Helmut Martin - Modern Chinese Writers: Self-portrayals

Studies on Modern China

Self-Portrayals

Helmut Martin
and
Jeffrey Kinkley
Editors

Ba Jin
Bai Xianyong
Chen Rong
Zhang Xinxin
Li Ang

Zhang Ailing
Wang Meng
Jin Yong
Chen Ruoxi
Liu Binyan

AND THIRTY-THREE OTHERS

An East Gate Book

The present volume is the result of a one-year appointment, 1987-88, of Dr. Helmut Martin as Research Linguist in the Contemporary Chinese Language Project, Center for Chinese Studies, University of California, Berkeley.

First published 1992

by M.E. Sharpe

Published 2015

by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright 1992 Taylor & Francis. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Modern Chinese writers: self-portrayals /
edited by Helmut Martin and Jeffrey Kinkley.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-87332-816-7 (cloth)
ISBN 0-87332-817-5 (paper)
1. Authors, Chinese20th centuryBiography.
2. Chinese essaysTranslations into English.
I. Martin, Helmut, 1940- .
II. Kinkley, Jeffrey C., 1948- .
PL2277.M65 1992
895.109'0052dc20
91-31578
CIP

ISBN 13: 9780873328173 (pbk)

Helmut Martin

AT THE END of the campaign against "spiritual pollution" in the spring of 1984, I had the opportunity to work at Tongji and Fudan universities in Shanghai, as an exchange scholar from the Ruhr University in Bochum. The authors I met there, and the collections of autobiographical essays ( chuangzuotan ) that Chinese friends brought to my attention, helped me to understand the hopes, fears, and everyday problems of China's writers. I returned to Germany with a collection of these essays (see the Source Bibliography), determined to use them as a very personal introduction to contemporary Chinese literature. In 1985, I published a preliminary selection in German, with the cooperation of K. H. Pohl, in the Munich literary magazine akzente.

During a sabbatical year, 1987-88, I had the privilege of undertaking further work in the field at the Modern Chinese Language Project of the Center for Chinese Studies, University of California at Berkeley. There I read through dozens of additional collections of essays for the present selection.

Which writers were selected? A list of one hundred was compiled, in collaboration with colleagues from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Peking, for a Chinese-German project of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Society). Mounting political pressure in 1986-87 necessitated abandonment of that project. Later, China published a preliminary Chinese version of the project, including 107 PRC writers but omitting Bei Dao, Cong Weixi, Liu Binyan, Wang Ruowang, Wu Zuguang, and others: [Xu] Jiemin, Dangdai Zhongguo zuojia bairen zhuan ([Auto]biographies of one hundred contemporary Chinese writers) (Beijing: Qiushi chubanshe, 1989). For the present anthology, controversial names were restored, Taiwan writers were added (and one from Hong Kong), and then the list was reduced to a more manageable nucleus of forty-four. My selection naturally favors "serious" authors, with Jin Yong representing popular authors and their strained relations with the "serious" onesand an often overlooked link between the tastes of readers on Taiwan and the Chinese mainland. Permission was solicited from all living authors to print their work in this book, and it was obtained from all who answered, including Bei Dao, who was represented by the transcript of an interview I had conducted with him in Chinese, translated by Beata Grant. Bei Dao, however, had second thoughts about making it public. In the end, I felt obliged, with utmost reluctance, to leave Bei Dao unrepresented, as no new text could be found that did him as much justice. Hence the final tally of forty-four pieces by forty-three authors (including a second, postmassacre selection by Zhang Xinxin).

In the early stages of selecting texts for this anthology, I benefited from the advice of many friends in the San Francisco Bay area: Dr. Chiang Yung-chen, the writers Nora Chen (Chen Shaocong), Chen Ruoxi, Dongdong (Liang Dong), Dr. Chuang Yin of Stanford University, and Orville Schell. I profited from the suggestions of the comparatist Zhao Yiheng from Peking, now at SOAS, London; the human rights activist and prominent dissident Xu Bangtai; Beata Grant, who was then at the University of California, Berkeley; and Ellen Yeung, then of Stanford University. Many distinguished Sinological colleagues put aside their other projects to translate essays for this book, for which the editors are profoundly grateful.

Following consultations at the 1986 international conference on contemporary Chinese literature at Jinshan, Shanghai, Jeffrey Kinkley joined the project. He became a full co-editor of the book; he corrected, revised, and, when necessary, rewrote the draft translations, after consulting the original Chinese texts. He also finalized the reference material, using my manuscript as a basis. I drafted the introductions to the individual essays, which he then edited. Apart from the individually signed overview and introductory essays, we share responsibility for the accuracy of editorial fact and opinion in this book.