From May Fourth to June Fourth: Fiction and Film in Twentieth-Century China (review)

Reviews 287 Ellen Widmer and David Der-WeiWang, editors. From May Fourth to June Fourth: Fiction and Film in Twentieth-Century China Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1993, xviii, 435 pp. Hardcover $49-95, paperback $24.95. copyright1994 by University of Hawai'i Press This is the third in an unplanned sequence ofconference volumes that serve as markers ofthe state of studies of Chinese literature outside China over the past quarter century. The first volume, Modern Chinese Literature in the MayFourth Era (edited by Merle Goldman), was based on a 1974 conference and published in 1977. Its three parts explored native and foreign influences on May Fourth writing , examined the social roles and literary styles of several important writers, and assessed continuities and change since the 1920s. Writing at a time when China was "closed" to most outside scholars, the authors in the Goldman volume had little reason to believe that the May Fourth canon would ever be surpassed in this century. Bonnie S. McDougalPs edited volume Popular Chinese Literature and PerformingArts in the People's Republic ofChina, 1949-1979 (published in 1984 and including ajuvenile piece of my own) drew on a 1979 conference and a conviction among its authors that post-May Fourth literature deserved attention in its full range. There was probably also a suspicion among the conference participants that the full flower of Maoist artistic effort should be plucked before it withered in the new era. Many of the authors had spent time in China being exposed to their subjects first-hand. The present volume can be regarded as the third in this unplanned series. Its efforts to identify linkages between the May Fourth era and post-Maoist fiction, the enthusiasm of its authors for their subjects, and the authors' broader understanding ofthe social and cultural contexts of their texts, make this collection a valuable successor to the pioneering of the first two volumes. The latest book's relative sophistication also suggests that the study of Chinese literature is breaking out of the realm of the exotic to which other scholars ofliterature have tended to confine it, perhaps not without encouragement from workers in this field themselves. The volume is introduced in turn by the two editors. In her preface, Ellen Widmer incisively outlines some of the disjunctions that encourage caution in seeking continuities between the May Fourth era and the 1980s. She also makes 288 China Review International: Vol. ?, No. ?, Spring 1994 explicit comparisons with the Goldman volume, pointing out the methodological advances made since 1974, the more recent recognition of the importance of gender, and the current volume's interest in a literature that is still evolving. David Der-Wei Wang exemplifies the methodological ambition ofmuch ofwhat follows in an introduction to the three broad parts of the volume, although a probably unintended air of self-congratulation intrudes: "At last, criticism arrives to restore China to itselfby translating fiction and film into its own higher language ." (page 1). The three parts in which the twelve chapters are grouped are titled "Country and City," "Subjectivity and Gender," and "Narrative Voice and Cinematic Vision ." As in all conference volumes, the grouping can appear awkward, particularly in the third part (more later). In Part One, Joseph S. M. Lau analyzes Han Shaogang's post-1985 fiction, tracing Han's transition from a Maoist "ventriloquist of received opinions to the soliloquist ofprivate anxieties" (p. 23). Lau brings out well the invented and grotesque features of Han's contributions to the 1980s "search for roots" (xungen). Michael S. Duke's discussion of Mo Yan's stories emphasizes what he calls Mo's pessimism at the expense of acknowledging the appeal ofhis more boisterous qualities to many Chinese readers. Indeed, throughout the volume there is little reference to the audiences of the fiction and few films discussed. Duke's analysis takes a mathematical bent, makes the far from startling observation that Chinese peasants do not talk very much, and includes a rather forced comparison with Lu Xun's imagery. More nuanced is Jeffrey C. Kinkley's chapter on Shen Congwen's contemporary legacy, in which he tries not to exaggerate the continuities and influences from Shen's work on writers...