The Literature of Leisure and Chinese Modernity

2. Wandering: The Threads of Conversation Group

        Wandering The Threads of Conversation Group 46 I will certainly not describe the narrow streets and shops of Hangzhou, I have not the time for that kind of fine grinding and polishing, nor do I have the ability to gather scattered and broken threads and weave them into a seamless, heavenly garment. I have no choice but to conceal my incompetence. What I earnestly wish to show is a feeling of attachment to the place, a feeling as mild as water, an indistinct sense of clinging yet with no moorings, a clinging one feels within the rays of the setting sun and beside the glow of the streetlamp. This kind of feeling, at once delicate, yet which penetrates into the bones, can only be fermented through the accumulation of countless dreams and mundane experiences. It gives you nothing remarkable to point to, and credit for it cannot be given to a single morning or night. I really do not know where to begin, but feel I must express it. —Yu Pingbo,“Qinghe Lane” Y u Pingbo’s explanation of his approach to describing a favorite street in Hangzhou is an exploration of prose’s ability to lyrically pursue a feeling without exactly capturing it. If poetry accomplishes this through ambiguity, parataxis, and structures of imagery, prose can add to this the unfolding of and wandering through ideas. Grammatical structures and terminology adopted from Western languages allowed for the expression of ideas through linear articulation to supplement the vertical implication or suggestion inherent to traditional Chinese prose: “This kind of feeling, at once delicate, yet which penetrates into the bones, can only be fermented through the accumulation of countless dreams and mundane experiences .” Being inspired by foreign languages, this linear unfolding may have contributed to the stigmatization of certain writers’“Europeanized” style, yet it opened expressive opportunities unavailable in classical Chinese prose or poetry.Yu Pingbo’s essays, among the earliest modern Chinese essays with serious artistic intent, are particularly rich with such long, interconnected clauses. The groups of modern essayists that emerged in China in the 1920s and 1930s can be traced back to a seminal group, but are eventually distinguishable from one another by the gestures or attitudes that characterize their essay writing. If we take the proliferation of essay magazines in the early 1930s to be the culmination of the popularity and influence of the modern Chinese informal essay, its roots reach back to the literary supplement to Beijing’s Chen bao (Morning news) and Threads of Conversation (1924–1930). These periodicals in no small way helped extend the literary influence of the Zhou brothers, Lu Xun and Zhou Zuoren, who embodied two distinctive approaches to modern Chinese writing: one critical/satirical and the other lyrical/scholarly (this latter being closer to the literature of leisure). Threads of Conversation centered on the social circle of Zhou Zuoren. Remarkably, even though Lu Xun had not been on speaking terms with Zhou since 1923, he too was a contributor. More broadly speaking, the Morning News Supplement and Threads of Conversation are the fountainheads of all the various types of modern Chinese essays (lyrical, polemic, expository, travelogue, memoir); while the modern essay ’s late imperial connections are most conspicuous in retrospect, the story of xiaopin wen’s emergence and differentiation really begins in these publications . What is striking about essays in Threads of Conversation, apart from their variety, is their freshness, their complete lack of cliché and stereotype. There is, however, an important difference between the Threads of Conversation essay and later developments: Threads of Conversation offerings are often not self-consciously artistic, nor do they demonstrate a desire to advance the cause of the essay genre in modern China. Of course, these works are all wenzhang ; but many contributions did not demonstrate the polish and attention to detail that would distinguish the essays of Zhou Zuoren and his closest prot égés. As advocates of the vernacularization of writing for whom translation was a crucial avenue of cultural evolution, the Threads of Conversation writers evince conspicuous traces of European linguistic influence before it was deemed problematic.For all these variables,we can still find examples of xiaopin wen in the pages of Threads of Conversation that represent a distinctive style, and they will be the focus of my attention in this chapter. The Threads of Conversation Group 47 Qian Xuantong, Sun Fuyuan, Chuan Dao [Zhang...