Chinese Literature
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JULY ? CONTENTS No. 7, 1980 The Ifiriter Wang Meng - Qin ZhaoYng STOR,IES A Spate of Visitors -W'ang Meng 9 The Barber's Tale-Wang Meng 22 A Night in the City -W'ang Meng 4t Three Poems - Bi Sbuoaang t9 INTRODUCING CLASSICAL CHINESE LITERATURE Ming-Dynasty Fiction - Fan Ning 64 The Old Gatdener 74 N(yIES ON .{BT The Art of W'u Zuoren - Ai Zbongxin THE CINEMA "Ihe Effendi", a New Cattoon Film-Ge Baoquan rot FOLKTALES Tales of the Effendi III IBJTRODUCING A C'LASSICAL PAINTING Qian Xuan's Scroll Painting "Playing Football" - Li Jinltan rr4 CULTUR.4.L EXCII.{NGE Sunshine - Festivity- Friendship -Yang Xianli tt7 CIIEONICI,E r21 PT.ATES Paintings by Wu Zuoren ,8-t9 Scenes from the Film "The Effendi" IIO-I11 Playing Football - Qian Xuan 116-rr1 COVEts Bird and Loquat - Xu Linla Chief Editor: Moo Dun Qin Zhooyong of him. But actually I know very little about him. This seems strange yet is not really so. In a nutshell, it is difficult to gairr a. true understanding of anyone, and still more difficult to grasp the 'Wang outlook and character of such a gifted writer as Meng, especially as I myself Iack insight. 'Vfe get to know a writer mainly through his works. Unfortu- nately I flever had the time to read many of rWang Meng's writ- ings. Moreover, during the twenty y€ars when w€ were both under a cloud, he was far away in Xinjiang in northwest China (I learn- ed that only recently), while I was in Guangxi in the south. Being several thousand kilometres apart, I had no flerils about him. In the summer of ry56 when I was v/orkiflg as an editor of a literary iournal, I received a short story by Wang Meng entitled "The Young New-comer in the Otganizatiot DePartment". 7t rc- Published monthly by CHINESE L RATURE flected th,e bureaucratic way of doing things in a district Party Beijing (37), China committee in a certain city through the experience of Lin Zhen, Subscription and distribution: GUOZI SHUDIAN P.O. Box 399, Beijing, China Qin Zhaoyang is a writer and a member of the secretariat of the Chinese Printed in tbe People's Republic of Cbina 'Writers' Association, IIIIIIIMtIIIIIIIIIIIIIMI| About a ycar later, \(/ang Mcng was blacklisted. Less than a year aftcr that thc same thing happened to me, due in part to "Tlrc YoLrng New-comer in the Organization Department". Aftcr thar, for twenty years, we had no word of each other. "Witl this young ne.w-comer in the literary field spend his life tunclcr a cloud like me? It's too badl" I often thought. But then, in the autumn ol ry77, v/e met each other again in Beijing. It was W'ang Meng who suddenly came to see me. He looked unchanged with the same thin pLain face, lean medium build and black hair. Only the rims of his spectacles had become darker. As to his mind, it struck me that over the years he had gained in experience and knowledge, in the depth of his thinking and powers of observation. f discovered that he had stayed in the adobe cottage of a Uygur peasant six years, had lVang Mcng in Xinjiang for learned to speak, rcad ar,d vrite ifl Uyg,r. and so had gained a good understanding of the working people there. He told me that a young cadre. f was so struck by its profundity and artisric ap- an educated young man born and up peal that I had it published that September. During thar period brought in the city like him could never have had such a chance to live the labouring I met Wang Meng twice. I was surpris,ed to find him a young with people if not for his "misfortune" 1957. He had also worked man around twenty, with a thin plain face. He could not expr,ess in hims,elf in convetsation as fluently and intelligentll, as in writing. in the Xinjiatg branch of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, translating some works the I forget what we talked about then, but rcmember I had come to by Uygurwriters into the conclusion that he was a promising new literary talent. I Ha.n language. He was not embittered by the hard times he had been through, as he felt he had gained so much from them. That would have been all the more surprised and delightecl had I knor.vn was how he summed up the experience of those twenty years. He that his maid€n work, the rtovel Long Lizse tlse Yout/t, would soon reached a conclusion "Of be published in thc Wenbui Daill'. about rne too, for later he told a friend, all those I've seen who have shared the same fate, the most "The Young New-comer in the Crganization D,epartmenL" spirited is Zhaoyartg." This was based, I believe, on the topic created a sensation. But then it aroused an unexpected debate in Qin we had discussed most enthusiastically: the conviction we shared a certait Titerary magazine. Some critics denounced it while some all those long years that the people, China's people, are really fite, others praised it. The basic reason was that, at that time, we were really splendid! allowed only to eulogize life in China but nor to criticize ir; nor Then he read and copied with great interest my poem on a scroll could we intersperse out praise with compatatively acute and pro- hanging on the wall: found criticisms. That approach to literature and aft h^d become deep-rooted literary circles in and in society at large. The vast sea has surged through the ages, So pressure was put on Xfang Meng and on me because I had The long rivcr flowed from time immemorial; published the story. Both of us must remember what it was lihe, And lifc is perpctual, though we have never discussed it. A11 things go round and start again. 4 from Xiniiang to attend Greatest of all are the pcople, other than \Vang Meng, who had returned a heavy heart he Strong is the scent of the soil; to some business for a fuietd at night. With cefiain things he had seen and heard High in the sky hang sun and moon, observcd and pondered over "The Barber's Tale" A brave spirit fills the land. which escaped most people's notice. In !(ang Meng seemed to identify himself with the r.arcator' In paste factoty appeared These disjointed lines which I wrote after the Tiananmen rncident,x "A Spate of Visitors", the director of the said at the before the downfall of the "gang of four,,, not o,ly summarized to be another reflection of the writer. And when he my life of the past tv/enty years but also end, "Unless rre g€t down to business, our coufltry's done for!" of a longer period.... 'Wang rt was actually at this meeting that I began to understand 'v7ang it seemed to me as if this were Meng speaking' his new works li7ang Meng Meng. I rcaTized that he vras not the sort of man he hacl so long Now aftet twenty years, I think, with the door of Marxist-Leninist truth and been labelled. It was not because he was "b1ack-hearted" that hc is once more knocking at ,,The Party, the door of our country's future as wrote to expose abuses. fn fact, young New_comer in the the fine tradition of the complete faith organization Department" was written by a man with finc aspira- well as of its past. I{e is open and honest, having can said to have expressed the tions, out of his deep conce(n over the defects of the party and in the Party and the people. He be Party members and ordinary people' of certain Party members, out of his love fot and his trust in the views of the rank-and-file Party. otherwise, instead of risking exposing these defects in public He really gets down to business I works make such an appeal he would have turned a blind eye to them or even made use of Perhaps this is one reason why his them to better his ow, posirion. Lin Zhen's frame of mind in the to readers. understand him' For instance, how story must have been that of Wang Mcng. In the end Lin Zhen However, I still don't fully time? \flhy can't I do went to knock at the door of the party secretafy, intending to tell can hc write so many works in such a short .Wang "I'm or "too otd"? Hardly a satisfactory him what was worrying him. It was probably Mcr.rg himself thc samc? Because busy" who knocked at the Party secr,etary,s door and confided in him. cxplani-rtion. rcad a couple of his essays dealing How deplorable that he was locked outsidc for twenry years jusr In thc last fcw ycars I havc and hcard him talking at meetings of because he knocked at it! How,cvcr, has,,t th.e twenty ycars, test with litcratLtrc ancl art quote the classics, resort to claptrap, o( get of history proved that his short story was necded, a very apt one writcrs. FIc clid not combining logic with that struck home? The door of our party should always rlemai,, carticd away. But his style rvas convincing, this is the style that we wide open for those who are concernecl for and loya1 to hcr.