The Tragic Vision in Jia Pingwa's Four Novels of the 1990S
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
The Tragic Vision in Jia Pingwa's Four Novels of the 1990s By Ming Fang Zheng B.A. Xian Foreign Languages University, 1982 M.A. University of British Columbia, 1993 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENT FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Department of Asian Studies) We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA April 2004 © Ming Fang Zheng, 2004 11 Abstract This thesis presents a study of "tragic vision" in four novels of the 1990s by the well known Chinese writer Jia Pingwa. The novels are The Abandoned Capital (Feidu lj£ A[5), White Nights (Baiye IE1 ft), The Earthen Gate (Tumen ± ("]), and Old Gao Village (Gaolaozhuang ifj & Si). After a review of Western theories of tragedy - including Unamuno, Jaspers, Krieger, Frye, and others, with special attention to Raymond Williams, I argue that tragic experience is primary, perennial, and universal, tragic vision is secondary, and tragedy, in whatever religious, philosophical, and artistic form, is a response to and product of tragic experience and tragic vision. By tragic vision I mean a view of the world, a "sense of life in men and peoples" that is tragic. This vision is not necessarily pessimistic because using our head we find despair, but using our heart we are full of hope (Unamuno). In Chinese the idea can be summed up in the Daoist epithet about Confucius—"Is that not the man who knows that striving is without hope and yet goes on?" In short, tragic vision is defiant resistance or resisting defiantly. Relying on this sense of the term, I flesh out Jia Pingwa's tragic vision through an analysis of the four novels mentioned above. I demonstrate how Jia expresses a cyclical vision of his individual characters' lives, of their crossing the rural and urban boundaries, and of traversing various stages of social history. These tragic cycles seem to go on hopelessly, but Jia's characters resist despair by waging Sisyphean battles. I conclude that modern China has tragic experience, Jia Pingwa has a tragic vision and, although his tragic vision is not as profound as that of some of the literary giants the world has produced, he has successfully forged this vision into art. TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ii TABLE OF CONTENTS iii Acknowledgements v Chapter 1 Introduction 1 1. Jia Pingwa and His Works 1 2. A Definition of Tragic Vision 17 Chapter 2 Tragic Plots 39 1. The Abandoned Capital • 42 2. White Nights : 43 3. The Earthen Gate ••47 4. Old Gao Village • 48 Chapter 3 Tragic Backgrounds 58 1. Traditional Thoughts and Modern Ideology 59 2. Rural and Urban Boundaries 64 3. Historical Background 71 Chapter 4 Tragic Heroes .' 82 1. Zhuang Zhidie 86 2. Ye Lang 97 3. Cheng Yi 109 4. Cai Laohei 119 iv Chapter 5 Techniques , 129 1. Characterization 130 (1) "Multi-Perspective Technique" 130 (2) Pairing 147 2. Image, Metaphor, Symbol, Myth 166 (1) The Rare Flower Myth 169 (2) The Myth of Four Suns 185 (3) The Myth of Mr. Niu's Divination 197 (4) Dog as Metaphor 200 (5) Setting as Metaphor 206 Chapter 6 Tragic Relief 208 Conclusion 224 Bibliography 240 Works by Jia Pingwa 240 Books Consulted 243 Journal Essays and Unpublished Dissertations Cited 252 V Acknowledgements Many times I dreamed of this day of writing an acknowledgement to express my gratitude to professors and friends who supported me through my thesis writing "Odyssey." Without my supervisor, Professor Michael S. Duke, who patiently and painstakingly guided me and corrected my numerous revisions in the past several years, and without Dr. Josephine Chiu-Duke's encouragement, this day would not have arrived. To them I express my deepest gratitude. I also owe a debt of gratitude stretching over many years to an understanding and compassionate advisor and friend, Professor Graham Good. My thanks also go to Professor John Xiros Cooper who corrected and examined orally my. MA thesis for the Department of English and readily agreed to be an examiner in my Ph.D. dissertation defense; to Dr. Catherine Swatek who taught me early vernacular Chinese fiction and graciously agreed to be an examiner in my doctoral defense; to Professor Jerry Dean Schmidt who pitched in on my dissertation when I needed the help; and to Professor Gemot Wieland who so meticulously caught my numerous typos as Chair of my oral examination. They all deserve my sincere gratitude. My dear neighbor, Professor Richard Pearson, the former head of Anthropology and Sociology, guided me with many sessions right from the start of my preparation of this dissertation in his cozy study and has been a precious mentor all along. You forever command my deepest respect. Professor Alison Bailey helped me to edit halfway of the first version and all the way through the final version of this dissertation free of charge despite her busy schedule as the Director of the Center of Chinese Research in the Institute of Asian Research. "A person who stretches out her hand in a critical moment is gold," as Professor Swatek commented perceptively. I also want to thank Professor Howard Goldblatt, my external examiner, who was strict and critical in passing judgment and offering advice. vi My great gratitude is also due my dear friends Elisabeth and Catherine Long who have been caring and generous in providing me with a low-rent, quiet, and stable environment and standing behind me in all my difficult years. Without your constant support, it would have been harder to write this dissertation. Manman Han helped typing some chapters of the earlier versions. My good neighbor John Madden and my friend David Racine provided me with technical support whenever I needed it. Mina Wong, as Asian Studies graduate secretary, gave me more support than she herself realized. My friends Julia Quan, Kevin Woodall, Susan Home, Timothy Timberg, and Ian Carter were always an inspiration to me and played an indispensable role in bringing me to this day. I offer you all thousands of thanks. Finally, I should thank the celebrity writer Jia Pingwa, his biographer Sun Jianxi, my friend Cheng Baoxun, Liu Xioaping, and Pang Jin for spending that wonderful 1998 summer evening in the Bell Tower Hotel during our interview. Final thanks also go to my friend Wang Jianxiah and my sister Zheng Miqin for generously supplying me with works by and about Jia Pingwa. Chapter 1 Introduction. 1 Chapter 1 Introduction 1. Jia Pingwa and His Works Jia Pingwa was born in 1952 in a village in the Township of Jinpen ^ instead of his own hometown Dihu ft It in Danfeng County f\- i*l -JI- in mountainous Southern Shaanxi.1 Born into a family of twenty-two people, with his father being the youngest of four siblings and teaching Chinese in another county and his mother often away with his father after Pingwa's younger siblings were bom, he is often left lonely and hungry, with his aunt, a widow in all but name, a sacrificial product of an old marriage without love because her husband lived with another 1 Interested readers are referred to John Edward Stowe's dissertation for Jia's early life and works. Although Stowe corrects the error which states Jia was born in 1953, he follows an error lie quotes on page 4 of his dissertation from Ying Bian ed., The Time is Not Yet Ripe: Contemporary China's Best Writers and Their Stories, (Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 1991) 99: "His birthplace is Lihua Township M'&Z', Danfeng County ftRM: in Shaanxi Province While Jia's real birthplace is in the town of Jinpen his official birthplace is in the town of Dihua Wfo, which is a word from the poem named "The Flower of Bush Cherry" Hfii 2L ±fc in Book of Poetry On page 7 of Stowe's dissertation, he quotes Jia's account of his birth: "r^^ffcftt, MM Pi5t4 Ifill, ~K'M&Mn and translates it into: "At the time that my parents were to give birth to me, they wanted to have a geomancer count the number of years that I would live; unfortunately he was not at home." The Chinese sentence actually means: "When I was about to be born, my parents consulted a geomancer who advised that the birth should better not take place at my own home." I pointed out these small errors to Stowe through email and he acknowledged them with gratitude. See^John Edward Stowe, "The Peasant Intellectual Jia Pingwa: An Historico-Literary Analysis of His Life and Early Works," dissertation (University of Toronto, 2003) 7. Chapter 1 Introduction. 2 woman in his work unit far away from home, while the rest of his cousins were taken better care of by their own parents, i.e., Pingwa's uncles and aunts. Although quiet, skinny, and the youngest in his class in primary school, he often did the best in his studies and his compositions were often model ones praised by his teachers. His schooling was disrupted when he was fourteen, just going to the second year in a local junior high school, by the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution. The experience left a lasting memory in young Pingwa's mind. His father would save a meat sandwich (meat was always short at the time) and bring it home miles away to his son. When he was temporarily detained, branded "a historical counter• revolutionary ,"3and obviously beaten by the Red Guards in a neighboring township, Jia Pingwa brought four packs of cigarettes and some meat in a cup to him.