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LI QINGXI
8
SEARCHING FOR ROOTS
Anticultural Return in Mainland Chinese Literature of the 1980s
LI QINGXI
For a number of avant-garde novelists and critics, who are like half-grown
children still wrapped up in the games of yesterday, the Hangzhou
symposium of December 19841 provides an inexhaustible topic of discussion. Perhaps for them, the opportunity to participate directly in a revolution in fiction will be hard to find again.
Han Shaogong is one of the novelists who participated in this dialogue. After the symposium, he published his article Wenxue de gen
[The roots of literature],2 which attracted widespread attention and introduced the term xungen (searching for roots) to mean seeking oneself in
the deep spirit of ones people and cultural essence. This article was later
referred to as the Root-Seeking Manifesto. Other major root-seeking
school texts to appear at the time include Zheng Wanlongs Wode gen
[My roots],3 Li Hangyus Li yi li women de gen [Lets untangle our
roots],4 and Ah Chengs Wenhua zhiyuezhe renlei [Culture conditions
humankind].5 It is worth noting that the several novelists mentioned above
were parties to the symposium. However, the discussion at the time did
not focus completely on cultural root-seeking. The topic of the conference
was Literature of the New Era: Review and Predictions (Xin shiqi
wenxue: huigu yu yuce). Another issue discussed frequently by participants was how to break out of existing artistic norms of fiction. Clearly,
such broad topics gave the novelists and critics who participated rich food
for thought.
Of course, the artistic norms of fiction are not entirely artistic. The
initial scar literature (shanghen wenxue) phase at the beginning of the
New Era of mainland fiction basically continued the conventions of the
1950s and 1960s, still unable to shake free from reflectionism and
typicalism. Political norms and theoretical norms were also involved. At
the beginning of the 1980s, both subject matter and the manner of writing
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Long ago, the late philosopher Jin Yuelin discovered a logical fallacy in
Chinese value systems. As an example, he brought up two old Chinese
sayings: friends are worth a thousand gold taels and money is like
manure. Separately, they make sense, but together they make trouble: an
equivalence is established between friends and manure.
On the surface this is just a joke, but it actually reflects an ambiguity
of value relations. The logical reason these two statements cannot be put
together is that their value positions are in a perfectly inverse relationship.
When someone compares friends to wealth, the standard of values is
material, but when someone compares money with manure, the spiritual
has imperceptibly become the source of value. This relationship creates a
vicious cycle. However, it also indicates the possibility of transcendence:
When spiritual values cannot be expressed by spiritual means and there is
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attitudes into literary works, narration breaks through the usual tendency
toward sociological values.
The creative interest of the root-seeking school generally emphasizes
peoples basic survival behaviors and a liberated state of life, including
sexual exploration. Thus, at the same time that many works take a worldly
point of view, they also construct a bipolar opposition of values. For
example, Zheng Wanlongs Yixiang yiwen [Other stories from other
places] series, composed of over a dozen short stories, repeatedly exposes
conflicts between money and sexual desire or human nature, while
describing many awkward human situations. This is not only meant to
challenge civilized laws that supposedly transcend the worldly. Rootseeking authors treatment of all kinds of human desire show that the
further one is immersed in the most basic matters, the less sure ones grasp
of human values becomes. Thus, proposing a bipolar opposition of
categories does not imply any kind of logical summary of human fate.
The reason root-seeking writers put so much emphasis on the value
relations of everyday life is precisely because they have discovered in
peoples basic survival activities the fictitious nature of fate. The most
feasible method of authentically representing the freedom of human
character is to penetrate the accumulated cultural layers of politics,
economics, ethics, and law, and return to the original state of life.
Authentic humanity, the true face of humankind, is often concealed under
these thickly accumulated layers of culture, both historical and realistic.
Some root-seeking works directly treat the confrontation between
culture and human nature, as does Wang Anyis Xiao Bao zhuang [Little
Bao village]. Perhaps Wang Anyi cannot be considered a typical rootseeking writer, yet Little Bao Village is a typical root-seeking work. The
story unfolds in a polite, decorous village in which ancient customs are
still preserved; a child named Lao Zha (Scoop up the dregs) is killed in
the effort to save someone elses life, and the deed is celebrated in the
village as a model of righteousness, expressing the pride of the ancestors,
and is greatly played up by the media. What then happens is that much
behavior referred to as humane (ren) is forced into the category of
seemly (li ), resulting in a number of incidents. The confrontation between humaneness (ren) and decorum (li ) is an internal contradiction
within the ethical thought of Chinese Confucianism. The disclosure of this
conflict within a root-seeking work is also an expression of peoples
(humanitys?) cultural situation. In a down-to-earth context, the contrast
between humaneness and decorum is particularly obvious.
Looking at the joys and sorrows of human life through worldly eyes
can be viewed as one kind of understanding. However, this does not mean
that the authors aesthetic consciousness and interest are entirely ex-
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One impression that can be gained from the rough outline above is
that the narratorial attitude of the root-seeking school is suggestive of the
aesthetics of phenomenology in its obvious tendency toward returning to
things in themselves. Perhaps it is for just this reason that critical interest
in the root-seeking school has not died out along with writers rootseeking craze.
In the mid-1980s, although there have been many discussions of rootseeking, they have for various reasons been unable to penetrate beyond a
certain level. It seems also that no one has yet examined it from the point
of view of philosophical aesthetics. Many scholars have focused on
characteristic subject matter and cultural background at the expense of a
recognition of the narratorial attitude. Moreover, disapproving opinions of
the root-seeking school are often based on a superficial understanding,
taking root-seeking to be simply a return to tradition, a cultural nostalgia,
or re-establishment of the ways of the ancients (fugu). This critique
comes both from certain conservatives and from a number of progressive
types. In the development of mainland Chinese literature in the 1980s, it
seems that root-seeking alone has been attacked by both otherwise
incompatible camps. In fact, the opinions of both camps represent a single
viewpoint: unwillingness to allow literature to break the established
pattern of ideological struggle, and thus intolerance of the liberal narratorial attitude of escape from the status quo.
It must be pointed out here that in the history of literature, the
intellectual trends and schools that have raised the flag of a return to the
ancients (fugu) have never simply returned to the past, and indeed have
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usually ended up being progressive forces; examples include the European Renaissance and the Ancient Literature movement of the Chinese
Tang dynasty (A.D. 618907). The reasons that authors undertook the
quest for roots, as I have pointed out in the first two sections of this
article, must first be considered in light of the actual circumstances of the
literary scene in mainland China in the 1980s.
Of course, from the point of view of internal aesthetics, the rootseeking school is clearly heir in some sense to the traditional Chinese
spirit. However, its selectivity in this respect is also very evident: rootseeking works are rarely concerned with moral exhortation, and indeed
seem not overly interested in moral issues at all. Quest for roots authors
have never given the impression of allying themselves with the traditional
ideas of poetry as education (shijiao) or music as ritual propriety
(liyue). The mission of the return to cultural roots has never been to
promote remolding the national character through Confucian cultivation,
but rather to seek the worth of Chinese peoples thought through explorations of artistic method and aesthetic attitude. Root-seeking authors have
neither the Neo-Confucianists burning ambition to re-establish Chinese
culture nor the superficial utilitarian attitude of Zhang Yimous adoption of
foreign culture. Their works show that they have instead inherited the
ontological spirit of returning to unpolished purity and the homage to
nature of Daoism. At the same time, in humanity they seek a classical
freedom of character, which overlaps with the Confucian notion of
humaneness (ren).
All of this is closely related to what in phenomenology is referred to as
return to the origin. An important implication of this return is the
bringing back of cultural space and time to the lifeworld formed by direct
experience. Root-seeking authors adopt a descriptive attitude in their
treatment of their artistic subjects as they write the human struggle for
survival and the everyday life of ordinary people, emphasizing peoples
basic desires and traditional, worldly valuesall to grasp direct experience. The basic tendency is the pursuit of human character. Only when
shaken free of the surrounding cultural time-space and returned to things
in themselves is the self able to enter a realm of unrestrained freedom.
In actual spiritual explorations, a return to origins cannot possibly be
a thorough return to nature; thus in the root-seeking authors process of
pursuing the untrammeled state of things, they nevertheless require some
cultural support. However, while seeking a spiritual fulcrum, they have at
least shed the cultural accumulations on the surface. Put in these terms,
the quest for cultural roots is actually an anticultural return. Although it
manifests an inheritance of certain aspects of Chinese culture, it is also
influenced by trends of Western philosophy. Chinese culture is an ex-
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NOTES
1. This conference was sponsored jointly by the editorial board of Shanghai
wenxue, Zhejiang wenyi chubanshi [Zhejiang literature and arts press], and the
Literary Association of the City of Hangzhou. Among the participating writers
and critics were Ru Zhijuan, Li Ziyun, Zhou Jieren, Li Tuo, Zheng Wanlong, Chen
Jiangong, Han Shaogong, Wu Liang, Nan Fan, Xu Zichen, Chen Sihe, Ah Cheng,
Cai Xiang, Cheng Depei, Ji Hongzhen, Li Qingxi, Li Hangyu, and Huang Zipingover twenty in all. I participated as a representative of Zhejiang Literature
and Arts Press.
2. Han Shaogong, Wenxue de gen, Zuojia [The writer] 4 (1985).
3. Zheng Wanlong, Wode gen, Shanghai wenxue [Shanghai literature] 5
(1985).
4. Li Hangyu, Li yi li women de gen, Zuojia 6 (1985).
5. Ah Cheng, Wenhua zhiyuezhe renlei, Wenyi bao [Literature and art
gazette], July 6, 1985.
6. Guangzhou: Huacheng chubanshe, 1981.
7. Liu Xinwu, Zai xin, qi, guai mianqian [In the face of the new, the
wondrous, and the strange], Du shu [The reader] 7 (1982); Wang Meng, Zhi
Gao Xingjian [To Gao Xingjian], Xiaoshuo jie [The world of fiction] 2 (1982);
Feng Jicai, Li Tuo, and Liu Xinwu, Guanyu dangdai wenxue chuangzuo wenti de
tongxin [A letter on the creative problems of contemporary literature], Shanghai
wenxue 8 (1982).
8. Dufuhaina, Meixue yu zhexue [Aesthetics and philosophy], Chinese trans.
(Beijing: Shehui kexue chubanshe, 1985), 3031.
9. Huang Ziping, Lun zhongguo dangdai duanpian xiaoshuo de yishu fazhan [On the artistic development of contemporary Chinese short stories], Wenxue pinglun 5 (1984).
10. Guigen jiedi, lit., when you get to the root of the matter.