The Chinese considered novels to be inferior to other forms of writing until European colonial power infiltrated China 150 years ago, according to a Victoria University of Wellington expert.
Professor of Chinese Yiyan Wang from the School of Languages and Cultures, who will deliver her inaugural lecture ‘Fiction in modern China: modernity through storytelling’ on Tuesday 17 March, will trace the evolution of Chinese fiction since the late nineteenth century against the background of the historical, social and cultural changes taking place in China during that time.
For many years, she says, most Chinese fiction was written under nom de plumes, because fiction writing wasn’t well regarded.
“Traditionally in Chinese culture the novel or fiction had low cultural status—‘true writing’ was poetry and essays, whereas fiction was considered mere entertainment for common people.
“The Confucian ideology is that writing should serve a good social or political purpose.”
This all changed when Europeans came to China, bringing items such as printing presses that completely transformed the production, dissemination and consumption of fiction, says Professor Wang.
“Newspapers and magazines ran serialised stories in a drive to sell their publications and as a result more and more people became interested in storytelling,” she says. “Also, within a 30-year period from the last decade of the nineteenth century, around 400 book titles from other countries were translated into the Chinese language, which opened Chinese people’s minds about storytelling.
“They began to realise that storytelling could be used for grand purposes such as nation building, and that it had the capacity to probe into the depths of individuals’ psychology and emotions.”
Because of China’s oral tradition, the stories that do well are those with a strong plot-driven narrative and characters that are recognisable archetypes, says Professor Wang. “Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries for instance, with its characters based on astrology, has similarities in Chinese fiction, and this novel has been translated into Chinese.”
Despite modern intellectual beliefs about using stories to enlighten the masses, Professor Wang says in the 1920s the most widely-read Chinese stories were ‘butterfly’ love stories with little social significance or depth.
When the Communists took control of China in 1949, those love stories were banned but they are widely available now.
“Now literature is back and the publishing industry is thriving. China produces more than 1,000 novels each year, but the trend these days in China is to read everything online.”
What: Fiction in modern China: modernity through storytelling
When: 6pm, Tuesday 17 March
Where: Lecture Theatre KKLT301, Level 3, Kirk Building, Kelburn Campus
RSVP by Monday 16 March. Phone 04-463 6700 or email rsvp@vuw.ac.nz with ‘Wang’ in the subject line.
For more information contact Professor Yiyan Wang on 04-463 6456 or yiyan.wang@vuw.ac.nz.
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