| Research for this book was begun while I was studying at Fudan University in Shanghai from 1980 to 1982 on a grant from the Committee for Scholarly Exchange with the People's Republic of China. I am indebted to my sponsors and to the staffs of several Chinese libraries who made their collections available to me. These include the Shanghai and Beijing municipal libraries, as well as the libraries of Fudan University, Beijing University, and Sichuan University. While in China, I had the fortune to interview three of the authors whose works I discuss in chapter 4 of this book: Ai Wu, Sha Ting, and Wu Zuxiang. I am most thankful for their time and hospitality. |
| Parts of chapters 2 and 4 of this book appeared as the article "The Morality of Form: Lu Xun and the Modern Chinese Short Story" in a conference volume edited by Leo Ou-fan Lee, Lu Xun and His Legacy (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985). A somewhat altered version of the second half of chapter 2 appeared as "The Specular Self: Subjective and Mimetic Elements in the Fiction of Ye Shaojun" in the journal Modern China 15, no. 1 (January 1989). |
| A note on format is in order here: The pinyin romanization system has been used throughout. In a few cases, when citing from works that employ a system other than pinyin, I have changed the romanization in the quoted passage for the purpose of consistency. References cited in the footnotes are generally given in an abbreviated form; for full titles and publication information, please refer to the selected bibliography. |
| A great many teachers, colleagues, and friends will rightfully recognize their influence on some part of the argument of this book. Although mentioning them here seems a poor return for their generosity, I would like to thank in particular the following: Cyril Birch, Jeff Hanes, Theodore D. Huters, Leo Ou-fan Lee, D. A. Miller, Masao Miyoshi, Lung-kee Sun, and James Tate. Finally, I dedicate this book to my parents, Marbury and Sylvia Anderson, with deep gratitude for their support and love through years of what must have seemed an interminable process of education. |
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by common consent the greatest of twentieth-century Chinese writers, satirized the literary polemics of his day in an essay entitled "The Tablet":