Taking Intimate Publics to China: Yang Jiang and the Unfinished Business of Sentiment

Readings of two autobiographical essays by Yang Jiang (1911–) suggest that Confucian conventions of intimacy exert a major force on personal memories of the Chinese twentieth century. To resolve the anxieties of a life that extends over the entire Chinese era of revolution, Yang Jiang reinvents the values of the Confucian intellectual and the Confucian family. This work certainly draws on the business of sentimentality in Chinese popular literature, which begs the question: is Yang Jiang part of a Chinese intimate public?