Previous research regarding the post-80s Chinese young writers might suggest that they are urgently chasing after commercial profits, but this popular viewpoint is too simplistic when facing up to the complex historical energies of their work. This article, through close reading the writings of two representative post-80s writers Han Han and Guo Jingming, historically analyzes how the post-80s Writers crowd, by virtue of the “New Concept Composition Contest” platform, have gathered in Shanghai, and points out the core of their writing. Guo Jingming identifies himself with the logic of commercial society, gets dunk of the prosperous of Shanghai, then devoices the young generation from the real Chinese status. Han Han uses the ironic method to deconstruct state propaganda and cultural symbols of Shanghai, while all his heroes or heroines are on cruising the way, do not willing to belong to any value system. The article argues that post-80s writing is ultimately a narrative about the “Chinese Dream,” and on how to rebuild relationships between individuals and their communities.
In the past ten years, with the rise and popularity of Internet technology, Chinese society has experienced a silent “cultural uprising,” which has formed a part of the lives and habits of contemporary ordinary Chinese at different levels, and has challenged the old pattern of cultural power and governance. How to identify this phenomenon, and carry out corresponding reforms, as an important aspect of national governance, is an urgent research topic. Based on the observation and analysis of the phenomenon of Chinese Internet culture in recent years, we can explore and summarize several key issues of China’s current cultural governance reform, and try to explain theoretically the influence of cultural prosperity on political power by retrospecting several governance experiences and lessons in history. In the era of the new Internet technology, how to truly enhance the nation’s basic ability to avoid the situation of dying once and letting go. The complexity of contemporary cultural governance comes from the new technological conditions, while the difficult problem runs through the historical understanding of the entire new cultural governance capacity.
Zuo Si (ca. 253–ca. 305) was a well-known poet in the Western Jin dynasty (265–316). More than half of his surviving poems are a series of eight “Poems on History” (Yongshi). There has been extensive research into the early medieval Chinese writers influenced by his “Yongshi.” However, this research can be further deepened and broadened. This article, based on previous scholarly findings, will examine the reception of these poems in three levels of literary and cultural context. The first level emphasizes the poetic practice of intertextual links between Zuo Si’s poems and other literary works. The second level highlights primary sources of literary criticism to address the evaluations of Zuo Si’s poems. The third level focuses on narrative to reveal how the educated elite employed these poems in their discourse. Investigating these three levels allows us to understand how poets, critics, and readers imitate, evaluate, and respond to these poems during the process of their reception. Furthermore, reception theory can help to uncover similarities and discrepancies in literary borrowings and assimilation (i.e. diction, imagery, and figure of speech) in the process of poetic composition and transmission.
Written by Qiu Huadong in 2000, Confession at Noon (Zhengwu de gongci) is a novel about the life of a renowned auteur one year after his suicide. Set at the end of the twentieth century, the story highlights the social and political change of the 1990s and its impact on the spiritual condition of intellectuals. The novel also addresses the changing role of writers as they confront new challenges presented by the rapid modernization and economic progress at the turn of the century. In this paper, I illustrate the ways in which Qiu unravels the spiritual agony of intellectuals through the portrayal of a film director’s dramatic life. I focus particularly on how Qiu uses narrative devices such as intertexuality and pastiche to illuminate the spiritual crisis and changing social position of intellectuals in the 1990s, and how he inserts fictional selves in the storytelling process to rethink his role as a writer-intellectual in the new era.
I unveil the aristocratic ethos regarding religion in imperial China under the reign of the Qing dynasty. Adopting a literary perspective, I deploy a hermeneutic methodology by means of scrutinizing the chef-d’oeuvre of a master writer Cao Xueqin, Dream of the Red Chamber, which embroiders trials and tribulations of an enormous aristocratic clan that embodies every stratum of Qing society, especially the upper strata. Through critically analyzing the novel translated by David Hawkes, I investigate the comprehensive permeation of religious ideology within the moneyed family from the aspects of credos, practices and language. I explore theodiversity and polytheism epotimised by harmonious contemporaneous of (sub-)religions, and propound that such phenomena are owing to lack of an overwhelmingly predominant religion, which can be accounted for by external and internal factors—the former pertains to centralization of authority in feudal China and orthodox Confucian thinking that promulgates atheism and agnosticism as well as ancestor and Heaven worship, while the latter entails the liberalism, i.e. non-sanctimoniousness and non-expansionism of indigenous and Sinicised religions. I also propose the overarching rationale accounting for the contemporaneous of religious theologies among the aristocracy, viz., the practicality and pragmatism of the Chinese nation.
It is of great necessity to observe Lu Xun from the human-geographical or cultural geographical perspective. Even the couple of corresponding case studies are able to reveal the whole picture. The “memes” of Lu Xun existed in the tie of Lu Xun with Shaanxi province, in the existential and imaginary relationships between him and the two cities of “An” (Xi’an and Yan’an), in Lu Xun studies conducted by Shaanxi’s academic community, and in a variety of cultural events and phenomena such as Shaanxi writers’ publications, as well as conferences and calligraphy activities in Shaanxi, are hinting from the indirect aspects at the profound impacts of Lu Xun over the modern and contemporary culture in China. The transmission, reception and transformation of Lu Xun in Shaanxi during various historical stages also indicate the changes occurring to political ideology, aesthetic judgment, values and academic paradigms. To discuss Lu Xun’s “memes” in the regional culture of Shaanxi, which closely combines the region in the physical sense of cultural geography and Lu Xun study, is an important component of Lu Xun studies, as well as an effective path to delve into the research on the ties of Lu Xun with China, or even with the world, for the further attempt to comprehensively understand the significance and value of Lu Xun to the new culture in China, as well as to the modern and contemporary culture.