DOCSLIB.ORG

The True Story of Ah Q: Depiction of a Chinese Archetype of the 1920S

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The True Story of Ah Q: Depiction of a Chinese Archetype of the 1920S The True Story of Ah Q: Depiction of a Chinese archetype of the 1920s Cho Kwan-hee Professor, Department of Chinese Language and Literature Sangmyung University t is said that a novel is a story created in the imagination of an author. A novel reveals human nature and an image of society through the actions and ideas of its characters. An author’s thoughts I are reflected clearly in a novel. A novel representative of an era is particularly intertwined with history, and there are many such novels within contemporary Chinese fiction. The novel discussed in this article explores the reality and issues of an era in China, and the authors’ solutions to those issues. ○● Faltering people in an era of turbulence From the Chinese perspective, Chinese contemporary history, which started with the Opium War with Great Britain in 1840, is filled with extreme self-contempt. Until the People’s Republic of China was established in 1949, not a day passed in China without internal troubles, including the Taiping Rebellion, and external troubles, such as imperialist 134 POSRI Chindia Quarterly�Summer 2012 :: Culture military intervention for influence over China. In 1911, the Xinhai Revolution spearheaded by Sun Yatsen (孫文) led to the end of Chinese feudalism, which had lasted for more than 2000 years, since Emperor Qin Shi unified China. Even after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, however, troubles persisted. In order to prevent civil war, Sun Yatsen gave up his presidency to Yuan Shikai (袁世凱), the strongest military figure of the time. Yuan aspired to become emperor, and Japan spared no effort in aiding him, offering financial backing and cooperation. Japan submitted a list of 21 demands to Yuan Shikai’s government, and Yuan, desperate for outside help to maintain his power, accepted these demands. On January 1, 1916, Yuan finally declared himself emperor. The Western powers that had been implicitly supporting him turned their backs on his anachronistic return to imperialism. Warlords who had been Yuan’s trusted followers betrayed him and declared independence. Forced into a corner, Yuan Shikai retracted his declaration in March of 1916, only two months after he took power as emperor. He died in June of the same year, disappointed and angry. Following his death, warlords in various parts of the country controlled their own territories, and China fell into a state of anarchy. The warlords sought horizontal and vertical alliances, dividing the country at whim to satisfy their interests. Failing to comprehend the state of affairs, the people of the country were left bewildered and helpless. ○● An outcry by Lu Xun from the “iron house” Lu Xun (魯迅), a prolific Chinese writer, was a young man with pent-up anger about this era of turbulence. He went to Japan to study medicine, determined to become a doctor to alleviate the suffering of the Chinese people. He soon realized that the suffering of the Chinese people came not from their bodies, but from their minds. He quit studying medicine and returned to China, but he failed to make a breakthrough in his cause for 135 Summer 2012�POSRI Chindia Quarterly some time. When a friend suggested writing, he responded as follows: “Imagine an iron house without windows, absolutely indestructible, with many people fast asleep inside who will soon die of suffocation. But you know since they will die in their sleep, they will not feel the pain of death. Now if you cry aloud to wake a few of the lighter sleepers, making those unfortunate few suffer the agony of irrevocable death, do you think you are doing them a good turn?” My friend’s reply was decisive. “But if a few awake, you can't say there is no hope of destroying the iron house.” - Excerpt from the Preface to Call to Arms Lu Xun ended up bending to his friend’s will, and his first story, A Madman’s Diary, was published. The new writing style and shocking plot of this novel made Lu an instant celebrity. He later joined the ranks of contemporary Chinese writers. ○● Ah Q, the embodiment of typical Chinese self-hypnotism After the success of his first short story, Lu Xun released one novel after another. The True Story of Ah Q (阿Q正傳) was first published as a series in the Beijing Morning News from December 4, 1921. Lu stated that he wanted to disclose the general weakness of the Chinese people. Intellectuals in a country that has been devastated by a more powerful country face the law of the jungle, where only the fittest survive. According to social evolutionists, this is the underlying law of history and development. Lu also had this idea in the beginning. The problem was that the general public did not try to understand the real issues, nor were they even aware of them. To make this point, Lu published a series about a fool, Ah Q, whose exact name 136 POSRI Chindia Quarterly�Summer 2012 :: Culture is not given, who lives in a rural farming village. In addition to the uncertainty regarding Ah Q’s surname, personal name, and place of origin, there is even some uncertainty regarding his “background.” This is because the people of Weichuang only made use of his services or treated him as a laughing-stock, without ever paying the slightest attention to his “ background.” - Excerpt from The True Story of Ah Q Ah Q is a day laborer with no home or regular job. He lives on odd jobs, from cutting barley and pounding rice to paddling a boat. However, Ah Q cannot put himself in anyone else’s shoes, and believes himself to be better than others, when actually he is being ridiculed. Ah Q represents the common man in rural China at that time. This fact made many readers of the Beijing Morning News feel uneasy. They were moved, as the story of Ah Q was a story about them. Ah Q, a common man in an unremarkable environment, is certainly as unimportant as a grain of sand, but despite his trivial existence, truth is revealed through his connection to the world. There is a saying, “To see the world in a grain of sand.” Before the old social institutions are abolished and a new society is created, the public must be awakened to build the power that can change society. Perhaps Lu Xun’s message in The True Story of Ah Q was this: a revolution that fails to awaken the public is false; the true goal of revolution is to awaken the public, not to topple autocracy. 137 Summer 2012�POSRI Chindia Quarterly.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Engaging with the Trans-East Asian Cultural Tradition in Modern Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Taiwanese Literatures, 1880S-1940S
    Afterlives of the Culture: Engaging with the Trans-East Asian Cultural Tradition in Modern Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Taiwanese Literatures, 1880s-1940s The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Hashimoto, Satoru. 2014. Afterlives of the Culture: Engaging with the Trans-East Asian Cultural Tradition in Modern Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Taiwanese Literatures, 1880s-1940s. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:13064962 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Afterlives of the Culture: Engaging with the Trans-East Asian Cultural Tradition in Modern Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Taiwanese Literatures, 1880s-1940s A dissertation presented by Satoru Hashimoto to The Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of East Asian Languages and Civilizations Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts August 2014 ! ! © 2014 Satoru Hashimoto All rights reserved. ! ! Dissertation Advisor: Professor David Der-Wei Wang Satoru Hashimoto Afterlives of the Culture: Engaging with the Trans-East Asian Cultural Tradition in Modern Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Taiwanese Literatures, 1880s-1940s Abstract This dissertation examines how modern literature in China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan in the late-nineteenth to the early-twentieth centuries was practiced within contexts of these countries’ deeply interrelated literary traditions.
    [Show full text]
  • Chinese Literature in the Second Half of a Modern Century: a Critical Survey
    CHINESE LITERATURE IN THE SECOND HALF OF A MODERN CENTURY A CRITICAL SURVEY Edited by PANG-YUAN CHI and DAVID DER-WEI WANG INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS • BLOOMINGTON AND INDIANAPOLIS William Tay’s “Colonialism, the Cold War Era, and Marginal Space: The Existential Condition of Five Decades of Hong Kong Literature,” Li Tuo’s “Resistance to Modernity: Reflections on Mainland Chinese Literary Criticism in the 1980s,” and Michelle Yeh’s “Death of the Poet: Poetry and Society in Contemporary China and Taiwan” first ap- peared in the special issue “Contemporary Chinese Literature: Crossing the Bound- aries” (edited by Yvonne Chang) of Literature East and West (1995). Jeffrey Kinkley’s “A Bibliographic Survey of Publications on Chinese Literature in Translation from 1949 to 1999” first appeared in Choice (April 1994; copyright by the American Library Associ- ation). All of the essays have been revised for this volume. This book is a publication of Indiana University Press 601 North Morton Street Bloomington, IN 47404-3797 USA http://www.indiana.edu/~iupress Telephone orders 800-842-6796 Fax orders 812-855-7931 Orders by e-mail [email protected] © 2000 by David D. W. Wang All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences— Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
    [Show full text]
  • Courtroom Drama with Chinese Characteristics: a Comparative Approach to Legal Process in Chinese Cinema
    Courtroom Drama With Chinese Characteristics: A Comparative Approach to Legal Process in Chinese Cinema Stephen McIntyre* While previous “law and film” scholarship has concentrated mainly on Hollywood films, this article examines legal themes in Chinese cinema. It argues that Chinese films do not simply mimic Western conventions when portraying the courtroom, but draw upon a centuries-old, indigenous tradition of “court case” (gong’an) melodrama. Like Hollywood cinema, gong’an drama seizes upon the dramatic and narrative potential of legal trials. Yet, while Hollywood trial films turn viewers into jurors, pushing them back and forth between the competing stories that emerge from the adversarial process, gong’an drama eschews any recognition of opposing narratives, instead centering on the punishment of decidedly guilty criminals. The moral clarity and punitive sense of justice that characterize gong’an drama are manifest in China’s modern-day legal system and in Chinese cinema. An analysis of Tokyo Trial, a 2006 Chinese film about the post-World War II war crimes trial in Japan, demonstrates the lasting influence of gong’an drama. Although Tokyo Trial resembles Hollywood courtroom drama in many respects, it remains faithful to the gong’an model. This highlights the robustness of China’s native gong’an tradition and the attitudes underlying it. * J.D., Duke University School of Law; M.A., East Asian Studies, Duke University; B.A., Chinese, Brigham Young University. I thank Professor Guo Juin Hong for his valuable comments and encouragement. I also thank those who attended and participated in the 2011 Kentucky Foreign Language Conference at the University of Kentucky, at which I presented an earlier version of this article.
    [Show full text]
  • Research Report Learning to Read Lu Xun, 1918–1923: the Emergence
    Research Report Learning to Read Lu Xun, 1918–1923: The Emergence of a Readership* Eva Shan Chou ABSTRACT As the first and still the most prominent writer in modern Chinese literature, Lu Xun (1881–1936) had been the object of extensive attention since well before his death. Little noticed, however, is the anomaly that almost nothing was written about Lu Xun in the first five years of his writing career – only eleven items date from the years 1918–23. This article proposes that the five-year lag shows that time was required to learn to read his fiction, a task that necessitated interpretation by insiders, and that further time was required for the creation of a literary world that would respond in the form of published comments. Such an account of the development of his standing has larger applicability to issues relating to the emerg- ence of a modern readership for the New Literature of the May Fourth generation, and it draws attention to the earliest years of that literature. Lu Xun’s case represents the earliest instance of a fast-evolving relationship being created between writers and their society in those years. In 1918, Lu Xun’s “Kuangren riji” (“Diary of a madman”) was published in the magazine Xin qingnian (New Youth).1 In this story, through the delusions of a madman who thought people were plotting to devour other people, the reader is brought to see the metaphorical cannibalism that governed Chinese society and tradition. It was a startling piece of writing, unprecedented in many respects: its use of the vernacular, its unbroken first person narration, its consistent fiction of madness, and, of course, its damning thesis.
    [Show full text]
  • Selected Works of Lu Hsun
    7 =-t SELECTED 1{ORKS OF VO L[I ME FOU R Y,.rj\\r^r 1!a- r.-::4i r.ar\. SELECTED WORKS OF LU HSUN VOLUME FOUR i-, :'fir 4\. itr .y 2 Lu Hsun with his wife and son Taken in September 1933 FOREIGN LANGUAGES PRESS PEKING 1960 T EDITOR'S NOTE Translated by Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang 'Ihe essays in this volume come from four collections: Frinqed Literature* and three volumes of Essays of Chieh.-chieh-ting. Fringed Literature, a collection of sixty-one essays written in 1934, was first published in 1936. The thirty- six essays in the first series of Essagrs of Chieh-chieh-ting were also written in 1934, the forty-eight in the second series in 1935, and the thirty-five in the third series in 1936. The three collections of Essays oJ Chieh-chieh-ting were all published in July 1937 after Lu Hsun's death, the first two having been edited by Lu Hsun, the last by his wife Hsu Kuang-ping. Between 1934 and 1936, when the essays in this volume were written, the spearhead of Japanese invasion had struck south from the northeastern provinces to Pe- king and Tientsin. On April 17, 1934, the Japanese imperialists openly declared that China belonged to their sphere of influence. In 1935, Ho Ying-chin signed the Ho-Umezu Agreement whereby the Kuomin- tang government substantially surrendered China's sovereign rights in the provinces of Hopei and Chahar. In November of the same year, the Japanese occupied Inner Mongolia and set up a puppet "autonomous gov- ernment" there.
    [Show full text]
  • The True Story of Ah Q
    THE TRUE STORY OF AH Q CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION For several years now I have been meaning to write the true story of Ah Q. But while wanting to write I was in some trepidation, too, which goes to show that I am not one of those who achieve glory by writing; for an immortal pen has always been required to record the deeds of an immortal man, the man becoming known to posterity through the writing and the writing known to posterity through the man — until finally it is not clear who is making whom known. But in the end, as though possessed by some fiend, I always came back to the idea of writing the story of Ah Q. And yet no sooner had I taken up my pen than I became conscious of tremendous difficulties in writing this far-from-immortal work. The first was the question of what to call it. Confucius said, "If the name is not correct, the words will not ring true"; and this axiom should be most scrupulously observed. There are many types of biographies: official biographies, autobiographies, unauthorized biographies, legends, supplementary biographies, family histories, sketches...but unfortunately none of these suited my purpose. "Official biography?" This account will obviously not be included with those of many eminent people in some authentic history. "Autobiography?" But I am obviously not Ah Q. If I were to call this an "unauthorized biography," then where is his "authenticated biography"? The use of "legend" is impossible, because Ah Q was no legendary figure. "Supplementary biography"? But no president has ever ordered the National Historical Institute to write a "standard life" of Ah Q.
    [Show full text]
  • Appropriating the West in Late Qing and Early Republican China / Theodore Huters
    Tseng 2005.1.17 07:55 7215 Huters / BRINGING THE WORLD HOME / sheet 1 of 384 Bringing the World Home Tseng 2005.1.17 07:55 7215 Huters / BRINGING THE WORLD HOME / sheet 2 of 384 3 of 384 BringingÕ the World HomeÕ Appropriating the West in Late Qing 7215 Huters / BRINGING THE WORLD HOME / sheet and Early Republican China Theodore Huters University of Hawai‘i Press Honolulu Tseng 2005.1.17 07:55 © 2005 University of Hawai‘i Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of Amer i ca Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Huters, Theodore. Bringing the world home : appropriating the West in late Qing and early Republican China / Theodore Huters. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8248-2838-0 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Chinese literature—20th century—History and criticism. 2. Chinese literature—20th century—Western influences. I. Title. PL2302.H88 2005 895.1’09005—dc22 2004023334 University of Hawai‘i Press books are printed on acid- free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Council on Library Resources. An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched. KU is a collaborative initiative designed to make high-quality books open access for the public good. The open-access ISBN for this book is 978-0-8248-7401-8. More information about the initiative and links to the open-access version can be found at www.knowledgeunlatched.org. The open-access version of this book is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY- NC-ND 4.0), which means that the work may be freely downloaded and shared for non-commercial purposes, provided credit is given to the author.
    [Show full text]
  • The True Story of Ah Q
    The True Story of Ah Q Lu Xun The True Story of Ah Q Table of Contents The True Story of Ah Q......................................................................................................................................1 Lu Xun.....................................................................................................................................................2 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................3 CHAPTER 2. A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF AH Q'S VICTORIES.............................................................6 CHAPTER 3. A FURTHER ACCOUNT OF AH Q'S VICTORIES......................................................9 CHAPTER 4. THE TRAGEDY OF LOVE...........................................................................................12 CHAPTER 5. THE PROBLEM OF LIVELIHOOD.............................................................................15 CHAPTER 6. FROM RESTORATION TO DECLINE........................................................................18 CHAPTER 7. THE REVOLUTION......................................................................................................21 CHAPTER 8. BARRED FROM THE REVOLUTION........................................................................24 CHAPTER 9. THE GRAND FINALE..................................................................................................27 i The True Story of Ah Q 1 The True Story of Ah Q Lu Xun This page copyright © 2004 Blackmask Online. http://www.blackmask.com
    [Show full text]
  • Intersecting Nations, Diverging Discourses: the Fraught Encounter of Chinese and Tibetan Literatures in the Modern Era Christoph
    Intersecting Nations, Diverging Discourses: The Fraught Encounter of Chinese and Tibetan Literatures in the Modern Era Christopher Peacock Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy under the Executive Committee of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2020 © 2020 Christopher Peacock All Rights Reserved Abstract Intersecting Nations, Diverging Discourses: The Fraught Encounter of Chinese and Tibetan Literatures in the Modern Era Christopher Peacock This is a two-pronged study of how the Chinese and Tibetan literary traditions have become intertwined in the modern era. Setting out from the contention that the study of minority literatures in China must be fundamentally multilingual in its approach, this dissertation investigates how Tibetans were written into Chinese literature, and how Tibetans themselves adopted and adapted Chinese literary discourses to their own ends. It begins with Lu Xun and the formative literary conceptions of nation in the late Qing and Republican periods – a time when the Tibetan subject was fundamentally absent from modern Chinese literature – and then moves to the 1980s, when Tibet and Tibetans belatedly, and contentiously, became valid subject matter for Han Chinese writers. The second aspect of the project situates modern Tibetan-language literature, which arose from the 1980s onwards, within the literary and intellectual context of modern China. I read Döndrup Gyel, modern Tibetan literature’s “father figure,” as working within unmistakably Lu Xun-ian paradigms, I consider the contradictions that arose when Tsering Döndrup’s short story “Ralo” was interpreted as a Tibetan equivalent of “The True Story of Ah Q,” and I analyze the rise of a “Tibetan May Fourth Movement” in the 2000s, which I argue presented a selective reading of modern China’s intellectual history.
    [Show full text]
  • Bringing the World Home
    Tseng 2005.1.17 07:55 7215 Huters / BRINGING THE WORLD HOME / sheet 1 of 384 Bringing the World Home Tseng 2005.1.17 07:55 7215 Huters / BRINGING THE WORLD HOME / sheet 2 of 384 3 of 384 BringingÕ the World HomeÕ Appropriating the West in Late Qing 7215 Huters / BRINGING THE WORLD HOME / sheet and Early Republican China Theodore Huters University of Hawai‘i Press Honolulu Tseng 2005.1.17 07:55 4 of 384 © 2005 University of Hawai‘i Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 7215 Huters / BRINGING THE WORLD HOME / sheet 050607080910 654321 library of congress cataloging-in-publication data Huters, Theodore. Bringing the world home : appropriating the West in late Qing and early Republican China / Theodore Huters. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0-8248-2838-0 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Chinese literature—20th century—History and criticism. 2. Chinese literature—20th century—Western influences. I. Title. pl2302.h88 2005 895.1'09005—dc22 2004023334 University of Hawai‘i Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Council on Library Resources. Designed by University of Hawai‘i Press production staff Printed by Maple-Vail Book Manufacturing Group Tseng 2005.1.17 07:55 5 of 384 Contents 7215 Huters / BRINGING THE WORLD HOME / sheet Preface vii Introduction 1 Part I. Late Qing Ideas Chapter 1. China as Origin 23 Chapter 2. Appropriations: Another Look at Yan Fu and Western Ideas 43 Chapter 3. New Ways of Writing 74 Chapter 4.
    [Show full text]
  • Comparative Analysis of English Versions of the True Story of Ah Q from the Perspective of Functional Equivalence Theory
    US-China Foreign Language, May 2021, Vol. 19, No. 5, 118-122 doi:10.17265/1539-8080/2021.05.005 D DAVID PUBLISHING Comparative Analysis of English Versions of The True Story of Ah Q From the Perspective of Functional Equivalence Theory YANG Tian, NI Jincheng University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai, China As a relatively mature translation theory at present, the functional equivalence theory plays an important guiding role in the practice of literary translation. Therefore, this thesis compares and analyzes two translation versions of The True Story of Ah Q under the guidance of functional equivalence theory in terms of words, syntax, and discourse. This paper makes a detailed analysis of the two versions, one of which was translated by William Lyell and the other by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang. Then, the specific differences between English and Chinese languages are studied to provide guidance for translators to consider how to effectively and appropriately conduct similar translations in the future. Keywords: comparative analysis, English versions, The True Story of Ah Q, functional equivalence theory Introduction Nowadays, Lu Xun’s works have been translated into many languages all over the world, which can be said that Lu Xun’s works of Chinese literature have truly entered the world. Translators play an important role in the process of international cultural communication. Facing the bottleneck of Chinese literature going abroad, it is of great value and significance to make a comparative analysis on the English translations of Lu Xun’s novels. As the core theory of American translation theorist Eugene Nida, the functional equivalence theory has been highly valued by scholars all over the world since its birth 50 years ago.
    [Show full text]
  • The Emergence of Hope in the Fiction of Lu Xun
    Loyola University Chicago Loyola eCommons Master's Theses Theses and Dissertations 1994 The Emergence of Hope in the Fiction of Lu Xun Amalia Valderrama-Nunez Loyola University Chicago Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_theses Part of the Modern Literature Commons Recommended Citation Valderrama-Nunez, Amalia, "The Emergence of Hope in the Fiction of Lu Xun" (1994). Master's Theses. 4069. https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_theses/4069 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at Loyola eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Master's Theses by an authorized administrator of Loyola eCommons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Copyright © 1994 Amalia Valderrama-Nunez LOYOLA UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO THE EMERGENCE OF HOPE IN THE FICTION OF LU XUN A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF LOYOLA UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS DEPARTMENT OF LIBERAL STUDIES BY AMALIA VALDERRAMA-NUNEZ CHICAGO, IL MAY 1994 Copyright by Amalia Valderrama-Nunez, 1994 All Rights Reserved ii PREFACE My thesis examines modem Chinese literature, specifically the writings of Lu Xun, a prominent 20th century writer. Lu Xun wrote about the weariness of a people caught up in the everyday struggle of life, a life full of hardships, steeped in poverty, ignorance, and injustice. In his short stories, Lu Xun does not provide solutions to these struggles; he does, however, offer small rays of hope.
    [Show full text]