- political attitude brought him criticism from both the Left and the Right, his cosmopolitan politics in the 1940s caught him in between again, except that this time his ﬁght was on a different transnational scale. A critical examination of Lin Yutang’s cosmopolitan politics will show the other side of the liberal cosmopolitan problematic in Chinese modernity situated transnationally. Lin’s critique of Western imperialism on the one hand and his insistence on the equal application of liberal principles on the other demonstrate a unique intellectual disposition that poses new questions to the cultural politics of liberal cosmopolitan practices and constitutes a pioneering cosmopolitan critique of modernity at large.

Diasporic Critique of Western Imperialism

One year after Lin had arrived in America, an all-out War of Resis- tance against Japan broke out in 1937. It is quite understandable that Lin devoted his political passion in the ensuing years to explaining cosmopolitan difference 199 and commenting on the War in China for the American public. As the War went on when Europe and America were all drawn in, however, Lin Yutang’s critical target shifted from Japan towards Anglo- (American) imperialism. That was a rather surprising move from his public image of a congenial “Chinese philosopher.” On what ground was his critique of Western imperialism based? From what disposition was his critique derived? Is Lin’s critique of imperialism a nationalist move? In a sense, anti-imperialism lies at the basis of Chinese modernity. China was forced upon its modernity by the threat of encroaching colonial desires and powers. It would be very hard for an intellectual growing up in the early 20th century China not to be an anti-imperialist. But anti-imperialism has never been a primary discourse for Chinese liberal cosmopolitanism. Rather, it was the nominal ideology for the Nationalist movement, as well as an important strategic deployment for communist cosmopolitanism. But that does not mean Chinese liberal cosmopolitanism is impotent over the issue of imperialism. If anti-imperialism was heralded by nationalists and communists to compete for their nationalist credentials, liberal cosmopolitan de- emphasis on the issue of imperialism was equally out of the concerns for nation-building. Given their Western training and background, Chinese liberals indeed maintained a deep ambiguity towards the “West,” because the “West” came to China in two faces: democratic ideals and institutions necessary to building a modern nation-state as well as its colonial desires and practices detrimental to the nascence and independence of other new nation-states. It was a conscious strategic choice on the part of Chinese liberals to focus on China’s own cultural and institutional reform by adopting Western democratic ideals despite imperialist practices of the West. Thus, Hu Shi, for instance, always emphasized the importance of “Chinese Renaissance” through westernization of Chinese cultures and institutions. In his English writings, however, he displayed much more critical attention to the issue of imperialism and its adverse effect toward modern China.1 On the other hand, Gu Hongming, one of Hu Shi’s chief opponents, was most well known for his scathing critique of Western imperialism. As Lin Yutang regarded both Hu and Gu as his spiritual predecessors, Lin Yutang and Gu Hongming’s critical discourses of imperialism can be cross-referenced comparatively.

1 For Hu Shi’s English writings, see Chih-ping Chou comp. and ed., A Collection of Hu Shih’s Unpublished English Essays and Speeches. 200 chapter seven

Although Gu Hongming’s critique of imperialism was sharp and perceptive, his views attracted little attention from the new generation of Chinese youth at the time who were determined to usher China into modernity with Western “democracy” and “science.” The later Nationalists and Communists, who upheld the banner of anti-imperialism to their own advantages, did not find Gu Hungming relevant at all. Indeed, Gu’s writings were perhaps more popular in the West, especially in Germany, than in China. That was not surprising, as Gu’s critique of imperialism was very much a de-national cosmopolitan critique. Gu has often been called, erroneously, a fierce nationalist because of his unrelenting critique of imperialism as if anti-imperialism were necessarily nationalism. To refuse to admit that China faced a “problem” at the turn of the last century was far from the nationalist concern of new nation-building, no matter how insightful was Gu’s diagnosis that the “Chinese problem” was created by Western imperialism and thus a fundamentally Western problem. Apparently, Gu’s critique of imperialism was a cosmopolitan critique pointing towards the heart of Western modernity “from within.” Lin Yutang was one of the few among modern Chinese intellectuals who paid much attention to Gu Hongming’s critical discourse of imperialism, which may be related to their similar pattern of cross- cultural upbringing. Like Gu, Lin was also first educated in West- ern culture—he was brought up to read the Bible before he learned by himself Chinese classics in his adult years. In that sense, Lin was already predisposed to follow Gu’s cosmopolitan critique of imperialism from within. Lin’s critical discourse of anti-imperialism during the Second World War, as we will see, bears an apparent discursive link with that of Gu Hongming enunciated in the First World War. Indeed, it was Lin’s diasporic position that enabled him to refocus his latent critical target on imperialism. Like Gu Hongming, Lin’s critique of imperialism was also a cosmopolitan critique directed at the dilemma of Western modernity “from within.” However, while Gu’s was a de-national one, Lin’s cosmopolitan critique coincided with Chinese national interest during the War time, which was quite different from Lin’s liberal nationalist cultural politics in the 1930s China when critique of imperialism had to be contained, but still latent, in the overall strategy of Chinese liberal cosmopolitanism. However, the diasporic space allowed the latent to emerge as the most relevant, as the diasporic space is situated right within the imperial center. In the diaspora, although Lin’s critique coincides with the objectives of cosmopolitan difference 201 nation-building (but not always), its cosmopolitan feature takes on a primary significance due to its diasporic position. Obviously, Lin’s critique of imperialism in the 1940s was occasioned by the circumstances of the War. On May 14, 1942, Lin Yutang gave a speech at India-China Friendship Day Celebration organized by the East and West Association at the Waldorf Astoria, New York. In that speech entitled “The Paradox of the Second World War,” Lin let out his frustrations about the nature and the manner in which the war was being fought, and the speech ends with a long section of verse— apparently part of his “deepest book” of verse that never got published.2

2 Let me quote in full here Lin’s verse at the end of his essay “Paradox of the Second World War”: Let me tell you about this war. Who do you suppose is going to win this war? Not the politicians and diplomats, With codfish eyes and artificial teeth, Nor any one tainted with politics. Not Tory-dogs, nor aged nincompoops, Nor one-eyed Monocled aristocrats, Nor whiskey-swilling planters bent on exit, Who threw away Singapore without a twitch— But with a contemptuous prodigality— And yet could nothing learn, nothing forget. Who could not scorch the rubber plantations, For rubber trees take fifteen years to grow, Being a fifteen-year investment, whose dividends Our children depend upon—must keep them yet. Who failed to smash the Penang radio station— Intoned Singapore in Oxford drawl, “Penang, are you still there?” Out came the Japs’ Voice on the receiving set. Then came the next, “Batavia, are you still there?” Again the Japs. “New Guinea, are you still there?” Again the Japs. “Rangoon, are you still there?” Again the Japs. “Australia, are you there?” What could you expect? Not these, we’ve had enough of these top-hats. Some one has said, only men whose souls are On fire could scorch the earth. I’d rather be right! Colonies don’t work. They never worked. Forty-three million Javanese Succumbed like a flash to hundred thousand Japanese, while we persistently say: “We’re outnumbered!” Why, the natives were unarmed, and never Meant to be. Natives shouldn’t be armed. You can’t sit on people, meanwhile expect Them to stand up and fight as your ally. And have you heard of slaves killing themselves 202 chapter seven

Just because they have to change masters, It don’t make sense. The war isn’t making sense, Though it insists on making sense. The battle is not lost. The Japanese Cut through the colonies like a knife. When we arm them with freedom, We’ll go through them like a flame! No, the battle is not lost, not yet The curious logic of events of this war Insists on making sense, that man on east And west of Suez Canal shall be free! Colonialism does not work. Imperialism does not work. The enslavement of men does not work. For we are at the end of an era; The very face of the earth is being changed. All nations and all peoples shall be free! Look out and be prepared for it! Who do you suppose is winning this war? It is uneducated John Doe, Not too educated John Doe! Given freedom, it is the Javanese. Given freedom, it is the Burmese. Given freedom, it is the Indians. It is the Chinese who have their freedom, You can’t give freedom to the Javanese, They’ve got to fight for freedom themselves. The victory of this war is postulated On one simple human truth, that men Who love freedom never can be conquered. It’s men who’ve got a four-footed sense The economists chose to ignore. The Nazi barbarism shall break its sword, Not upon violations of fiscal laws, But upon violations of the laws of man. So long as man’s pulse and heart beat for freedom, Barbarism cannot hold him down. Why, it’s a hopeless case. As ‘tis in China, It’s the Poles, the Serbs, the Dutch, the Russians. It’s the tight lip, the compressed mouth, the grim Silent, fearful wrath of revolted man, Driving the invader to a frenzy of despair. “He won’t be conquered. What can I do? He thinks he is as good a man as I, Though I have bayonets.” It’s the fearful, Look of sullen, subterranean hatred. It’s the inner voice of unconquered men. Whose body lies on a rack, his spirit free. “He won’t be conquered. What can I do?” Man, a good nation, though defeated, Shall rise again, always shall rise again. Even as you do not know what to do With a defeated, conquered Germany, So Germany does not know what to do With recalcitrant you. This is the paradox of this war, And of all wars. cosmopolitan difference 203

To Lin, the world war was being fought without much sense except as “savage battle for survival.”3 Atlantic Charter was drawn up hastily to call for a war for freedom, but Churchill had declared that it was not supposed to cover India or countries east of Suez. Thus, instead of fighting for a “democratic New Era” against the Fascist New Order, the democracies found themselves fighting a war of paradoxes, which Lin outlined as “the paradox of Russia, the paradox of Asia, and the paradox of our era.”4 Underlying these paradoxes is the issue of West- ern imperialism. What lies at the bottom of the “paradox of Asia” is the problem of India. On the one hand, Japan’s propaganda is claiming that the war in Asia ought to be fought over racial lines with the slogan “Asia for the Asiatics,” while China, by leading the war of resistance against Japan, is insisting that the war should not be fought over racial lines. But the irony is that the British policy towards India is helping Japan rather than China. On many occasions, Lin Yutang joined hands with American liberals in supporting India’s independence movement. Lin laid bare many excuses of British colonialists in their anti-Hindu propaganda, claiming that it was a fiction that the Indian Congress was not representative of India and did not include the Muslims, that it was a lie that the English were loved in India. It was such an irony that what was going on in India was incomprehensible to many Americans, for, as Lin explains, “Gandhi is a fool because he is fighting for what George Washington was fighting for—for his country’s freedom and independence from England.”5 The real problem is, Lin points out, that Churchill is “fighting a twentieth century war in order to take off his boots after the war and climb back into a nineteenth century bed, comfortably mattressed in India, Singapore and Hong Kong.”6 In a roundtable radio discussion on the “meaning of the war” with Herbert Blumer and Richard McKeon, Lin Yutang therefore insists: “the issue of this war is empire versus freedom. By ‘empire’ . . . I mean a system of imperialism, of a world half free and half slave. By ‘freedom’ on the other side, I mean the independence of nations.”7 Whether one likes it or not, Lin warns, Asia will be for the Asiatics after the war, except Japan will not benefit from it. The question is whether “we” (standard pronoun for Lin at the time) will recognize these facts. “I think that

3 Lin Yutang, “The Paradox of the Second World War,” The China Monthly III, No. 5 (May, 1942): 7. 4 Ibid. 5 Lin Yutang, “India Is United for Freedom,” Freedom for India—Now!, p. 15. 6 Lin Yutang, Between Tears and Laughter, p. 185. 7 Lin Yutang, “The Meaning of the War,” p. 8. 204 chapter seven wars are brought about by empires and not by the independence of nations. For instance, the Indians or the Hindus insist that they cannot come to Gadag with the Moslems because the English are there. The moment that the English get out, they will be able to arrive at some formula.”8 In other words, the so-called “problem of India” is really a “problem of England.” What Lin means by the “paradox of our era” is that “the war is forcing us into a new era of human racial relationships,” yet we are quite “unable to think of a better and greater democracy that shall cover the whole of mankind.”9 The Germans and the Japanese in the war promulgate fascist racism, but the idea of empire equally rests upon a false sense of racial prejudice. To Lin Yutang, racial prejudice was a left-over of savage days, and no nation was really immune from it, but the new world after the war would have to rely upon “a new doctrine and new faith in the essential equality of all races.”10 Unfortunately, at present, we still “have not yet any conception of the brotherhood of all men.” Lin warns that the contemporary state of racial prejudice in human relationships “is not funny any more. We are starting out on an era of compulsory world living with all the tribalistic traits of a past epoch and the psychology of the bulldog-terrier racial prejudices.”11 In order to overcome imperialism, then, there should ﬁrst of all be a fundamental change of racial attitude, and Western attitude toward Asia must change. In Lin’s judgment, “some white people, including the most liberal-minded, have not the faintest idea of what India, China and Japan are going through mentally.”12 Despite their difference in their cosmopolitan positioning, Gu Hong- ming and Lin Yutang shared certain critical assumptions in their discourses on imperialism. While Gu attributed “Kolonial Politik” in the First World War to the rise of “commercialism” in the West, Lin Yutang argued that it was the modern “faith” in materialism that lay behind the raison d’etre of “geo-politics” of the imperialist thinking during the Second World War. As Lin put it humorously, he always won- dered what was inside the knapsack the white man carried around the

8 Ibid., p. 9. 9 Lin Yutang, “The Paradox of the Second World War,” The China Monthly III, No. 5 (May, 1942): 8. 10 Lin Yutang, “East and West Must Meet,” Survey Graphic XXXI (November, 1942): 534. 11 Lin Yutang, “The Search for Principles,” Free World V ( June, 1943): 495. 12 Lin Yutang, “Union Now with India,” Asia XLII (March, 1942): 148. cosmopolitan difference 205 globe by the name of the “white man’s burden,” and he discovered that it was merely “canned goods.”13 At a time when human existence was regarded “95 per cent economic,” Lin maintained that “the charge of ‘materialism’ is no mere cliché. Materialism is the very stuff and fiber of modern thinking.”14 In this respect, Lin Yutang’s cultural critique of imperialism focuses on the epistemological change of modern Western thought. To Lin Yutang, the absence of a philosophy of peace in the “geo-political” thinking in the postwar planning derives directly from the pseudo-scientific principles of “social sciences” that treat the human way of being exclusively in terms of material factors. Owing to the rapidly growing prestige of Science, the scientific approaches originally employed by natural scientists were now imitated and upheld by professors of humanities, and along with it the emergence of various disciplines of “social sciences.” Lin dates this epistemological change to the middle of the nineteenth century when a number of “social science” masterpieces appeared about the same time: Mommsen’s History of Rome 1854, Taine’s History of English Litera- ture 1856, Darwin’s On the Origin of Species 1859, Renan’s Life of Christ 1863, the first volume of Marx’s Das Kapital 1968.15 As Lin sees it, materialism, naturalism and determinism form an interrelated whole in modern thinking that inevitably leads to a change in Weltanschauung, in which human existence is degenerated into mere animal being. It is not that “raising the standard of living” is not desirable, but to think of man’s being exclusively in terms of “welfare” constitutes an “economic witchcraft” that regards “ants as our ideal.”16 Lin also detects a discursive change signifying the modern “mechanical” thinking, when we shun away from simple and direct terms like “goodness,” “justice” and say, instead, “spiritual values” or “social values,” call a criminal an “maladjusted individual,” a person out of a job a “dislocated individual,” speak of public sentiments as “response” or “reactions,” diplomacy as “pressure,” criticism as an “outlet.” To highlight the contribution of each discipline in such an orchestrated epistemological change, Lin provides a long list:

13 Lin Yutang, Between Tears and Laughter, p. 61. 14 Ibid. 15 See Lin Yutang, The Pleasures of a Nonconformist, p. 96. 16 Ibid., p. 93. 206 chapter seven

Hence arise the conscientious, diligent fact-finding and fact-verification of Niebuhr and Ranke and the economic interpretation of history of Charles A. Beard, the physiological psychology of Wundt and the behav- iorist psychology of J. B. Watson, the “experimental novel” of Zola and the postmortem “realism” of Dreiser and Farrell, the literary criticism of Taine and the research into “origins” of Renan, the “social physics” of Comte and the “materialist dialectic” of Marx, the “ontological criticism” of poetry of some academic professor and the “comparison” and “influences” of comparative literature of our postgraduate schools, the incestuous complex of Freud and the looking for the soul (Psyche) in the anus-to-mons-veneris area of the psychoanalysts. The whole structure of psychoanalysis falls if there is no seat to our pants. And symbolizing this universal break-up, we have the coterie small talk of T. S. Eliot, the lugubrious self-dissection and exhibitionism of Joyce, and the retreat from harmony of Stravinsky, the retreat from beauty of Picasso, the retreat from logic and sanity of Dali, and the retreat from grammar of Gertrude Stein.17 When all those are translated into the wartime thinking, Lin argues, you have the scientific positing of “geopolitics” in the name of “political science,” in which “Nazi scholars and anti-Nazi scholars meet and shake hands in profound admiration of one another.”18 After all, as if echoing Gu Hongming’s idea that the germ of German “militarism” during the First World War was rooted in “Commercialism” in Britain and America, Lin Yutang concluded that “Hitler’s ethics and politics had something to do with this century and a half of European development . . . Any analysis of the origins of Nazi thought as exclusively Germanic, which excludes the elements of general decay in all West- ern Europe, is self-deceptive . . . man had in Europe’s mind become a mechanistic animal fighting in a fury of blind atoms governed by blind forces. Hitler merely stepped into the vacuum.”19 Lin’s critique of imperialism in the diaspora was a test to his cosmopolitan appeal in America. All of his English books published in the US, including My Country and My People, The Importance of Living, A Leaf in the Storm, With Love and Irony, The Wisdom of China and India, had been bestsellers with almost unanimous rave reviews. The reception of Between Tears and Laughter, however, was quite mixed, to say the least. According to one critic, most of the reviews he had read about Between

17 Lin Yutang, Between Tears and Laughter, pp. 178–179. 18 Ibid., p. 148. 19 Ibid., pp. 181–182. cosmopolitan difference 207

Tears and Laughter were unfavorable—“Unfavorable is, in fact, too mild a word. Most of these reviews slated the book.”20 Perhaps an Indian reviewer best captured the reason for the general resentment for Lin’s book: “What disconcerts other reviewers most is the fact that once upon a time Lin Yutang was so ‘genial,’ so ‘carefree and irresponsible,’ so ‘witty and gay,’ and now suddenly, he has become earnest. He pulls no punches and his humor has become barbed. Dr. Lin was delightful, they feel, when he was witty at the cost of a commonly hated tribe, but to pinprick our own tribe, Well, how inconsiderate. But he has said what had to be said. As he sees his own task, he acts offstage as prompter to the greatest personages of the world today. And a prompter is an unpopular person.”21 Apparently, American intellectual establishment at that time was not quite ready for a critical cosmopolitan from China. Lin Yutang’s acceptance into the New York intellectual circles was based on his “good-will” cultural ambassadorship introducing Chinese cultural wisdom to the American public. But if that “good-will” entails a critique of British and American imperialism and of Western modernity utilizing “Chinese cultural wisdom,” then you simply become a Chi- nese patriot who had lost his temper and his sense of humor. Orville Prescott, for instance, who had just started his long-term career at that time as a distinguished and renowned book reviewer for The New York Times, made that point quite clear in his debasing review of Lin’s book. Prescott ﬁrst acknowledged that “the benign little man” had been most successful in introducing and interpreting his own country and people to the Western minds “with such charm, such tolerance and such humor that made thousands of Americans almost regret that they were not Chinese and therefore members of the most truly civilized of all peoples.”22 In the meantime, as Prescott was quick to point out, that success has also won him “wealth and fame from the American public.” But Prescott contended that Lin’s latest book could very much destroy the Chinese-American good-will his previous efforts had established. What annoyed Prescott most was Lin’s

20 Paul Hutchinson, “Between Anger and Revolt,” The Christian Century (October 20, 1943): 1200. 21 Krishnalal Shridharani, “Churchill and Pericles,” Common Sense (September, 1943): 342. 22 Orville Prescott, “Books of the Times,” The New York Times (August 4, 1943): 13. 208 chapter seven

“attitude”—“smug, condescending and self-righteously superior. As a product of an ancient and non-industrialized civilization he pours the vials of his wrathful condemnation upon the materialism, the imperialism, the wars, power politics and general corruption of Europe and America (although as a long-time exile and resident of America he frequently forgets himself and uses the pronoun ‘our’ about American institutions).”23 In other words, to Prescott, it was simply unacceptable, and bizarre, that a lot of celebrated Englishmen and Americans were criticized by Lin and Winston Churchill was the “chief villain of the book.” It was not so much a matter of whether the criticism was justiﬁed or not, but rather whether, as a member of “the non- industrialized civilization,” Lin was even qualiﬁed or not to criticize materialism and imperialism. To do that would mean Lin had lost his manners, hence goes the “good-will.” There were also sympathetic supporters for Lin’s views on this account, however. Sterling North of New York Post was quite forthright in backing up Lin’s cosmopolitan credentials. In his words, “Lin Yutang, the ‘Little Critic’ who has interpreted the Orient to the Occident and vice versa, has earned the right to be sharply sarcastic about the aims of white race in Asia.”24 North agrees with Lin Yutang’s critique of British and American racial imperialism, and believes that America should take that as serious warning on the principles of democracy, and North concludes that “what America needs is a few more Chinese missionaries like Lin Yutang.”25 In his review article entitled “East and West Meet in Mind of Lin Yutang,” Albert Guerard of New York Herald Tribune presented Lin’s argument on imperialism and materialism with neither approval nor disapproval. He complimented “the incredible richness of Lin Yutang’s mind, its delightful play of humor, its passionate earnestness,” and then goes on to embrace Lin’s cosmopolitan identity: “I believe with Wendell Willkie that the world is one, and so I can not admit that the East is in sole possession of human wisdom. I feel like chiding Lin Yutang for his overweening racial pride. Two wrongs do not make a right. We need to integrate, to humanize our cultures, and he should be one of the men to guide us. Deeply rooted in the ways of his country and of his people, he is well acquainted

23 Ibid. 24 Sterling North, “The Socratic ‘Gadfly’ on the Flank of Democracy,” New York Post ( July 22, 1943): 24. 25 Ibid. cosmopolitan difference 209 with our ways, especially with the best of them all, a fearlessly critical attitude. By challenging us so vigorously, he proves his relationship to us. And we are deeply proud to claim him.”26 In any case, in fighting against racial prejudice and imperialism in America in the wartime period, Lin Yutang had the most important ally in Pearl S. Buck. Having grown up in China, Buck was faced with a grave “culture shock” when she came back to America, as she tells African American students at Howard University: “I will confess that I have been completely perplexed by this race prejudice in my own country. Having lived always . . . in China, where there is almost no race prejudice as such, I did not know my own country in this regard.”27 In her conversation with Eslanda Robeson, Buck again con- fesses: “I am glad I am an American. I might enjoy life more as a Negro, but one is born with one’s skin fixed. I try to forget it as much as I can. Elsewhere I can forget it entirely but here in my own country, by means of segregation and discrimination, they keep rubbing it in that I am a white.”28 Taking advantage of her Chinese cosmopolitan experience, Buck fought for racial equality in America, participating in political rallies and giving public speeches, together with Lin Yutang on many occasions such as over the issue of freedom for India. But such alliance met with serious challenge shortly afterwards when critical concern was shifted towards American representation of China. In fact, two decades of close collaboration and friendship between Lin Yutang and the Walshes finally broke up in the early 1950s. Their correspondences during this period demonstrate that serious disagreement arose between them over the issue of American representation of China, or more specifically, of the politics of Civil War in China.

Representing China: A Debate with “Chinahands”

Lin Yutang’s cross-cultural politics during the wartime 1940s contained two interrelated aspects: critique of Western imperialism on

26 Albert Guerard, “East and West Meet in Mind of Lin Yutang: His New Book Mixes Flashing Wit with Crusading against the Machine Age,” New York Herald Tribune ( July 25, 1943): 5. 27 Pearl S. Buck, “Equality,” What America Means to Me, p. 21. 28 Pearl S. Buck, American Argument, with Eslanda Goode Robeson, p. 116. 210 chapter seven the one hand and defense of liberalism in regards to American representation of China on the other. While his critique of imperialism brought him some negative reception from New York intellectual circles, it was his debate with a group of “Chinahands ” over Ameri- can representation of China that spelled the end of his “American success”—not only had his series of American bestsellers ceased, but he was virtually silenced and retreated from making public utterances in matters related to American politics of China. Lin Yutang’s anxiety and frustration were vividly revealed in his correspondences with the Walshes. This is quite understandable because Lin’s American success originated from appreciative praise and collaboration from New York liberal intellectual circles including his publisher Richard Walsh and Pearl S. Buck. Indeed, Lin’s debate with the new “Chinahands” over American representation of China caused very much a liberal cosmopolitan implosion. In the early twentieth century, American representation of China was chiefly in the hands of missionaries whose objective was to change China. Such impulse was evident, for instance, in Arthur Smith’s Chi- nese Characteristics at the turn of the century, as well as in Henry Luce’s media enterprise in the 1930s and 1940s. Pearl S. Buck’s writing on China can be seen as a transition. While Buck’s representation of China still retained much missionary discursive enunciations, Buck herself resolutely divorced herself from mainstream missionary enterprise, and more importantly, her narratives of China were very much received as fictional ethnography on China, as I discussed in Chapter Six. It is no accident that Buck belonged to the second generation of American missionaries in China, which consisted of a number of notable “Chinahands” such as Owen Lattimore and John Service . By the 1940s, American representations of China have become increasingly a special enterprise carried out by a host of “Chinah- ands.” What counts as a “Chinahand” is his first-hand experience and knowledge about China. While anybody can become a “Chinahand” (Edgar Snow started out as a deck boy), prestige of a seasoned “Chi- nahand” lies in the success of his turning his experience into expertise. This is true of the most famous “Chinahands” in this period: Agnes Smedley, Edgar Snow, Ted White, Owen Lattimore, and of course, John King Fairbank. They formed a distinct group of American liberal cosmopolitan intellectuals in the 1940s as they shared some common features in their intellectual identity: they achieved their cultural capital through their writings on China as “China experts,” and they cosmopolitan difference 211 were all progressive liberals who also allied themselves with the cause of China’s progress. And China’s “progress,” in their objective expert analysis, lied in the Chinese Communist revolution, not in the corrupt and conservative Nationalist government. Due to the “Who Lost China” debate—an American-centric and nationalist discourse—and the ensuing McCarthyism in the early 1950s, the issue of the representation of China in the 1940s by progressive liberal Chinahands has been dominated by victimization discourses that yield little to a better understanding of an important part of history in the cross-cultural politics between China and America. By examining Lin Yutang’s debate with liberal American “Chinahands,” there is certainly no point in re-invoking the issue in terms of their all- too-obvious ideological difference of pro- or anti-communism. What is important is to understand the nature of their liberal cosmopolitan difference in terms of American representations of China. In other words, the paradoxical marriage between American liberalism and Chinese totalitarianism is to be seen via the contention between different kinds of liberal cosmopolitanisms as represented by Lin Yutang and the new China experts. And this is the contention for discursive power out of different understanding of liberal cosmopolitanism from different perspectives, even though they were contending in the same discursive space. After Lin published Between Tears and Laughter, which indicts Western imperialism, he went on a trip back to China for six months. The result was a “travel book”—The Vigil of a Nation, in which Lin offered his own account of the wartime situation of China, especially the civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists. After a six-month tour of wartime China from 1943–1944, Lin Yutang arrived in La Guardia airport in New York on March 22, 1944, and immediately issued a press dispatch, in which he emphasized the importance of the reopen- ing of the Burma Road and called for the continued faith of America in China—because “that faith is being systematically destroyed by the Chinese Communist grapevine propaganda through American chan- nels.” Richard Walsh and Pearl S. Buck did not quite like such pro- government stance from Lin but still urged him to write the book reporting on his journey. Somewhat reluctant, Lin went ahead with writing the book, and when the first a few chapters reached Rich- ard Walsh and Pearl S. Buck, they were quite impressed with Lin’s style and approach and assured him that he had a grand start. But after they read the chapter on civil war, they became quite concerned. 212 chapter seven

Walsh feels that Lin’s pro-government stance would damage his reputation in America, as “people will wonder at you because you now so wholeheartedly support the government you once criticized, because you really did not visit the region you so bitterly condemn.”29 In other words, Pearl S. Buck and Richard Walsh were concerned that in his views about the civil war in China, Lin sounded like a “party propagandist,” and their suggestions were to add more sections where Lin mingled and talked with common people, especially the descriptions on the minority peoples in interior China, and to tone down his affiliation with the government as much as possible such as cutting down his references to conversations with officials and uses of government- provided automobiles. Lin Yutang was rather frustrated. For many years, Richard Walsh and Pearl S. Buck were his first readers and critics whose views Lin trusted and appreciated. With such responses from them, Lin knew that his efforts in writing the book to gain American public understanding had failed, because if his trusted liberal-minded friends could not find his messages convincing, much less sympathy could be expected from the general public. Lin agreed that he could modify the texts by reduc- ing references to the officials and the uses of government-provided automobiles (though he did not have to do so if he were visiting Gen- eral Eisenhower, as he grudgingly added), but that will not solve the problem. “The truth is,” as Lin writes to Walsh, “if you will admit it, that in the unimportant things I am successful, but whenever it comes to my political beliefs—frankly the communist question—I sound unconvincing and have a false note.”30 But Lin felt he could not back away from his convictions: “I think the chapter on Civil War has been written with great fairness, that moreover, it is there that I wrote with the most passionate conviction against Chinese killing Chinese in time of war. I think even you can see that, only that such an attitude puz- zles you.”31 Therefore, Lin suggested that they should delay publishing the book, or perhaps not to publish it at all. For whatever padding he could do for the book, he would be smeared as a paid government propagandist for his political views which were obvious throughout the

29 Richard Walsh, letter to Lin Yutang, April 14, 1944, the John Day Company Archive, Box 193. 30 Lin Yutang, letter to Richard Walsh and Pearl S. Buck, August 25, 1944, the John Day Company Archive, Box 193. 31 Ibid. cosmopolitan difference 213 book, since the current state of American mind was “abnormal” and very much “poisoned” by pro-communist propaganda. “What about all those worthy American observers who are by implication put in the wrong by my book? Since I cannot stoop to being a ‘great liberal’ by defaming my own country, there is no way out.”32 Out of further negotiations, The Vigil of a Nation was eventually published, but not surprisingly, it received almost unanimous condemnation from American reporters on China due to its pro-government and anti-communist political stance. In a radio broadcast on NBC’s “America’s Town Meeting” in 1945, Lin Yutang had a direct confrontation with Agnes Smedley who accused Lin of all that Walsh had predicted and warned him of. Smedley recalls the event to one of her friends as such: “You were right, I nearly had a fight with Lin Yutang. Before the program began I asked him why he didn’t come right out and tell the public that he represents the Military Affairs Commission of the Chinese govt., and that he got a big fat check in American dollars from a Chinese govt. bank for his trip, etc. Lin turned pale yellow and screamed at me with all hands and legs flying in the air: ‘I’ll sue you! I’ll sue you! I’ll sue you!’ he screamed.”33 Actually, Smedley was also an important ally of Lin in their fight against Western imperialism. When Between Tears and Laughter was under scathing reviews by certain New York intellectuals, Smedley furnished with a very positive review, applauding Lin’s liberal stance as a gadfly to the state. She affirmed that Lin’s liberal critique must be quite successful as it brought about the wrath of a New York Times reviewer who screamed that Lin dared to criticize us given Lin had made a fortune with his books in America. In Smedley’s words, “such a viewpoint would do credit to a money-changer.”34 Perhaps the most representative criticism from Chinahands was from Edgar Snow, whose well-known Red Star over China was the first account in English of the Chinese Communist revolutionary movement

32 Ibid. 33 Agnes Smedley, letter to A. Taylor, August 12, 1945, quoted in Janice R. Mac- Kinnon and Stephen R. MacKinnon, Agnes Smedley: The Life and Times of an American Radical, p. 291. 34 Agnes Smedley, “Lin Yutang Scolds and Warns,” The Progressive (September 13, 1943: 8. But Smedley also brushed aside Lin’s belief that Confucianism has a role in critiquing Western modernity. Adopting a standard Communist standpoint, Smedley writes: “Confucianism is unadulterated feudalism which has blocked China’s progress for thousands of years, and has had to be fought by every Chinese reformer.” 214 chapter seven and consequently established him as a most influential Chinahand in America. In a polemical review essay entitled: “China to Lin Yutang” published in The Nation, Snow’s objective is to discredit Lin’s representation of China. It is interesting to observe that Snow always tends to use “Kungchantang,” instead of “Communists,” as opposed to Kuo- mintang, obviously to suggest that Chinese Communists were really different from what Americans understand as “Communists.” The notion that Chinese Communists were merely “agrarian reformers” was indeed the theme popularized by Snow in his Red Star over China. And Snow repeats his thesis here that Kungchantang was much more “democratic” than Kuomintang. According to Snow, the Chinese Communists have renounced “any intention of establishing communism in China in the near future.”35 So far as the Communist expansion during the war was concerned, that was precisely a potent sign of its democratic practices that won popular support. To account for the reasons for the Communist expansion, Snow finds an ally in another influential Chinahand—Owen Lattimore, from whom he quotes a social scientist’s reasoning for the Communist wartime expansion: (1) they have survived and expanded, “not because they subdue people by armed force, but because the people support them”; (2) “basic economic conditions are better in Communist-controlled China than in Kuomintang-controlled China”; (3) conscription and taxation are more equally distributed in Communist-controlled territory; (4) few of the many progressive, educated middle-class Chinese who voluntarily entered Communist territory have fled from it; and (5) “it is a fact that governing committees and representative committees are elected, and that the Communists limit themselves to one-third of the representation.”36 But while it seems Snow is attacking Lin’s argument, when read in between lines, he lays equal emphasis on discrediting Lin’s qualifica- tions as the spokesman for China. Snow begins the essay by acknowledging that he and Lin used to be friends, and he had admired and respected Lin. But now he found Lin had written a book “with such unexpected smallness of faith in a man’s people, so full of mischief, and so lacking in dignity and pride.”37 Then he goes on to remind his readers that in writing that book, “the author leaves his role of compiler of ancient wisdom and wit to enter a new métier, that of

35 Edgar Snow, “China to Lin Yutang,” The Nation (February 17, 1945): 180. 36 Ibid., p. 183. 37 Ibid., p. 180. cosmopolitan difference 215 polemicist and party propagandist.”38 Apparently, Snow was rather sarcastic about Lin’s image in America as a philosopher of Chinese wisdom, when he hints at Lin’s core readership: “Dr. Lin’s ignorance of conditions of battle in China will probably go unnoticed by many of the elderly ladies whose hair will stand on end when they read his book.”39 However, the main strategy in Snow’s attack is to claim that Lin’s credibility in his representation of China is somehow questionable because Lin is removed from his own people, and that had much to do with Lin’s diasporic situation. As Snow puts it, “Lin’s whole trouble is that, after seventeen years of this anti-Communist vigil, half of which he has spent in comfortable America, he never ventured into the scene of conflict to see how it was with his people.”40 Lin Yutang never visited Yanan, while many Western observers did. Snow also insinuated that Lin was carrying an official visa in America even though Lin claimed that he did not get any pay from the Nationalist government. In the end, Snow wished that Lin would change his mind and choose to identify with his own people, for Lin’s “native skepticism will eventually compel him to reexamine the faulty case he has made out.”41 In his private conversations, Lin Yutang had complained why he should be the one out of four hundred million Chinese to come out and say the truth about the ongoing civil war in China, and had seriously considered giving up the publication of the book.42 When challenged, however, Lin did not seem to yield his political convictions. When The Nation gave Lin Yutang a chance for a rebuttal, Lin replied with “China and Its Critics.” Lin’s reply to Snow begins by stating that he sees in Snow’s essay “for the first time a real attempt to discuss or dispute the facts” in his book and he is happy to discuss the issue with Snow “whose sincerity cannot be questioned.”43 In other words, Lin never challenged the validity of the cosmopolitan role Snow assumed in representing China. But Lin did point out that he was writing against the contemporary tide of public opinion about China, and the Chinese

38 Ibid. 39 Ibid., p. 182. 40 Ibid., p. 181. 41 Ibid., p. 183. 42 See Lin Yutang’s wife Liao Cuifeng, or “Hong,” to Pearl S. Buck and Richard Walsh, August 24, 1944, The John Day Archive, Box 193. 43 Lin Yutang, “China and Its Critics,” The Nation (March 24, 1944): 324. 216 chapter seven

Communists had become “America’s sacred cow,” and so “to suggest that the sacred cow was in fact a red bull in a china shop would be to arouse the ire of the cow-worshipers,” but Lin insisted that he “never cared which way the wind blows.”44 Lin claims that his objections towards the Chinese Communists derive from two major premises: that they had sought to expand their own army and party base during the war at the cost of national unity; and that they were not true democrats as American observers portrayed them to be but totalitarians of the Russian type in theory and practice. In fact, despite Lin’s polemic with the Leftist writers in the 1930s China, Lin’s representation of the Chinese Communists in his American writings up till this time was far from being negative. Rather, Lin sees the Communist soldiers as a potent force and part of the rejuvenation of the whole nation in the war. In “The Birth of a New China,” for instance, Lin Yutang applauded “the magnanimous attitude of sincere patriotism and broad-mindedness of the Kwangsi Generals, Li Tsungjen and Pai Tsunghsi, and of the Communist leaders, Chu Teh and Mao Tsehtung”45 for bringing about a united front of resistance against Japan. Likewise, his criticism of the Chinese Com- munists was based on the same nationalist position. Lin’s major argument with Snow and other American experts on China at the time was that these Chinahands never bother to check the original documents in Chinese but rather rely on “what the Communists say through their interpreters to foreigners on a conducted tour.”46 Lin claims that if one reads, for instance, editorials of Xinhua Ribao, or Mao’s articles, or “Chengfeng Wenhsien” (literature of the Party Purification Cam- paign), it would be very clear that the Chinese Communists were not really “democrats” as American observers would like to portray them to be. Lin Yutang was perhaps the first critic to reveal the nature of now well-known Yanan CCP Purification Movement, or “Zhengfeng Campaign .” As Lin explains: “As early as February, 1942, Mao Tse-tung started the ‘purification,’ or chengfeng, movement, ‘to purify thought, pacify education, and purify the party.’ (cheng means to ‘rectify,’ and feng means ‘atmosphere.’) How thought is purified is evident from the book ‘Chengfeng Wenhsien,” or

44 Ibid. 45 Lin Yutang, The Birth of a New China, reprint of Chapter Ten of the Revised and enlaged edition of My Country and My People, p. 387. 46 Ibid. cosmopolitan difference 217

‘Literature of the Purification.’ The concrete method of purifying thought is the ‘utter-frankness,’ or tanpai, movement, a political Oxford Group movement in which everyone’s private life is made an open book. If a member is not utterly frank about his thoughts and private conversation, other members will be utterly frank about him. The result is of course unfortunate for those whose private conversations need ‘purification’ or ‘rectification.’47 Lin’s debate with American Chinahands in the 1940s raises a number of intriguing and significant issues concerning cosmopolitan politics. In the cosmopolitical difference between Lin Yutang and China observers in the 1940s, Lin Yutang seems to suffer from three disadvantages. First, Lin’s diasporic position has become a liability. The very fact that he was able to stay and speak in the US carrying an official visa was taken as physical signs of separation from his own people while American observers had been there in the field, so to speak, as journalists reporting on China. That is a paradoxical situation about cosmopolitan identity. Lin Yutang was speaking, or would very much like to speak, as a cosmopolitan intellectual in America, but thought that the fact that he was Chinese should rather be taken for granted and he should not have to defend his Chinese authenticity in regards to his knowledge of “my country and my people” once he had sojourned in the diaspora. Edgar Snow and other Chinahands, on the other hand, claim to speak in America as cosmopolitan intellectuals for the Chinese people, but to make themselves more trustworthy and authoritative, they would seek to discredit a cosmopolitan intellectual from China as either un-Chinese (not with the people) or too Chinese (merely patriotic or nationalistic). But it is important to note, though, that the reason why Chinahands’ attack upon Lin’s cosmopolitan identity was effective and successful was precisely because their “American-ness” was very much taken for granted. And it was American power through public opinion that both Lin and Chinahands’ discourses seek to appeal to. In such a battle for “cosmopolitan authenticity,” a Chinese diasporic position is bound to be disadvantageous. Secondly, in defending liberal principles, Lin chose in his political judgment the Nationalist government as a better option for the political future of modern China, and that became an apparent liberal faux pas, while American China observers enjoyed the aura of liberal

47 Ibid., p. 327. 218 chapter seven

critics of the Chinese government, and yet their cosmopolitical role in promoting a particular kind of American policy towards China which would have real consequences upon the future of China was hardly questioned. The cross-cultural politics produce cosmopolitan effects both ways, but the cosmopolitan liberal criteria seem to apply only in one dimension. And the liberal qualification of being pro-government or anti-government was a false argument in the first place. It seemed rather strange that, in resisting a Communist totalitarian solution for Chinese modernity, Lin Yutang was deemed as betraying liberal principles simply because he was siding with the wartime Chinese government fighting for the unity and independence of the nation. From the perspective of Chinese liberals today, Lin Yutang’s critical insight on the totalitarian nature of Chinese Communist practice in its early stage served as an important historical witness to the possibility of a liberal alternative road for Chinese modernity. In today’s intellectual world in China where liberalism is still far from being the orthodox, the totalitarian nature of “Zhengfeng” has become an acceptable open topic for self-reflection, and the case of Wang Shiwei, for instance, has already been “rectified” even in the orthodox Communist ideology. On the other hand, the American Chinahands’ collaboration with Chinese Communist practice has warranted little self-reflection. When retired wartime journalists and China watchers gathered together in Arizona in 1981, for instance, the dominant mood was not self-reflection, but rather self-apology. In assessing their work of representing China in the 1940s, Fairbank concluded: “The American experience in China [during the 1940s] was a first-class disaster for the American people… we all tried, but we failed . . . I mean that we could not educate or illuminate or inform the American people or the American leadership in such a way that we could modify the outcome.”48 But that is by no means critical reflection upon the American liberal collaboration with Chinese totalitarianism. Rather, as Charles Hayford points out, it assumed the righteousness of their representation and lamented that it did not exert overwhelming influence upon American public opinion on China.49 This is indeed an intriguing question in terms of liberal

48 John K. Fairbank, in Stephen R. MacKinnon and Oris Friesen, China Reporting: An Oral History of American Journalism in the 1930s and 1940s, p. 184. 49 See Charles W. Hayford, “The United States and China (1948) and The United States and China,” unpublished paper presented at the Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting, Chicago, April 3, 2005. cosmopolitan difference 219 cosmopolitan politics in American intellectual history. The victimization discourse of McCarthyism does not alleviate the issue, nor does it legitimize the American liberal collaboration with Chinese Com- munist totalitarianism. The cosmopolitical inquiry must go beyond the so-called “un-American” accusation and refocus on the political effect of Chinahands’ intervention on Chinese modernity. Such an inquiry must start with a self-reflective introspection upon the role Chinah- ands played in the imperial power US exerted upon China. A later generation of American China experts in the 1970s had embarked upon such an inquiry. As David Horowitz demonstrates, for instance, liberal progressive representation of China originated from the overall American governmental and non-governmental presence in China, and very much participated in “an intra-bureaucratic struggle within the government.”50 And American Chinahands must acknowledge that, in such contention within the US government, their cosmopolitanism not only has a relationship with power, but their appeal to this power exerts serious consequences upon the political shape of modern China which they perhaps cannot afford to be responsible of and would not themselves be part of. Thirdly and most importantly, Lin’s reputation as “a philosopher of Chinese wisdom” lent much less prestige and credibility compared with China observers’ first-hand reporting and experience that claimed to offer hard facts and scientific knowledge about China which contributed to their identity as “China experts.” To understand the cosmopolitan difference between Lin Yutang and American China experts in the 1940s, it would be helpful to examine the later debate among liberal China experts carried out in the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Schol- ars in the early 1970s.51 The younger generation’s challenge and critique of older generation of China experts represented by John King Fairbank can still shed some light upon our understanding of liberal China specialists in the 1940s, as the institutionalization of China studies had its roots in the 1940s.52 Fairbank’s own career started in the

50 David Horowitz, “Politics and Knowledge: An Unorthodox History of Modern China Studies,” p. 157. 51 Of course, I am not concerned here with the ideological alliance of the younger generation of China experts with Maoist revolutionary doctrine, which would be another interesting topic for cosmopolitan inquiry. Rather, I am only interested in their self-critique of the ﬁeld of China studies in America. 52 See also Charles W. Hayford, “The Good Earth, Revolution, and the American Raj in China,” The Several Worlds of Pearl S. Buck, pp. 19–27. 220 chapter seven

1940s, and he himself also acknowledged that “the early generation of China specialists in the 1930’s and 1940’s…were able to function as area specialists.”53 According to James Peck, underlying the various interpretations of modern Chinese history and culture by China experts as represented by Fairbank is a basic theoretical framework, namely the modernization model. The China experts saw the worldwide expansion of the Western power as inevitable and overwhelming, so that all the other cultures could do was to “respond” to such Western expansion. The worldwide Western expansion is seen primarily as the advancement of machine technology which has also changed Western society, but which proved to be much more destructive to Chinese traditional social fabric in such a way that Chinese traditional values became largely antithetical to such change. Yet, modern China was left with no alternative means but to seek the path of modernization by “responding,” that is, adapting to the age of machine civilization opened up and brought upon by the Western powers. “Here, then, lies the heart of the modern dilemma for the China experts: if all traditional cultures are subject to the corrosive inﬂuence of this technological civilization, they do not all have the same capacity for resistance and above all the same capacity for absorption. Simply to begin the modernization effort, each society must jettison, or decisively reinterpret, the cultural heritage which has been its raison d’etre.”54 Peck’s argument is that the modernization model underlying the assumptions of China experts grossly neglected factors of imperialism in modern Chinese history. However, what I am more interested in is the inherent logic of the modernization model and its liberal cosmopolitan implications in their attitudes and inclinations towards the dilemma of Chinese modernity. On the emotional level, at least, many Chinahands of the 1940s were aware of Western imperialism in China. Growing up as “mishkids” (second generation of missionary parents) in China, those who grew up as inﬂuential Chinahands (including Pearl S. Buck, Henry Luce, Owen Lattimore, John Service and so on) had experienced some traumatic anti-imperialistic episodes of modern Chinese history, such as the Boxer’s Rebellion and the

53 John King Fairbank, “An Exchange,” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 2, No. 3 (April–July 1970): 53. 54 James Peck, “The Roots of Rhetoric: The Professional Ideology of America’s China Watchers,” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 2 No. 1 (October, 1969): 60. cosmopolitan difference 221

Nationalist Revolution of 1927. In a way, they were perhaps too eager to be on the right side of history and therefore to do good for China. The explanation for the American liberal collaboration with Chi- nese Communist revolution must be sought in such missionary zeal, whether in support of the National government in the case of Henry Luce, or inclining towards the Communist “agrarian reformers” in the case of Owen Lattimore and others, as well as in the inherent ideological implications of the modernization model. For in the modernization model, universalism and relativism are two sides of the same coin. Or rather, liberalism seen in modern social sciences is essentially an economic matter while liberal values are seen as relative especially when applied to non-Western societies. The problem of American representation of China in the 1940s by China specialists was certainly not they were un-American due to their Communist sympathies (McCarthyism), nor was that their modernization model neglected imperialist factors in modern Chinese history (for many China specialists in the 1940s were conscious of imperialism in this regard), but rather that the progressive assumptions of the modernization theory were inevitably enmeshed in the power play in American intervention with China that entail an inherently imperialistic attitude in their objectivity, no matter how benign it may seem—for the good of China’s modernization project. When modernization model was applied to China in the hands of American China experts who projected their cosmopolitan universal application to China’s progress, it easily translates into legitimization for their collaboration with Chinese “agrarian reformers .” This is probably most tellingly reﬂected in Fairbank’s statement: We cannot expect democracy in China soon or on our own terms, but only on terms consistent with Chinese tradition, which must be gradually remade . . . economic security comes before political freedom in the wants of mankind. A man will think of food before he thinks of free speech.55 What must be acknowledged is that, when China observers concluded that “Communists could seem good in China though bad in America,” their expertise judgment is certainly a cosmopolitan political act that

55 John King Fairbank, Atlantic Monthly (September 1946), reprinted in China Per- ceived, pp. 3–19, quotes at p. 4, p. 9; also quoted in Charles W. Hayford, “The United States and China (1948) and The United States and China.” 222 chapter seven exerts tremendous socio-political consequences upon Chinese modernity for generations of Chinese to grapple with. It is interesting to note that a major argument in Lin Yutang’s Vigil of a Nation is to offer a blueprint for China’s post-war future in the last chapter of the book—a future of democratization going hand in hand with industrialization and modernization. Having seen and experienced American material wealth, Lin claims that he constantly compares that with contemporary Chinese lifestyle: “I see girls in ﬁne woolen sweat- ers and mothers in cotton prints, I ask myself, Do the Chinese women have these, the average housewives and their daughters? . . . The ﬁve- and-ten stores are probably the best index of a manufacturing country turning out things cheap enough for the poorest housewife to buy, and therefore the most interesting phenomenon in this country for an Oriental.”56 Lest he be misunderstood, Lin noted that he took pains to criticize the materialistic and mechanistic approaches in Western modernity in Between Tears and Laughter, and he still did not believe “a quart of milk for every Hottentot” will lead to world peace. But for China, it was a matter of emphasis, as China has too little of material progress, and industrialization must come to replace the “handicraft age.” “The sin of China was not dirt, but poverty, and that dirt was not a moral problem, but one of water supply and sewage system and enameled bathtubs.”57 But for Lin Yutang, industrialization and modernization were part of the democracy project in Chinese modernity. To break the two apart would be unthinkable from a liberal perspective. Lin Yutang proposes in the book that three things must be done immediately in China to embark on the democratizing process. First, a Bill of Rights must be enforced immediately so that people’s rights, most notably the freedom of the press, are protected and “little people” are made to feel important individuals. “Second, the government should at once grant constitutional status to all political parties in China which are not backed by a separate army, as a preparatory step toward the coming constitutional period . . . Third, the Kuomintang should develop within its own ranks a vigorous movement, which may be called the ‘left,’

56 Lin Yutang, Vigil of a Nation, p. 250. 57 Ibid., p. 251. cosmopolitan difference 223 bidding for the support of peasant and labor and the common people in competition with the Communist ultra-radical platform.”58 Another competition between the Nationalists and the Communists, as Lin sees it, is the deep intellectual schism over Chinese tradition. “It is rooted in the fundamental opposing attitudes of the Kuomin- tang and the Communist party on the question whether the traditional Chinese culture must be saved and salvaged, or whether it should be uprooted and discarded completely.”59 To the progressive mind of the Chinese Communists (and the American China experts alike), Chinese traditional culture was nothing but a drag, a feudalist past that stood in the way of China’s modernization and progress. And for that matter, statements like “Chinese youth should not study Chinese ancient books” and “all Chinese books contain poison” are taken literally in all earnest seriousness. On the other hand, “Chinese scholars, like Ku Chikang, Feng Youlan, Chu Tseching, and others . . . suggest that the past national culture or the Chinese philosophy of life is worth defending and that all Chinese history is not just a stinking pot of corruption and exploitation of the masses.”60 So at the dawn of China’s historical revival, the tug of war goes on in intellectual China between Master Kung and Karl Marx—“The Marxian fans would like to see Mas- ter Kung’s whisker plucked, and the Kuomintang fans would like to see Confucius claw Karl’s bushy beard.”61 Lin Yutang believes only time will settle the issue and he wagers that Master Kung will eventually win, for “the issue involved is between the fundamental humanism of Confucius and the economic and deterministic materialism of Marx.”62

A Philosophy of Peace

Just as Richard Walsh had predicted, Lin Yutang’s Vigil of a Nation was against the tide of American public opinion towards China at the time, and the direct consequence was the poor sale of the book. To maintain his reputation and marketability, Lin was strongly urged not

58 Ibid., p. 224. 59 Ibid., p. 57. 60 Ibid. 61 Ibid., p. 58. 62 Ibid. 224 chapter seven to engage in any further public comment on American policy towards China, and it was agreed that Lin’s next book project was to write a biography on Su Dongpo, for which Lin could resume his role as a cultural interpreter on (traditional) Chinese literature and philosophy, away from the immediate and messy political polemics. Only in his correspondences with Richard Walsh did Lin continue to let out his frustrations towards American policy towards China. In his letter to Richard Walsh and Pearl S. Buck shortly before the founding of the People’s Republic of China, for instance, Lin has this to say: “Liberty for Americans is their life blood, but for Chinese, what does it matter anyhow?. . . . [T]he consigning of 500 millions to totalitarian rule does not even arouse a ripple in their phlegm. . . . What I was going to say is that I have no country to return to. I suppose Edgar Snow and Agnes Smedley think I am a fool not to jump into the communist heaven at this moment, in my own country.”63 It is important to note, however, that Lin’s debate with American Chinahands is not to be seen in terms of Lin’s “patriotic” stance vs. Chinahands’ “un-American” betrayal. In fact, the two dimensions of Lin’s literary practices in the 1940s in America—critique of imperialism and defending liberalism constitute the same underlying theme: a cosmopolitan and cross-cultural critique of modernity at large. Lin Yutang was certainly concerned and very frustrated that China would turn totalitarian and he would have no country to return to, but what he was equally concerned with, if not more so, was that American liberals genuinely believed it was a good and positive thing. To Lin Yutang, the imperialist betrayal of India and the liberalist betrayal of China were both symptoms of a modern malaise, larger and more signiﬁcant than the fall of China to totalitarian rule itself. The lack of a philosophy of peace at times of world wars was the direct consequence of the modern malaise affecting our way of thinking and way of life. In one of his letters to Richard Walsh, Lin claimed that some day, he was going to “write an ambitious book, a book of philosophy, called the Problem of the Age, attempting a synthesis of science and religion. It was much better when the priest was a medicine man. Knowledge should never have been separated from faith. They are now, and that is the cause of distraction of the modern spirit. Nowhere except in this

63 Lin Yutang to Richard J. Walsh and Pearl S. Buck, September 2, 1949, the John Day Company Archive. cosmopolitan difference 225 crazy modern world have knowledge and faith been separated. Faith, whatever its garb, is but a body of valid beliefs, beliefs valid for action. There are a great many philosophical problems involved in this, but it is possible to make a synthesis of the oriental and occidental points of view.”64 Lin’s ambitious book of philosophy turned out to be a small and much-neglected book—Peace Is in the Heart, published independently in England instead of by the John Day Company in the US. The book resonates and repeats some of the themes already explored in Between Tears and Laughter. Indeed, taken as a whole, Lin Yutang’s writings in the 1940s offer a clear contour of a cross-cultural philosophy of peace, at the bottom of which lies a cosmopolitan critique of modernity at large. Indeed, Lin Yutang was not so much a “congenial Chinese philosopher” even in his introduction and translation of Chinese cultural “wisdom.” In his “introduction” to his seminal compilation of The Wisdom of China and India, Lin already clearly turned his role as a “wisdom compiler” to a critic of Western modernity. In an important cross-cultural strategic move, Lin Yutang situated his interpretation of Chinese culture and philosophy in a critical engagement with the contemporary dilemma of modernity. Lin Yutang charges that the modern intellectual world was going into pieces because the whole knowledge system was disintegrating as all traditional values were col- lapsing, so that college professors would not even treat human values as relevant in human studies, thanks to “the invasion of the humanities by scientific materialism and of the betrayal of the humanities through the false instinct of their professors to ape the technique and paraphernalia of the natural sciences.”65 As a result, scientific materialism has become the guiding method and technique for the study of human society, literature and culture, in which professors of humanities are confined in finding the value-free mechanistic laws governing human action. Hence, “Western social thought is either economics or political science.”66 When man is reduced to a mere economic being and the study of human society only in terms of the science of power politics, a

64 Lin Yutang to Richard Walsh, December 12, 1948, the John Day Company Archive. 65 Lin Yutang, The Wisdom of China and India, p. 573. 66 Lin Yutang, Peace is in the Heart, p. 21. 226 chapter seven philosophy of peace will certainly be impossible to imagine. Again, Lin Yutang was not charging against material progress per se. He was all for material progress of all kinds, for soap, for instance. Soap in America has become “democratic,” Lin notes, as anyone from Asia and Europe to America would discover. It was readily available in hotels and even those in five-and-ten-cent stores are of good quality. And that has made the task of cleaning much easier and more pleasant. But the cleaning of the body does not necessarily translate into an enrichment of the soul, and it is amazing that modern human sciences refuse to take into consideration the factors of human spirituality at all. “If there is one thing I can be sadistic about, it is swine-and- slop Economics. My only desire in life is to see the Economist, the law-giver of Europe, dethroned, disgraced, and hanged. I burn with rage whenever I see tables of percentages. If he were not so smug with his little facts, it would not arouse such a resentment in me . . . The Economist wants to defend the whole modern civilization with his fractions and statistical averages. Somehow if only the figures are juggled right, there will be peace in the world. He tells you: this is science; it is positive, objective knowledge.”67 Armed with such objective knowledge, the political scientists chart out a “realistic” picture of geopolitical forces that must be checked or contained or boosted, but such scientific realism unabashedly refuses to take into account factors of human will or passion or the question of justice. So long as Man is only seen as an economic animal capable only of brute force, so long as economic materialism and scientific realism dominate our modern way of thinking, a philosophy of peace will be unattainable. A philosophy of peace would have to go beyond the dominant scientific materialistic technique of modernity. “Out of the shattered fragments of modern knowledge a new world must be built, and East and West must build it together.”68 The new world of peace must rely on a viable philosophy of peace. And the problem of peace is essentially the problem of man, or how we understand as the nature of man. Man must be taken as Man, with human spirituality, personal integrity, individual dignity, and emotions and desires, rather than as a mere economic animal hungry for power and control. Thus, peace must be seen as a positive, normative

67 Ibid., pp. 25–26. 68 Lin Yutang, The Wisdom of China and India, p. 576. cosmopolitan difference 227 principle of life instead of a negative mechanism for checks and bal- ances. “Peace is rich, peace is satisfying, peace is growth and movement and action and life. Peace is as natural as harmony because it is the normal way of man . . . And the psychology of domestic peace, national peace, and world peace cannot be very different—it is merely the harmony of social relationships.”69 And Lin Yutang emphasizes that the attainment of the harmony in social relationships, either among individuals or nations, requires a “technique of peace,” and the philosophy of peace should occupy itself with such a technique. To think about and to work out techniques of peace, cross-cultural resources from both East and West can be drawn to make contributions. Lin Yutang believes that our standards of morality, especially international morality, are so low because we have shunned away from Enlightenment thinkers and their universal ideals. To Lin Yutang, the flowers of New England culture—the epigrammatic wisdom of Emer- son, the love of nature and rural ideals in Thoreau, and the mysticism and the largess of humanity in Whitman can serve as healthy ingredients for constructing a philosophy of peace based on the ideals of Man as human agency. But to Lin Yutang, the most important cultural resources come from the Chinese tradition, both Taoist and Confucian. To Lin Yutang, modern Western thinking needs spiritual softening. Scientific materialism has put man in the image of steel and geopolitical theory of Force will only lead to reaction to force, thus not to peace but to endless wars. Instead of believing “in the impossibly naïve rectilinear values of the West,”70 Lin suggests a circular view of Taoism could very well mellow down the incredibly arrogant scientific positiv- ity that history inevitably moves towards where the “canned foods” are. The philosophy of Laozi could rectify the hardness of our modern thinking and supplement it with a sense of subtlety and irony, for it teaches the wisdom of lying low for long-term sustainment, the power of the weak over brute force, and the permeability of the flexible and formless water. If Force and Power are understood in the Laozian paradox, Lin contends, America could truly achieve her greatness. And Lin Yutang quotes Laozi and longs for his “Dream America” as follows:

69 Lin Yutang, Peace Is in the Heart, p. 28. 70 Ibid., p. 78. 228 chapter seven

The Great Tao Flows everywhere, (Like a ﬂood) it may go left or right The myriad things derive their life from it, And it does not deny them. When its work is accomplished, It does not take possession. It clothes and feeds the myriad things Yet does not claim them as its own . . . Because to the end it does not claim greatness, Its greatness is achieved. How did the great rivers and seas become the Lords of the Ravines? By being good at keeping low. That was how they became the Lord of Ravines. Therefore in order to be the chief among the people, One must speak like their inferiors. In order to be foremost among the people, One must walk behind them. Thus it is that the sage stays above, And the people do not feel his weight; Walks in front, And the people do not wish him harm. Then the people of the world are glad to uphold him for ever. Because he does not contend, No one in the world can contend against him. I am not worried lest America may not be able to assert a leadership of force and power; I am worried lest she may. I am concerned to see America assume a moral leadership, a leadership of humility, so that the world may pay her glad homage and uphold her forever. Like the great river that nourishes life along its valley, she shall by the exuberance and richness of her life be a blessing upon the people of the earth. She shall stay above, and the world shall not feel her weight; she shall walk in front and no one will wish her harm. For she shall then lead in kindness and unselﬁshness and justice and by that secret of unused power bring a new era of brotherhood to mankind. No one can dethrone her because of her power for goodness, and no one can take away from her, because she does not take possession. She shall not contend, and no one in the world can contend against her, and because she takes no credit, the credit can never be taken away from her. This is my Dream America . Will it come true?”71

71 Ibid., pp. 61–63. cosmopolitan difference 229

For the technique of achieving peace, Confucianism also has much to contribute, not merely because of its sound humanism, but also because of its concrete pragmatic approaches to arriving at harmony in social relationships. For real peace must come from within, from the human heart, and Confucian teachings offer a rich repertoire of discourses in this respect. Lin Yutang here emphasizes particularly again the modern relevance of Confucian notions of “li” (good manners) and “yue” (music) as important techniques of achieving peace in the heart. Political scientists would laugh at the notions of government by good manners and government by music, but Lin Yutang assures us the Confucian emphasis on the power of music and good manners was no mere joke. Confucianism never trusted that law alone would bring about social order and harmony, and much less the soldier would bring about peace. Rather, the Confucian ideal is to prevent people from committing crimes and avoiding the court in the first place. And that requires moral cultivation. In modern terminology, Confucian moral cultivation reveals a deep psychological understanding of the nature of man. The training in good manners and music are important techniques of attaining inner peace since proper manners and pleasant music inevitably bring about good taste in people. The psychological function of the government by good taste is well elaborated in the Confucian classic Liji (The Book of Rituals), as Lin Yutang quotes: “Music expresses the harmony of the universe, while rituals express the order of universe. Through harmony all things are influenced, and through order all things have their proper place… Therefore, the superior man tries to create harmony in the human heart by a discovery of human nature, and tries to promote music as a means to the perfection of human culture.”72 By means of such psychological techniques of acquiring good taste, one achieves peace in the heart. And only when there is peace in the human heart can there be real peace in the world. Finally, Lin Yutang argues that a philosophy of peace must rely on a clear affirmation of human rights over economic rights. When modern materialism forsakes human rights for economic rights, it is also forsaking human dignity. Lin claims that in his recent years of stay in the US, he has met only one thinking American—a Negro porter in New York—whose values Lin shares. When asked about his

72 Ibid., p. 39. 230 chapter seven view about the prospect of the war, he remarked: “Conditions may change—perhaps—after the war. But it isn’t the money I’m complain- ing about. I don’t mind working for little money. It is that we want to be treated and thought of as human beings.”73 To Lin Yutang, that was a simple yet resounding slap in the face of all those Western thinkers who were all busy thinking hard in their post-war planning for his economic rights yet totally unaware of his human rights. But the viability of world peace must depend on the unquestionable faith in human dignity, which entails the recognition and affirmation of equality for all nations and all races. In the current Federation of men, Lin proclaims, we only know we belong to five categories: White, Black, Red, Yellow and Brown, but we know next to nothing what constitutes the common denominator unifying these five categories. Lin believes the Mencian notion of humanity elucidates succinctly such common- ality, as Mencius holds that the slight yet significant differentiation of human beings from beasts lies in human moral and spiritual faculties. In other words, the common standard for humanity is that there is a common heart in man—for all races. Once we recognize such common heart in man, Lin Yutang makes an urgent cosmopolitan call: If the world is to function as a unit, the faith must ultimately develop equally that no nation is better than any other nation. As with individuals, so with nations, equality cannot be proved by standards of intelligence or creative ability or moral integrity. It will have to be a mystic standard, a bland assertion that we are all equal just because we are all men.74

73 Ibid., p. 66, original emphasis. 74 Ibid., p. 85. CHAPTER EIGHT

CONCLUSION: WHAT A LIBERAL COSMOPOLITAN ALTERNATIVE MEANS FOR CONTEMPORARY CHINESE INTELLECTUAL DILEMMA

My critical reading of Lin Yutang’s cross-cultural politics in between China and the world investigates the problematic of the liberal cosmopolitan as an alternative intellectual disposition for Chinese modernity. The Chinese modernity project has a history of over a century now, but is perhaps still in its early stage, certainly still very much ongoing and far from being complete. Despite its limitations, the open and cosmopolitan intellectual atmosphere of the 1980s made it possible to re-discover the significance of Lin Yutang’s literary and cultural practices in search for an alternative Chinese modernity different from its master narratives of nationalism and revolutionary radicalism. How- ever, instead of further opening up possibilities for critical reflections of Chinese modernity discourses, the post-1989 contemporary Chi- nese intellectual world has been too quickly caught up in the schism between the so-called “liberal” and the “New Left” camps (again!). To go beyond the deadlock of the liberal and New Left debate, a liberal cosmopolitan alternative in light of Lin Yutang’s cross-cultural practices seems more urgent and relevant than ever, as it could contribute to all the three major intellectual trends in China today—the Neo-Confucian school , the New Left and the liberal—in a coherent and integrated approach.1 The 1980s ended violently in the crackdown of student demonstra- tions of 1989. In the aftermath of the chilling political climate, Chinese intellectuals embarked on a belated sober reflection upon radicalism in Chinese modernity, which in a way started a new kind of intellectual discourse in contemporary China. In a lecture given at the Chinese

1 According to Xu Youyu, the Neo-Confucianism (or cultural conservatism), the New Left (plus the post-modernism) and the liberalism are three main currents of intellectual thought in contemporary China, and the New Left and the liberalism are locked in a fundamental and irreconcilable difference. See Xu Youyu, “Ziyouzhuyi yu dangdai zhongguo” (Liberalism and Contemporary China), pp. 414–415. 232 chapter eight

University of Hong Kong in 1988, Yu Yingshi , an overseas historian of the Neo-Confucian lineage, outlined modern Chinese history as a progression of successive radicalism, and by contrast, a lack of sustainable conservatism.2 Yu’s thesis was that the socio-political turmoil of modern China had precipitated waves of waves of radical thought that culminated in the disaster of the “Cultural Revolution,” mainly because the socio-economic milieu was too immature and hostile to the formation of a middle class to sustain a liberal conservative counter-balance. Yu’s resort to socio-economic rationality for the cause of radicalism may be oversimpliﬁed; after all, historical rationality seems a rather risky business today. But Yu’s diagnosis of radicalism as a pervasive modern Chinese intellectual phenomenon has certainly been perceptive and aroused much interest and response from Chinese intellectuals. Responses to Yu’ critique of radicalism was a turning point for contemporary Chinese intellectual discourses, not so much because Yu’s call for the emergence of a middle class and a conservative counter- balance was certainly a legitimate concern, but more importantly, critique of radicalism re-evaluates the discourse of total Westerniza- tion and, by contrast, the relentless demonization of Chinese cultural traditions, that re-emerged in the 1980s. In his essay “Radicalism in 20th Century Cultural Movements” that appeared in the inaugural issue of Dongfang, a Neo-Confucian journal, Chen Lai made it clear that there was an apparent discursive link underlying the radicalisms of the New Culture and May Fourth Movement of early 20th century, the “Great Cultural Revolution” and the “Cultural Zeal” of the 1980s. Even though the “Cultural Revolution” was not an intellectual movement but rather a political campaign, there is still no doubt its ideological discourse inherits the radicalism of the May Fourth Movement in a strict orthodox Marxist interpretation, and instead of a critical historical reﬂection, the 1980s “Cultural Zeal” repeats the discourse of radicalism in the name of Westernization. The common scapegoat for such radicalism was traditional Chinese culture, condemned as “feudal,” corrupt and antithetical to modernity, whether in the May Fourth Movement, the “Great Cultural Revolution” or the “Culture

2 See Yu Yingshi, “Zhongguo jindai sixiang shang de jijin yu baoshou” (Radical- ism and Conservatism in the History of Modern Chinese Thought). Yu Yingshi is a favorite disciple of Qian Mu, the celebrated modern Chinese scholar of the Neo- Confucian school. conclusion 233

Zeal” of the 1980s. Thus, “a critical reflection upon the cultural radicalism dominant in 20th century Chinese history is the starting point toward the 21st century.”3 The critique of radicalism loosens up the defining dichotomy of Chinese modernity, namely, that of tradition (Chinese)/modernity (Western), and leads to a reassessment of the role of traditional cultural resources in Chinese modernity. This is certainly a healthy move in understanding Chinese modernity and bringing about an alternative. It is no coincidence that Li Zehou and Liu Zaifu have also echoed the critique of radicalism with their resolute announcement: Farewell to Revolution!4 To be suspicious of revolutionary claims and to say farewell to revolution, one is naturally led to cast doubt upon the unquestionable logic of Westernization and retain at least an open attitude toward the relevance of traditional Chinese cultural resources in Chinese modernity. That was precisely the position of Liu Zaifu in another “farewell”—“Farewell to the Gods.” What Liu meant was that in looking back over the 20th century, Chinese literary theories have been overwhelmed by different kinds of “gods”—ideas and theories borrowed from the West. “To be sure, the basic premises of influential Chinese literary theories of the current century all come from abroad. For example, Zhou Zuoren’s theory of humanistic literature derives from the Western Renaissance; Hu Shi’s genetic evolution of literature derives from social Darwinism . . . Disputes in the arena of Chinese literary theory have quite often been foreigners’ debates.”5 In Liu’s view, the 21st century would have to see a fresher and livelier literary and theoretical language coming out of a creative transformation from Chinese writers and critics themselves. My reading of Lin Yutang’s cross-cultural practices towards a liberal cosmopolitan alternative can certainly be seen as contributing to this line of critical reflection of radicalism as the dominant discourse in Chinese modernity. Lin Yutang’s literary practices have been sidelined and marginalized precisely due to successive radicalization of Chinese modernity discourses, particularly in the form of an orthodox

3 See Chen Lai. “Ershi shiji wenhua yundong zhong de jijin zhuyi” (Radicalism in 20th Century Cultural Movements), p. 294. 4 See Li Zehou and Liu Zaifu. Gaobie geming: huiwang ershi shiji zhongguo (Farewell to Revolution: Looking Back at Twentieth Century China). 5 Liu Zaifu, “Farewell to the Gods: Contemporary Chinese Literary Theory’s Fin- de-siecle Struggle,” p. 2. 234 chapter eight dogmatism of Marxism. Once we say “farewell to revolution,” Lin’s cross-cultural practices present possibilities for an alternative discourse. One of Lin’s chief cultural dispositions was his insistence that Chinese cultural traditions, Confucian or Taoist, must not be taken as totally irrelevant to modernity, rather they can and should be appropriated and incorporated into modernity. And it should be noted that this disposition did not arrive from an old-fashioned conservative, but from a “model” intellectual of the Westernized group. In a sense, the agony of Chinese modernity lies in its search for a healthy and sustainable subjectivity, which has been lacking since Zhang Zhidong ’s “zhongti xiyong” paradigm. Modern Chinese subjectivity cannot be a culturally essentialist return to pre-Zhang Zhidong’s era. It will have to come out of East-West creative transformations. Lin Yutang’s aesthetics of life derives partly from the Crocean theory of expression via Spingarn, but it was not a borrowed debate between Irving Babbitt and J. E. Spingarn. Instead, it was a cross-cultural integration from both Chi- nese and Western cultural sources. As such, Chinese cultural sources must be taken as meaningful heritage and relevant to modernity in the ﬁrst place. A healthy and mature modern subjectivity cannot evolve from Lu Xun’s doubly negative Nietzschean/Hegelian superman, and it will have to rely partly upon a creative appropriation of traditional Chinese cultural sources. In this respect, the contemporary Neo- Confucian effort is quite signiﬁcant and relevant today. Historically speaking, however, Lin Yutang should be considered a forerunner of Neo-Confucian thought in modern China. His English translation and interpretation of Chinese cultural wisdom engages Western modernity in a unique critical fashion unprecedented in modern Chinese thought, and especially his philosophy of peace pushes Confucian and Taoist thoughts into direct challenging dialogue with modernity East and West. It is not surprising that in his later years in Taiwan, Lin Yutang found a new friendship with Qian Mu, one of the founding scholars of Neo-Confucianism.6 To say “farewell to the gods” is by no means an easy task for contemporary Chinese intellectuals. The recent debate between the New Left and the liberal seems to be yet another version of “foreigners’

6 See Qian Hu Meiqi, “Yi renshi yutang xiansheng de jingguo” (Our Friendship with Lin Yutang), Huigu Lin Yutang: Lin Yutang xiansheng bainian jinian wenji (In Memory of Lin Yutang: Essays in Honor of Lin Yutang’s 100th Anniversary), pp. 102–111. conclusion 235 debates” in China. The post-Tiananmen divide between the New Left and the liberal first started overseas regarding re-examining modern Chinese literary studies in Western academia, when Modern China published Liu Kang’s essay “Politics, Critical Paradigms: Reflections on Modern Chinese Literature Studies” in 1993. Liu charges that C. T. Hsia ’s groundbreaking work A History of Modern Chinese Fiction: 1917–1957 published in 1961 is “based on a critical paradigm that is avowedly Eurocentric, formalist and ahistorical.”7 Working under the influence of the Anglo-American New Criticism, C. T. Hsia’s His- tory is designed to construct a story of modern Chinese fiction in the manner of F. R. Leavis in which literary excellence is judged upon autonomy of aesthetic value divorced from political considerations. To Liu Kang, “it may appear odd that Hsia should adopt such an anti- modern modernist paradigm for a body of texts expressing nothing if not an unreserved enthusiasm for modernization, democracy, science, and progress.”8 Liu was aware that Hsia’s liberal humanist inclination in line with Leavisian New Criticism was the target of Marxist criticism by Prusek as soon as the book was published. But instead of situating Hsia’s alignment with New Criticism in the context of the historical practices of Chinese modernity, Liu’s inspiration and novelty in indicting Hsia’s Eurocentrism lies in his understanding of the Foucauldian post-modernist revelation about power and knowledge. But in Liu’s understanding, the Foucauldian theory of power and knowledge has a Chinese link with Mao’s “Cultural Revolution”-type power politics: “Mao’s conception of the relationship between politics and aesthetics might in fact have inspired Foucault’s radical critique of Western liberal humanism.”9 Thus, Liu’s deconstruction of Hsia’s Eurocentrism turns out to be a re-appreciation of Mao’s totalitarian politics of “Cultural Revolution” via Western post-modernist masters, a very strange detour indeed.

7 Liu Kang, “Politics, Critical Paradigms: Reflections on Modern Chinese Litera- ture Studies,” Modern China 19 No. 1 ( January 1993): 18. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid., p. 14. It is quite an oversimplified reading of Michel Foucault’s theory of power and knowledge in connection with Mao’s theory of class struggle. Foucault may have been somewhat influenced by French Maoists at certain time, but one of Foucault’s famous statements was, for instance, that Nazism and Communism constituted two greatest evils of the 20th century. See Michel Foucault, “Subject and Power” in Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, pp. 208–226. 236 chapter eight

Manifest nostalgia, if not explicit re-appreciation, of the totalitarian ideology of Mao’s “Cultural Revolution” is what contemporary liberal intellectuals find most at fault with various discourses of the New Left, with good reason.10 The fall into the totalitarian ideology and control is the most traumatic experience for modern Chinese intellectuals and historical reflection on Chinese modernity must be based on and derive from its own historical trauma. A liberal cosmopolitan alternative in light of Lin Yutang’s literary and cultural practices ought to understand that the fight for intellectual integrity and independence constitutes an invaluable lesson for modern Chinese intellectual experience. Intellectual reflection upon contemporary issues facing China must derive from modern Chinese historical experience itself and take its own subjectivity seriously. New theoretical paradigms from the West, whether post-modernist, post-structuralist or post-colonial, do not constitute axiomatic license for a renewed nostalgia or appreciation of the totalitarian ideology. Of course, it does not mean application of post-modern or post-colonial theories is necessarily ill-fitted to Chinese realities. The liberal cosmopolitan disposition is open to all theoretical insights but ought to insist that what should be presupposed is the subjectivity of modern Chinese historical experience rather than the a priori superiority of new Western theories. If Left-leaning Western masters of post-modernist theories are not regarded as “gods,” the strange detour to a renewed appreciation of Maoist ideology may not be possible, and the politics of C. T. Hsia’s History can be seen in a different light. In his “Introduction” to the new edition of Hsia’s History, David Der-wei Wang offers a much more balanced account of the publication of the book in its historical context. As Wang explains, it is true that Hsia was trained in the theories of F. R. Leavis and New Criti- cism and his History was intended to present a “Great Tradition” of modern Chinese novelists. But Hsia would be rather “bemused” or “amused” that his apprenticeship and lineage with the avant-guard theory of New Criticism of his time would be seen as “Eurocentric” by later critics armed with new theories popular in Western academia, as these later critics “tread the very same path that C. T. Hsia trod, applying the most radical new ideas of modern Western criticism to

10 For an overview of contemporary discourses of the New Left, see Zhang Xudong ed. Whither China? Intellectual Politics in Contemporary China. conclusion 237 a non-Western country, sedulously avoiding all the types of mistakes pointed out by their Western tutors and seeking only those literary virtues on the list of ofﬁcially approved merits.”11 On the other hand, as Wang suggests, Hsia’s History can be seen as demonstrating “his strong desire to make a national literature globally competitive.”12 When situated in the historical context of Chinese modernity, Hsia’s History appeared when literature was taken as a mere tool for ideological propaganda in Maoist China, and the signiﬁcance of Hsia’s History lies precisely in resisting the totalitarian violence of blatant ideological canonization of modern Chinese literary history by upholding a liberal humanist interpretation. It is in this sense that Hsia’s indebtedness to New Criticism serves as a de-politicizing tool in contradistinction to the totalitarian politicization of modern Chinese literature. And in rejecting the Maoist approach towards literature, Hsia was never obscure in his strategic and paradigmatic intentions. Nevertheless, Hsia’s History has its own limitations as well. For instance, Lin Yutang was not even considered a modern Chinese novelist, and therefore not even included in Hsia’s History, even though Lin published a number of best-selling novels in America. Is it because Lin’s works were written in English and therefore not considered as part of modern Chinese literature? Or, even in Lin’s English novels, he was too “obsessed with China” and therefore less desirable? In this respect, even though Hsia was writing overseas in America, he seemed to be less open and cosmopolitan than the mainland critics of the Reform Era who advocated for a “world perspective” and the “twentieth-century view of modern Chinese literature” in the 1980s. The problem was, of course, Hsia’s over-reliance upon one particular “foreign god:” New Criticism, the avant-guard theory of his times. The insistence upon liberal humanism does not necessarily preclude one from falling into the trap of Euro-centrism or cultural imperialism, and that should serve as a caution to the blind spot that contemporary liberal intellectuals are prone to. Indeed, Lin Yutang’s cross-cultural practices demonstrate that a liberal cosmopolitan alternative for modern Chinese intellectuals must be vigilant towards both the totalitarian erosion of individual integrity and autonomy and the powers of cultural imperialism, especially in

11 David Der-wei Wang, “Introduction,” A History of Modern Chinese Fiction, p. xiv. 12 Ibid., p. xxiv. 238 chapter eight the form of commercial globalization to which the production of Lin’s own works were very much subjugated. The critique of commercial globalization and cultural imperialism are ostensibly two discursive emphases for the New Left intellectuals and such critical attention is certainly warranted. Global commercialism was indeed the deﬁning feature of modernity, against which Gu Hongming had positioned himself at the beginning of Chinese modernity. A liberal cosmopolitan alternative cannot reject the so-called free market in toto, but will have to retain a critical stance towards its all-encompassing power to com- mercialize and trivialize cultural integrity. There is certainly a trivializing tendency, for instance, in the revival of popular interest in “little leisure essays” by Lin Yutang as well as other modern essayists like Zhou Zuoren, Liang Shiqiu and Zhang Ailing in contemporary China since the 1990s. So many similar kinds of selections of “leisure” essays by Lin and others have appeared that it seems they constitute a major cultural trend in China today. But their revival had quite a different meaning than in the 1930s. According to one critic, “in the 1990s, ‘leisure’ has suddenly been hollowed out the original ‘deep’ signiﬁ- cance [in Chinese modernity], and become purely cultural consumer products of no depth.”13 But I would not go so far in such generaliza- tion, and I do not believe there is such a radical break between the 1930s and the 1990s, since they are very much part of the still ongoing Chinese modernity project. The popularity of the “leisure essays” by Lin Yutang and others in the 1930s relied on the emergence of a new urban middle-class market, and even more so in terms of Lin’s popularity in the American market. The question is about maintaining a critical disposition towards the trivializing (and Orientalizing) powers of the commercial market, as Lin Yutang did in the 1930s China but not quite so during certain periods of his American residency. Last but not the least, an inquiry of Chinese modernity in light of Lin Yutang’s cross-cultural practices reminds us that a liberal cosmopolitan disposition is no license to embracing Western modernization discourses in toto without critical awareness of cultural imperialism. Liberal intellectuals must understand that not all critique of cultural imperialism, as revealed by Said’s theory of Orientalism, for instance, is necessarily anti-Westernism, and therefore constitutes disregard for

13 See Zhang Yiwu, “Xianshi wenhua chao pipan” (Critique of the Leisure Cultural Trend), Wenyi zhengming 5 (1993): 16–17. conclusion 239 democracy and human rights in terms of Chinese historical reality. Quite the contrary, critical awareness of cultural imperialism precisely derives from modern Chinese historical experience. In modern Chinese historical context, critique of imperialism has always been a somewhat sensitive and embarrassing issue for liberal intellectuals as if critique of Western imperialism would jeopardize their cultural capital and prevent them from pursuing a liberal democratic path for modern China. Liberal intellectuals must move beyond such dichotomy. Cri- tique of imperialism does not necessarily lead to xenophobic nationalism, and modern Chinese nationalism is not necessarily antagonistic to liberal cosmopolitanism. Historically, the discourse of anti-imperialism has been claimed by both Nationalists and Leftists. It is true that during the Cultural Revolution, the discourse of anti-imperialism was uti- lized to justify the Maoist totalitarian rule, but that should not deter us from maintaining a critical awareness of contemporary global power relations and the relevance of cultural imperialism in today’s world. Lin Yutang’s cross-cultural politics has shown, for instance, while the Japanese call during the Second World War for a racial war by uniting the Asians against Western imperialism was a strategic deployment to disguise her own imperial intentions and atrocities, it did not mean racism and imperialism did not exist in the West at the time. A liberal cosmopolitan à la Lin Yutang would have to ﬁght on both fronts. In 1955, Lin Yutang published the novel Looking Beyond (also titled Unexpected Island), in which Lin imagined a cosmopolitan utopian world found on an island called “Thainos.” Set in the year 2004, it was as much a projection of Lin’s liberal cosmopolitan ideal world as a critique of the real modern world caught in the Cold War. By 2004, the real world would have gone through World War III and World War IV, in which New York and London would have disappeared. The USSR would have been defeated in World War III, and the UN had been succeeded by DWA (Democratic World Alliance) formed by the victorious powers, which believes in the power of brute force more than ever. “The Pax Americana during the life of the DWA had been a pain in the neck,” and the forty-ﬁrst President of the US had become the de facto world dictator.14 On the other hand, “as culmination of two full centuries of materialistic thinking, in which the economist was the high priest of society, a mechanistic cynicism and hedonist

14 Lin Yutang, Looking Beyond, p. 33. 240 chapter eight

abandon had gripped the younger generation…there grew up in certain young circles a cult which might be described as a combination of Zsazsaism and Sartrism, a mixture of exaggerated sophistication and effete intellectualism, an assertion of the will to live and enjoy the day, whatever was happening to the world.”15 On the island Thainos, however, we ﬁnd a group of European immigrants of various nationalities—“Greeks, Italians, Thracians, Phrygians and others from the islands of the Aegean Sea, of which the Delian shepherds and wine- growers living on the middle heights were the most numerous,”16 living together with the native Thainians in peace and harmony. There is much racial mixing in the community, and most residents are turning into pagans like the ancient Greeks as they live much closer to nature, where “illness . . . cured itself, with or without medicine, on this island.”17 The whole community is led by a philosopher-king named Laos, of mixed Chinese descent on his mother’s side, who foresaw the disasters of the forthcoming world wars and led a group of volunteers to the island. While there are quarrels and disagreements as usual, the island-world is established upon the principle of reasonableness and common sense—a mixture of wisdom from Greek, Christian and Chinese cultures. It seems Lin Yutang should have set the story in 2054.

15 Ibid., p. 32. 16 Ibid., pp. 20–21. 17 Ibid., p. 5. APPENDIX

CHRONOLOGY OF LIN YUTANG (林语堂)

1895 Born “Lin Hele” (和乐), on October 10, at Banzai, a remote mountain village in Zhangzhou (Longxi) county, Fujian province, China, the ﬁfth child to a frugal Chinese Christian pastor’s family of eight children (six boys and two girls). His father, Lin Zhicheng, is a second generation Chinese Christian.

1900–1905 Attending mission school at his home at Banzai, taught by his father, the pastor.

1905–1911 Leaves hometown at the age of ten, attending primary and then secondary education at Xunyuan Shuyuan (Union Middle School), a free missionary school (Principal: Rev. P. W. Pitcher), at Gulangyu, Amoy, Fujian province; school name: Lin Yutang (林玉堂).

1911–1916 Attending St. John’s University in Shanghai—an Episcopalian missionary school (President: Dr. F. L. Hawks Pott, 1864–1947), where classes are taught exclusively in English. Member of the Editorial Committee of Echo, an English-language student journal of the St. John’s University. “A Life in a Southern Village,” his ﬁrst piece of literary work, a short story in English, published in Echo in 1914. First reads about Gu Hongming’s writings in English-language newspapers, and Gu became one of the most important intellectual inﬂuences on him. Granted BA degree from St. John’s University in 1916, graduating with distinction. 242 appendix

1916 English-language Instructor at Tsinghua College (later Tsinghua University) in Beijing. Tsinghua College was set up by the so-called American Indemnity Fund as a preparatory school for sending Chi- nese students to American universities for further study. Serving as an English Instructor at Tsinghua makes him also eligible for government scholarship to study in the US. Conducting voluntary Sunday Bible classes at Tsinghua College.

1917 English Instructor at Tsinghua. Meets Hu Shi for the ﬁrst time in the welcome reception for Hu’s heroic return from the US as a leader of the New Culture Move- ment. Undergoes through a “culture shock” during the heyday of the New Culture Movement, because he was not familiar with Chinese classics the New Culturalists were revolting against due to his Christian education, so he plunges himself into learning Chinese classics and folklore traditions.

1918 English Instructor at Tsinghua. One of the editors for Chinese Social and Political Science Review, an English-language journal. “Hanzi suoyinzhi shuoming” (A Note on the Index System for Chinese Characters), his ﬁrst Chinese-language article, published in La Jeunesse (The New Youth), prefaced by Cai Yuanpei.

1919 Marries, for life, Liao Cuifeng, a graduate of St. Mary’s College—a mission school for women in Shanghai, from a well-off merchant family in Xiamen (Amoy), Fujian province, in summer. Leaves in August for Harvard University for graduate study on a half government scholarship. Majors in Comparative Literature at Harvard, his professors include Bliss Perry and Irving Babbitt. Residences at Harvard: 51 Mount Auburn St, Cambridge, MA; and 85 Trowbridge Street, Cambridge, MA. chronology of lin yutang (林语堂) 243

1920 Graduate study at Harvard University suspended in summer due to unexpected severance of scholarship from the governement. Leaves for Le Creusot, France to work for YMCA to earn his tuition and living expenses so as to resume his study.

1921 Attending University of Jena, Germany from February to summer, then transferred to Leipzig University, Germany, majoring in philology, starting from September.

1922 Continues graduate study at Leipzig University, Germany. Obtains his M.A. from Harvard University, in absentia.

1923 Obtains his Ph.D. in Linguistics from Leipzig University, with his thesis, Altchinesiche Lautlehre (Archaic Chinese Phonetics) written in German. Returns to Amoy, China in spring, and his ﬁrst daughter Adet (Lin Rusi) born in Amoy on May 6. Joins the faculty of Peking University as Professor of English, as well as adjunct professor at Beijing Normal University, till 1926. Residence in Beijing: No. 39, Xiao ya bao hutong, Nan xiao jie, Chaoyang men nei, Beijing (北京朝阳门内南小街小雅宝胡同 39 号).

1924 Introduces the idea of “humor” to Chinese culture and translates the word into a Chinese neologism—youmo in his essay “Zheng yi sanwen bing tichang ‘youmo’” (Call for Essay Translations and Promoting ‘Humor’). Joins the Yusi literary group, headed by the Zhou brothers (Lu Xun and Zhou Zuoren), and befriends both.

1925 Contributes to Yusi, including “Satianshi yulu” (Thus Spake Zarathustra). English Section editor, Guomin xinbao. Begins to use the name of Lin Yutang (林语堂). 244 appendix

1926 Adjunct Professor at Beijing Women’s Normal University, and then Dean of Student Affairs, Beijing Women’s Normal University. On Beiyang government’s death list due to his stance on the March 18th Massacre; The Lins hide out at relatives’ home for 3 weeks and then leave for Amoy in May. His second daughter Anor (Lin Taiyi) born in Beijing on April 1. Joins the faculty of Amoy University as Dean of the College of Humanities, inviting several colleagues from Peking University, including Lu Xun, to the faculty of Amoy University.

1927 Leaves Amoy University in February for Shanghai, then goes to Wuhan to join the “Great Revolution of 1927.” Serves as Assistant Secretary, under Eugene Chen, Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Nationalist government in Wuhan. Editor, English Edition, Zhongyang ribao (Central Daily), the Party journal for KMT. Executive Editor, The People’s Tribune. Leaves Wuhan after the break-up of the Nationalist government in Wuhan, and goes to Shanghai in September. Residences in Shanghai: Yuyuan lu, Shanghai; No. 43A, Yidingpan lu (Edinburgh Road), Shanghai.

1928 Visiting Professor of English, Dongwu University, Shanghai, for a year. English Secretary for Cai Yuanpei, President of Academia Sinica; Research Associate of Academia Sinica. His only play, Zi jian Nan Zi (Confucius Saw Nancy) published in the journal Ben Liu, which causes a national sensation. Compiles Kaiming English Reader, which was a huge success, and became the standard textbook for a whole generation of middle school Chinese students learning English. The publication of Jian fu ji, the ﬁrst collection of his Chinese essays written during his Beijing years.

1929 Translates Pygmalion by Bernard Shaw into Chinese. Co-translates (with Zhang Yousong) The Diary of a Communist School- boy by N. Ognyov into Chinese. chronology of lin yutang (林语堂) 245

1930 The League of Left-wing Writers (the Left League) was established, headed by Lu Xun. Starts his own column, The Little Critic in The China Critic, an English- language weekly run by a group of Western-trained professionals, and consequently draws Pearl S. Buck’s attention. First English collection of essays, Letters of a Chinese Amazon and War- time Essays published. Publishes Xin de wen ping (New Criticsim), a collection of translations of theoretical essays by Croce, J. E. Spingarn and others. His third daughter—Mei Mei (Lin Xiangru, Hsiang Ju Lin) born in Shanghai on July 11.

1931 Participates in the delegation of Academia Sinica to attend the annual meeting of Cultural Cooperation Committee of the League of Nations in Switzerland, and goes to Britain after the conference. Delivers the lecture entitled “The Spirit of Chinese Culture” in Britain. Starts to work on his invention of the Chinese Typewriter in Britain.

1932 Launches Lunyu (Analects), a fortnightly journal promoting humor writings, which became an instant success and wins him the title of “Mas- ter of humor.” Member of the Standing Committee of the Chinese League for the Protection of Civil Rights, headed by Song Qingling and Cai Yuanpei.

1933 George Bernard Shaw visits Shanghai on February 17, and was warmly welcomed by leading Chinese intellectuals including Cai Yuanpei, Lu Xun, and Lin Yutang. Yang Quan, one of the committee members of the Chinese League for the Protection of Civil Rights, was assassinated and the activities of the League cease. Pearl S. Buck was welcomed in Shanghai by the Liberal Cosmopoli- tan Club, the China Critic editorial committee, and meets Lin Yutang for the ﬁrst time. 246 appendix

1934 Launches the journal Renjianshi (This Human World), promoting “xiaopinwen” (little-taste-essays, or familiar essays) in “leisurely” style based on one’s “xingling” (Personality). Publication of Da huang ji, and Xing su ji, both collections of his Chi- nese essays in the 1930s. The Left League launches their own journals Xin yu lin, Tai bai and Mang zhong, attacking Lin’s popular journals of familiar essays. Writing My Country and People in Lushan in summer.

1935 Launches another literary journal Yuzhoufeng (Cosmic Wind). Engages in polemics with Lu Xun and other Leftist writers. One of the editors of T’ien Hsia Monthly, an English-language academic journal published in China. Publishes The Little Critic: Essays, Satires and Sketches on China, collections in two volumes of his English essays of the “Little Critic” column in The China Critic, many of these English essays were rendered into Chinese by Lin Yutang himself that appeared in his Chinese-language journals (again), making Lin Yutang not only a bilingual writer, but a bilingual writer of bilingual works. My Country and My People published by Reynal & Hitchcock (a John Day book) in US, and it became an instant success.

1936 Xi Feng, a journal of translation was launched by Huang Jiade and Huang Jiayin with Lin Yutang as Consulting Editor Publication of Pi jing ji, a collection of his Chinese essays. Publication of A History of the Press and Public Opinion in China. At the repeated invitation of Richard Walsh and Pearl S. Buck to come to America to meet his American readers due to the success of his book My Country and My People, Lin Yutang ﬁnally decides to leave China for a while to concentrate on his writing in America. On August 1, the Lin family leave Shanghai on the ship President Hoover, arrive in New York on September 9, carrying one-year tourist visa. Soon afterwards, Richard Walsh introduces Lin Yutang to New York intellectual circles. Lu Xun dies on October 19; Lin Yutang writes the essay “Dao Lu Xun” (In Memory of Lu Xun) in New York. chronology of lin yutang (林语堂) 247

Residing at ﬁrst in Princeton, New Jersey, then moves to 50 Central Park West, New York. Publishes his essay “A Chinese Gives Us Light on His Nation” in The New York Times. Contributes regularly to The New York Times in the 1930s and 1940s.

1937 The Importance of Living published by the John Day Company. It was cho- sen by the Book-of-the-month Club in December, and was the No. 1 bestseller in the non-ﬁction category for the whole year of 1938 in the US. This book is still in print today and has been translated into a dozen languages. It also establishes Lin’s intellectual status as a “Chi- nese philosopher” in America.

1938 Leaves New York with the family on February 5 for Italy, then sojourns in Paris, residing at 59 Rue Nicolo, Paris, for about a year. Writes his war-time novel—Moment in Peking in Paris. The Wisdom of Confucius published by Random House.

5/1939–4/1940 Returns to New York in May. Moment in Peking published by the John Day Company. John Day published an enlarged edition of My Country and My People, with a new last chapter: “Birth of a New China: A Personal Story of the Sino-Japanese War.” His essay “The Real Threat: Not Bombs, But Ideas” appears in The New York Times.

1940 Goes back to Chongqing from New York via Hong Kong in April, residing at No. 24 Cai E lu, Beibei, Chongqing. The house was later donated during the wartime to Chinese Wartime Literary Association, and presently preserved as “The House of Lao She.” Meets Generalissimo and Madame Chiang Kei-shek (Song Meil- ing) in Chongqing, and begins long-term correspondence with Song Meiling. Decides to come back to US with consent from Song Meiling, carrying a diplomatic visa. 248 appendix

Arrives in Los Angeles, California in September, residing: 2393 Castilian Drive, Los Angeles, California. Starts writing the novel A Leaf in the Storm in California.

1941 Returns to New York in April, residing ﬁrst at 88 Morningside Drive, then 90 Morningside Drive, till June, 1942. Leaf in the Storm, a sequel to Moment in Peking, published by John Day. Awarded an Honorary Doctor’s Degree in Arts by Elmira College.

1942 Purchases an upscale apartment in Manhattan at 7 Gracie Square, New York, New York, and lives there from July, 1942 to July, 1948. Writes A Man Thinking, a book of verse, unpublished. The Wisdom of China and India published by John Day, another bestseller. Awarded an Honorary Doctor’s Degree in Arts by Rutgers Uni- versity.

1943 Publishes Between Tears and laughter, a critique of imperialism and modernity, gets negative reviews for the ﬁrst time from American media. Travels in September to Chongqing for a half-year wartime visit. Meets Generalissimo and Madame Chiang Kai-shek six times during the visit. Engages in another round of polemics with Leftist writers in China.

1944 Returns to New York in March. Publishes The Vigil of a Nation, a book about his adventures during the trip to China. He makes clear his views about supporting the Nationalist government and renouncing the Communists in this book, which infuriates American China observers. Prior to The Vigil of a Nation, Lin’s books have all been best-sellers. chronology of lin yutang (林语堂) 249

1945 Due to negative reception of The Vigil of a Nation, Richard Walsh advised Lin Yutang to stay away from writing on contemporary political issues. Concentrates on working on his Chinese typewriter.

1946 Invents Mingkwai Chinese typewriter, but also gets himself in heavy debt. Awarded an Honorary Doctor’s Degree by Beloit College.

1947 The Gay Genius: The Life and Times of Su Tungpo, a book away from contemporary politics, published by John Day.

1948 Chinatown Family, a novel of the life of Chinese in America, barely completed by Lin Yutang before he goes to Paris, published by John Day. Assumes the position of Director of Arts and Letters Division, UNESCO, in Paris, residing at 48 Rue du Docteur Blanche, Paris/35 Rue Raffet, Paris, 16, France.

1949 Resigns the UNESCO job after half a year, and moves to Cannes, in southern France, (address: 1er étage, 15 Quai St. Pierre, Cannes) and resumes writing, working on On the Wisdom of America.

1950 Returns back to New York, residing at Apartment 8–F, Riverdale Towers, 3103 Fairﬁeld Ave, New York. On the Wisdom of America published John Day, only enjoys a mediocre sale.

1951 Widow, Nun and Courtesan: Three Novelettes From the Chinese Translated and Adapted by Lin Yutang published by John Day. 250 appendix

1952 Obtains a patent for his Mingkwai Typewriter in the USA, but never put into manufacture. Famous Chinese Short Stories, retold by Lin Yutang published by John Day.

1953 The novel The Vermilion Gate, the last book published by John Day. Long-time friendship with Pearl S. Buck and Richard Walsh broke up, nominally over disputes over royalties of Lin’s books.

1954 Accepts invitation to assume Chancellorship at Nanyang University, Singapore, at its planning stage. Arrives in Singapore in October, and participates in the planning of setting up the new university sponsored by overseas Chinese com- munities in Singapore.

1955 Runs into conﬂict with the merchant sponsors of Nanyang University, and resigns after six months, leaves Singapore for Cannes, France in April. The novel Looking Beyond (The Unexpected Island) published by Pren- tice-Hall.

1956 Resides at 1er étage, 15 Quai St. Pierre, Cannes (Vieux Port), France.

1957 Returns back to New York, resides at 239 E 79th Street, New York, New York. Lady Wu published by World Publishing Company.

1958 Visits Taiwan for the ﬁrst time from October 14–November 1, receives warm welcome. The Secret Name published by Farrar, Straus and Cudahy.

1959 From Pagan to Christian published World Publishing Company, by which he announces his return to Christianity. chronology of lin yutang (林语堂) 251

1960 The Importance of Understanding: Translations from the Chinese published by World Publishing Company.

1961 Delivers the speech “Chinese Letters Since the Literary Revolution” at the Library of Congress, Washington DC. Imperial Peking: Seven Centuries of China published by Crown Publishers. The novel The Red Peony published by World Publishing Company.

1962 Goes on a two-month visit to six countries in Latin America, the lectures he delivered during the tour are later included in The Pleasure of a Nonconformist, published by World Publishing Company.

1963 Juniper Loa, a novel published by World Publishing Company.

1964 The Flight of the Innocents, a novel about refugees ﬂeeing Mainland China to Hong Kong, published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons.

1965 Invited by Ma Xingye, Director of the Central News Agency, he begins to write a column Wu Suo Bu Tan (Free Talk) in Zhongyang ribao (Central Daily), thus resumes his writing career in Chinese.

1966 Leaves US after 30 years and moves to Taiwan. Received by President Chiang Kai-shek on January 28. Residing at 141, Section 2, Yangteh Avenue, Taipei, a house of Chinese-Spanish style built by the ROC government, and presently preserved as “The House of Lin Yutang.”

1967 The Chinese Theory of Art: Translation from the Master of Chinese Art published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons. Accepts the position of Research Professor at Chinese University of Hong Kong, starts work on compiling Chinese-English Dictionary of Modern Usage. 252 appendix

1968 Delivers the lecture “Toward a Common Heritage of All Mankind” at the second annual conference of The International Association of University Presidents, held at Seoul, South Korea on June 18.

1969 Assumes the position of President of PEN, ROC, and attends the 36th Congress of International PEN held in Monton, France in September.

1970 Keynote speaker at the 37th Congress of International PEN held in Seoul, South Korea.

1971 His ﬁrst daughter, Lin Rusi commits suicide in Taipei; Lin composes a ci poem “Nian Rusi” (Remembrance of Rusi).

1972 Completes the compilation of Chinese-English Dictionary of Modern Usage, published by the Chinese University Press.

1973 Nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature.

1974 Wu suo bu tan he ji, a collection of his essays in Chinese written in his Taiwan years.

1975 Memoirs of an Octogenarian published in Taipei.

1976 Dies in Hong Kong on March 26, and buried in the garden of his home in Yangming Mountain, Taipei. Lin Yutang’s wife Liao Cuifeng dies in 1987 and is buried in Hong Kong. WORKS CITED

Works of Lin Yutang

A. Essays “A Fang” (阿芳) (Ah Fang). Lunyu (论语) (Analects) 2 (October 1, 1932): 10–12. “A Fang” (阿芳) (Ah Fang). In Lin Yutang mingzhu quanji (林语堂名著全集) (A Com- plete Collection of Lin Yutang’s Famous Works), Trans. Jin Wen, Vol. 15, pp. 106–109. Changchun: Dongbei shifan daxue chubanshe, 1994. “Ah Fong, My House-Boy” The China Critic III (September 4, 1930): 853–854. “Baike furen zhi weida” (白克夫人之伟大) (The Greatness of Mrs. Buck). Lunyu (论语) (Analects) 24 (September 1, 1933): 880–881. “China and Its Critics” The Nation CLX (March 24, 1945): 324–327. “East and West Must Meet” Survey Graphic XXXI (November, 1942): 533–534, 560–561. “Fangjinqi yanjiu” (方巾气研究) (A Study on Pseudo-moralism). Shenbao (申报) (Shen Pao) (April 28, 1934): 17; (April 30, 1934): 17; (May 3, 1934): 20. “For a Civic Liberty Union” The China Critic V (November 3, 1933): 1157–1158. “The Function of Criticism at the Present Time” The China Critic III ( January 23, 1930): 78–81. “Guanyu Wuguo Wumin” (关于吾国吾民) (On My Country and My People). Yuzhoufeng (宇宙风) (Cosmic Wind) 49 (October 16, 1937): 30–31. “Hanzi suoyin zhi shuoming” (汉字索引制说明) (A Note on the Index System for Chi- nese Characters). Xin qingnian (新青年) (La Jeunesse) 4, No. 2 (1918): 128–131. “A Hymn to Shanghai” The China Critic III (August 14, 1930): 779–780. “India Is United for Freedom” In Freedom for India—Now!, Pearl S. Buck, Lin Yutang, Krishnalal Shridharani et al., pp. 13–17. New York: The Post War World Council, 1942. “Introduction” In Girl Rebel: The Autobiography of Hsieh Pingying. Trans. Adet and Anor Lin, pp. xiii–xviii. New York: John Day Co., 1940. “Ji xingling” (记性灵) (On “xingling”). Yuzhoufeng (宇宙风) (Cosmic Wind) 11 (Febru- ary 16, 1936): 525–526. “Jin wen ba bi” (今文八弊) (Eight Sicknesses of Today’s Literature). Renjianshi (人间世) (This Human World) 27 (May 5, 1935): 42–43, 28 (May 20, 1935): 30–31, 29 ( June 5, 1935): 36–38. “Kezeng de baihua siliu” (可憎的白话四六) (Disgusting Dogmatic Baihua). Lunyu (论语) (Analects) 26 (October 1, 1933): 84–85. “Linbie zeng yan” (临别赠言) (Farewell Remarks). Yuzhoufeng (Cosmic Wind) 25 (Sep- tember 16, 1936): 79. “Literary Revolution and What Is Literature” The Chinese Students’ Monthly XV No. 4 (February 1920): 24–29. “Literary Revolution, Patriotism, and the Democratic Bias” The Chinese Students’ Monthly XV No. 8 ( June 1920): 36–41. “Lun wen” (论文) (On Literature) Lunyu 15 (April 16, 1933): 532–536; 28 (November 1, 1933): 170–173. “Lun yanlun ziyou” (论言论自由) (On Freedom of Speech) Lunyu 13 (March 16, 1933): 451–453. “Lun youmo” (论幽默) (On Humor). Lunyu 33 ( January 16, 1934): 434–438, Lunyu 35 (February 16, 1934): 522–525. 254 works cited

“Lun yuluti zhi yong” (论语录体之用) (On the Use of Yuluti). Lunyu 26 (October 1, 1933): 82–84. “Lun zhengzhi bing” (论政治病) (On Political Sickness) Lunyu 27 (October 16, 1933): 126–127. “The Meaning of the War” In The University of Chicago Round Table, a Radio Discus- sion by Lin Yutang, Herbert Blumer and Richard McKeon, No. 284 (August 29, 1943): 1–19. “On Freedom of Speech” The China Critic, VI (March 9, 1933): 264–265. “On Political Sickness” The China Critic, V ( June 16, 1932): 600–601. “The Paradox of the Second World War” The China Monthly III 5 (May, 1942): 7–9. “Satianshi yulu—Satianshi yu Dongfang Shuo” (萨天师语录—萨天师与东方朔) (Thus Spake Zarathustra) Lunyu 15 (April 16, 1933): 508–509. “The Search for Principles” Free World V ( June, 1943): 495–497. “Shuo ziwo” (说自我) (On Self). Renjianshi (人间世) (This Human World) 7 ( July 5, 1934): 7. “Sishi zixu”(四十自叙) (Autobiography at Forty). Lunyu (论语) (Analects) 49 (Septem- ber 16, 1934): 6–7. “Union Now with India” Asia XLII (March, 1942): 146–150. “What I Want” The China Critic ( July 13, 1933): 639–694. “What Liberalism Means” The China Critic (March 12, 1931): 251–253. “Xinjiu wenxue” (新旧文学) (New and Old Literature). Lunyu (论语) (Analects) 7 (December 16, 1932): 212–213. “Youbuweizhai congshu xu” (有不为斋丛书序) (“Preface to Do-Nothing-Studio Essays”). Lunyu (论语) (Analects) 48 (September 1, 1934): 1098–1100. “Yu Tao Kangde shu” (与陶亢德书) (Letter to Tao Kangde). Lunyu (论语) (Analects) 28 (November 1, 1933): 173. “Yu Xujun lun baihua wenyan shu” (与徐君论白话文言书) (A Talk With Mr. Xu on Baihua and Wenyan). Lunyu (论语) (Analects) 63 (April 16, 1935): 722–725. “Yuanqi” (缘起) (Origin) Lunyu (论语) (Analects) 1 (September 16, 1932): 1–3. “Zarathustra and the Jester” The China Critic, IV (The Little Critic) ( January 1, 1931): 11–13. “Zuo wen yu zuo ren” (做文与做人) (To Write and To Be a Man). Lunyu (论语) (Analects) 57 ( January 16, 1935): 442–447.

B. Books Between Tears and Laughter. New York: John Day Co., 1943. The Birth of a New China. Reprint of Chapter Ten of the revised and enlarged edition of My Country and My People, New York: The John Day Company, 1939. The Chinese Theory of Art: Translation from the Master of Chinese Art. Trans. Lin Yutang. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1967. Chinatown Family. New York: John Day Co., 1947. Confucius Saw Nancy and Essays About Nothing. Shanghai: The Commercial Press, 1935. Famous Chinese Short Stories. Retold by Lin Yutang. New York: John Day Co., 1948. The Flight of the Innocents. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1964. From Pagan to Christianity. Cleveland: World Publishing Co., 1959. The Gay Genius: The Life and Times of Su Tungpo. New York: John Day Co., 1947. A History of the Press and Public Opinion in China. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1936. The Importance of Living. New York: John Day Co., 1937. The Importance of Understanding. Cleveland: World Publishing Co., 1960. Juniper Loa. Cleveland: World Publishing Co., 1963. Leaf in the Storm. New York: John Day Co., 1940. works cited 255

Letters of a Chinese Amazon and Wartime Essays. Shanghai: The Commercial Press, 1934. The Little Critic: Essays, Satires and Sketches on China (First Series: 1930–1932). Shanghai: The Commercial Press, 1936. The Little Critic: Essays, Satires and Sketches on China (Second Series: 1933–1935). Shanghai: The Commercial Press, 1935. Looking Beyond. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1955. Memoirs of an Octogenarian. Taipei: Meiya Publications, Inc. 1975. Moment in Peking. New York: John Day Co., 1939. My Country and My People. Hong Kong: Heinemann Educational Books, 1977. (1st ed. John Day, 1935) A Nun of Taishan and Other Translation. Shanghai: The Commercial Press, 1935. On the Wisdom of America. New York: John Day Co., 1950. The Pleasures of a Nonconformist. Cleveland: World Publishing Co., 1962. The Red Peony. Cleveland: World Publishing Co., 1961. The Secret Name. New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1958. Tixiao jiefei (啼笑皆非), Chinese translation of Between Tears and Laughter, Chongqing, Shangwu yinshuguan, 1944. The Vermilion Gate. New York: John Day Co., 1953. The Vigil of a Nation. New York: John Day Co., 1944. Widow, Nun and Courtesan. Trans. and Adapted by Lin Yutang. New York: John Day Co., 1951. The Wisdom of China and India. New York: Random House, 1942. The Wisdom of Confucius. New York: Random House, Illustrated Modern Library, 1943. The Wisdom of Laotse. New York: Random House, 1948. With Love and Irony. New York: John Day Co., 1940. Xin de wen ping (新的文评) (New Literary Criticism). Shanghai: Beixin shuju, 1930. Lin yutang mingzhu quanji (林语堂名著全集) (The Complete Works of Lin Yutang’s Famous Works). Changchun: Dongbei shifan daxue chubanshe, 1994. Zhongguo ren (中国人) (My Country and My People). Trans. Hao Zhidong (郝志东) and Shen Yihong (沈益洪). Hangzhou: Zhejiang renmin chubanshe, 1988.

C. Letters between Lin Yutang and Richard Walsh/Pearl S. Buck The John Day Company Archive. Special Collection, Princeton University.

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A Cheng 阿城 Feng Naichao 冯乃超 Ah Ying 阿英 Feng Youlan 冯友兰 bai 白 gaodeng huaren 高等华人 baihua 白话 geren 个人 baoguo 保国 gewu 格物 baojiao 保教 gexing 个性 baozhong 保种 gexing zhishang zhuyi 个性至上主义 Beibei 北碚 Gong’an 公安 Beifa tuci 北伐途次 guanguan Beiyang 北洋 shangshang 官官商商 ben 本 gui guo 贵国 Ben Liu 奔流 gui guowang 贵国王 bishou 匕首 guo 国 bu jin qingli 不近情理 guo-jia 国家 guomin xinbao 国民新报 Cai Yuanpei 蔡元培 guominxing 国民性 Cai E lu 蔡锷路 Guo Moruo 郭沫若 Cha Hua 茶话 Guoqu de youling 过去的幽灵 chaotuo 超脱 Cheng Fangwu 成方吾 Hai Ge 海戈 Chengfeng Wenhsien 整风文献 Haipai 海派 [Zhengfeng wenxian] Haiwai shinian 海外十年 Ching-kiang 镇江 huaji 滑稽 [Zhenjiang] huanglian 黄连 chongdan 冲淡 Huang Jiade 黄嘉德 Chongqing 重庆 Huang Jiayin 黄嘉音 Chu Teh [Zhu De] 朱德 huixin 会心 Chu Tseching 朱自清 huixin de weixiao 会心的微笑 [Zhu Ziqing] ci 词 jia-guo 家国 Cui Ning 崔宁 Jian fu ji 剪拂集 jian yi 贱夷 daguan 达观 jiangli 讲理 Da huang ji 大荒集 Jiangnan 江南 Dalu xincun 大陆新村 Jiao Hong 焦竑 dan 淡 jicai 荠菜 danbo 淡泊 Jicai malan tou, zizi 荠菜马兰头， danyuan 淡远 jia zai houmen tou 姊姊嫁在后门头 datong 大同 jinqing 近情 Dao Lu Xun 悼鲁迅 Jin Shengtan 金圣叹 daoxueqi 道学气 jinshi 进士 Dazhong Wenyi 大众文艺 Jingpai 京派 dazhongyu 大众语 jingshen shengli fa 精神胜利法 Dongfang 东方 Jingu qiguan 今古奇观 dunhou 敦厚 jiuguo 救国 Dushu 读书 junjun chenchen, 君君臣臣 fangjinqi 方巾气 fufu zizi 父父子子 266 character list

Kaiming 开明 nalai zhuyi 拿来主义 Kiang Kang-hu 江亢虎 Nian Rusi 念如斯 [Jiang Kanghu] Nianyu Guanyin 碾玉观音 kuanda 宽大 Nuli Zhoubao 努力周报 kuangren 狂人 Ku Chikang [Gu 顾颉刚 Pai Tsunghsi 白崇禧 Jiegang] [Bai Chongxi] Kungchantang 共产党 Pan Guangdan 潘光旦 [Gongchandang] Pan Hannian 潘汉年 Kuomintang 国民党 pengchang 捧场 [Guomindang] Pi jing ji 披荆集 Kwangsi [Guangxi] 广西 pien-pien [pian-pian] 翩翩 pingdan 平淡 Laozi 老子 puluo 普罗 Lao Xiang 老向 li 利 Qian Mu 钱穆 li 理 qing 情 li 礼 qingdan 清淡 Li Fuchun 李富春 qingli 情理 Li Liweng 李笠翁 Quan Zenggu 全增嘏 Liao Cuifeng 廖翠凤 qu 趣 Liji 礼记 Qu Qiubai 瞿秋白 Li Qingya 李青崖 quan shijie gongxiang 全世界共享共 Li Shenzhi 李慎之 gongyou zhi wenhua 有之文化 Li Tsungjen [Li 李宗仁 qun 群 Zongren] Li Zhi 李贽 ren 仁 Liao Mosha 廖沫沙 ren qing shuai xing 任情率性 licai 理财 Renjianshi 人间世 liang yi 良夷 Renjian heshi 人间何世 linong 里弄 Lin Hele 林和乐 Shao Xunmei 邵洵美 Lin Rusi 林如斯 shang shi zhi shi 上识之士 Lin Xiangru 林相如 Shen Pao 申报 Lin Yu [Lin You] 林幽 shi 士 Lin Yutang 林玉堂 shi 史 Lin Zhicheng 林至诚 Shidai shudian 时代书店 Liu Xie 刘勰 shi yang bu hua 食洋不化 Lushan 庐山 shuqucao 鼠曲草 Lunyu 论语 Song Meiling 宋美龄 Lunyu pai 论语派 Song Qingling 宋庆龄 Lunyu she 论语社 Su Dongpo 苏东坡 Lunyu she tongren 论语社同仁 Sun Fuyuan 孙伏园 Luotuo xiangzi 骆驼祥子 Sun Yat-sen 孙逸仙

Ma Xingye 马星野 Taibai 太白 malan 马兰 tanpai [tanbai] 坦白 Mao Dun 茅盾 tangpu [dangbu] 党部 Mao Tsehtung 毛泽东 Tao Kangde 陶亢德 [Mao Zedong] tao-tai [daotai] 道台 Mang zhong 芒种 tiandan 恬淡 Mengya 萌芽 tianxia 天下 mengzhu 盟主 tingzijian 亭子间 mo 默 ti-yong 体/用 moqi 默契 tong 通 character list 267 tongren 同仁 yangwu 洋务 tongxin 童心 Yelang 夜郎 tongzhan 统战 Yenching [Yanjing] 燕京 tufei 土匪 yi 义 yi 夷 Wang Chong 王充 yi ren 夷人 Wang Jingwei 汪精卫 yi shang 夷商 Wang Shiwei 王实味 yi zheng renxin 以正人心 wai yi 外夷 Yijing 易经 wen 文 you 幽 wenren 文人 you jiao wu lei 有教无类 Wenren xiangqing 文人相轻 youmo 幽默 wenruqiren 文如其人 You Zi 由子 Wenxue 文学 Yu Dafu 郁达夫 wenyan 文言 yuan 元 Wenhua re 文化热 yuan ren bu fu ze xiu 远人不服则修 weiqu qingxu 委屈情绪 wende 文德 Wu Suo Bu Tan 无所不谈 Yuan Hongdao 袁宏道 wuben 务本 Yuan Mei 袁枚 Wupeng chuan 乌篷船 Yuan Zhongdao 袁中道 wutong 务通 Yuan Zhonglang 袁中郎 Yuan Zongdao 袁宗道 xi 檄 yue 乐 Xifeng 西风 yuluti 语录体 xianshi 闲适 yusi 语丝 xiaopinwen 小品文 Yuzhou feng 宇宙风 Xiaopinwen de weiji 小品文的危机 Xiao San 萧三 zaidao 载道 xiao yi 小夷 zawen 杂文 Xin yu lin 新语林 Zhang Ailing 张爱玲 Xinhua Ribao 新华日报 Zhang Kebiao 章克标 Xing su ji 行素集 Zhang Yiping 章衣萍 xinmin 新民 Zhang Yousong 张友松 xintai 心态 Zhang Xuecheng 章学诚 Xinyue 新月 zhen 真 Xinyue she 新月社 zhengcai 争财 xing 性 zhengfeng 整风 xingling 性灵 Zheng yi sanwen 征译散文并提 xingqing 性情 bing tichang ‘youmo’ 倡‘幽默’ Xiu Xiu 秀秀 Zhi yang qi yi 制洋器议 xizai 西崽 zhiyin 知音 xizai xiang 西崽相 zhong xiao lian jie 忠孝廉节 Xu Maoyong 徐懋庸 zhongti xiyong 中体西用 Xueheng 学衡 Zhongyang ribao 中央日报 Xunyuan Shuyuan 寻源书院 Zhuangzi 庄子 Zigu weiwen fen 自古未闻粪有 Yan Hui 颜回 you shui, erjin 税而今只须屁 Yanan 延安 zhixu pi wujuan 无捐 yanzhi 言志 Zi Lu 子路 Yang Quan 杨铨 Zi jian Nan Zi 子见南子 yangchang nieshao 洋场孽少 ziyunying 紫云英 Yangming 阳明 ziwo 自我

INDEX

Aesthetics, 7, 19, 21, 60–61, 83, Cultural Revolution, 9–12, 48, 55, 64, 127–128, 132, 134–135, 142–143, 232, 235–236, 239 147–148, 159, 161, 175, 197–198, cultural zeal, 4, 15, 17, 232 234–235 agrarian reformers, 214, 221 datong, 50 Ah Ying, 14, 80, 98 dazhongyu, 118–121, 124 Analects School, 4, 6, 11, 13–15, 77, diaspora, 3, 8, 198, 200, 206, 217 84, 96 Dushu, 16 anti-traditionalism, 47, 52 Arnold, Mathew, 42–43 Enlightenment, 6, 16, 20, 24, 27, 31–32, Atlantic Charter, 203 37, 47, 50–51, 63–66, 87–88, 227

Babbitt, Irving, 57, 134, 136–137, Fairbank, John King, 8, 210, 218–221 140–141, 158, 234, 242 Feng Guifen, 26 baihua, 118–124 Feng Xuefeng, 13, 68–69, 72 bilingual, 2–3, 6, 17, 97, 99, 109, Foucault, Michel, 47, 70, 102, 127, 235 111–112, 123, 153, 173, 178, 180–181, 190, 194, 197, 246 Gu Hongming, 1, 5, 23, 38–46, 56, 58, Buck, Pearl S., 1, 6, 88–94, 161–176, 87, 199–200, 204, 238 179, 181–184, 186, 195, 197, Papers from a Viceroy’s Yamen, 40–42, 209–212, 215, 219, 220, 224, 44–45 245–246, 250 The Story of a Chinese Oxford Movement, East Wind West Wind, 172, 174–175 39 on “foreign Chinese”, 91–92, 181 Guo Moruo, 14, 80, 98, 140 The Good Earth, 89–90, 164, 167–169, 171–174, 219 Haipai, 59, 98–99, 104, 128 Hsia, C. T., 235–237 Cai Yuanpei, 12, 58, 105, 164, 242–245 Hu Feng, 73, 82–84, 90 cannibalism, 55 Hu Shi, 1, 49, 52–53, 57–58, 63, 66–67, Chen Duxiu, 49, 51–53, 58, 87 70, 73–76, 88–89, 132–133, 161, 199, Chen Pingyuan, 16–21 242 China Critic, The, 1–2, 78, 91–93, humor, 2, 4, 7, 14, 18–19, 78–79, 97–102, 105–106, 115–116, 122, 82, 86–87, 97, 107, 114, 127–128, 164–165, 245–246 148–159, 164, 180, 198, 207–208, Chinahands, 8, 180, 197, 209–211, 213, 243, 245 216–220, 224 Chinese Student’s Monthly, The, 58 imperialism, 3, 5, 8–9, 23, 37–43, 46, Chuan, T. K., See Quan Zenggu 48–51, 61, 75, 89, 94, 197–211, 213, Churchill, Winston, 203, 207–208 220–221, 224, 237–239, 248 class struggle, 16–17, 70, 74, 84–85, 235 inferiority complex, 53, 92, 94, 113, 181 Confucianism, 20, 29–31, 33, 43, 45, Iron House, 9, 11, 54, 67, 73, 143 52, 66, 92, 158, 177, 213, 229 Confucius, 23, 30, 42, 43, 51, 62, 130, Jin Shengtan, 60, 128, 176 157–159, 177, 188, 223, 244, 247 Jingpai, 59, 98–99, 128 Cosmopolitanism, 1–3, 5, 7, 38, 48–53, John Day Company, 163, 166, 65, 127. 199–200, 211, 219, 239 170–171, 173–174, 177, 182–189, Croce, Benedetto, 21, 83, 134–135, 245 191–194, 212, 224–225, 247 270 index

Kiang Kang-hu, 90 “What Liberalism Means,” 2 knowledge structure, 9–11, 17 The Wisdom of China and India, 2, 182, Kolonial Politik, 41–43, 45, 204 187, 206, 225–226, 248 Xin de wen ping, 134, 137, 141, 245 La Jeunesse. See The New Youth Lin Zexu, 5, 25–26 Lao She, 14, 81, 98, 121, 152–153, 247 Literary Revolution, 53, 58, 67, 87, 120, Laozi, 131, 227 251 Lattimore, Owen, 8, 210, 214, 220–221 Liu Zaifu, 233 Left League, 13–15, 59, 67–72, 80–84, Lu Xun, 1, 4–6, 10–14, 18–19, 21, 49, 86–87, 119, 245–246 52–57, 59, 61, 63, 66–73, 76, 80–83, leisure, 7, 19, 72, 113, 127–128, 141–144, 88, 90–91, 95, 97, 102, 104, 106, 146–148, 151, 153, 156–157, 159, 110–111, 114, 120–121, 132–133, 177, 238 137, 140–141, 143–144, 148, 152, Li Liweng, 128 161, 164, 243–246 Li Zehou, 64–66, 233 A Madman’s Diary, 54 Liang Qichao, 1, 25, 27, 31–37, 71, 132 The Story of Ah Q, 54, 56 on “public morality”, 33–34 Yecao, 143 Xin min shuo, 31–32, 37 zawen, 69, 72, 143 Liang Shiqiu, 71–72, 137, 140, 238 Lunyu, 2, 6, 14, 43, 64, 76–82, 94–99, Liberal Cosmopolitan Club, 1–2, 93, 101–102, 106, 109–111, 116–125, 245 138–139, 148–150, 163, 245 Liberal Nationalist, 6, 51, 60, 63, 89, Lunyu phenomenon, 6, 97–98, 101, 200 116–118 Liberalism, 2, 9, 48, 64–67, 71, 73, 89, 198, 210–211, 218, 221, 224, 231 Mao Dun, 14, 120 Lin Yutang May Fourth Movement, 11, 16, 20–21, Between Tears and Laughter, 61–62, 186, 31, 46, 48–54, 57–59, 61, 64, 66, 91, 198, 203, 205–206, 211, 213, 222, 120, 232 225, 248 Meredith, George, 149–151 as Chinese philosopher, 2, 7, 159, McCarthyism, 211, 219, 221 161, 175, 178, 180, 184, 187, mishkids, 220 189–190, 197, 199, 225, 247 modern ethos, 6, 117, 151 de-political disposition, 6, 8, 19, 198 Famous Chinese Short Stories, 191, 194, national character, 21, 56 250 national salvation, 6, 58–59, 63–67, 74, Looking Beyond, 239, 250 78, 86, 88–89, 152 as Master of Humor, 2, 148, 245 national shame, 30 My Country and My People, 2, 99, 127, nationalism, 3, 5, 23, 25, 29–31, 36–38, 148, 151, 155–156, 165, 175, 177, 48–52, 56, 64–67, 73–75, 85, 89, 91, 180, 182, 186, 197, 206, 216–217, 93, 107, 113, 200, 231, 239 246–247 Neo-Confucian school, 231–232 on “my Dream America”, 227–228 Neo-Confucianism, 9, 141, 151, 158 on “philosophy of peace”, 205, New Citizen, 5, 31–37 223–229, 234 New Culturalist, 5, 46, 58 on “pidgin English”, 115 New Culture and May Fourth “On Humor”, 149–150 Movement, 11, 16, 31, 46, 48–54, On the Wisdom of America, 161, 182, 57–59, 61, 64, 232 187, 189, 191, 249 as Cultural Renaissance, 49, 52 Peace Is in the Heart, 198, 225, 227 New Left, 9, 231, 234–236, 238 The Importance of Living, 1–2, 99, 121, New Youth, The, 49, 51, 57, 118, 242 145, 153, 155, 157, 175–179, 187, Nietzschean, 5, 47, 53, 55–57, 61, 234 189, 197, 206, 247 The Vigil of a Nation, 198, 211, 213, Pan Guangdan, 96, 98, 100, 102 248–249 parlor liberals, 8 index 271 proletariat literature, 67 Wan Pingjin, 12, 101, 162 puluo, 71, 87 wenren, 83, 102–105, 107, 110 Westernization, 10, 16, 19–21, 52–53, Qu Qiubai, 72, 120 61, 64, 199, 232–233 Quan Zenggu, 26, 96, 98, 100, 102, 115 White, Ted, 210

Reform Era, 4, 9, 11–12, 15, 64, 76, xianshi, See leisure 237 xiaopinwen, 82–83, 141, 143–146, 148, Renjianshi, 14, 76, 80, 82, 96–97, 110, 246 113, 142, 246 Xifeng, 97, 116–117 revolutionary literature, 67, 71 xingling, 7, 60, 83, 120, 127–129, 131–132, 134, 137–139, 141–142, Self-expression, 7, 83, 127–128 148, 151, 159, 176, 246 Self-strengthening Movement, 26, 65 Xu Shoushang, 13, 143 Service, John, 210, 220 Xueheng, 57, 137, 140 Shao Xunmei, 96–98 xueheng school, 137, 140 Shaw, George Bernard, 14, 79, 140, 164, 244–245 Yang Quan, 12–13, 245 Smedley, Agnes, 1, 8, 197, 210, 213, 224 Yangwu Movement. See Smith, Arthur, 44, 56 Self-Strengthening Movement The Chinese Characteristics, 44, 56, 176, you jiao wu lei, 23, 30, 43 210 youmo, 7, 78, 82, 127–128, 148–152, Snow, Edgar, 1, 8, 197, 210, 213–217, 154, 157, 159, 243 224 Yu Dafu, 14, 97 Song Qingling, 12, 164, 245 Yu Yingshi, 232 Spingarn, J. E., 61, 134–137, 139–142, Yuan Zhonglang, 60, 83–84, 110, 112, 234, 245 116, 128–134, 137–138, 142, 146, Su Dongpo, 154, 224 175 Sun Yat-sen, 49–50, 84 yuluti, 83, 95, 118–124 Yusi, 18, 59, 97, 101, 137, 243 Tao Kangde, 96, 177 Yuzhou feng, 14, 76, 81, 86 Tao Yuanming, 154–156 Taoism/Taoist, 9, 21, 143, 145, 153–154, Zhang Kebiao, 96, 98, 105 157, 177, 227, 234 Zhang Zhidong, 1, 5, 23, 25–33, 36, Taylor, Charles, 23–24 38–39, 45–46, 49, 51–52, 65, 234 tianxia, 5, 38, 65 Quan xue pian, 23, 27–29 twentieth century Chinese literature, Zhengfeng Campaign, 216, 218 16–18, 21 zhongti xiyong, 5, 26–28, 31, 39, 234 Zhou Zuoren, 1, 53, 59–61, 97, 99, 102, Walsh, Richard J., 8, 161, 163, 165– 127–128, 131–134, 140, 143–145, 167, 170–174, 177–178, 182–195, 147–148, 238, 243 197, 210–213, 215, 223–225, 246, The Sources of New Chinese Literature, 134 249–250 Zhuangzi, 154–155