The Subversive Fiction of Yu Hua

THE SUBVERSIVE FICTION OF YU HUA Marsha L. Wagner Columbia University The Subversion of Literary Norms In the brief period of leniency and openness between 1986 and 1989, a handful of young Chinese mainland writers experimented with a style of writing fiction that subverted virtually all the conventions and restrictions of Chinese literature since 1942. Some of the most stylistically unconventional short stories and novellas of this period were composed by a youth from Zheijiang province named Yu Hua. Writing in Beijing in June, 1989, in an article entitled "Xuwei de zuopin" [Hypocritical Works], Yu Hua defined the style he created in terms of opposition-if what conventional fiction reflects is called truth, he aims to express falseness; if the prevailing style is social realism, his style is fantasy. Even the language Yu Hua uses to describe his subversion of conventions is a language of disloyalty and deviation: After I discovered that the previous attitude toward writing, simply to take things as they are, leads only to a superficial truth, I was obliged to seek a new style of expression. The result of my search made me no longer loyal [zhongcheng] to forms that depicted objects. I began to use a kind of hypocritical [xuwei] form of writing. The form deviated [beib] from the order and logic provided to me by the status-quo world but still allowed me to approach truth freely. (45) Yu Hua refuses to see literature as journalism; he has no interest in recording the surfaces of daily life or the objects of the external world. Instead, he advocates a literature of miracles [qiji], talent [caihua], and imagination [xiangxiang Ii] (44). Moreover, Yu Hua wants to probe characters' souls, their innermost passions and desires, and ignore the external facts of their lives. CHINOPERL Papers No. 20-22 (1997-99)© 1999 by the Conference on Oral and Performing Literature, Inc. CHINOPERL Papers No. 20-22 The result is a fictional world that is often dreamlike, if not nightmarish, reflecting subconscious fears and wishes more than conscious will and discipline. Characters in many of Yu Rua's stories seem to be moved about like puppets, and they themselves do not understand what they are doing or why. Each character is isolated in his or her own solipsistic world, and the character's perceptions may be grotesque, paranoid, horrific, or self-consuming. A common motif in Yu Rua's fiction is the sensation of being dazzled; characters are often dazed into a kind of dizzy confusion by the brilliance of sunlight. Yu Rua defends the pervasive use of violence in his fiction: "Because the form of violence is full of passion, its power comes from the yearnings of man's inner core" (45). He disparages routine activity, ordinary language, beauty and "civilization". Re considers civilization superficial and weak, for it will always yield to violence or the evil in human nature: "Confronted by violence and chaos, civilization is only a slogan, order which has become an adornment" (Kinkley; "Xuwei de zuopin" 46). In other words, Yu Rua sees civilization as something artificial, superimposed on human nature. In the 1986-1989 period, Yu Rua's intention, therefore, was to deviate from the norms of civilization, to negate what is polite, proper, attractive- "in order to discover truth, I oppose morality and I oppose pretty things" [meihao de dongxll (Wagner, August 16, 1991). Having eradicated external "reality" from his fictional world, he is left with an overwhelming solipsism, in which the very existence of other characters, of the landscape, even of the weather or atmosphere, depends only on the dominant subjectivity. The "miracle" of Yu Rua' s fiction is the extent of innovation his stories contain. He has deliberately set out to break all the rules of social realist literature, and he declines to conform to many of the broader conventions of fictional discourse. For example, traditional notions of storytelling involve unity of action, a plot with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Although some of Yu Rua's stories have causally linked series of events, others contain unconnected incidents, illogical transitions, and no closure. The time sequence in many Yu Hua stories is also deliberately confused; he believes a...