The Literature of Leisure and Chinese Modernity

Introduction: Writing as a Way of Life

Introduction Writing as a Way of Life 1 Often when we look at modern Chinese literature we are more concerned with how it comments on history and national identity and do not fully recognize how the author conveys a philosophy of life or a commitment to principles. But literary writing in China is as much about establishing an image of a way of life (the implied author) and generating or attracting a community receptive to the author’s personality (the implied audience) as it is a discourse about Chinese affairs, whether the writing is revolutionary, reactionary, or ostensibly apolitical. This book looks at an essay genre called xiaopin wen (little prose pieces) that emerged in the 1920s and reached the peak of its popularity shortly before the War Against Japan broke out in 1937. The xiaopin wen genre embodies a way of writing, a way of building and maintaining a range of literary communities, that had shown itself many times in China’s cultural past and continues to have considerable appeal in modern and contemporary China. The way of writing, and lifestyle, that most forms of xiaopin wen represent, can be called a “literature of leisure” (xianqing wenxue). The literature of leisure, however, is not limited to xiaopin wen. Particularly since the beginning of the seventeenth century, but earlier as well, a long tradition of Chinese writers—supported by a growing readership—felt that literature was more than the expression of political ambition and loyalty, or the praise of moral virtue, despite the fact that the often central Confucian tradition of literary exegesis held these to be the highest aims of literary creation. The literature of leisure inherits and combines at least three traditions that can be traced to the earliest stages of Chinese literary history, but were marginal to mainstream Confucian culture. The first is the playful philosophical critique of Confucianism represented most dramatically by the Warring States text Zhuangzi, one of the two foundational works of Daoism (the other being the mystical poem Dao de jing).1 The second is the eremitic tradition represented by writers like the Six Dynasties poet Tao Qian, who conspicuously turned their backs on official positions to live the simple life of a farmer or hermit and left behind a literary record of their exploits. The eremitic tradition differs from philosophical Daoism in its undertone of political and moral frustration. Finally, leisure literature may also be aligned with the influence of Buddhism on Chinese literature, especially its engagement with the dialectic of desire and transcendence. When leisure writing is serious, it attends to the tragic transience of worldly pleasures, even as it richly immerses us in the elaboration of those pleasures. It is this discourse of detachment that permits the cultivation of sophisticated tastes that are not equivalent to—indeed are often in opposition with—hedonistic pleasure-seeking. By the late imperial period, in addition to these traditional alternatives to the Confucian worldview, the proliferating stimuli of urban life drew writers’ attention to many new areas of pleasure and enjoyment, from the exuberance of rustic simplicity to the most lavishly detailed urban sophistication; urbanization provided access to new and more varied forms of income, which increasingly distracted literati from concern with the fate of the realm. It also made high culture available to affluent monks and socially ambitious businessmen. The Buddhist connection makes the study of modern leisure literature particularly fascinating, since it highlights the encounters of twentieth-century writers with Buddhist thought in their own reading and through cultural figures like Su Manshu and Li Shutong . In this context, the cultivation of a meaningful private life and its expression in literary form became an alternative objective to the service to realm and emperor represented by the civil service examination system. Pursuit of this lifestyle may not have dominated late imperial literati life, but by the late Ming, it did exist as a fully fledged and widely practiced alternative, perhaps for the first time in Chinese history. The construction of a space, both actual and literary, in which to enjoy one’s leisure—gazing at natural scenery, contemplating rare books and antiques, listening to music, enjoying tea and wine—is the milieu and the most common subject matter of the literature of leisure.2 Leisure literature in the late Ming was manifested in poetry, a growing variety of prose forms, and in significant sections of vernacular novels that were produced throughout the late Ming and Qing dynasties; in this...