Global Chinese Literature Chinese Overseas History, Literature, and Society Chief Editor Wang Gungwu Subject Editors Evelyn Hu-DeHart, David Der-wei Wang, Wong Siu-lun Editorial Board Ien Ang, Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Liu Hong, Frank Pieke, Elizabeth Sinn, Jing Tsu VOLUME 3 Global Chinese Literature Critical Essays Edited by Jing Tsu and David Der-wei Wang LEIDEN • BOSTON 2010 This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Global Chinese literature : critical essays / [edited] by Jing Tsu and David Der-wei Wang. p. cm. — (Chinese overseas: history, literature, and society, ISSN 1876-3847 ; v. 3) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-18765-8 (hard cover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-16905-0 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Chinese literature—Foreign countries—History and criticism. 2. Chinese diaspora in literature. 3. Chinese in literature. 4. China—In literature. I. Tsu, Jing. II. Wang, Dewei. III. Title. IV. Series. PL3033.G56 2010 895.1’09—dc22 2010015916 ISSN 1876-3847 ISBN 978 90 04 18765 8 Copyright 2010 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. 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 NV 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. printed in the netherlands CONTENTS Acknowledgements ..................................................................... vii List of Contributors .................................................................... ix 1. Introduction: Global Chinese Literature ............................... 1 Jing Tsu and David Der-wei Wang 2. Minor Sinophone Literature: Diasporic Modernity’s Incomplete Journey ................................................................. 15 Kim Chew Ng 3. Against Diaspora: The Sinophone as Places of Cultural Production ............................................................................... 29 Shu-mei Shih 4. Global Vision and Locatedness: World Literature in Chinese/by Chinese (Shijie huawen/huaren wenxue 世界華文／ 華人文學) from a Chinese-Americanist Perspective ............... 49 Sau-ling C. Wong 5. (Re)mapping Sinophone Literature ....................................... 77 Tee Kim Tong 6. Sinophonics and the Nationalization of Chinese .................... 93 Jing Tsu 7. Alai and the Linguistic Politics of Internal Diaspora .................................................................................. 115 Carlos Rojas 8. Thinking with Food, Writing off Center: Notes on Two Hong Kong Authors ................................................................ 133 Rey Chow 9. In Search of a Genuine Chinese Sound: Jiang Wenye and Modern Chinese Music ................................................... 157 David Der-wei Wang vi contents 10. Reinventing Chinese Writing: Zhang Guixing’s Sinographic Translations ........................................................................... 177 Andrea Bachner 11. Chinese Literature in the Global Canon: The Quest for Recognition ........................................................................... 197 Julia Lovell 12. Commentary: On the “Sainifeng 賽呢風” as a Global Literary Practice .................................................................... 219 Eric Hayot Index ........................................................................................... 229 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The idea for the present volume of essays arose from the dynamic and polemical discussions that took place at a conference held at Harvard University in December 2007, “Globalizing Modern Chinese Literature: Sinophone and Diasporic Writings.” We give our heartfelt thanks to all the participants and the following institutions for their generous support: the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation Inter-University Center for Sinology U.S.A., the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures and the Council on East Asian Studies at Yale University, and the Fairbank Center and the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University. The CCK Foundation and the Council on East Asian Studies, in particular, offered further assistance that made this publication possible. Our current editor at Brill, Mark Monfasani, and former editor, Matt Kawecki, have been tireless in their enthusiasm. We dedicate this volume to colleagues, writers, and critics in different corners of the Sinophone world whose works provide the main inspiration for putting forth this first volume of its kind. LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Andrea Bachner, Ph.D. (Harvard University), is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Chinese Studies at Penn State University. She is the author of essays on Chinese, Latin-American, and Euro- pean contemporary literature and culture and is currently complet- ing a manuscript on contemporary reflections on the Chinese writing system, Mediality, Alterity, and the Sinograph. Rey Chow is Anne Firor Scott Professor of Literature in Trinity Col- lege of Arts and Sciences, Duke University and the author of numer- ous books on language, literature, film, and cultural theory. The Rey Chow Reader, ed. Paul Bowman, is available from Columbia University Press (2010). Eric Hayot is Professor of Comparative Literature and Director of the Asian Studies Program at the Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of Chinese Dreams: Pound, Brecht, Tel Quel (Michigan, 2004) and The Hypothetical Mandarin: Sympathy, Modernity, and Chinese Pain (Oxford, 2009), as well as a co-editor of Sinographies: Writing China (Minnesota, 2008). Julia Lovell is lecturer in modern Chinese history at the University of London. She is author of The Politics of Cultural Capital: China’s Quest for a Nobel Prize in Literature (Hawai’i University Press, 2006) and transla- tor of numerous works of modern Chinese literature, including the complete fiction of Lu Xun (Penguin Classics, 2009). Kim Chew Ng, Malaysia Chinese fiction writer and literary critic, is Professor of Chinese Literature at National Chi Nan University in Taiwan. Author of numerous award-winning fiction, his scholarly pub- lications include literary anthologies and monographs such as MaHua wenxue yu Zhongguo xing (Taibei: Yuanliu, 1998) and Wen yu hun yu ti: lun xiandai Zhongguo xing (Taibei: Maitian, 2006). Carlos Rojas is Assistant Professor of Chinese Cultural Studies and Women’s Studies at Duke University. He is author of The Naked Gaze: x list of contributors Reflections of Chinese Modernity (Harvard University Asia Center, 2008) and The Great Wall: A Cultural History (Harvard University Press, 2010), and co-editor of Rethinking Chinese Popular Culture: Cannibalizations of the Canon (Routledge, 2009) and Writing Taiwan: A New Literary History (Duke University Press, 2007). Shu-mei Shih is Professor of Comparative Literature at UCLA. She is the author of The Lure of the Modern: Writing Modernism in Semico- lonial China, 1917–1937 (2001), Visuality and Identity: Sinophone Articula- tions across the Pacific (2007), and the co-editor of Minor Transnationalism (2005) and Creolization of Theory (2010). She also edited special issues on “Comparative Racialization” (2008) for PMLA and on Taiwan for Postcolonial Studies (2003). Kim Tong Tee, Ph.D. (National Taiwan University), is Associate Pro- fessor at National Sun Yat-sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan. He is author of Nanyang lunshu: Mahua wenxue yu wenhua shuxing (Taibei: Mai- tian, 2003) and Guanyu Mahua wenxue (Gaoxiong: CLA, NSYSU, 2009) and co-editor of Chongxie Taiwan wenxue shi (Taibei: Maitian, 2006) and Huidao Malaixiya: HuaMa xiaoshuo qishi nian (Selangor: Dajiang, 2008). Jing Tsu, Ph.D. (Harvard University), is Associate Professor of Chinese Literature at Yale University. She is author of Failure, Nationalism, and Literature: The Making of Modern Chinese Identity, 1895–1937 (Stanford University Press, 2005) and Sound and Script in Chinese Diaspora (Harvard University Press, 2010). David Der-wei Wang is Edward C. Henderson Professor of Chinese Literature at Harvard University. He is author, editor, and co-editor of numerous publications in English and Chinese, including The Monster That is History: Violence, History, and Fictional Writing in 20th Century China (University of California Press, 2004); Writing Taiwan: A New Literary History (Duke University Press, 2007). Sau-ling C. Wong is Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She has published extensively on Asian Ameri- can literature, including Reading Asian American Literature: From Necessity to Extravagance (1993) and (coedited) AsianAmerica.net: Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Cyberspace (2003). INTRODUCTION: GLOBAL CHINESE LITERATURE Jing Tsu and David Der-wei Wang The idea of a “global Chinese literature” draws together three rec- ognizably fraught terms. Each of them brings into view additional related issues that the current volume addresses. But why global? Why now? Indeed, the timing is anticipatory, as the geography of modern Chinese literature has seldom been jointly reexamined from outside its national boundaries. Yet, so-called