Chinese literature, the body of works written in Chinese, including lyric

poetry, historical and didactic writing, drama, and various forms of fiction.

scene from Romance of the Three Kingdoms

Key People Liu Cixin, Ezra Pound, Hu Shih, Ban Gu, Lu Xun

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 BCE. Its medium, the Chinese language, 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-Han 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 Yuan [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, at least before the 20th century.
The graphic nature 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 Han 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 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 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, 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. 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.
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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 pianwen (“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 pian. 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 baguwen (“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 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
(guwen, or wenyan) 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 (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.
Origins: c. 1400–221 BCE
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 BCE) 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 LiWilliam H. NienhauserThe Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Literary use of myths

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. Zhou dynasty (c. 1046–
256 BCE) sources are more plentiful, but even these must at times be
supplemented by writings of the Han period (206 BCE–220 CE), 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 Zhou conquest (c. 11th
century BCE), when religious observance connected with the cult of the
dominant deities was proclaimed a royal prerogative. Because of his
temporal position, the king alone was considered qualified to offer sacrifice
and to pray to these deities. Shangdi (“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 in
the early part of the 5th century BCE, institutional inertia and a trend toward
rationalism precluded the revival of a mythological world. Confucius prayed
to Heaven (Tian) 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 Zhou, 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 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 Huangdi (“The Yellow Emperor”)
and Chiyou (“The Wormy Transgressor”), for example, became a part of
Daoist lore and eventually provided models for chapters of two works
of vernacular fiction, Shuihuzhuan (The Water Margin, also translated as All
Men Are Brothers) and Xiyouji (1592; Journey to the West, also partially
translated as Monkey). Other mythological figures such as Kuafu and
the Xiwangmu 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. Qu Yuan,
the ill-fated minister of the state of Chu (771–221 BCE), 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 WilhelmWilliam H. Nienhauser
Poetry
The first anthology of Chinese poetry, known as the Shijing (“Classic of
Poetry”) and consisting of temple, court, and folk songs, was given
definitive form somewhere around the time of Confucius (551–479 BCE). But
its 305 songs are believed to range in date from the beginning of the Zhou
dynasty to the time of their compiling.
The Shijing is generally accounted the third of the Five Classics (Wujing) of
Confucian literature. The other four are: the Yijing (“Classic of Changes”), a
book of divination and cosmology; the Shujing (“Classic of History”), a
collection of official documents; the Liji (“Record of Rites”), a book
of rituals with accompanying anecdotes; and the 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 BCE. The Five Classics have been held in high esteem by Chinese
scholars since the 2nd century BCE. (For a discussion of
the Yijing and Shujing, see below Prose.)
The poems of the Shijing were originally sung to the accompaniment of
music, and some of them, especially temple songs, were also accompanied
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 Shijing 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 Shijing 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 Zhou 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 Zhou armies, are even briefer.
The Shijing 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 BCE 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 Chu—hence the generic appellation Chuci, or “songs
of Chu.” These southern songs, though adorned with end rhymes like the
songs of the Shijing, 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-BCE compositions of the towering genius Qu Yuan,
China’s first known poet.
Among some 25 elegies that are attributed to Qu Yuan, the most important
and longest is Lisao (“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. Qu Yuan committed suicide by drowning himself in the Miluo
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 Shijing, which had few successful imitators, the genre created by Qu
Yuan 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 BCE, brief prose
writings were reported to be numerous, but of these only two collections
have been transmitted: the Shu, or 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 Yi, or 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 Laozi, or Daodejing (“Classic of the Way of
Power”), which is attributed to Laozi, who is credited with being the
founder of Daoism and who might have been an older contemporary of
Confucius; and the 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 Laozi consists of brief summaries of Laozi’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 BCE, 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 Mengzi, 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 Zhuangzi,
attributed to the Daoist sage Zhuangzi, who (as stated in the epilogue of
the Zhuangzi)
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….
The first example of the well-developed essay, however, is found neither in
the Mencius nor in the Zhuangzi but in the Mozi, attributed to Mo Di,
or Mozi, a predecessor of Mencius and Zhuangzi, 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 Xunzi and his pupil, the Legalist Hanfeizi. The peak of this
development, however, was not reached until the appearance of the first
expertly arranged full-length book, Lüshi Chunqiu (“The Spring and Autumn
[Annals] of Mr. Lü”), completed in 240 BCE under the general direction of 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.
Qin and Han dynasties: 221 BCE–220 CE
Poetry
Following the unification of the empire by the Qin dynasty (221–206 BCE)
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
Chu 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 Sima Xiangru, bordered on the frivolous and bombastic. Another
major fu writer, 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 BCE of the Yuefu, 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 yuefu, for the Music Bureau—includes not
only touching lyrics but also charming ballads.
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. Luofuxing (“The Song of Luofu”;
also called Moshangsang, “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 Kongque
dongnanfei (“Southeast the Peacock Flies”). The longest poem of early
Chinese literature (353 lines), it relates the tragedy of a young married
couple who committed suicide as the result of the cruelty of the husband’s
mother. The ballad was probably first sung shortly after 200 CE and grew by
accretion and refinement in oral transmission until it was recorded in final
form for the first time about 550. Yuefu songs, most of which are made up
mainly of five-syllable lines, became the fountainhead of a new type
of poetry, gushi (“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
Sima Qian
Sima Qian, detail, ink and colour on silk; in the National Palace Museum, Taipei.

Prose literature was further developed during the Qin and Han dynasties. In
addition to a prolific output of philosophers and political thinkers—a
brilliant representative of whom is Liu An, prince of Huainan, whose work is
called Huainanzi (c. 140 BCE; “The Master of Huainan”)—an important and
monumental category of Han dynasty literature consists of historical works.
Outstanding among these is the Shiji (c. 85 BCE; “Historical Records”; Eng.
trans. The Records of the Grand Historian of China, 2 vol.) by 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 Shiji was not only the first general history of its kind attempted
in China, but it also set a pattern in organization for dynastic histories of
subsequent ages. An artist as well as a historian, Sima Qian 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. Sima’s great successor, the poet-historian-
soldier Ban Gu, author of the Hanshu (“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 Sima Qian in either scope or style.

Ban Gu’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, wenyan, 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: 220–
618 CE
After the fall of the Han dynasty, there was a long period of political division
(220–589 CE), with barely four decades of precarious unification (280–
316/317 CE). 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 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 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 Mulanshi (“Ballad of Mulan”), which sings of a girl who
disguised herself as a warrior and won glory on the battlefield.

Tao Qian
Tao Qian, portrait by an unknown artist; in the National Palace Museum, Taipei.

Soon the number of writers of “literary” poetry greatly increased. Among

them, two poets deserve special mention. 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. Tao Qian (4th–5th centuries),
also known as Tao Yuanming, 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 Jin dynasty at age 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 Guiqulai ci (“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 gushi, 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 Daoism and later to
Buddhism, nearly all of the major writers began to cultivate an uninhibited
individuality. 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 (Wenfu), 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 Daoist philosopher Ge Hong 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 qingtan (“pure conversation”), intellectual discussions on lofty and
nonmundane matters, recorded in a 5th-century collection
of anecdotes titled Shishuo xinyu (“A New Account of Tales of the World”)
by Liu Yiqing. 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 pianwen (“parallel prose”). In this form, parallel construction of
pairs of sentences and counterbalancing of tonal patterns were the chief
requirements. Pianwen 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, Wenxin diaolong (“The
Literary Mind and the Carving of the Dragon”), by the 6th-century
writer Liu Xie.
Among prose masters of the 6th century, two northerners deserve special
mention: Yang Xuanzhi, author of Luoyang Jialanji (“Record of Buddhist
Temples in Luoyang”), and Li Daoyuan, author
of Shuijingzhu (“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.
Tang and Five Dynasties: 618–960
During the 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 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 jueju (“truncated verse”). An
outgrowth and a shortened version of the lüshi, 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 lüshi 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 gushi (“ancient style”) form still in use, it was possible for an individual
poet to enjoy conformity or freedom as he saw fit.

Li Bai

Of the more than 2,200 Tang 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 Bai, one of the
two major poets of the Tang dynasty, a lover of detachment and freedom,
deliberately avoided the lüshi and chose the less formal verse forms to sing
of friendship or wine. An example is the poem “To Danqiu,” 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.

Du Fu
Du Fu, stone rubbing, Qing dynasty (1644–1911/12).

Generally considered the greatest poet of China was 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 Tang. As an artist, Du 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 Du Fu as a poet-historian was Bai Juyi, who, like his
great predecessor, was deeply concerned with the social problems of his
age. Bai Juyi 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 Xinyuefu
shi (“New Yuefu Poems”).
At the end of the Tang 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 ci, in contrast
with shi, which includes all the verse forms mentioned above. Since the
lines in a ci 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 Tang, 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 ci became the major vehicle of lyrical
expression. Of ci poets in this period, the greatest was Li Yu, last monarch
of the Southern Tang, who was seized in 976 as the new Song
dynasty consolidated its power. Li Yu’s ci 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 ci, which had been sung at
parties and banquets. The following is typical, translated by Jerome Chen
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 ci, the end of the Tang saw the evolution of another new
folk form: bianwen (“popularizations,” not to be confused with pianwen, 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 Yu against the peculiarly
artificial prose style of pianwen, which, cultivated for almost 1,000 years,
had become so burdened with restrictive rules as to make forthright
expression virtually impossible. Han Yu boldly advocated the use of Zhou
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 pianwen. This new freedom
enabled Liu Zongyuan, Han Yu’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 Yu’s pupil Shen Yazhi and Bai Xingjian,
younger brother of the poet Bai Juyi. 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.
Song dynasty: 960–1279
The Song 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 Tang times, were accelerated.
Prose
In prose the reform initiated by Han Yu in the name of ancient, more
straightforward style (guwen) was reemphasized by such 11th-century
writers as Ouyang Xiu and Su Dongpo. 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 guwen style was as important as
their poetry. The guwen movement was further supported by men whose
primary interest was not belles lettres, such as Sima Guang, the statesman-
historian, and Zhu Xi, the scholar-philosopher and principal formulator of
Neo-Confucianism.
In prose fiction there were two distinct trends. Short tales in guwen were
written in ever greater bulk but failed to maintain the level achieved in
the Tang dynasty. The subject matter became more fragmentary
and anecdotal and the style duller. In sharp contrast to the guwen school,
which was still a literary language despite the movement toward
naturalness of expression, there arose a school of storytelling in
the vernacular. 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 huaben (“vernacular story”) type was to open
up new vistas in prose fiction in later periods.
Poetry
Poetry of the conventional type (shi) 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 shi poets of the Song
dynasty, 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.

Li Qingzhao
Li Qingzhao, statue in the Li Qingzhao Memorial, Jinan, Shandong province, China.
(more)

But it was in their utilization of the newer verse form, ci, that Song poets
achieved their greatest distinction, making ci the major genre of the
dynasty. As noted above, the ci form had been popularized at first orally by
women singers, and the first generation of ci 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 ci form
reached the heights of great art. Ouyang Xiu and Li Qingzhao, the latter
generally considered the greatest woman poet of China, may be considered
representatives of this trend. Li Qingzhao’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 ci were Su Dongpo and Xin Qiji, the latter a soldier
turned recluse. It was Xin Qiji who imbued the writing of ci with new
characteristics by rising above rules without breaking them, surpassing in
this respect his contemporaries as well as those who came after him.
Yuan dynasty: 1206–1368
Fleeing from the Jin (Juchen) Tatars, who captured their capital in 1127, the
Song 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 Yuan, 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 Yuan
dynasty provided a unique milieu for unconventional literary activities.
Drama
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 Yuan 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 were
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, Yuanshi, 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 Yuan dramas
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 Yuan dramatists, the following deserve special mention. Guan
Hanqing, the author of some 60 plays, was the first to achieve distinction.
His Dou’e yuan (“Injustice Suffered by Dou’e”) deals with the deprivations
and injustices suffered by the heroine, Dou’e, 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 Shifu,
Guan’s contemporary, wrote Xixiangji (Romance of the Western Chamber),
based on a popular Tang prose romance about the amorous exploits of the
poet Yuan Zhen, renamed Zheng Sheng 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 Yuan play. Ma Zhiyuan, another
contemporary, wrote 14 plays, of which the most celebrated
is Hangongqiu (“Sorrow of the Han Court”). It deals with the tragedy of
a Han dynasty court lady, Wang Zhojun, 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.
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; and (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-Han 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 sanqu (“nondramatic songs”), a
liberalization of the ci, which utilized the spoken language of the people as
fully as possible. Although line length and tonal 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 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 Luo are Sanguozhi
yanyi (Romance of the Three Kingdoms), Shuihuzhuan (The Water Margin),
and Pingyaozhuan (“The Subjugation of the Evil Phantoms”). The best of the
three from a literary standpoint is the Shuihuzhuan, 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 Yuan 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 baguwen (“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 shi and ci 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 Qin-Han school tried to underrate the achievements
of Han Yu and Liu Zongyuan, along with the Song essayists, and proudly
declared that post-Han prose was not worth reading. The Tang-Song school,
on the other hand, accused its opponents of limited vision and
reemphasized Han Yu’s dictum that literature should be the vehicle of Dao,
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 Gong’an school, named for the
birthplace of the three Yuan brothers, of whom the middle one—Yuan
Hongdao—was the best known. The Gong’an school 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 Zhong Xing and Tan Yuanchun, 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 Song dynasty and
maintained in southern China during the period of Mongol domination was
revitalized. This southern drama, also musical and known as chuanqi (“tales
of marvels”), had certain special traits: (1) a chuanqi 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; and (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 chuanqi, 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
Chenyu and his friend the great actor Wei Liangfu. The Kun school,
initiating a style of soft singing and subtle music, was to dominate the
theatre to the end of the 18th century.

Xiyouji
Painting depicting a scene from Xiyouji (Journey to the West).

Aside from drama and daju (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 Cheng’en’s Xiyouji is a fictionalized account of the pilgrimage
of the Chinese monk Xuanzang to India in the 7th century. The subject
matter was not new—it had been used in early huaben, or “vernacular
story,” books and Yuan drama—but it had never been presented at length in
such a lively and rapid-moving narration. 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 Shuihuzhuan, 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 Shuihuzhuan, 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 been
translated into English.
The title of the second novel (the author of which is unknown), 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 Ximen Qing. 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 novel has been banned in China more than once because of its
eroticism, and all copies of the first edition of 1610 were destroyed.
Qing dynasty: 1644–1911/12
The conquest of China by the Manchu, people from the region northeast of
China who set up the Qing 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 ci writing, the 17th-century Manchu poet Nara Singde
(Sinicized name Nalan Xingde) was outstanding, but even he lapsed into
conscious imitation of Southern Tang models except when inspired by the
vastness of open space and the beauties of nature. In nonfictional prose, Jin
Renrui continued the familiar essay form.
Prose fiction
Pu Songling continued the prose romance tradition by writing
in guwen (“classical language”) a series of 431 charming stories of the
uncanny and the supernatural titled Liaozai zhiyi (1766; “Strange Stories
from the Liaozai 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 Tang 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 guwen style
for fiction writing and proceeded to produce a vernacular novel of some one
million words, the Xingshi yinyuanzhuan (“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, Pu Songling had this longest Chinese novel of the old
school published under a pseudonym.
Wu Jingzi satirized the 18th-century literati in a realistic masterpiece, Rulin
waishi (c. 1750; “Unofficial History of the Literati”; Eng. trans. The
Scholars), 55 chapters loosely strung together in the manner of a
picaresque romance. Unlike Pu Songling, 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 Cao Zhan’s Hongloumeng (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 chuanqi 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 Beijing and giving rise to what came to be
designated as Beijing 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 (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 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 Zhou 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 Sima Qian.
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 Rulin waishi, they wrote fiction usually intended for serial publication
and satirizing Chinese society and culture. One of these writers was Liu E,
whose Laocan youji (1904–07; The Travels of Lao Can ), a fictional account
of contemporary life, pointed to the problems confronting the tottering Qing
dynasty.
Poetry, long stagnant, at last began to free itself from the shackles of
traditionalism. The most prominent poet, 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 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;
and 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 Zunxian 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.
May Fourth period

Following the overthrow of the Qing dynasty and the establishment of the
republic in 1911/12, 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 “Wenxue gailiang chuyi” (“Tentative Proposal for Literary
Reform”) was published in Xinqingnian (New Youth), a radical monthly
magazine published in Beijing. In it Hu called for a new national literature
written not in the classical language but in the vernacular, the living
“national language” (guoyu). Chen Duxiu, the editor of Xinqingnian,
supported Hu’s views in his own article “Wenxue geming lun” (“On Literary
Revolution”), which emboldened Hu to hone his arguments further in a
second article (1918), “Jianshe de wenxue geming” (“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 an important part of the larger New Culture Movement for cultural
and sociopolitical reform, which was greatly strengthened by a student
protest on May 4, 1919, 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 Xinqingnian of such stories as “Kuangren riji” (“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 Zhou Shuren. Known by the pseudonym Lu Xun, Zhou had studied in
Japan and, with his younger brother, the noted essayist Zhou Zuoren, had
become a leader of the literary revolution soon after returning to China. Lu
Xun’s acerbic, somewhat Westernized, and often satirical attacks on China’s
feudalistic traditions established him as China’s foremost critic and writer.
His “A-Q zhengzhuan” (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.
Guo Moruo

These early writings provided the impetus for a number of youthful

intellectuals to pool their resources and promote shared ideals by forming
literary associations. In 1920 Shen Yanbin, better known later as Mao Dun,
and others established the Wenxue Yanjiuhui (“Literary Research
Association”), generally referred to as the “realist” or “art-for-life’s-sake”
school, which assumed the editorship of the established literary magazine
Xiaoshuo yuebao (Short Story Monthly). Perhaps the most important literary
magazine of the early 1920s, Xiaoshuo yuebao was used by the Association
to promote the so-called “new literature,” most major fiction writers
publishing their works in it 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 Chuangzao 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, 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 literature” was built. This was particularly true in drama and
poetry, in which figures such as Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen and
Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore, respectively, were as well known to
Chinese readers as indigenous playwrights and poets. In drama, the Nanguo
She (“South China Society”), founded by the former Creationist Tian Han,
produced and performed several short plays that were a mixture of critical
realism and melodrama, while poets of the Xinyue She (“Crescent Moon
Society”), such as the British-educated Xu Zhimo and the American-educated
Wen Yiduo, 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 Zuoyi Zuojia Lianmeng
(“League of Left-Wing Writers”), whose membership included many
influential writers. Lu Xun, 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 Beijing to Shanghai in 1927, directed most of his
creative energies to translating Russian literature and writing the bitingly
satirical random essays (zawen) that became his trademark. Among the
many active prewar novelists, the most successful were Mao Dun, Lao She,
and Ba Jin.

Mao Dun 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, Ziye (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”—Luotuo Xiangzi
(1936; “Camel Xiangzi,” published in English in a bowdlerized translation as
Rickshaw Boy, 1945).

Ba Jin, a prominent anarchist, was the most popular novelist of the period. A
prolific writer, he is known primarily for his autobiographical novel Jia (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 Xiao Jun and Xiao Hong and the powerful short stories of
Duanmu Hongliang 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 Qing, Tian Jian, and Zang Kejia 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 those authors include the contemplative sonnets
of Feng Zhi, the urbane songs of Beijing by Bian Zhilin, and the romantic
verses of He Qifang. Less popular but more daring were Dai Wangshu and Li
Jinfa, poets published in Xiandai (“Contemporary Age”), a Shanghai literary
magazine. The latter 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, probably the most spectacular advances were made in drama,
largely through 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 Cao Yu,
whose first play, Leiyu (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 Richu (1936;
Sunrise) and Yuanye (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 Cao Yu’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: 1937–49

During the Sino-Japanese War (1937–45), most writers fled to the interior,
where they contributed to the war effort by writing patriotic literature under
the banner of the Zhonghua Quanguo Wenyijie Kangdi Xiehui (“All-China
Anti-Japanese Federation of Writers and Artists”), founded in 1938 and
directed by Lao She. All genres were represented, including reportage
(baogao wenxue), 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 Ba Jin, Cao Yu, and Mao Dun. The short stories and novels that
Sha Ding wrote in the late 1930s and mid-1940s also received acclaim from
fellow writers. Ding Ling’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 Yan’an. Another female writer of note at the
time was Zhang Ailing (Eileen Chang), whose career as a writer began in
occupied Shanghai and whose fiction featured exquisite narratives and a
sense of coming destruction.

The growing dissatisfaction of intellectuals with the Nationalist government

in Chongqing 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.

1949–76

Literature on the China mainland from 1949 through much of the 1970s was
largely a reflection of political campaigns and ideological battles. This state
of affairs can be traced to Mao Zedong’s 1942 “Zai Yan’an wenyi zuotanhui
shang de jianghua” (“Talks at the Yan’an 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 Guo Moruo elected as its first chairman.

Mao’s literary ideals had first been realized in the 1940s by Zhao Shuli,
whose early stories, such as “Li Youcai banhua” (“The Rhymes of Li Youcai”),
were models of proletarian literature, both in form and in content. As the civil
war neared its conclusion, novels of land reform, such as Ding Ling’s
prizewinning Taiyang zhao zai Sangganhe shang (1949; The Sun Shines over
the Sanggan River) and Baofeng zhouyu (1949; The Hurricane) by Zhou Libo,
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
Longxugou (1951; Dragon Beard Ditch), which earned him the prestigious
title of People’s Artist. Another very popular play, Baimaonü (1953; White-
Haired Girl) by He Jingzhi, was taken from a contemporary folk legend. It was
made a model that all writers were supposed to follow.

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 and deprived many
young writers such as Liu Binyan and Wang Meng of their freedom to write.
The literary nadir, however, was not reached until the Cultural Revolution
(1966–76), when the only literature available was a few carefully screened
works by Lu Xun, a handful of model revolutionary operas, known as
yangbanxi, and the revolutionary-romantic novels of Hao Ran. 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.

After the Cultural Revolution

Gao Xingjian

Gao Xingjian, 2008.

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, and of Bai Hua, with their sharp
political criticism of the previous 20 years; the symbolic “obscure” poetry of
Bei Dao and others; the relatively bold dramas, both for the stage and for the
screen, of several playwrights such as Gao Xingjian, who, after becoming a
French citizen in 1994, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2000; and the
innovative investigative reportage of Liu Binyan. In addition to translated
literature from the West, the works of some important modern writers, such
as Shen Congwen and Zhang Ailing, were rediscovered in the mid-1980s
after an absence from mainland bookstores and literary histories for almost
30 years.

Compared with the active literary scene of the early 1980s, when almost
every important literary magazine published more than a million copies, the
late 1980s saw the beginning of a decline in the influence of literature in
society. Nevertheless, the overall scale of literary activity remained large.
Older writers such as Wang Zengqi and Gao Xiaosheng—the latter’s short
stories about Chen Huansheng, a simple and honest peasant, met with
success—continued to write, while younger writers emerged: Wang Anyi; Mo
Yan, who gained a literary reputation with his fanciful story Touming de
hongluobo (1984; The Diaphanous Red Radish) and went on to win the Nobel
Prize for Literature in 2012; Zhang Chenzhi; Jia Pingwa; Han Shaogong; A
Chen, whose stories, especially Qiwang (1984; The King of Chess), were seen
as literary treasures; and Shi Tiesheng, Wang Shuo, and Yu Hua, whose
novels won international attention in the mid-1990s and afterward.