Chinese literature

Introduction

      the body of works written in Chinese, including lyric poetry, historical and didactic writing, drama, and various forms of fiction.

      Chinese literature is one of the major literary heritages of the world, with an uninterrupted history of more than 3,000 years, dating back at least to the 14th century BC. Its medium, the Chinese language (Chinese languages), has retained its unmistakable identity in both its spoken and written aspects in spite of generally gradual changes in pronunciation, the existence of regional and local dialects, and several stages in the structural representation of the written graphs, or “characters.” Even the partial or total conquests of China for considerable periods by non-Chinese ethnic groups from outside the Great Wall failed to disrupt this continuity, for the conquerors were forced to adopt the written Chinese language as their official medium of communication because they had none of their own. Since the Chinese graphs were inherently nonphonetic, they were at best unsatisfactory tools for the transcription of a non-Chinese language; and attempts at creating a new alphabetic–phonetic written language for empire building proved unsuccessful on three separate occasions. The result was that after a period of alien domination, the conquerors were culturally assimilated (except the Mongols, who retreated en masse to their original homeland after the collapse of the Yüan [or Mongol] dynasty in 1368). Thus, there was no disruption in China's literary development.

General characteristics

      Through cultural contacts, Chinese literature has profoundly influenced the literary traditions of other Asian countries, particularly Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. Not only was the Chinese script adopted for the written language in these countries but some writers adopted the Chinese language as their chief literary medium.

      The graphic nature (Chinese writing) of the written aspect of the Chinese language has produced a number of noteworthy effects upon Chinese literature and its diffusion: (1) Chinese literature, especially poetry, is recorded in handwriting or in print and purports to make an aesthetic appeal to the reader that is visual as well as aural. (2) This visual appeal of the graphs has in fact given rise to the elevated status of calligraphy in China, where it has been regarded for at least the last 16 centuries as a fine art comparable to painting. Scrolls of calligraphic renderings of poems and prose selections have continued to be hung alongside paintings in the homes of the common people as well as the elite, converting these literary gems into something to be enjoyed in everyday living. (3) On the negative side, such a writing system has been an impediment to education and the spread of literacy, thus reducing the number of readers of literature; for even a rudimentary level of reading and writing requires knowledge of more than 1,000 graphs, together with their pronunciation. (4) On the other hand, the Chinese written language, even with its obvious disadvantages, has been a potent factor in perpetuating the cultural unity of the growing millions of the Chinese people, including assimilated groups in far-flung peripheral areas. Different in function from recording words in an alphabetic–phonetic language, the graphs are not primarily indicators of sounds and can therefore be pronounced in variant ways to accommodate geographical diversities in speech and historical phonological changes without damage to the meaning of the written page. As a result, the major dialects in China never developed into separate written languages as did the Romance languages, and, although the reader of a Confucian Classic in southern China might not understand the everyday speech of someone from the far north, Chinese literature has continued to be the common asset of the whole Chinese people. By the same token, the graphs of China could be utilized by speakers of other languages as their literary mediums.

      The pronunciation of the Chinese graphs has also influenced the development of Chinese literature. The fact that each graph had a monophonic pronunciation in a given context created a large number of homonyms, which led to misunderstanding and confusion when spoken or read aloud without the aid of the graphs. One corrective was the introduction of tones (tone) or pitches in pronunciation. As a result, metre in Chinese prosody is not concerned with the combination of syllabic stresses, as in English, but with those of syllabic tones, which produce a different but equally pleasing cadence. This tonal feature of the Chinese language has brought about an intimate relationship between poetry and music (arts, East Asian) in China. All major types of Chinese poetry were originally sung to the accompaniment of music. Even after the musical scores were lost, the poems were, as they still are, more often chanted—in order to approximate singing—than merely read.

      Chinese poetry, besides depending on end rhyme and tonal metre for its cadence, is characterized by its compactness and brevity. There are no epics of either folk or literary variety and hardly any narrative or descriptive poems that are long by the standards of world literature. Stressing the lyrical (lyric), as has often been pointed out, the Chinese poet refrains from being exhaustive, marking instead the heights of his ecstasies and inspiration or the depths of sorrow and sympathy. A short poem in Chinese sometimes resembles a cablegram, wherein verbal economy is highly desirable. Generally, pronouns and conjunctions are omitted, and one or two words often allude to highly complex thoughts or situations. This explains why many poems have been differently interpreted by learned commentators and competent translators.

      The line of demarcation between prose and poetry is much less distinctly drawn in Chinese literature than in other national literatures. This is clearly reflected in three genres. The fu, for example, is on the borderline between poetry and prose, containing elements of both. It uses rhyme and metre and not infrequently also antithetic structure, but, despite occasional flights into the realm of the poetic, it retains the features of prose without being necessarily prosaic. This accounts for the variety of labels given to the fu in English by writers on Chinese literature—poetic prose, rhyme prose, prose poem, rhapsody, and prose poetry.

      Another genre belonging to this category is p'ien-wen (“parallel prose”), characterized by antithetic construction and balanced tonal patterns without the use of rhyme; the term is suggestive of “a team of paired horses,” as is implied in the Chinese word p'ien. Despite the polyphonic effect thus produced, which approximates that of poetry, it has often been made the vehicle of proselike exposition and argumentation. Another genre, a peculiar mutation in this borderland, is the pa-ku wen-chang (“eight-legged essay”). Now generally regarded as unworthy of classification as literature, for centuries (from 1487 to 1901) it dominated the field of Chinese writing as the principal yardstick in grading candidates in the official civil-service (Chinese civil service) examinations. It exploited antithetical construction and contrasting tonal patterns to the limit by requiring pairs of columns consisting of long paragraphs, one responding to the other, word for word, phrase for phrase, sentence for sentence.

      Chinese prose writing has been diverted into two streams, separated at least for the last 1,000 years by a gap much wider than the one between folk songs and so-called literary poems. Classical, or literary, prose (ku-wen, or wen-yen) aims at the standards and styles set by ancient writers and their distinguished followers of subsequent ages, with the Confucian Classics and the early philosophers as supreme models. While the styles may vary with individual writers, the language is always far removed from their spoken tongues. Sanctioned by official requirement for the competitive examinations and dignified by traditional respect for the cultural accomplishments of past ages, this medium became the linguistic tool of practically all Chinese prose writers. Vernacular prose (pai-hua (baihua)), in contrast, consists of writings in the living tongue, the everyday language of the authors. Traditionally considered inferior, the medium was piously avoided for creative writing until it was adopted by novelists and playwrights from the 13th century on.

History

Origins: c. 1400–221 BC

      The oldest specimens of Chinese writing extant are inscriptions on bones and tortoise shells dating back to the last three centuries of the Shang dynasty (18th–12th centuries BC) and recording divinations performed at the royal capital. These inscriptions, like those engraved on ceremonial bronze vessels toward the end of the Shang period, are usually brief and factual and cannot be considered literature. Nonetheless, they are significant in that their sizable vocabulary (about 3,400 characters, of which nearly 2,000 have been reliably deciphered) has proved to be the direct ancestor of the modern Chinese script. Moreover, the syntactical structure of the language bears a striking resemblance to later usages. From the frequent occurrences in the bone inscriptions of such characters as “dance” and “music,” “drum” and “chimes” (of stone), “words” and “southern” (airs), it can safely be inferred that, by the Shang dynasty, songs were sung to the accompaniment of dance and music; but these songs are now lost.

Tien-yi Li William H. Nienhauser, Jr.

Literary use of myths (myth)

      Early Chinese literature does not present, as the literatures of certain other world cultures do, great epics embodying mythological lore. What information exists is sketchy and fragmentary and provides no clear evidence that an organic mythology ever existed; if it did, all traces have been lost. Attempts by scholars, Eastern and Western alike, to reconstruct the mythology of antiquity have consequently not advanced beyond probable theses. Shang dynasty material is limited. Chou dynasty (c. 1111–255 BC) sources are more plentiful, but even these must at times be supplemented by writings of the Han period (206 BC–AD 220), which, however, must be read with great caution. This is the case because Han scholars reworked the ancient texts to such an extent that no one is quite sure, aside from evident forgeries, how much was deliberately reinterpreted and how much was changed in good faith in an attempt to clarify ambiguities or reconcile contradictions.

      The early state of Chinese mythology was also molded by the religious situation that prevailed in China at least since the Chou (Zhou dynasty) conquest (12th century BC), when religious observance connected with the cult of the dominant deities was proclaimed a royal prerogative. Because of his temporal position, the king (sacred kingship) alone was considered qualified to offer sacrifice and to pray to these deities. Shang-ti (“Supreme Ruler”), for example, one of the prime dispensers of change and fate, was inaccessible to persons of lower rank. The princes, the aristocracy, and the commoners were thus compelled, in descending order, to worship lesser gods and ancestors. Though this situation was greatly modified about the time of Confucius (Confucianism) in the early part of the 5th century BC, institutional inertia and a trend toward rationalism precluded the revival of a mythological world. Confucius prayed to Heaven (T'ien) and was concerned about the great sacrifices, but he and his school had little use for genuine myths.

      Nevertheless, during the latter centuries of the Chou, Chinese mythology began to undergo a profound transformation. The old gods, to a great extent already forgotten, were gradually supplanted by a multitude of new ones, some of whom were imported from India with Buddhism or gained popular acceptance as Taoism (Daoism) spread throughout the empire. In the process, many early myths were totally reinterpreted to the extent that some deities and mythological figures were rationalized into abstract concepts and others were euhemerized into historical figures. Above all, a hierarchical order, resembling in many ways the institutional order of the empire, was imposed upon the world of the supernatural. Many of the archaic myths were lost; others survived only as fragments, and, in effect, an entirely new mythological world was created.

      These new gods generally had clearly defined functions and definite personal characteristics and became prominent in literature and the other arts. The myth of the battles between Huang-ti (Huangdi) (“The Yellow Emperor”) and Ch'ih Yu (“The Wormy Transgressor”), for example, became a part of Taoist lore and eventually provided models for chapters of two works of vernacular fiction, Shui-hu chuan (The Water Margin, also translated as All Men Are Brothers) and Hsi-yu chi (1592; Journey to the West, also partially translated as Monkey). Other mythological figures such as K'ua-fu and the Hsi-wang-mu subsequently provided motifs for numerous poems and stories.

      Historical personages were also commonly taken into the pantheon, for Chinese popular imagination has been quick to endow the biography of a beloved hero with legendary and eventually mythological traits. Ch'ü Yüan, the ill-fated minister of the state of Ch'u (771–221 BC), is the most notable example. Mythmaking consequently became a constant, living process in China. It was also true that historical heroes and would-be heroes arranged their biographies in a way that lent themselves to mythologizing.

Hellmut Wilhelm William H. Nienhauser, Jr.

Poetry

      The first anthology of Chinese poetry, known as the Shih Ching (Shijing) (“Classic of Poetry”) and consisting of temple, court, and folk songs, was given definitive form somewhere around the time of Confucius (551–479 BC). But its 305 songs are believed to range in date from the beginning of the Chou dynasty to the time of their compiling.

      The Shih Ching is generally accounted the third of the Five Classics (Wu Ching (Wujing)) of Confucian literature, the other four of which are: the I Ching (Yijing) (“Classic of Changes”), a book of divination and cosmology; the Shu Ching (Shujing) (“Classic of History”), a collection of official documents; the Li chi (Liji) (“Record of Rites”), a book of rituals with accompanying anecdotes; and the Ch'un-ch'iu (Chunqiu) (“Spring and Autumn”) annals, a chronological history of the feudal state of Lu, where Confucius was born, consisting of topical entries of major events from 722 to 481 BC. The Five Classics have been held in high esteem by Chinese scholars since the 2nd century BC. (For a discussion of the I Ching and Shu Ching, see below Prose (Chinese literature).)

      The poems of the Shih Ching were originally sung to the accompaniment of music; and some of them, especially temple songs, were accompanied also by dancing. (In all subsequent periods of Chinese literary history, new trends in poetry were profoundly influenced by music.) Most of the poems of the Shih Ching have a preponderantly lyrical strain whether the subject is hardship in military service or seasonal festivities, agricultural chores or rural scenes, love or sports, aspirations or disappointments of the common folk and of the declining aristocracy. Apparently, the language of the poems was relatively close to the daily speech of the common people, and even repeated attempts at refinement during the long process of transmission have not spoiled their freshness and spontaneity. In spite of this, however, when the songs are read aloud and not sung to music their prevailing four-syllable lines conduce to monotony, hardly redeemed by the occasional interspersion of shorter or longer lines.

      If there ever was an epic tradition in ancient China comparable to that of early India or the West, only dim traces of it persist in the written records. The Shih Ching has a few narrative poems celebrating heroic deeds of the royal ancestors, but these are rearranged in cycles and only faintly approximate the national epics of other peoples. One cycle, for example, records the major stages in the rise of the Chou kingdom, from the supernatural birth of its remote founder to its conquest of the Shang kingdom. These episodes, which, according to traditional history, cover a period of more than 1,000 years, are dealt with in only about 400 lines. Other cycles, which celebrate later military exploits of the royal Chou armies, are even briefer.

      The Shih Ching exerted a profound influence on Chinese poetry that, generally speaking, has stressed the lyrical rather than the narrative element; a dependence more on end rhymes for musical effect than on other rhetorical devices; regular lines, consisting of a standard number of syllables; and the utilization of intonation that is inherent in the language for rhythm, instead of the alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables as is the norm in Western poetry. The high regard in which this anthology has been held in China results both from its antiquity and from the legend that Confucius himself edited it. It was elevated in 136 BC to the position of a major classic in the Confucian canon.

      Meanwhile, another type of poetry, also originating in music and dance, had developed in the south, in the basin of the Yangtze River, an area dominated by the principality of Ch'u—hence the generic appellation Ch'u tz'u, or “songs of Ch'u.” These southern songs, though adorned with end rhymes like the songs of the Shih Ching, follow a different metrical pattern: the lines are usually longer and more irregular and are commonly (though not always) marked by a strong caesura in the middle. Their effect is thus rather plaintive, and they lend themselves to chanting instead of singing. The beginning of this tradition is obscure because most of the early samples were eclipsed by the brilliant 4th/3rd-century-BC compositions of the towering genius Ch'ü Yüan (Qu Yuan), China's first known poet.

      Among some 25 elegies that are attributed to Ch'ü Yüan, the most important and longest is Li sao (“On Encountering Sorrow”), which has been described as a politico-erotic ode, relating by means of a love allegory the poet's disappointment with his royal master and describing his imaginary travels in distant regions and the realms of heaven, in an attempt to rid himself of his sorrow. Ch'ü Yüan committed suicide by drowning in the Mi-lo River; and his tragic death, no less than his beautiful elegies, helped to perpetuate the new literary genre. In contrast to the poems of the Shih Ching, which had few successful imitators, the genre created by Ch'ü Yüan was cultivated for more than five centuries, and it also experienced later revivals.

Prose

      Prior to the rise of the philosophers in the 6th century BC, brief prose writings were reported to be numerous; but of these only two collections have been transmitted: the Shu, or Shu Ching (Shujing) (“Classic of History”), consisting of diverse kinds of primitive state papers, such as declarations, portions of charges to feudal lords, and orations; and the I, or I Ching (Yijing) (“Classic of Changes”), a fortune-telling manual. Both grew by accretion and, according to a very doubtful tradition, were edited by Confucius himself. Neither can be considered literature, but both have exerted influence on Chinese writers for more than 2,000 years as a result of their inclusion in the Confucian canon.

      The earliest writings that can be assigned to individual “authorship,” in the loose sense of the term, are the Lao-tzu, or Tao-te Ching (Daodejing) (“Classic of the Way of Power”), which is attributed to Lao-tzu (Laozi), who is credited with being the founder of Taoism and who might have been an older contemporary of Confucius; and the Lun yü (Lunyu) (“Conversations”), or Analects (selected miscellaneous passages), of Confucius. Neither of the philosophers wrote extensively, and their teachings were recorded by their followers. Thus, the Lao-tzu consists of brief summaries of Lao-tzu's sayings, many of which are in rhyme and others in polished prose to facilitate memorization. Likewise, the Analects is composed of collections of the sage's sayings, mostly as answers to questions or as a result of discussions because writing implements and materials were expensive and scarce. The circumstances of the conversations, however, were usually omitted; and as a consequence the master's words often sound cryptic and disjointed, despite the profundity of the wisdom.

      By about 400 BC, writing materials had improved, and a change in prose style resulted. The records of the discourses became longer, the narrative portions more detailed; jokes, stories, anecdotes, and parables, interspersed in the conversations, were included. Thus, the Mencius, or Meng-tzu, the teachings of Mencius, not only is three times longer than the Analects of Confucius but also is topically and more coherently arranged. The same characteristic may be noticed in the authentic chapters of the Chuang-tzu, attributed to the Taoist sage Chuang-tzu (Zhuangzi), who “in paradoxical language, in bold words, and with subtle profundity, gave free play to his imagination and thought. . . . Although his writings are inimitable and unique, they seem circuitous and innocuous. Although his utterances are irregular and formless, they are unconventional and readable . . .” (from the epilogue of the Chuang-tzu).

      The first example of the well-developed essay, however, is found neither in the Mencius nor in the Chuang-tzu but in the Mo-tzu, attributed to Mo Ti, or Mo-tzu (Mozi), a predecessor of Mencius and Chuang-tzu, whose singular attainments in logic made him a forceful preacher. His recorded sermons are characterized by simplicity of style, clarity of exposition, depth of conviction, and directness of appeal.

      The prose style continued to be developed by such outstanding philosopher-essayists as Hsün-tzu and his pupil, the Legalist Han-fei-tzu. The peak of this development, however, was not reached until the appearance of the first expertly arranged full-length book, Lü-shih Ch'un-ch'iu (“The Spring and Autumn [Annals] of Mr. Lü”), completed in 240 BC under the general direction of Lü Pu-wei (Lü Buwei). The work, 60 essays in 26 sections, summarizes the teachings of the several schools of philosophy as well as the folklore of the various regions of China.

Ch'in and Han (Han dynasty) dynasties: 221 BC–AD 220

Poetry

      Following the unification of the empire by the Ch'in dynasty (221–206 BC) and the continuation of the unified empire under the Han, literary activities took new directions. At the Imperial and feudal courts, the fu genre, a combination of rhyme and prose, began to flourish. Long and elaborate descriptive poetic compositions, the fu were in form a continuation of the Ch'u elegies, now made to serve a different purpose—the amusement of the new aristocracy and the glorification of the empire—by dwelling on such topics as the low table and the folding screen or on descriptions of the capital cities. But even the best fu writing, by such masters of the art as Mei Sheng and Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju (Sima Xiangru), bordered on the frivolous and bombastic. Another major fu writer, Yang Hsiung (Yang Xiong), in the prime of his career remorsefully realized that the genre was a minor craft not worthy of a true poet. Nonetheless, the fu was almost universally accepted as the norm of creative writing, and nearly 1,000 pieces were produced.

      A more important contribution to literature by the Han government was the reactivation in 125 BC of the Yüeh Fu, or Music Bureau, which had been established at least a century earlier to collect songs and their musical scores. Besides temple and court compositions of ceremonial verse, this office succeeded in preserving a number of songs sung or chanted by the ordinary people, including songs from the border areas, which reveal alien influences. This category—called yüeh-fu (yuefu), for the Music Bureau—includes not only touching lyrics but also charming ballads (ballad).

      One such ballad, “The Orphan,” tells of an orphan's hardships and disappointments; the form of the poem—lines of irregular length, varying from three to six syllables (or graphs)—represents the singer's attempt to simulate the choking voice of the sufferers. Lo-fu hsing (“The Song of Lo-fu”; also called Mo-shang sang, “Roadside Mulberry Tree”), recounts how a pretty young lady declined a carriage ride offered her by a government commissioner. The most outstanding folk ballad of this period is K'ung-ch'üeh tung-nan fei (“Southeast the Peacock Flies”). The longest poem of early Chinese literature (353 lines), it relates the tragedy of a young married couple who had committed suicide as the result of the cruelty of the husband's mother. The ballad was probably first sung shortly after AD 200 and grew by accretion and refinement in oral transmission until it was recorded in final form for the first time in about 550. Yüeh-fu songs, most of which are made up mainly of five-syllable lines, became the fountainhead of a new type of poetry, ku-shih (“ancient-style poems”); contemporary Han dynasty poets at first merely refined the originals of the folk songs without claiming credit and later imitated their fresh and lively metre.

Prose

      Prose literature was further developed during the Ch'in and Han dynasties. In addition to a prolific output of philosophers and political thinkers—a brilliant representative of whom is Liu An, prince of Huai-nan, whose work is called Huai-nan-tzu (Huainanzi) (c. 140 BC; “The Master of Huai-nan”)—an important and monumental category of Han dynasty literature consists of historical works. Outstanding among these is the Shih-chi (c. 85 BC; “Historical Records,” Eng. trans., The Records of the Grand Historian of China, 2 vol.) by Ssu-ma Ch'ien (Sima Qian). A masterpiece that took 18 years to produce, it deals with major events and personalities of about 2,000 years (down to the author's time), comprising 130 chapters and totaling more than 520,000 words. The Shih-chi was not only the first general history of its kind attempted in China, it also set a pattern in organization for dynastic histories of subsequent ages. An artist as well as a historian, Ssu-ma Ch'ien succeeded in making events and personalities of the past into living realities for his readers; his biographies subsequently became models for authors of both fiction and history. Ssu-ma's great successor, the poet-historian-soldier Pan Ku (Ban Gu), author of the Han shu (“Han Documents”), a history of the Former Han dynasty containing more than 800,000 words, performed a similar tour de force but did not equal Ssu-ma Ch'ien in either scope or style.

      Pan Ku's prose style, though not necessarily archaic, was more consciously literary—a result of the ever-widening gap between the spoken and written aspects of the language. This anomaly was more evident in China than elsewhere, and it was to have far-reaching effects on the evolution of Chinese literary tradition. In an attempt to resolve the difficulties of communication among speakers of many dialects in the empire, a standard literary language, wen-yen, was promoted from the Han dynasty on. Perpetuated for more than 2,000 years, the literary language failed to keep pace with changes in the spoken tongue, and eventually it became almost unintelligible to the illiterate masses.

The Six Dynasties and Sui dynasty: AD 220–618

      After the fall of the Han dynasty, there was a long period of political division (AD 220–589), with barely four decades of precarious unification (AD 280–316/17). Despite the social and political confusion and military losses, however, the cultural scene was by no means dismal. Several influences on the development of literature are noteworthy. First, Buddhism, introduced earlier, had brought with it religious chants and Indian music, which helped to attune Chinese ears to the finer distinctions of tonal qualities in their own language. Second, aggressive northern tribes, who invaded and dominated the northern half of the country from 316, were being culturally absorbed and converted. Third, the political division of the empire between the South and the North (as a result of the domination of non-Chinese in the north) led to an increase in cultural differences and to a subsequent rivalry to uphold what was regarded as cultural orthodoxy, frequently resulting in literary antiquarianism.

Poetry

      Folk songs (folk music) flourished in both regions. In the South, popular love songs, originating in the coastal areas, which now came increasingly under Chinese political and cultural domination, attracted the attention of poets and critics. The songs of the North were more militant. Reflecting this spirit most fully is the Mu-lan shih (“Ballad of Mu Lan”), which sings of a girl who disguised herself as a warrior and won glory on the battlefield.

      Soon the number of writers of “literary” poetry greatly increased. Among them, two poets deserve special mention. Ts'ao Chih (Cao Zhi) (3rd century), noted for his ethereal lyricism, gave definite artistic form to the poetry of the five-syllable line, already popularized in folk song. T'ao Ch'ien (Tao Qian) (4th–5th centuries), also known as T'ao Yüan-ming, is one of China's major poets and was the greatest of this period. A recluse, he retired from a post in the bureaucracy of the Chin dynasty at the age of 33 to farm, contemplate nature, and write poetry. His verse, written in a plain style, was echoed by many poets who came after him. Using several verse forms with seemingly effortless ease—including the fu, for Kuei-ch'ü-lai tz'u (“Homeward Bound”)—he was representative of the trend of the age to explore various genres for lyrical expression. One of his best loved poems is the following ku-shih, translated by Arthur Waley; it is one of 12 he wrote at different times after he had been drinking.

I built my hut in a zone of human habitation,

Yet near me there sounds no noise of horse or coach.

Would you know how this is possible?

A heart that is distant creates a wilderness round it.

I pluck chrysanthemums under the eastern hedge,

Then gaze long at the distant hills.

The mountain air is fresh at the dusk of day;

The flying birds two by two return.

In these things there lies a deep meaning;

Yet when we would express it, words suddenly fail us.

Prose

      As orthodox Confucianism gradually yielded to Taoism (Daoism) and later to Buddhism, nearly all of the major writers began to cultivate an uninhibited individuality. Lu Chi (Lu Ji), 3rd-century poet and critic, in particular emphasized the importance of originality in creative writing and discredited the long-established practice of imitating the great masters of the past. Still, his celebrated essay on literature (Wen fu), in which he enunciated this principle, was written as a fu, showing after all that he was a child of his own age. The 3rd/4th-century Taoist philosopher Ko Hung insisted that technique is no less essential to a writer than moral integrity. The revolt of the age against conventionality was revealed in the new vogue of ch'ing-t'an (“pure conversation”), intellectual discussions on lofty and nonmundane matters, recorded in a 5th-century collection of anecdotes entitled Shih-shuo hsin-yü (“A New Account of Tales of the World”) by Liu Yi-ch'ing. Though prose writers as a whole continued to be most concerned with lyrical expression and rhetorical devices for artistic effect, there were notable deviations from the prevailing usage in the polyphonic p'ien-wen (“parallel prose”). In this form, parallel construction of pairs of sentences and counterbalancing of tonal patterns were the chief requirements. P'ien-wen was used especially in works concerned with philosophical disputes and in religious controversies; but it was also used in the first book-length work of literary criticism, Wen-hsin tiao-lung (“The Literary Mind and the Carving of the Dragon”), by the 6th-century writer Liu Hsieh.

      Among prose masters of the 6th century, two northerners deserve special mention: Yang Hsien-chih, author of Lo-yang Chia-lan chi (“Record of Buddhist Temples in Lo-yang”), and Li Tao-yüan, author of Shui Ching chu (“Commentary on the Water Classic”). Although both of these works seem to have been planned to serve a practical, utilitarian purpose, they are magnificent records of contemporary developments and charming storehouses of accumulated folklore, written with great spontaneity and artistry. This age also witnessed the first impact of Buddhist literature in Chinese translation, which had been growing in size and variety since the 2nd century.

T'ang and Five Dynasties: 618–960

      During the T'ang dynasty (Tang dynasty) (618–907), Chinese literature reached its golden age.

Poetry

      In poetry, the greatest glory of the period, all the verse forms of the past were freely adopted and refined, and new forms were crystallized. One new form was perfected early in the dynasty and given the definitive name lü-shih (lüshi) (“regulated verse”). A poem of this kind consists of eight lines of five or seven syllables—each line set down in accordance with strict tonal patterns—calling for parallel structure in the middle, or second and third, couplets.

      Another verse form much in vogue was the chüeh-chü (“truncated verse”). An outgrowth and a shortened version of the lü-shih, it omitted either the first four lines, the last four lines, the first two and the last two lines, or the middle four lines. Thus, the tonal quality of the lü-shih was retained, whereas antithetic structure was made optional. These poems of four lines, each consisting of five or seven words (syllables or characters), had to depend for their artistry on suggestiveness and economy comparable to the robāʾīyāt (“quatrains”) of Omar Khayyam and the Japanese haiku.

      The fine distinctions of tonal variations in the spoken language had reached their height during this period, with eight tones; and rules and regulations concerning the sequence of lighter and heavier tones had been formulated. But since the observance of strict rules of prosody was not mandatory in the ku-shih (“ancient style”) form still in use, it was possible for an individual poet to enjoy conformity or freedom as he saw fit.

      Of the more than 2,200 T'ang poets whose works—totaling more than 48,900 pieces—have been preserved, only a few can be mentioned. Wang Wei, a musician and the traditional father of monochrome landscape painting, was also a great poet. Influenced by Buddhism, he wrote exquisite meditative verse of man's relation to nature that exemplified his own dictum that poetry should have the beauty of painting and vice versa. Li Po (Li Bai), one of the two major poets of the T'ang dynasty, a lover of detachment and freedom, deliberately avoided the lü-shih and chose the less formal verse forms to sing of friendship or wine. An example is the poem “To Tan-Ch'iu,” translated by Arthur Waley.

My friend is lodging high in the Eastern Range,

Dearly loving the beauty of valleys and hills.

At green Spring he lies in the empty woods,

And is still asleep when the sun shines on high.

A pine-tree wind dusts his sleeves and coat;

A pebbly stream cleans his heart and ears.

I envy you, who far from strife and talk

Are high-propped on a pillow of blue cloud.

      Generally considered the greatest poet of China was Tu Fu (Du Fu), a keen observer of the political and social scene who criticized injustice wherever he found it and who clearly understood the nature of the great upheaval following the rebellion of dissatisfied generals in 755, which was a turning point in the fortunes of the T'ang. As an artist, Tu Fu excelled in all verse forms, transcending all rules and regulations in prosody while conforming to and exploiting them. His power and passion can perhaps be suggested by a single line (translated by Robert Payne): “Blue is the smoke of war, white the bones of men.”

      One of the admirers of Tu Fu as a poet-historian was Po Chü-i (Bai Juyi) who, like his great predecessor, was deeply concerned with the social problems of his age. Po Chü-i sought to learn from ordinary folk not only naturalness of language but also their feelings and reactions, especially at the height of his career when he wrote what he called the Hsin yüeh-fu shih (“New Yüeh-fu Poems”).

      At the end of the T'ang and during the Five Dynasties, another new verse form developed. Composed normally of lines of irregular length and written as lyrics to musical tunes, this form came to be known as tz'u (ci), in contrast with shih, which includes all the verse forms mentioned above. Since the lines in a tz'u might vary from one to nine or even 11 syllables, they were comparable to the natural rhythm of speech and therefore easily understood when sung.

      First sung by ordinary folk, they were popularized by professional women singers and, during the T'ang, attracted the attention of poets. It was not, however, until the transitional period of the Five Dynasties (907–960), a time of division and strife, that tz'u became the major vehicle of lyrical expression. Of tz'u poets in this period, the greatest was Li Yü (Li Yu), last monarch of the Southern T'ang, who was seized in 976 as the new Sung dynasty consolidated its power. Li Yü's tz'u poetry is saturated with a tragic nostalgia for better days in the South; it is suffused with sadness—a new depth of feeling notably absent from earlier tz'u, which had been sung at parties and banquets. The following is typical, translated by Jerome Ch'en and Michael Bullock:

      Lin hua hsieh liao ch'un hung

T'ai ch'ung ch'ung

Wu nai chao lai han yü wan lai feng

Yen chih lei

Hsiang liu tsui

Chi shih ch'ung

Tzu shih jen sheng ch'ang hen shui ch'ang tung

      The red of the spring orchard has faded.

Far too soon!

The blame is often laid

on the chilling rain at dawn

and the wind at dusk.

The rouged tears

That intoxicate and hold in thrall—

When will they fall again?

As a river drifts toward the east

So painful life passes to its bitter end.

folk literature

      Besides the early tz'u, the end of the T'ang saw the evolution of another new folk form: pien-wen (“popularizations,” not to be confused with p'ien-wen, or parallel prose), utilizing both prose and verse to retell episodes from the Buddha's life and, later, non-Buddhist stories from Chinese history and folklore.

Prose

      In prose writing a major reform was led by Han Yü (Han Yu) against the peculiarly artificial prose style of p'ien-wen, which, cultivated for almost 1,000 years, had become so burdened with restrictive rules as to make forthright expression virtually impossible. Han Yü boldly advocated the use of Chou philosophers and early Han writers as models for prose writing. This seemingly conservative reform had, in fact, a liberalizing effect; for the sentence unit in prose writing was now given perfect freedom to seek its own length and structural pattern as logic and content might dictate, instead of slavishly conforming to the rules of p'ien-wen. This new freedom enabled Liu Tsung-yüan (Liu Zongyuan), Han Yü's chief associate in the literary reform, to write charming travel and landscape pieces. It also accelerated the development of a new genre in prose: well-made tales of love and romance, of heroic feats and adventures, of the mysterious and supernatural, and of imaginary incidents and fictionalized history. Among the 9th-century writers of such prose romances were Han Yü's pupil Shen Ya-chih and Po Hsing-chien, younger brother of the poet Po Chü-i. These prose romances, generally short, were written in the classical prose style for the amusement of the literati and did not reach the masses until some of the popular ones were adapted by playwrights in later ages.

Sung dynasty (Song dynasty): 960–1279

      The Sung dynasty was marked by cultural advancement and military weakness. During this period, literary output was spectacularly increased, thanks mainly to the improvement of printing (invented in the 8th century) and to the establishment of public schools throughout the empire (from 1044). Nearly all the literary genres in verse and prose were continued; and some trends, begun in T'ang times, were accelerated.

Prose

      In prose, the reform initiated by Han Yü in the name of ancient, more straightforward style (ku-wen) was reemphasized by such 11th-century writers as Ou-yang Hsiu (Ouyang Xiu) and Su Tung-p'o (Su Shi). Both men held high rank in the civil service and were great painters as well as leading poets. Nevertheless, their contribution to prose writing in ku-wen style was as important as their poetry. The ku-wen movement was further supported by men whose primary interest was not belles lettres, such as Ssu-ma Kuang (Sima Guang), the statesman-historian, and Chu Hsi (Zhu Xi), the scholar-philosopher and principal formulator of Neo-Confucianism.

      In prose fiction there were two distinct trends. Short tales in ku-wen were written in ever greater bulk but failed to maintain the level achieved in the T'ang dynasty. The subject matter became more fragmentary and anecdotal and the style duller. In sharp contrast to the ku-wen school, which was still a literary language despite the movement toward naturalness of expression, there arose a school of storytelling in the vernacular (baihua). Almost purely oral in origin, these tales reflected the style of the storyteller who entertained audiences gathered in marketplaces, fairgrounds, or temple yards. In the 12th century they became fairly lengthy, connected stories, especially those dealing with fictionalized history. This elevation of the everyday speech of the common people as a medium of story writing of the hua-pen (“vernacular story”) type was to open up new vistas in prose fiction in later periods.

Poetry

      Poetry of the conventional type (shih) was cultivated by numerous rival schools, each claiming many illustrious members. On the whole, the rival literary movements were significant as steps toward greater naturalness in syntax, and a few outstanding writers approximated the spoken vernacular language. Among the many shih poets of the Sung dynasty, Lu Yu (Lu You), who flourished in the 12th century, was a towering figure. A traveler and patriot, he wrote throughout his long career no fewer than 20,000 poems, of which more than 9,000 have been preserved.

      But it was in their utilization of the newer verse form, tz'u, that Sung poets achieved their greatest distinction, making tz'u the major genre of the dynasty. As noted above, the tz'u form had been popularized at first orally by women singers; and the first generation of tz'u writers had been inspired and guided by them in sentiment, theme, and diction; their lyrics were thus redolent with the fragrance of these women. Later in the 12th century, as men (and one great woman) of letters began to take over, the tz'u form reached the heights of great art. Ou-yang Hsiu and Li Ch'ing-chao (Li Qingzhao), the latter generally considered the greatest woman poet of China, may be considered representatives of this trend. Li Ch'ing-chao's poems, paralleling her life, are intensely personal. They at first dealt with the joys of love, but gradually their tone darkened to one of despair, caused first by frequent and lengthy separations from her husband, who was in government service, and then by his untimely death.

      Other masters of the tz'u were Su Tung-p'o and Hsin Ch'i-chi (Xin Qiji), the latter a soldier turned recluse. It was Hsin Ch'i-chi who imbued the writing of tz'u with new characteristics by rising above rules without breaking them, surpassing in this respect his contemporaries as well as those who came after him.

Yüan dynasty (Yuan dynasty): 1206–1368

      Fleeing from the Chin (Juchen) Tatars, who captured their capital in 1127, the Sung officials and courtiers retreated southward. For almost a century and a half, China was again divided. And in spite of political reunification by Kublai Khan, founder of the Yüan, or Mongol, dynasty (beginning in 1206 in the North and comprising the whole of China by 1280), the cultural split persisted. In the South, where China's historic traditions found asylum, racial and cultural homogeneity persisted. In fact, the centre of Chinese philosophy and traditional literature never again returned north of the Yangtze Delta. But in the North new developments arose, which led to wholly new departures. First, the migration and fusion of the various ethnic groups gave birth to a common spoken language with fewer tones, which later was to become the basis of a national language; second, with the southward shift of the centre of traditional culture, the prestige of the old literature began to decline in the North, especially in the eyes of the conquerors. Thus, in contrast to the South, North China under the Yüan dynasty provided a unique milieu for unconventional literary activities.

Drama (dramatic literature)

      In this period, dramatic literature came into a belated full flowering. The skits and vaudeville acts, the puppet shows and shadow plays of previous ages had laid the foundation for a full-fledged drama; but the availability of Indian and Iranian models during the Yüan dynasty may have been a more immediate cause for its accelerated growth. Many Chinese men of letters refused to cooperate with the alien government, seeking refuge in painting and writing. As the new literary type developed—the drama of four or five acts, complete with prologue and epilogue and including songs and dialogue in language fairly close to the daily speech of the people—many men of letters turned to playwriting. Between 1234 and 1368, more than 1,700 musical plays were written and staged, and 105 dramatists were recorded; moreover, there is an undetermined number of anonymous playwrights whose unsigned works have been preserved but discovered only in the 20th century. This remarkable burst of literary innovation, however, failed to win the respect of the orthodox critics and official historians. No mention of it was made in the copious dynastic history, Yüan shih; and casual references in the collected works of contemporary writers were few. Many plays were allowed to fall into oblivion. It was not until 1615 that a bibliophile undertook to reprint, as a collection, 100 of the 200 plays he had seen. Even after ardent searches by 20th-century librarians and specialists, the number of extant Yüan dramas has been increased to only 167, hardly 10 percent of the number produced. Moreover, since the musical scores have been lost, the plays cannot be produced on the stage in the original manner.

      Among the Yüan dramatists, the following deserve special mention. Kuan Han-ch'ing (Guan Hanqing), the author of some 60 plays, was the first to achieve distinction. His Tou-o yüan (“Injustice Suffered by Tou-o”) deals with the deprivations and injustices suffered by the heroine, Tou-o, which begin when she is widowed shortly after her marriage to a poor scholar and culminate in her execution for a crime she has not committed. Wang Shih-fu (Wang Shifu), Kuan's contemporary, wrote Hsi-hsiang chi (Chamber), based on a popular T'ang prose romance about the amorous exploits of the poet Yüan Chen, renamed Chang Chun-jui in the play. Besides its literary merits and its influence on later drama, it is notable for its length, two or three times that of the average Yüan play. Ma Chih-yüan, another contemporary, wrote 14 plays, of which the most celebrated is Han-kung ch'iu (“Sorrow of the Han Court”). It deals with the tragedy of a Han dynasty court lady, Wang Chao-chün, who, through the intrigue of a vicious portrait painter, was picked by mistake to be sent away to Central Asia as a chieftain's consort. Like the Romance of the Western Chamber, this play has been translated into western European languages.

      This new literary genre acquired certain distinct characteristics: (1) All extant compositions may be described as operas; (2) each play normally consists of four acts following a prologue; (3) the language of both the dialogue (for the most part in prose) and the arias—which alternate throughout the play—are fairly close to the daily speech of ordinary people; (4) all of the arias are in rhymed verse, and only one end rhyme is used throughout an act; (5) all of the arias in an act are sung by only one actor; (6) nearly all of the plays have a happy ending; (7) the characters in most of the plays are people of the middle and underprivileged classes—poor scholars, bankrupt merchants, Buddhist nuns, peasants, thieves, kidnappers, abductors, and women entertainers—antedating a similar trend in European drama by nearly four centuries.

      At least 12 of the playwrights thus far identified were Sinicized members of originally non-Chinese ethnic groups—Mongols, Juchens, Uighurs, and other Central Asians.

Poetry

      Another literary innovation, preceding but later interacting with the rise of the drama, was a new verse form known as san-ch'ü (“nondramatic songs”), a liberalization of the tz'u, which utilized the spoken language of the people as fully as possible. Although line length and tonal (tone) pattern were still governed by a given tune, extra words could be inserted to make the lyrics livelier and to clarify the relationship between phrases and clauses of the poem. The major dramatists were all masters of this genre.

Vernacular fiction

      Similarly, fiction writers who wrote in a semivernacular style began to emerge, continuing the tradition of storytellers of the past or composing lengthy works of fiction written almost entirely in the vernacular. All of the early pieces of this type of book-length fiction were poorly printed and anonymously or pseudonymously published. Although many early works were attributed to such authors as Lo Kuan-chung (Luo Guanzhong), there is little reliable evidence of his authorship in any extant work. These novels exist in numerous, vastly different versions that can best be described as the products of long evolutionary cycles involving several authors and editors. The best known of the works attributed to Lo are San-kuo chih yen-i (Romance of the Three Kingdoms), Shui-hu chuan (The Water Margin), and P'ing-yao chuan (“The Subjugation of the Evil Phantoms”). The best of the three from a literary standpoint is the Shui-hu chuan, which gives full imaginative treatment to a long accretion of stories and anecdotes woven around a number of enlightened bandits—armed social and political dissenters.

Ming dynasty: 1368–1644

      The Yüan dynasty was succeeded by the Ming dynasty, under which cultural influences from the South—expressed in movements toward cultural orthodoxy—again became important. Nearly all the major poets and prose writers in traditional literature were southerners, who enthusiastically launched and supported antiquarian movements based on a return to models of various ages of the past. With the restoration of competitive literary examinations, which had been virtually discontinued under the Mongols, the highly schematic pa-ku wen-chang (“eight-legged essay”) was adopted as the chief yardstick in measuring a candidate's literary attainments. Despite occasional protests, it continued to engage the attention of aspirants to official literary honours from 1487 to 1901.

Classical literature

      Although Ming poets wrote both shih and tz'u and their output was prodigious, poetry on the whole was imitative rather than freshly creative. Tirelessly, the poets produced verses imitating past masters, with few individually outstanding attainments.

      Prose writers in the classical style were also advocates of antiquarianism and conscious imitators of the great masters of past ages. Rival schools were formed, but few writers were able to rise above the ruts of conventionalism. The Ch'in-Han school tried to underrate the achievements of Han Yü and Liu Tsung-yüan, along with the Sung essayists, and proudly declared that post-Han prose was not worth reading. The T'ang-Sung school, on the other hand, accused its opponents of limited vision and reemphasized Han Yü's dictum that literature should be the vehicle of Tao, equated with the way of life taught by orthodox Confucianism. These continuous squabbles ultimately led nowhere, and the literary products were only exquisite imitations of their respective models.

      The first voice of protest against antiquarianism was not heard until the end of the 16th century; it came from the Kung-an school, named for the birthplace of three brothers, of whom the middle one was the best known. Yüan Hung-tao challenged all of the prevailing literary trends, advocating that literature should change with each age and that any attempt at erasing the special stamp of an era could result only in slavish imitation. Declaring that he could not smile and weep with the multitude, he singled out “substantiality” and “honesty with oneself” as the chief prerequisites of a good writer.

      This same spirit of revolt was shared by Chung Hsing and T'an Yüan-ch'un, of a later school, who were so unconventional that they explored the possibilities of writing intelligibly without observing Chinese grammatical usages. Although their influence was not long lasting, these two schools set the first examples of a new subgenre in prose—the familiar essay.

Vernacular literature

      It was in vernacular literature that the writers of this period made a real contribution. In drama, a tradition started in the Sung dynasty and maintained in southern China during the period of Mongol domination was revitalized. This southern drama, also musical and known as ch'uan-ch'i (chuanqi) (“tales of marvels”), had certain special traits: (1) a ch'uan-ch'i play contains from 30 to 40 changes of scene; (2) the change of end rhymes in the arias is free and frequent; (3) the singing is done by many actors instead of by the hero or heroine alone; (4) many plots, instead of being extracted from history or folklore, are taken from contemporary life.

      Since there were no rules regulating the structure of the ch'uan-ch'i, playlets approaching the one-act variety were also written. This southern theatre movement, at first largely carried on by anonymous amateurs, won support gradually from the literati until finally, in the 16th century, a new and influential school was formed under the leadership of the poet-singer Liang Ch'en-yü (Liang Chenyu) and his friend the great actor Wei Liang-fu. The K'un school (kunqu), initiating a style of soft singing and subtle music (arts, East Asian), was to dominate the theatre to the end of the 18th century.

      Aside from drama and ta-ch'ü (a suite of melodies sung in narration of stories), which in the South were noticeably modified in spirit and structure, becoming more ornate and bookish—it was prose fiction that made the greatest progress in the 16th century. Two important novels took shape at that time. Wu Ch'eng-en (Wu Cheng'en)'s Hsi-yu chi (Xiyouji) is a fictionalized account of the pilgrimage of the Chinese monk Hsüan-tsang (Xuanzang) to India in the 7th century. The subject matter was not new; it had been used in early hua-pen, or “vernacular story,” books and Yüan drama; but it had never been presented at length in such a lively and rapid-moving narration. Of all of the 81 episodes of trial and tribulation experienced by the pilgrim, no two are alike. Among the large number of monsters introduced, each has unique individuality. Like the Shui-hu chuan, it reveals the influence of the style of the oral storytellers, for each chapter ends with the sentence “in case you are interested in what is to follow, please listen to the next installment, which will reveal it.” Unlike the Shui-hu chuan, which was written in a kind of semivernacular, the language used was the vernacular of the living tongue. For the author the choice must have been a deliberate but difficult one, for he had the novel first published anonymously to avoid disapproval. Besides eliciting numerous commentaries and “continuations” in China, it has two English translations.

      The title of the second novel (the author of which is unknown), Chin P'ing Mei (Jinpingmei), is composed of graphs from the names of three female characters. Written in an extremely charming vernacular prose style, the novel is a well-knit, long narrative of the awful debaucheries of the villain Ch'ing Hsi-men. The details of the different facets of life in 16th-century China are so faithfully portrayed that it can be read almost as a documentary social history of that age. The sexual perversions of the characters are so elaborately depicted that several Western translators have rendered a number of indelicate passages in Latin. The novel has been banned in China more than once, and all copies of the first edition of 1610 were destroyed.

Ch'ing dynasty (Qing dynasty): 1644–1911/12

      The conquest of China by the Manchus, a Mongol people from the region north of China who set up the Ch'ing dynasty in 1644, did not disrupt the continuation of major trends in traditional literature. (During the literary inquisition of the 18th century, however, many books suspected of anti-Manchu sentiments were destroyed; and numerous literati were imprisoned, exiled, or executed.) Antiquarianism dominated literature as before, and excellent poetry and prose in imitation of ancient and medieval masters continued to be written, many works rivaling the originals in archaic beauty and cadence. Although the literary craftsmanship was superb, genuine creativity was rare.

Poetry and prose nonfiction

      In the field of tz'u (ci) writing, the 17th-century Manchu poet Nara Singde (Sinicized name, Na-lan Hsing-te) was outstanding; but even he lapsed into conscious imitation of Southern T'ang models except when inspired by the vastness of open space and the beauties of nature. In nonfictional prose, Chin Jen-jui continued the familiar essay form.

Prose fiction

      P'u Sung-ling (Pu Songling) continued the prose romance tradition by writing in ku-wen (“classical language”) a series of 431 charming stories of the uncanny and the supernatural entitled Liao-chai chih-i (1766; “Strange Stories from the Liao-chai Studio”; Eng. trans., Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio). This collection, completed in 1679, was reminiscent of the early literary tale tradition, for it contained several T'ang stories retold with embellishments and minor changes to delineate the characters more realistically and to make the plots more probable. Such traditional supernatural beings as fox spirits, assuming in these stories temporary human form in the guise of pretty women, became for the first time in Chinese fiction humanized and likable. Despite the seeming success of these tales, the author soon became aware of the limitations of the ku-wen style for fiction writing and proceeded to produce a vernacular novel of some 1,000,000 words, the Hsing-shihyin-yüan chuan (“A Marriage to Awaken the World”). This long story of a shrew and her henpecked husband was told without any suggestion of a solution to the problems of unhappy marriages. Unsure of the reaction of his colleagues to his use of the vernacular as a literary medium, P'u Sung-ling had this longest Chinese novel of the old school published under a pseudonym.

      Wu Ching-tzu (Wu Jingzi) satirized the 18th-century literati in a realistic masterpiece, Ju-lin wai-shih (c. 1750; “Unofficial History of the Literati”; Eng. trans., The Scholars), 55 chapters loosely strung together in the manner of a picaresque romance. Unlike P'u Sung-ling, whom he far surpassed in both narration and characterization, he adopted the vernacular as his sole medium for fiction writing.

      Better known and more widely read was Ts'ao Chan (Cao Zhan)'s Hung-lou meng ( Dream of the Red Chamber), a novel of a love triangle and the fall of a great family, also written in the vernacular and the first outstanding piece of Chinese fiction with a tragic ending. Because its lengthy descriptions of poetry contests, which interrupt the narrative, may seem tiresome, especially to non-Chinese readers, they have been largely deleted in Western translations. Nevertheless, some Western critics have considered it one of the world's finest novels.

Drama

      In drama, the Ming tradition of ch'uan-ch'i was worthily continued by several leading poets of the conventional school, though as a whole their dramatic writings failed to appeal to the masses. Toward the end of the 18th century, folk dramas of numerous localities began to gain popularity, converging finally at the theatres of Peking and giving rise to what came to be designated as Peking drama—a composite product that has continued to delight large audiences in China.

19th-century translations of Western literature

      By the early 19th century, China could no longer ward off the West and, after the first Opium War (Opium Wars) (1839–42), China's port cities were forcibly opened to increased foreign contacts. In due course, many Western works on diverse subjects were translated into Chinese. The quality of some of these was so outstanding that they deserve a place in the history of Chinese literature. One distinguished translator was Yen Fu (Yan Fu), who had studied in Great Britain and whose renderings of Western philosophical works into classical Chinese were acclaimed as worthy of comparison, in literary merit, with the Chou philosophers. Another great translator was Lin Shu, who, knowing no foreign language himself but depending on oral interpreters, made available to Chinese readers more than 170 Western novels, translated into the literary style of Ssu-ma Ch'ien.

19th-century native prose and poetry

      Meanwhile, writers of native fiction, especially in central and southern China, began to be seriously influenced by Western models. Using the vernacular and mostly following the picaresque romance structure of the Ju-lin wai-shih, they wrote fiction usually intended for serial publication and satirizing Chinese society and culture. One of these writers was Liu E, whose Lao Ts'an yu-chi (1904–07; The Travels of Lao Ts'an), a fictional account of contemporary life, pointed to the problems confronting the tottering Ch'ing dynasty.

      Poetry, long stagnant, at last began to free itself from the shackles of traditionalism. The most prominent poet, Huang Tsun-hsien (Huang Zunxian), inspired by folk songs and foreign travel, tried to write poetry in the spoken language and experimented with new themes, new diction, and new rhythm. His young friend Liang Ch'i-ch'ao (Liang Qichao) not only fervently supported Huang and his associates in what they called “the revolution in Chinese poetry” but also ventured forth in new directions in prose. Liang's periodical publications, especially, exerted an extensive influence on the Chinese people in the early years of the 20th century. Fusing all the unique and attractive features of the various schools of prose writing of the past into a new compound, Liang achieved a vibrant and widely imitated style of his own, distinguished by several characteristics: flexibility in sentence structure so that new terms, transliterations of foreign words and phrases, and even colloquial expressions could be accommodated; a natural liveliness; a touch of infectious emotionalism, which the majority of his readers enjoyed. Although he was too cautious to use the vernacular, except in fiction and plays, he did attempt to approximate the living speech of the people, as Huang Tsun-hsien had done in poetry.

      As part of a westernization movement, the competitive literary examination system, which had been directly responsible for excessive conservatism and conventionality in thought as well as in literature, was abolished in 1905.

Tien-yi Li William H. Nienhauser, Jr.

Modern Chinese literature

May Fourth period (May Fourth Movement)

      Following the overthrow of the Manchu dynasty and the establishment of the Republic in 1912, many young intellectuals turned their attention to the overhauling of literary traditions, beginning with the language itself. In January 1917 an article by Hu Shih, a student of philosophy at Columbia University, entitled “Wen-hsüeh kai-liang ch'u-i” (“Tentative Proposal for Literary Reform”) was published in the Peking magazine Hsin ch'ing-nien (New Youth). In it Hu called for a new national literature written not in the classical language but in the vernacular, the living “national language” (kuo-yü). Ch'en Tu-hsiu (Chen Duxiu), the editor of Hsin ch'ing-nien, supported Hu's views in his own article “Wen-hsüeh ko-ming lun” (“On Literary Revolution”), which emboldened Hu to hone his arguments further in a second article (1918), entitled “Chien-she te wen-hsüeh ko-ming” (“Constructive Literary Revolution”), in which he spelled out his formula for a “literary renaissance.” The literary reform movement that began with these and other “calls to arms” was a part of the larger May Fourth Movement for cultural and sociopolitical reform, whose name commemorates a 1919 student protest against the intellectual performance of the Chinese delegates to the Paris Peace Conference formally terminating World War I. At the outset, the literary reformers met with impassioned but mostly futile opposition from classical literati such as the renowned translator Lin Shu, who would largely give up the battle within a few years.

      The first fruits of this movement were seen in 1918 and 1919 with the appearance in Hsin ch'ing-nien of such stories as “K'uang-jen jih-chi” (“The Diary of a Madman”), a Gogol-inspired piece about a “madman” who suspects that he alone is sane and the rest of the world is mad, and “Yao” (“Medicine”), both by Chou Shu-jen. Known by the pseudonym Lu Hsün (Lu Xun), Chou had studied in Japan and, with his younger brother, the noted essayist Chou Tso-jen, had become a leader of the literary revolution soon after returning to China. Lu Hsün's acerbic, somewhat westernized, and often satirical attacks on China's feudalistic traditions established him as China's foremost critic and writer. His “Ah Q cheng-chuan” (1921; “The True Story of Ah Q”), a damning critique of early 20th-century conservatism in China, is the representative work of the May Fourth period and has become an international classic.

      These early writings provided the impetus for a number of youthful intellectuals to pool their resources and promote shared ideals by forming literary associations. The Wen-hsüeh yen-chiu hui (“Literary Research Association”), generally referred to as the “realist” or “art-for-life's-sake” school, assumed the editorship of the established literary magazine Hsiao-shuo yüeh-pao (Short Story Monthly), in which most major fiction writers published their works throughout the 1920s, until the magazine's headquarters was destroyed by Japanese bombs in 1932. The socially reflective, critical-realist writing that characterized this group held sway in China well into the 1940s, when it was gradually eclipsed by more didactic, propagandistic literature. Members of the smaller Ch'uang-tsao she (“Creation Society”), on the other hand, were followers of the “Romantic” tradition who eschewed any expressions of social responsibility by writers, referring to their work as “art for art's sake.” In 1924, however, the society's leading figure, Kuo Mo-jo (Guo Moruo), converted to Marxism, and the Creation Society evolved into China's first Marxist literary society. Much of the energy of members of both associations was expended in translating literature of other cultures, which largely replaced traditional Chinese literature as the foundation upon which the new writing was built. This was particularly true in drama and poetry, in which figures such as Henrik Ibsen and Rabindranath Tagore, respectively, were as well known to Chinese readers as indigenous playwrights and poets. In drama, the Nan-kuo she (“South China Society”), founded by the former Creationist T'ien Han (Tian Han), produced and performed several short plays that were a mixture of critical realism and melodrama, while poets of the Hsin-yüeh she (“Crescent Moon Society”) such as the British-educated Hsü Chih-mo (Xu Zhimo) and the American-educated Wen I-to were creating new forms based on Western models, introducing the beauty of music and colour into their extremely popular lyrical verse.

1927–37

      Political events of the mid-1920s, in which Nationalist, Communist, and warlord forces clashed frequently, initiated a shift to the left in Chinese letters, culminating in 1930 in the founding of the Tso-i tso-chia lien-meng (“League of Leftist Writers”), whose membership included most influential writers. Lu Hsün, the prime organizer and titular head throughout the league's half-decade of activities, had stopped writing fiction in late 1925 and, after moving from Peking to Shanghai in 1927, directed most of his creative energies to translating Russian literature and writing the bitingly satirical random essays (tsa-wen) that became his trademark. Among the many active prewar novelists, the most successful were Mao Tun, Lao She, and Pa Chin.

      Mao Tun (Mao Dun), a founder of the Literary Research Association, was the prototypical Realist. The subjects of his socially mimetic tableaux included pre-May Fourth urban intellectual circles, bankrupt rural villages, and, in perhaps his best known work, Tzu-yeh (1933; Midnight), metropolitan Shanghai in all its financial and social chaos during the post-Depression era.

       Lao She, modern China's foremost humorist, whose early novels were written while he was teaching Chinese in London, was deeply influenced by traditional Chinese storytellers and the novels of Charles Dickens. His works are known for their episodic structure, racy northern dialect, vivid characterizations, and abundant humour. Yet it was left to him to write modern China's classic novel, the moving tale of the gradual degeneration of a seemingly incorruptible denizen of China's “lower depths”—Lo-t'o hsiang-tzu (1936; “Camel Hsiang-tzu,” published in English in a bowdlerized translation as Rickshaw Boy, 1945).

      Pa Chin (Ba Jin), a prominent Anarchist, was the most popular novelist of the period. A prolific writer, he is known primarily for his autobiographical novel Chia (1931; The Family), which traces the lives and varied fortunes of the three sons of a wealthy, powerful family. The book is a revealing portrait of China's oppressive patriarchal society, as well as of the awakening of China's youth to the urgent need for social revolution.

      The 1930s also witnessed the meteoric rise of a group of novelists from Northeast China (Manchuria) who were driven south by the Japanese annexation of their homeland in 1932. The sometimes rousing, sometimes nostalgic novels of Hsiao Chün and Hsiao Hung (Xiao Hong) and the powerful short stories (short story) of Tuan-mu Hung-liang became rallying cries for anti-Japanese youth as signs of impending war mounted.

      Poetry of the 1930s underwent a similar politicization, as more and more students returned from overseas to place their pens in the service of the “people's resistance against feudalism and imperialism.” The lyrical verse of the early Crescent Moon poets was replaced by a more socially conscious poetry by the likes of Ai Ch'ing, T'ien Chien, and Tsang K'o-chia that appealed to the readers' patriotic fervour. Others, particularly those who had at first gravitated toward the Crescent Moon Society, began striking out in various directions: notable works of these authors include the contemplative sonnets of Feng Chih, the urbane songs of Peking by Pien Chih-lin (Bian Zhilin), and the romantic verses of Ho Ch'i-fang. Less popular, but more daring, were Tai Wang-shu and Li Chin-fa, poets of the Hsien-tai (“Contemporary Age”) group, who wrote very sophisticated, if frequently baffling, poetry in the manner of the French Symbolists.

      While fiction reigned supreme in the 1930s, as the art of the short story was mastered by growing numbers of May Fourth writers, and novels were coming into their own, the most spectacular advances were made in drama, owing largely to the efforts of a single playwright. Although realistic social drama written in the vernacular had made its appearance in China long before the 1930s, primarily as translations or adaptations of Western works, it did not gain a foothold on the popular stage until the arrival of Ts'ao Yü (Cao Yu), whose first play, Lei-yü (1934; Thunderstorm), a tale of fatalism, retribution, and incestual relations among members of a rich industrialist's family, met with phenomenal success. It was followed over the next several years by other critically and popularly acclaimed plays, including Jih-ch'u (1936; Sunrise) and Yüan-yeh (1937; Wilderness), all of which examined pressing social issues and universal human frailties with gripping tension and innovative dramaturgy. Political realities in future decades would force a steady decline in dramatic art, so that Ts'ao Yü's half-dozen major productions still stand as the high-water mark of modern Chinese theatre. Yet, even though movies, television, and other popular entertainments would weaken the resiliency of this literary form, it would still serve the nation as an effective propaganda medium, particularly during the war of resistance.

The war years: 1937–45

      During the Sino-Japanese War, most writers fled to the interior, where they contributed to the war effort by writing patriotic literature under the banner of the Chung-hua ch'üan-kuo wen-i chieh k'ang-ti hsieh-hui (“All-China Anti-Japanese Federation of Writers and Artists”), founded in 1938 and directed by Lao She. All genres were represented, including reportage (pao-kao wen-hsüeh), an enormously influential type of writing that was a natural outgrowth of the federation's call for writers to go to the countryside and the front lines. Literary magazines were filled with short, easily produced and adaptable plays, topical patriotic verse, and war-zone dispatches. Among the major writers who continued to produce work of high quality during this period were Pa Chin, Ts'ao Yü, Mao Tun, and Ting Ling (Ding Ling). The latter's fictional explorations of the female psyche and the social condition of women had caught the public's imagination in the 1920s, and in the late 1930s she established herself as the major literary figure in the Communist stronghold of Yen-an.

      The growing dissatisfaction of intellectuals with the Nationalist government in Chungking surfaced dramatically during the civil war that raged throughout China following Japan's surrender, ending with the Nationalists' retreat to Taiwan and the establishment, in October 1949, of the People's Republic of China. Most writers, feeling intense pride and welcoming the challenge, chose to remain on the mainland and serve the new government.

1949 to the present

      Literature on the China mainland since 1949 has largely been a reflection of political campaigns and ideological battles. This state of affairs can be traced to Mao Tse-tung's (Mao Zedong) 1942 “Tsai Yen-an wen-i tso-t'an-hui shang te chiang-hua” (“Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art”), in which he articulated his position that literature, which existed to serve politics, was to be popularized while the people's level of literary appreciation was gradually being elevated. Mao's call for a truly proletarian literature—written by and for workers, peasants, and soldiers—gave rise to a series of rectification campaigns that further defined and consolidated party control over literary activities. In 1949, the First National Congress of Writers and Artists was convened, and the All-China Federation of Literature and Art Circles was founded, with Kuo Mo-jo elected as its first chairman.

      Mao's literary ideals had first been realized in the 1940s by Chao Shu-li (Zhao Shuli), whose early stories, such as “Li Yu-ts'ai pan-hua” (“The Rhymes of Li Yu-ts'ai”), were models of proletarian literature, both in form and in content. As the civil war neared its conclusion, novels of land reform, such as Ting Ling's prizewinning T'ai-yang chao tsai Sang-kan-ho shang (1949; The Sun Shines over the Sangkan River) and Pao-feng tsou-yü (1949; The Hurricane) by Chou Li-po, became quite popular. Few of the established May Fourth writers continued to produce fiction after 1949, for their experience as social critics did not prepare them for Socialist Realism, a method of composition, borrowed from the Soviet Union, according to which society is described as it should be, not necessarily as it is. Many of the older poets, however, were successful during the early postliberation years, writing poetry in praise of land reform, modernization, and Chinese heroes of the Korean War. Playwrights were also active, introducing more proletarian themes into their works, some of which incorporated music. By this time, Lao She had begun writing plays, such as Lung-hsü kou (1951; Dragon Beard Ditch), which earned him the prestigious title of People's Artist. Another very popular play, Pai-mao nü (1953; White-Haired Girl) by Ho Ching-chih, was taken from a contemporary folk legend.

      During the mid-1950s, an experiment in liberalization—the Hundred Flowers Campaign—was abruptly terminated as criticism of the party went beyond all expectations; it was followed by an anti-rightist movement that purged the cultural ranks of most preliberation writers and artists. The literary nadir, however, was not reached until the Cultural Revolution (1966–76), when the only literature available were a few carefully screened works by Lu Hsün (Lu Xun), a handful of model revolutionary Peking operas, and the revolutionary-romantic novels of Hao Jan. After the death of Mao and the fall of the Gang of Four, literature made a comeback and most surviving writers were rehabilitated, although the progress was as rocky as the political scene Chinese literature continued to reflect.

      The accusatory “scar literature,” a sort of national catharsis that immediately followed the 10-year “holocaust,” gave way to more professional and more daring writing, as exemplified in the stories of Wang Meng, with their stylistic experiments in stream of consciousness; the symbolic “obscure” poetry of Pei Tao (Bei Dao) and others; the relatively bold dramas (dramatic literature), both for the stage and for the screen, of several playwrights; and the innovative investigative reportage of Liu Pin-yen. In addition to translated literature from the West, literature from Taiwan also began to reach mainland writers and readers as literary restrictions continued to fall gradually.

Taiwanese literature after 1949

      The first decade of literary activities in Taiwan after 1949 was characterized by stereotypical anti-Communist fiction and drippingly sentimental essays and poetry, producing little memorable literature other than novels such as Yang-ko (1954; The Rice-Sprout Song) by Chang Ai-ling (Zhang Ailing), a story of peasant life under Communist rule, and Hsüan-feng (1959; The Whirlwind), Chiang Kuei's novel of power struggles in Shantung. In the 1960s, however, a group of Taiwan University students ushered in the modernist era by publishing their own craftsmanlike stories, which were heavily indebted to such Western masters as Franz Kafka, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf. Many of these writers, such as Pai Hsien-yung, author of Yu-yüan ching-meng (1982; Wandering in the Garden, Waking from a Dream), remained active and influential in the mid-1980s. Vernacular poetry in Taiwan developed around several societies in which modernist, even surrealist, verse was in vogue. These poets (baihua), while not widely accepted by the reading public, strongly influenced the more accessible poets who followed. The late 1960s witnessed the rise of regional (hsiang-t'u) writing, in which the Taiwanese countryside served as the setting for fiction and poetry that effectively captured the dramatic social and psychological effects of transition from a rural to an urban-based society. Huang Ch'un-ming's Ni-szu i-chih lao-mao (1980; The Drowning of an Old Cat) is representative of this nativist school, which in later years gave way to a more nationalistic literature that reflected Taiwan's current political situation. Mainland literature occasionally appears in Taiwanese periodicals, while firsthand experiences and observations by mainland émigrés and overseas Chinese, such as the collection of stories Yin hsien-chang (1976; The Execution of Mayor Yin) by Ch'en Jo-hsi, are given broad exposure.

Howard C. Goldblatt

Additional Reading

General works

Karl Lo, A Guide to the Ssu pu ts'ung k'an: Being an Index to Authors, Titles, and Subjects (1965); Hu Shih, Pai-hua wen-hsüeh shih (“History of Vernacular Literature,” 1929); Wu-Chi Liu, An Introduction to Chinese Literature (1966, reprinted 1967); Yuanjun Feng, An Outline History of Classical Chinese Literature, trans. by Xianyi Yang and Gladys Yang (1983); Burton Watson, Early Chinese Literature (1962); Patrick Hanan, The Chinese Vernacular Story (1981); C.T. Hsia, The Classic Chinese Novel: A Critical Introduction (1968, reissued 1980); Colin Mackerras (ed.), Chinese Theater: From Its Origins to the Present Day (1983), a collection of essays on various eras and genres of traditional drama, its performance, and its audience; William H. Nienhauser, Jr. (ed.), Indiana Companion to Traditional Chinese Literature (1985), containing essays and entries with extensive bibliographies on all aspects of traditional Chinese literature; translations by Arthur Waley and Burton Watson, too numerous to be listed; Wu-Chi Liu and Irving Yucheng Lo (eds.), Sunflower Splendor: Three Thousand Years of Chinese Poetry (1975, reprinted 1977), the most extensive collection of translations; Y.W. Ma and Joseph S.M. Lau (eds.), Traditional Chinese Stories: Themes and Variations (1978), the standard collection of translations; Eugen Feifel (ed. and trans.), Geschichte der chinesischen Literatur: Mit Berücksichtigung ihres geistesgeschichtlichen Hintergrundes, 3rd ed. (1967); Georges Margouliès, Évolution de la prose artistique chinoise (1929), Histoire de la littérature chinoise: prose (1949), and Histoire de la littérature chinoise: poésie (1951); Derk Bodde, “Myths of Ancient China,” in Samuel Noah Kramer (ed.), Mythologies of the Ancient World, pp. 367–408 (1961), a good critical introduction but limited to five classical myths; and Wolfgang Münke, Die klassische chinesische Mythologie (1976).

Modern Chinese literature

All the works mentioned in this section of the article are available in English translation and can be located in Donald A. Gibbs and Yun-Chen Li, A Bibliography of Studies and Translations of Modern Chinese Literature, 1918–1942 (1975); and Winston L.Y. Yang and Nathan K. Mao (eds.), Modern Chinese Fiction: A Guide to Its Study and Appreciation: Essays and Bibliographies (1981). The most useful historical works are Tse-Tsung Chou, The May Fourth Movement: Intellectual Revolution in Modern China (1960, reissued 1967); C.T. Hsia, A History of Modern Chinese Fiction, 2nd ed. (1971); D.W. Fokkema, Literary Doctrine in China and Soviet Influence, 1956–1960 (1965); and Merle Goldman, Literary Dissent in Communist China (1967, reissued 1971). Synopses of representative works are given in Joseph Schyns, 1500 Modern Chinese Novels & Plays (1948, reissued 1970); and Meishi Tsai, Contemporary Chinese Novels and Short Stories, 1949–1974: An Annotated Bibliography (1979). Poetry is treated in Kai-Yu Hsu (ed. and trans.), Twentieth Century Chinese Poetry: An Anthology (1963, reissued 1970); and Angela C.Y. Jung Palandri (ed. and trans.), Modern Verse from Taiwan (1972). The best anthologies of translated literature are Joseph S.M. Lau, C.T. Hsia, and Leo Ou-Fan Lee (eds.), Modern Chinese Stories and Novellas, 1919–1949 (1981); Joseph S.M. Lau (ed.), The Unbroken Chain: An Anthology of Taiwan Fiction Since 1926 (1983); Kai-Yu Hsu (ed.), Literature of the People's Republic of China (1979); Perry Link (ed.), Roses and Thorns: The Second Blooming of the Hundred Flowers in Chinese Fiction, 1979–1980 (1984); and Edward M. Gunn (ed.), Twentieth-Century Chinese Drama: An Anthology (1983).William H. Nienhauser, Jr. Howard C. Goldblatt

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