Red Discipline A Shandong Professor, Honglou meng, and the Rewriting of Literary History in the Early P.R.C. Inaugural-Dissertation zur Erlangung des Doktorgrades am Fachbereich Geschichts- und Kulturwissenschaften der Freien Universität Berlin November 2012 vorgelegt von Marie-Theres Strauss aus Stuttgart Inaugural-Dissertation zur Erlangung des Doktorgrades am Fachbereich Geschichts- und Kulturwissenschaften der Freien Universität Berlin November 2012 vorgelegt von Marie-Theres Strauss aus Stuttgart 1. Gutachter: Prof. Dr. Erling von Mende 2. Gutacher: PD Dr. Ingo Schäfer Datum der Disputation: 25. Juni 2013 RED DISCIPLINE Table of Contents List of Abbreviations ...................................................................................................................................... 1 Introduction ....................................................................................................................................................... 2 Chapter One. A Shandong Professor ..................................................................................................... 13 1. The Problem of Sources ............................................................................................................... 15 2. The Problem of Narratives ......................................................................................................... 25 3. A Republican Education ............................................................................................................... 29 4. A Socialist Profession .................................................................................................................... 54 Chapter Two. Honglou meng.................................................................................................................... 90 1. The Problem of Sources ............................................................................................................... 93 2. The Problem of Narratives .......................................................................................................102 3. Campaigns .......................................................................................................................................104 4. Protagonists....................................................................................................................................112 5. Texts ..................................................................................................................................................127 6. “A Poisoned Mind” .......................................................................................................................167 Chapter Three. Red Discipline: The Rewriting of Literary History .........................................175 1. The Problem of Narratives .......................................................................................................180 2. The Problem of Sources .............................................................................................................185 3. Setting the Stage ...........................................................................................................................197 4. The Experts On Periodization .................................................................................................203 5. The Experts on Honglou meng.................................................................................................212 6. Reds and Experts: The Transition Phase ............................................................................226 7. A Great Leap in Literary History ............................................................................................237 8. The Reds On Honglou meng ......................................................................................................240 9. Red Experts: Revisions ...............................................................................................................244 Conclusion .....................................................................................................................................................253 Bibliography .................................................................................................................................................257 TABLE OF CONTENTS RED DISCIPLINE List of Abbreviations BDRC Biographical Dictionary of Republican China (Boorman, Howard L. (ed.), New York: Columbia University Press, 1968) CCP Chinese Communist Party (Zhongguo gongchandang 中國共産黨) CCPCC Chinese Communist Party Central Committee (Zhong-Gong Zhongyang 中共中央) CHC The Cambridge History of China, John King Fairbank, Denis Twitchett (eds.), Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1979 – ongoing CPPCC Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (Zhongguo renmin zhengzhi xieshang huiyi 中國人民政治協商會議, abbr.: Zhongguo zheng-xie 中國政協) CPSUCC Communist Party of the Soviet Union’s Central Committee ECCP Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period (1644-1912), 2 vols. (Hummel, Arthur (ed.), Washington D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1943) GDR German Democratic Republic (former East Germany) GMD Guomindang, a.k.a. Kuomintang 國民黨 (National People’s Party) HSSP Hu Shi sixiang pipan 胡適思想和批判 (Criticisms of Hu Shi thought), Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 1955 NPC National People’s Congress (Quanguo renmin daibiao dahui 全國人 民代表大會) PKU Peking University (Beijing daxue 北京大學) Shanda Shandong daxue 山東大學 (Shandong University) Wenlian Quanguo wenxue yishujie lianhehui 全國文學藝術界聯合會 (All- China Federation of Literary and Art Circles) ABBREVIATIONS 1 RED DISCIPLINE Introduction One of the cornerstones of traditional fiction and as such one of the focal points of literary history courses taught in China today is the eighteenth-century novel Honglou meng 紅樓夢 (Dream of the Red Chamber). The student of classical Chinese literature has little trouble locating a regular universe of secondary scholarship on this particular mid-Qing novel: the average Chinese bookstore usually dedicates an entire separate shelf or section to its study, many of the classic commentaries still dating from the first half of the twentieth century. Some years ago, to get an overview of the topic and preferably contextualize it within the Chinese literary tradition, I stumbled upon (and was grateful for) a tome entitled Zhongguo gudai wenxueshi jiaocheng 中國古代文學史 教程 (Chinese classical literary history course) in a bookstore in Beijing. Flipping to the chapter on Honglou meng and expecting nothing, I read the following passage: In sum, Dream of the Red Chamber reveals two aspects in terms of content, one being the showcasing of the irrevocable final collapse of feudalist society through the rise and fall of the Jia family; the second one being the display of the author’s rebellious spirit and the hopes of the period as shown through the love story between Jia Baoyu, Lin Daiyu and Xue Baochai.1 Whatever had come to my mind when thinking about Honglou meng previous to this discovery, it generally was not that the novel portrayed the “irrevocable final collapse of the feudalist class” or that the author demonstrated his “rebellious spirit” in depicting a love triangle between three privileged and poetic cousins. What then, I asked myself, do these terms mean exactly, and why – of all possible interpretations – are they the ones that stuck in official literary historiography? As I gradually found out, these strange-sounding connotations have their origin in a national event of the mid-1950s: the Honglou meng-Campaign of 1954/55. Lasting just a few months in fall and winter, its main target at the start was a well known literary scholar, Yu Pingbo 俞平伯 (1900-1990), who had written an essay on the novel and failed to read it according to the new Marxist-Leninist criteria. His failure was picked up and commented on by two young university graduates in an article of their own, which 1 Ouyang Zhenren 歐陽禎人 (ed.). Zhongguo gudai wenxueshi jiaocheng 中國古代文學史教程 (Chinese classical literary history course) (Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 2007), 344. INTRODUCTION 2 RED DISCIPLINE eventually led to the start of a nation-wide campaign criticizing both the individual Yu Pingbo and his work, but also the wider realm of reading and writing about the novel in general. Unlike the Yan’an period of the 1940s or the Cultural Revolution, the Honglou meng-Campaign of 1954 has received fairly little attention in scholarly publications. This is not only because its duration was relatively short, but also because it eventually merged with and shifted into another campaign whose target is rather more well-known, namely the Anti-Hu Shi-Campaign of 1954/55. When reading up on the period in the Cambridge History of China, the only publication mentioned relating to the Honglou meng-Campaign is an essay written by a certain Lu Kanru 陸侃如, entitled “Hu Shi fandong sixiang jiyu gudian wenxue yanjiu de duhai 胡適反動思想給予古典文學研究的 毒害” (The poison instilled by Hu Shi's reactionary thought in the research of classical literature) and originally published in the organ of the Chinese Writers Union, Wenyibao 文藝報 (Literary Gazette). I decided to make this my point of departure: who was this Lu Kanru and why was he writing such an essay for Wenyibao at the time? As one delves into the fabric of the Honglou meng-Campaign, the sheer mass of other textual material – campaign essays, policy texts, criticisms and self-criticisms, commentaries, essay compilations – soon becomes overwhelming. Lu Kanru,