The Big Red Book of Modern Chinese Literature

by Yunte Huang

  The sunsets in this place are beautiful to behold. There is a local expression here, “fire clouds”; if you say “sunset,” no one will understand you, but if you say “fire clouds,” even a three-year-old child will point up to the western sky with a shout of delight.

  Right after the evening meal the “fire clouds” come. The children’s faces all reflect a red glow, while the big white dog turns red, red roosters become golden ones, and black hens become a dark purple. An old man feeding his pigs leans against the base of a wall and chuckles as he sees his two white pigs turn into little golden ones. He is about to say: “I’ll be damned, even you have changed,” when a man out for a refreshing evening stroll walks by him and comments: “Old man, you are sure to live to a ripe old age, with your golden beard!”

  The clouds burn their way in the sky from the west to the east, a glowing red, as though the sky had caught fire.

  The variations of the “fire clouds” here are many: one moment they are a glowing red; a moment later they become a clear gold; then half purple, half yellow; and then a blend of gray and white. Grape gray, pear yellow, eggplant purple—all of these colors appear in the sky. Every imaginable color is there, some that words cannot describe and others that you would swear you have never seen before.

  Within the space of five seconds a horse is formed in the sky with its head facing south and its tail pointing west; the horse is kneeling, looking as though it is waiting for someone to climb up onto its back before it will stand up. Nothing much changes within the next second, but two or three seconds later the horse has gotten bigger, its legs have spread out, and its neck has elongated . . . but there is no longer any tail to be seen. And then, just when the people watching from below are trying to locate the tail, the horse disappears from sight.

  Suddenly a big dog appears, a ferocious animal that is running ahead of what looks like several little puppies. They run and they run, and before long the puppies have run from sight; then the big dog disappears.

  A great lion is then formed, looking exactly like one of the stone lions in front of the Temple of the Immortal Matron. It is about the same size, and it too is crouching, looking very powerful and dominant as it calmly crouches there. It appears contemptuous of all around it, not deigning to look at anything. The people search the sky, and before they know it something else has caught their eye. Now they are in a predicament—since they cannot be looking at something to the east and something to the west at the same time—and so they watch the lion come to ruin. A shift of the eyes, a lowering of the head, and the objects in the sky undergo a transformation. But now as you search for yet something else, you could look until you go blind before finding a single thing. The great lion can no longer be seen, nor is there anything else to be found—not even, for example, a monkey, which is certainly no match for the glimpse of a great lion.

  For a brief moment the sky gives the illusion of forming this object or that, but in fact there are no distinguishable shapes; there is nothing anymore. It is then that the people lower their heads and rub their eyes, or perhaps just rest them for a moment before taking another look. But the “fire clouds” in the sky do not often wait around to satisfy the children below who are so fond of them, and in this short space of time they are gone.

  The drowsy children return home to their rooms and go to sleep. Some are so tired they cannot make it to their beds, but fall asleep lying across their elder sister’s legs or in the arms of their grandmother. The grandmother has a horsehair fly swatter, which she flicks in the air to keep the bugs and mosquitoes away. She does not know that her grandchild has fallen asleep, but thinks he is still awake.

  “You get down and play; Grandma’s legs are falling asleep.” She gives the child a push, but he is fast asleep.

  By this time the “fire clouds” have disappeared without a trace. All the people in every family get up and go to their rooms to sleep for the night after closing the windows and doors.

  Even in July it is not particularly hot in Hulan River, and at night the people cover themselves with thin quilts as they sleep.

  As night falls and crows fly by, the voices of the few children who are not yet asleep can be heard through the windows as they call out:

  Raven, raven, working the grain-threshing floor;

  Two pecks for you, not a tiny bit more.

  The flocks of crows that cover the sky with their shouts of caw-caw fly over this town from one end to the other. It is said that after they have flown over the southern bank of the Hulan River they roost in a big wooded area. The following morning they are up in the air flying again.

  As summer leads into autumn the crows fly by every evening, but just where these large flocks of birds fly to, the children don’t really know, and the adults have little to say to them on the subject. All the children know about them is embodied in their little ditty:

  Raven, raven, working the grain-threshing floor;

  Two pecks for you, not a tiny bit more.

  Just why they want to give the crows two pecks of grain doesn’t seem to make much sense.

  9

  After the crows have flown over, the day has truly come to an end.

  The evening star climbs in the sky, shining brightly there like a little brass nugget.

  The Milky Way and the moon also make their appearance.

  Bats fly into the night.

  All things that come out with the sun have now turned in for the night. The people are all asleep, as are the pigs, horses, cows, and sheep; the swallows and butterflies have gone to roost. Not a single blossom on the morning glories at the bases of the houses remains open—there are the closed buds of new blossoms, and the curled-up petals of the old. The closed buds are preparing to greet the morning sun of the following day, while the curled petals that have already greeted yesterday’s sun are about to fall.

  Most stars follow the moon’s ascent in the sky, while the evening star is like her advance foot soldier, preceding her by a few steps.

  As night falls the croaking of frogs begins to emerge from rivers, streams, and marshes. The sounds of chirping insects come from foliage in the courtyards, from the large fields outside the city, from potted flowers, and from the graveyard.

  This is what the summer nights are like when there is no rain or wind, night after night.

  Summer passes very quickly, and autumn has arrived. There are few changes as summer leads into autumn, except that the nights turn cooler and everyone must sleep under a quilt at night. Farmers are busy during the day with the harvest, and at night their more frequent dreams are of gathering in the sorghum.

  During the month of September the women are kept busy starching clothes, and removing the covers and fluffing the matted cotton of their quilts. From morning till night every street and lane resounds with the hollow twang of their mallets on the fluffing bows. When their fluffing work is finished, the quilts are recovered, just in time for the arrival of winter.

  Winter brings the snows.

  Throughout the seasons the people must put up with wind, frost, rain, and snow; they are beset by the frost and soaked by the rain. When the big winds come they fill the air with swirling sand and pebbles, almost arrogantly. In winter the ground freezes and cracks, rivers are frozen over, and as the weather turns even colder the ice on the river splits with resounding cracks. The winter cold freezes off people’s ears, splits open their noses, chaps their hands and feet. But this is just nature’s way of putting on airs of importance, and the common fo1k can’t do a thing about it.

  This is how the people of Hulan River are: when winter comes they put on their padded clothes, and when summer arrives they change into their unlined jackets, as mechanically as getting up when the sun rises and going to bed when it sets.

  Their fingers, which are chapped and cracked in the winter, heal naturally by the time summer arrives. For those that don’t heal by themselves, there is always the Li Yung-ch’un Pharmacy, where the people can buy two ounces of saffron
, steep it, and rub the solution on their hands. Sometimes they rub it on until their fingers turn blood-red without any sign of healing, or the swelling may even get progressively worse. In such cases they go back to the Li Yung-ch’un Pharmacy, though this time rather than purchasing saffron, they buy a plaster instead. They take it home, heat it over a fire until it becomes gummy, then stick it on the frostbite sore. This plaster is really wonderful, since it doesn’t cause the least bit of inconvenience when it is stuck on. Carters can still drive their carts, housewives can still prepare food.

  It is really terrific that this plaster is sticky and gummy; it will not wash off in water, thereby allowing women to wash clothes with it on if they have to. And even if it does rub off, they can always heat it once more over a fire and stick it back on. Once applied it stays on for half a month.

  The people of Hulan River value things in terms of strength and durability, so that something as durable as this plaster is perfectly suited to their nature. Even if it is applied for two weeks and the hand remains unhealed, the plaster is, after all, durable, and the money paid for it has not been spent in vain.

  They go back and buy another, and another, and yet another, but the swelling on the hand grows worse and worse. For people who cannot afford the plasters, they can pick up the ones others have used and discarded and stick them on their own sores. Since the final outcome is always unpredictable, why not just muddle through the best one can!

  Spring, summer, autumn, winter—the seasonal cycle continues inexorably, and always has since the beginning of time. Wind, frost, rain, snow; those who can bear up under these forces manage to get by; those who cannot must seek a natural solution. This natural solution is not so very good, for these people are quietly and wordlessly taken from this life and this world.

  Those who have not yet been taken away are left at the mercy of the wind, the frost, the rain, and the snow . . . as always.

  (Translated by Howard Goldblatt)

  CHRONOLOGY

  1949

  Founding of the People’s Republic of China

  1956

  The Hundred Flowers Campaign

  1957

  The Anti-Rightist Campaign

  1958–60

  The Great Leap Forward

  1966–76

  The Cultural Revolution

  1976

  Mao Zedong dies

  Introduction to the Revolutionary Era

  The founding of the People’s Republic of China in October 1949 led to the creation of a socialist literary system. Borrowed from the Soviet model, Chinese bureaucracy established “central and provincial literary magazines, editorial boards of prescribed political composition, a National Publication Administration that reviewed publishing plans and rationed paper, and a Writers’ Association that set down rules about writers’ pay and privileges.”* Mao’s views on literature, which he had expressed explicitly in his famous Yan’an speech in 1942, provided the reigning ideology. Quoting Lenin, Mao had stated that literature and art are “the cogs and screws in the whole machine” of revolution; “therefore, the Party’s literary and artistic activity occupies a definite and assigned position in the Party’s total revolutionary work and is subordinated to the prescribed revolutionary task of the Party in a given revolutionary period.” In other words: literature serves politics. Mao’s speech became the blueprint for the party line on literature in new China.

  Due to its subservience to politics, literature under communism has often, perhaps rightly, been dismissed as propaganda, as mere formulaic expressions that have little or no aesthetic value. But although literature was subordinate to politics in this so-called “Revolutionary Era,” it is essential to recognize that there was, as Perry Link reminds us, a widespread assumption of literature’s importance to the rest of life. Such an assumption was predicated on faith in social engineering, which Mao and his followers believed capable of reshaping a person’s moral character. Writers were therefore regarded as “engineers of the soul.”

  Literature occupying such a central position in the great Communist machine of social engineering comes at a price, as Chinese writers would soon find out. In 1956 and 1957, Mao, himself a highly accomplished poet, encouraged writers and intellectuals to speak their minds on public issues. Mao famously declared, “Let a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend.” In response, Wang Meng, Liu Bingyan, and others published critical pieces about bureaucratism, corruption, and inefficiency. Wang’s story “The Young Man Who Has Just Arrived at the Organization Department” (1956), in particular, drew nationwide attention. Reneging on his own policy, Mao ordered a witch hunt, condemning those who had spoken out as “Rightists.” The “hundred flowers” that had dared to bloom were now regarded as “poisonous weeds.” The Rightists were publicly humiliated, deprived of their party memberships, and sent to the countryside for reform through hard labor.

  The infamous Anti-Rightist Campaign, which claimed about half a million victims and left a deep and lasting psychic wound, was soon followed in 1958 by the “Great Leap Forward,” a campaign aiming to boost China’s economy. In order to overtake Britain in steel production in fifteen years, the whole country was mobilized: Families turned in their cooking pots, farming tools, doorknobs, or anything that could be melted down for iron. People’s communes were established with the stated purpose of rapidly realizing a truly Communist society built on the Marxist notion, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” Zhao Shuli, a highly exalted writer in this period, captured well the spirit of communal sharing and collective responsibility in his story “The Unglovable Hands” (1960). The three-year-long utopian campaign ended in a disaster, with millions of people starved to death, housing turned into rubble, and the land savaged in the maniacal pursuit of useless, low-grade iron produced by uneducated peasants in their makeshift backyard furnaces.

  No devastation, however, could surpass the catastrophe wreaked by the Cultural Revolution. Set in motion by Mao in 1966, this sweeping movement was allegedly intended to defend “true” Communist ideology from the threat of “backward” elements in Chinese society through violent class struggle. With youthful Red Guards spearheading the revolution, a spasm of violence spread into all walks of life and turned the country upside down: Millions were persecuted, homes ransacked, schools and universities closed, books burned, students sent down to the countryside to receive “reeducation” by the peasants, factories shut down. Factious battles broke out in the streets. The socialist literary system, which had held sway since 1949, also collapsed, and all branches of the writers’ associations and their sponsored literary journals ceased to exist. In this turbulent period, the main literary output came from “the people” (workers, peasants, and soldiers) mobilized to compose, often collectively in committees, panegyrics for Mao the Great Helmsman and praises of the ongoing proletarian revolution. The few writers who did publish in these years wrote under strict guidelines and followed closely Mao’s new mandates that literary works “should combine revolutionary realism and revolutionary romanticism” and “never forget the class struggle.” These doctrines found exemplary expressions in the Model Modern Revolutionary Peking Operas, which replaced traditional opera plots with episodes in the struggle for Communist victory. In these modern operas, like The Red Lantern, social realism is combined with romantic characterization that exhibits the prescribed “three prominences”: “among the masses, positive characters should stand out; among positive characters, the heroes should be apparent; and among heroes, there should be no doubt who the superheroes are.”†

  The death of Mao in September 1976 put an end to the ten-year turmoil that had rendered China a cultural wasteland. The ice in the frozen river might have cracked, but would take a long thaw before the currents of literary imagination could again run freely—or, at least, less impeded.

  * Perry Link, The Uses of Literature: Life in the Socialist Chinese Literary System (Prince­ton: Princeton Univer
sity Press, 2000), p. 5.

  † Link, p. 115.

  MAO ZEDONG

  (1893–1976)

  Hundreds of millions once hailed him as the “Great Helmsman,” to their ultimate sorrow. Mao Zedong, whose name is nearly synonymous with modern China, was also a writer. The eldest son of a rich farmer in Xiangtan, Hunan, Mao ruled the world’s most populous country from 1949 to 1976 and brought about sweeping social movements, such as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, which devastated China. A master calligrapher, Mao composed in brushstrokes many poems in classical form, such as “Changsha,” “Mount Liupan,” and “Snow,” included here. As a revolutionary politician and military strategist, he also penned numerous articles, pamphlets, and books. For decades, selections from Mao’s work were taught in classrooms, making him the most-read writer in China. During the Cultural Revolution, Mao’s Little Red Book of Sayings (also known as Quotations from Chairman Mao) was intended to be a sacred book to every Chinese. Unlike Charlie Chan’s fortune-cookie aphorisms that dispense a mix of wisdom, humor, and racism, Mao’s sayings were in essence policies to be implemented, principles to live by, and sentences to be carried out.

  Changsha

  —to the tune of “Chin Yuan Chun”

  Alone I stand in the autumn cold

  On the tip of Orange Island,

  The Hsiang flowing northward;

  I see a thousand hills crimsoned through

  By their serried woods deep-dyed,

  And a hundred barges vying

  Over crystal blue waters.

  Eagles cleave the air,

  Fish glide in the limpid deep;

  Under freezing skies

  A million creatures contend in freedom.