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Chinese modernist satire: Lao She’s Mr Ma and Son (1929), Qian Zhongshu’s Fortress Besieged (1947), and Eileen Chang’s Legends (1944)

2023; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 38; Issue: 7 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/0950236x.2023.2244460

1470-1308

Yuexi Liu,

Asian Culture and Media Studies

ABSTRACTBringing into dialogue modern Chinese literary studies and modernist studies, this essay examines what I call the Chinese modernist satires of Lao She, Qian Zhongshu, and Eileen Chang. Chinese modernism is here understood as plural in itself, encompassing multiple origins, times, influences, politics, and loci. Viewed as part of a global/planetary modernism, early-twentieth-century Chinese modernism was neither imported nor belated. Like the Anglo-American exterior modernists, who worked under the shadow of their formidable high modernist precursors, Lao She, Qian, and Chang belonged to the younger generation of Chinese modernists; Mr Ma and Son (1929), Fortress Besieged (1947), and the short stories collected in Legends (1944) contributed to a distinctive strand of Chinese modernism, which, comparable to the exterior modernism of their British and American counterparts, is focused on satire and comedy. Building connections between the three significant writers in modern Chinese literature, the essay also demonstrates a variety within their Chinese modernist satire.KEYWORDS: Chinese modernismglobal/planetary modernismscomparative literary studiesexterior modernismcomedy and satirerace and gender Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Shu-Mei Shih's, seminal The Lure of the Modern: Writing Modernism in Semicolonial China, 1917–1937 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001) is an exemplar.2 See Douglas Mao ed., The New Modernist Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021).3 It must be acknowledged that such terms as 'the West' and 'Western' are problematic in themselves.4 The 'Chinese' in Chinese modernism refers to the language. This helps to prevent ideological wars and open up studies of Chinese modernism and Chinese literature more broadly.5 Susan Stanford Friedman's Planetary Modernisms (2015) 'aims to "unthink" the West's idea of itself as the Ur-modernity by rethinking modernity on a planetary scale.' Susan Stanford Friedman, Planetary Modernisms: Provocations on Modernity Across Time (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), p. 3. For my purpose here, Friedman's imperative 'Always spatialize!' (p. 84) opens up a space for Chinese modernism in its own right.6 Scholars of the Chinese modernism of the eighties tend to view Chinese modernism as belated. For example, Ning Wang concedes that 'China's is actually a sort of "belated" modernism, which is mixed up with other elements: romanticism, realism and postmodernism.' Ning Wang, 'Multiplied Modernities and Modernisms?', Literary Compass, 9.9 (2012), pp. 617–22 (619). See also, Xudong Zhang, Chinese Modernism in the Era of Reforms: Cult Fever, Avant-Garde Fiction, and the New Chinese Cinema (1997).7 Chinese modernism in this essay, unless otherwise specified, refers to the Chinese modernism in the early twentieth century.8 Creating a dialogue between Chinese and British modernisms, Patricia Laurence's Lily Briscoe's Chinese Eyes (2003) aims: 'first, to reveal multiple discourses and forms of modernism in China located through extensive research in the letters, diaries, and fiction during the Republican period; second, to include China and the Chinese aesthetic in a network of interdependency and to reconfigure international modernism.' Patricia Laurence, Lily Briscoe's Chinese Eyes: Bloomsbury, Modernism, and China (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2003), p. 32.9 Gunn's book does not mention modernism but deals with the period and writers pertinent to my discussion of Chinese modernist satire.10 Edward Gunn, Unwelcome Muse: Chinese Literature in Shanghai and Peking 1937–1945 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980), 198. Gunn quotes from Edwin Muir's The Present Age from 1914 (1939).11 See Yuexi Liu, 'Exterior Modernism: Evelyn Waugh and Cinema' (unpublished doctoral thesis, Durham, Durham University, 2017).12 Chen Ai and Chen Jian, 'Fan feng zhi si yu feng ci zhi li: Zhang Ailing yu Lao She shen mei bi jiao lun', Zhejiang Xuekan, no. 2 (2003), pp. 92–97.13 For a comparison of Eileen Chang and Lu Xun, see Xu Zidong, Wu chu an fang: Zhang Ailing wen xue jia zhi chong gu (Xi'an: Xiaanxi renmin chubanshe, 2019), pp. 165–76.14 Notably, Chinese modernist writers in the early twentieth century read beyond British literature and literature in English for that matter; many could read European and Japanese literatures in their original languages. For the purpose of this essay, I will focus on the relationship between Chinese and British modernisms.15 Qian Zhongshu, 'China in the English Literature of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries' (B.Litt. thesis, University of Oxford, 1937). For Qian's time at Oxford, see Yang Jiang, Wo Men Sa (Beijing: Sanlian, 2003), pp. 68–88.16 Maugham was one of Chang's favourite writers. According to Gunn, Chang enjoyed reading Maugham and Huxley, read most of Beverly Nichols, but never came across Waugh (Gunn, p. 202, 203, 292). Leo Ou-fan Lee also notes that Chang admired 'Somerset Maugham, P. G. Wodehouse, Aldous Huxley, and other English writers.' Leo Ou-Fan Lee, Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China, 1930–1945 (Cambridge, M.A.: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 285. Maugham's travel book On a Chinese Screen (1922) and novel The Painted Veil (1925) fail to create a dialogue between China and the West, betraying his Eurocentrism and orientalism. Maugham, however, was a master at detecting and portraying human nature. His sketches of the people he met in China in 1919 offer remarkable insights not only into those individuals but also into their times.17 Wang Shuizhao, a Qian scholar who knew the writer well, was reminded by a young scholar of the danger of putting Qian on the pedestal and looking up to him. But Wang believes that it is fine to look up as long as it does not affect the objectivity of the criticism. Wang Shuizhao, Qian Zhongshu de xueshu rensheng (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2020), pp. 2–3.18 Lu Xun, 'Lun fengci', in Qiejieting zawen erji (Nanjing: Yilin chubanshe, 2018), pp. 51–53 (51).19 The word fengci was generally acknowledged to be coined by the Liang Dynasty literary theorist and critic Liu Xie in Wenxindiaolong (The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons, written in 501-502).20 See the definition of satire in the Oxford English Dictionary, , last accessed 19 September 2021.21 See the definition of fengci in Cihai, < https://cihai.com.cn/baike/detail/72/5360615>, last accessed 29 May 2022.22 '"讽刺"的生命是真实。' Lu Xun, 'Shenme shi "fengci"', in Qiejieting zawen erji, pp. 94–96 (94).23 '一个作者,用了精炼的,或者简直有些夸张的笔墨 – 但自然也必须是艺术的地 – 写出或一群人的或一面的真实来,这被写的一群人,就称这作品为"讽刺"' (ibid.).24 Jonathan Greenberg, Modernism, Satire, and the Novel (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 9.25 Ibid., p. 11.26 Lao She has often been regarded as a realist until recently. See David Der-wei Wang, Fictional Realism in Twentieth-Century China: Mao Dun, Lao She, Shen Congwen (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992).27 Green's unfinished novel Mood is unfinishable perhaps because of its close resemblance to Woolf's Mrs Dalloway. See Henry Green, 'Mood', in Mathew Yorke (ed.), Surviving: The Uncollected Writing of Henry Green (London: Harvill, 1993), pp. 28–47.28 Robert Bickers, 'New Light on Lao She, London, and the London Missionary Society, 1921–1929', Modern Chinese Literature, 8.1–2 (1994), pp. 21–39 (34). Hu Shi, one of the leading writers and intellectuals in the New Culture Movement, was the guest of honour and chief speaker at the dinner.29 Anne Witchard, Lao She in London (Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong Press, 2012), p. 75.30 Ibid., p. 64.31 Lao She, 'How I Wrote Mr Ma and Son', in Mr Ma and Son (Changsha: Hunan wenyi chubanshe, 2017), pp. 257–61 (257). The article was written in Chinese; all translation from this article is provided by the author of this essay.32 Lao She, Mr Ma and Son, trans. by William Dolby (Melbourne: Penguin, 2013), pp. 52–53.33 'How I Wrote Mr Ma and Son', p. 258.34 Lu Xun's 'Diary of A Madman' (1918), published in the May Fourth Movement's magazine, New Youth, is the first modern Chinese fiction written in baihua.35 'Can a rickshaw boy use his own language to describe a sunny evening or a snow scene? If not, let me try on his behalf' (ibid.). The assumption that a rickshaw boy is incapable of describing something literary somewhat betrays Lao She's class bias.36 'Every time I had written a few passages, I would read them to my friends for comments. I went to Zhongjin more than anyone else. A Pekinese, naturally he could tell whether the sentences were coherent and the diction appropriate' (ibid., p. 261).37 Ibid., p. 257.38 Ibid., p. 259.39 Ibid., p. 261.40 Ibid.41 Lin Yutang's essay 'On Humour' (1934) was published in Analects Fortnightly, a literary magazine established in 1932 and edited by him which aimed to promote humour in China. In the essay, Lin argued that '[o]rthodox Chinese literature did not allow for humorous expression, so the Chinese people did not understand the nature of humour and its function.' Joseph C. Sample, 'Contextualising Lin Yutang's Essay "On Humour": Introduction and Translation', in Jessica Milner Davis and Jocelyn Chey (ed.), Humour in Chinese Life and Letters (Volume One): Classical and Traditional Approaches (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2011), pp. 169–89 (179). Sample's article provides a full translation of Lin's 'On Humour'. Qian, however, opined in 'Shuoxiao' ('On Laughter' or 'Joking'), collected in Written in the Margin of Life (1941), that although laughter helps to release humour, laughter does not necessarily mean humour. He particularly warned against the promotion of humour, arguing that once promoted as a slogan or a standard, it becomes affected and that humour cannot be mass produced. Qian Zhongshu, 'Shuoxiao', in Xiezai rensheng bianshang (Beijing: Sanlian, 2020), pp. 23–26. Qian's criticism is directed at the craze over humour inspired by Lin Yutang and Analects Fortnightly in the 1930s (1933 is referred to as the 'Year of Humour').42 Lao She, 'Tan youmo', in Shu Yi (ed.), Wo zenyang xie xiaoshuo (Nanjing: Yilin chubanshe, 2012), pp. 130–36(132). The translation is provided by the author of this essay.43 Lu Xun, 'Shenme shi "fengci"', pp. 95–96.44 Mr Ma and Son, p. 40.45 'Dear little thing! It was nice to feel it again. She had taken it out of its box that afternoon, shaken out the moth-powder, given it a good brush, and rubbed the life back into the dim little eyes.' Katherine Mansfield, 'Miss Brill', in The Garden Party and Other Stories (London: Penguin, 2000), pp. 110–14 (110).46 'Oh! Just, subtle, and mighty opium!' Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (London: Penguin, 2003), p. 55.47 Mr Ma is compared to Lu Xun's Ah-Q. Qian Liqun, Wen Rumin, and Wu Fuhui ed., Zhongguo xiandai wenxue sanshinian (Beijing: Peking University Press, 1998), p. 208.48 Jeffrey Mather, 'Laughter and the Cosmopolitan Aesthetic in Lao She's 二马 (Mr. Ma and Son)', CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, 16.1(2014), pp. 1–9 (7), , last accessed 29 May 2022.49 Luan Guiming, Xiaoshuo yiyu: Qian Zhongshu Weicheng jiuduan (Beijing: New World Press, 2018), p. 90.50 Qian Zhongshu, Fortress Besieged, trans. by Jeanne Kelly and Nathan K. Mao (London: Penguin: 2006), p. 2.51 In his 1980 preface to the reissued novel, Qian disclosed that he was unsatisfied with Fortress Besieged and that he, therefore, began to write another novel, one with a female protagonist, entitled Baihexin (The Heart of the Lily), after Le coeur d'artichaut. The draft was lost during the move from Shanghai to Beijing in 1949, and the novel was eventually abandoned. But Qian believed that had it been finished, it would have been better than Fortress Besieged. Qian Zhongshu, 'Chongyin qianji', in Weicheng (Beijing: Sanlian, 2019), pp. 5–6.52 Gunn, p. 259.53 Theodore Huters, 'In Search of Qian Zhongshu', Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, 11.1 (1999), pp. 193–99 (198).54 See Marina MacKay, '"Doing Business with Totalitaria": British Late Modernism and the Politics of Reputation', ELH, 73.3 (2006), pp. 729–53; Marius Hentea, 'Late Modernist Debuts: Publishing and Professionalising Young Novelists in 1920s Britain', Book History, 14.1 (2011), pp. 167–86; and Ashley Maher, '"Swastika Arms of Passage Leading to Nothing": Late Modernism and the "New" Britain', ELH, 80.1 (2013), pp. 251–85.55 See Caroline Hovanec, Animal Subjects: Literature, Zoology, and the British Modernism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018) and Laura Frost, The Problem with Pleasure: Modernism and Its Discontents (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013).56 C. T. Hsia, A History of Modern Chinese Fiction (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1999), p. 448.57 On mind-reading in fiction, see Lisa Zunshine, Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2006).58 Wang Zurong points out Qian's interest in and knowledge of psychoanalysis as early as in the early 1930s during his undergraduate years and then puts the writer on the couch. Wang Zurong, Huaiju xinshi: Qian Zhongshu de ziwo jiqi weishijie (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2020), p. 26.59 FB, pp. 33–34.60 '最后几句话是因为鸿渐变了脸色而说的。' Qian Zhongshu, Weicheng (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 2002), p. 27.61 '鸿渐已经羞愤得脸红了' (ibid.).62 Hsia considers Hung-chien a 'moral coward' and compares him to Paul Pennyfeather, Adam Fenwick-Symes, and Tony Last (442). It is arguable whether Qian's or Waugh's protagonists are moral cowards and whether Tony Last is an appropriate comparison. Hsia, however, hints at their relationship with modernity.63 Waugh's satire on marriage, however, is specifically directed at adulterous women. A Handful of Dust (1934) is an exemplar.64 FB, p. 46.65 Ibid.66 Ibid.67 Ibid., p. 48.68 'Mrs Chang spoke Shanghainese better than her husband, but her native accent often showed through like an undersized jacket that doesn't cover up the gown underneath' (ibid., p. 49).69 Ibid., pp. 51–52.70 There is also a clock which is behind the standard/modern time in 'Love in a Fallen City': 'Shanghai's clocks were set an hour ahead so the city could "save daylight," but the Bai family said: "We go by the old clock." Ten o'clock to them was eleven to everyone else. Their singing was behind the beat; they couldn't keep up with the huqin of life.' Eileen Chang, 'Love in a Fallen City', in Love in a Fallen City and Other Stories, trans. by Karen S. Kingsbury and Eileen Chang, pp. 109–67 (111).71 FB, pp. 388–89.72 Diran John Sohigian notes that 'it is the burden of tradition that is embodied by the inaccurate clock, whose time creates a lag that subverts even its modern usefulness.' Diran John Sohigian, 'The Phantom of the Clock: Laughter and the Time of Life in the Writings of Qian Zhongshu', in Jessica Milner Davis and Jocelyn Chey (ed.), Humour in Chinese Life and Letters (Volume Two): Resistance and Control in Modern Times (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2013), pp. 23–45 (28). Sohigian argues that '[t]hinkers inspired by Bergson's thought [on laughter and time, including Qian and Lao She] challenged the prevailing rationalist paradigm of the May Fourth Enlightenment Project' (p. 24). Interestingly, Waugh also read Bergson, and Vile Bodies (1930), which exemplifies exterior modernist satire, is a nod to Bergsonian becoming. Evelyn Waugh, The Diaries of Evelyn Waugh, ed. by Michael Davie (London: Phoenix, 2009), p. 230.73 Chuanqi has also been translated as Romances. All the short stories by Chang mentioned here come from this collection.74 On Shanghai modernity and modernism, see Lee, Shanghai Modern; Nicole Huang, Women, War, Domesticity: Shanghai Literature and Popular Culture of the 1940s (Leiden: Brill, 2005); Xuelei Huang, Shanghai Filmmaking: Crossing Borders, Connecting to the Globe,1922-1938 (Leiden: Brill, 2014); and William Schaefer, Shadow Modernism: Photography, Writing, and Space in Shanghai, 1925–1937 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017).75 Wu Fuhui, Dushi xuanliu zhong de haipai xiaoshuo (Beijing: Kexue chubanshe, 2019), p. 2, 3.76 Ibid., pp. 2–3.77 Lee, p. 269.78 Eileen Chang, 'Siyu', in Liuyan (Beijing: Beijing shiyue wenyi chubanshe, 2019), pp. 113–25 (119). It was written in Chinese; the translation is provided by the author of this essay.79 David Der-wei Wang notes Chang's tendency to rewrite and revise earlier works in both English and Chinese, tracing how 'The Golden Cangue' becomes The Rouge of the North via many revisions and translations by Chang over 24 years. David Der-wei Wang, 'Leifengtang xia de Zhang Ailing', in Ding Fan and Wang Yao (ed.), Xuanyabian de shu (Nanjing: Yilin chubanshe, 2019), pp. 102–111 (102, 105).80 Maugham, whom Chang admired, is known for his comedy of manners.81 Chang and Mansfield are comparable not only thematically but also formally: the use of dashes and ellipses to describe female experience indirectly, especially female sexuality (think of 'Bliss' and 'The Golden Cangue'). Hsia also compares Chang with Mansfield (p. 389).82 Although 'Love in a Fallen City' was published four years before Fortress Besieged, I bring the two in dialogue, arguing that not only can they be viewed as a pair approaching the same theme of marriage from the female and male perspectives respectively, Chang's story rewrites such works as Qian's novel.83 'Love', pp. 135–36.84 Lee discusses how 'Chang appropriates the narrative formula of Hollywood screwball comedies in order to bring out the mistaken intentions and personality clashes in the initial courtship' (p. 293). But he also notes that 'role-playing becomes not merely a structural ingredient in a screwball comedy plot but, more significantly, a necessary act in Liusu's search for identity' (p. 294).85 'Love', p. 127.86 Lee notes that 'in both [Chang's] life and art Hong Kong was a complement to Shanghai, standing as its "other" in her fictional representation' (p. 303).87 'Love', p. 137. Xu Zidong, however, points out that in the 1930s and 1940s Shanghai was in fact much more developed economically and culturally than Hong Kong. Xu Zidong, Xidu Zhang Ailing (Beijing: Peking University Press, 2020), p. 103.88 'Love', p. 152.89 Ibid., p. 164.90 Ibid., p. 167.91 Conversely, Qian compares the war to legendary beauties: 'the planes kept coming in much the same manner as the peerless beauty whose "one glance could conquer a city and whose second glance could vanquish an empire"' (FB, p. 44).92 Rey Chow 'redefine[s] the historical appearance of Butterfly fiction as a feminisation of the predominant Confucian culture'. Rey Chow, 'Rereading Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies: A Response to the "Postmodern" Condition', Cultural Critique, 5 (1986–87), pp. 69–93 (76). Chang is sometimes considered a Butterfly writer.93 Meng Yue and Dai Jinhua, Fuchu lishi dibiao (Beijing: Peking University Press, 2018), p. 270.94 Ibid., p. 266.95 Eileen Chang, 'Ziji de wenzhang', in Liuyan, pp. 91–97 (91, 92).96 Ibid., p. 94.97 'Love', p. 167.