The Literature of Leisure and Chinese Modernity

Notes

Notes 183 Introduction 1. See Burton Watson, The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968) and D. C. Lau, Lao Tzu Tao te ching (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1963). 2. Lin Yutang, The Importance of Understanding (Cleveland and New York: World Book Publishing, 1960). I am adopting the term xianqing (leisure) from its modern usage, but also from its appearance in prominent premodern works of leisure literature like Li Yu’s seventeenth-century work Xianqing ouji. 3. An excellent English introduction to this entire legacy from the hand of one of the major modern practitioners of the literature of leisure is Lin Yutang’s 1960 book The Importance of Understanding, which is in fact an anthology of Chinese leisure literature throughout history. The book’s Chinese title translates as “A translation of the most beautiful classical Chinese informal essays (xiaopin wen).” The collection includes ancient writings from Zhuangzi all the way to essays by Lin Yutang and some of his friends, but late imperial writers of the kind who were admired in essay circles in the late 1920s and early 1930s make up the lion’s share. Lin Yutang , The Importance of Understanding. 4. Chih-tsing [C. T.] Hsia, A History of Modern Chinese Fiction, 3rd ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 535–537. 5. Jonathan Spence, The Gate of Heavenly Peace (New York: Penguin Books, 1982); C. T. Hsia, “Yen Fu and Liang Ch’i-ch’ao as Advocates of New Fiction,” Chinese Approaches to Literature from Confucius to Liang Ch’i-ch’ao, ed. Adele Austin Rickett (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978); Cezong Zhou, The May Fourth Movement: Intellectual Revolution in Modern China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960). 184 Notes to Pages 8–9 6. Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life, trans. John Moore (London: Verso, 1991), 29–42, 101–252. 7. The academic status of most of these authors, from this perspective, resembles the mixture of labor and leisure in the life of premodern literati. 8. Ouyang Xiu, “Zuiweng ting ji,” Guwen guanzhi, eds. Wu Chucai and Wu Diaohou, vol. 2 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1979); Ouyang Xiu, “The Old Toper’s Pavilion,” The Chinese Essay, ed. David Pollard (London: Hurst & Company, 2000). 9. Just how far back would be difficult to say, and the question of historicity has considerable bearing on whether the resonance Lin feels is due to parallel historical developments in different cultures or to universal human attitudes. 10. Hu Shi, “Some Modest Proposals for the Reform of Literature,” trans. Kirk Denton, Modern Chinese Literary Thought: Writings on Literature, 1893–1945, ed. Kirk Denton (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996). 11. For a general discussion of the emergence in China of modern genres and their relationship to premodern forms, see Milena Dolezelova-Velingerova, “The Origins of Modern Chinese Literature,” Modern Chinese Literature in the May Fourth Era, ed. Merle Goldman (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977). 12. Zhou Zuoren, Zhongguo xin wenxue de yuanliu (Beiping: Renwen shudian, 1932). 13. Theodore Huters, “Chapter 3. New Ways of Writing,” Bringing the World Home: Appropriating the West in Late Qing and Early Republican China (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2005). 14. Hsia, A History of Modern Chinese Fiction, 132–133. 15. See for example Ye Shengtao and Yu Pingbo, Jian qiao (Shanghai: Shuang feng she, 1924); O. M., Women de liuyue (Shanghai: Dongya tushuguan, 1925); O. M., Women de qiyue (Shanghai: Dongya tushuguan, 1924); Xu Dishan, Kongshan lingyu: Luo Huasheng sanji zhi yi (Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1926); Chen Xuezhao, Juan lü (Shanghai: Liang xi tushuguan, 1925); Chen Xuezhao, Cun cao xin (Shanghai: Xinyue shudian, 1927). For a comprehensive chronological listing of modern xiaopin wen collections, see Li Ning, ed., Xiaopin wen yishu tan (Beijing: Zhongguo guangbo dianshi chubanshe, 1990). A number of terms were used more or less interchangeably to refer to short personal essays, including sanwen (miscellaneous writing), which came to be the formal generic term for essays, suibi (literally , “following the brush,” also used for centuries in Japan as zuihitsu), and suigan (following one’s feelings), which was the term Lu Xun used for his short essays published in Xin qingnian (New youth) magazine. In the 1920s and 30s, the term xiaopin wen was often used to refer to all of these, although many writers continued to use the other terms. 16. Hsia, A History of Modern Chinese Fiction, 132. Notes to Pages 9–13 185 17...