The Big Red Book of Modern Chinese Literature: Writings from the Mainland in the Long Twentieth Century

by Yunte Huang (Editor)

Overview

A panoramic vision of the Chinese literary landscape across the twentieth century.

Award-winning literary scholar and poet Yunte Huang here gathers together an intimate and authoritative selection of significant works, in outstanding translations, from nearly fifty Chinese writers, that together express a search for the soul of modern China. From the 1912 overthrow of a millennia-long monarchy to the Cultural Revolution, to China’s rise as a global military and economic superpower, the Chinese literary imagination has encompassed an astonishing array of moods and styles—from sublime lyricism to witty surrealism, poignant documentary to the ironic, the transgressive, and the defiant.

Huang provides the requisite context for these revelatory works of fiction, poetry, essays, letters, and speeches in helpful headnotes, chronologies, and brief introductions to the Republican, Revolutionary, and Post-Mao Eras. From Lu Xun’s Call to Arms (1923) to Gao Xinjiang’s Nobel Prize–winning Soul Mountain (1990), this remarkable anthology features writers both known and unknown in its celebration of the versatility of writing. From belles lettres to literary propaganda, from poetic revolution to pulp fiction, The Big Red Book of Modern Chinese Literature is an eye-opening, mesmerizing, and indispensable portrait of China in the tumultuous twentieth century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393353808
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	08/22/2017
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	624
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.10(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Yunte Huang, a Guggenheim Fellow, has taught at Harvard and the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he is a Distinguished Professor of English. The author of the Edgar Award–winning biography Charlie Chan and Inseparable, both NBCC finalists, Huang speaks frequently about American popular culture.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction xiii

Part 1 1911-1949

Introduction to the Republican Era 5

Lu Xun 9

Preface to Call to Arms 9

A Madman's Diary 15

Hu Shih 27

The Butterflies 27

Dream and Poetry 28

One Smile 28

To the Tune of Shengzhazi 29

Guo Moruo 30

The Streets of Heaven 30

The Sky Dog 31

The Nirvana of the Feng and Huang: Prelude 32

Liu Bannong 35

How Can I Not Miss Her 35

Paper Thin 36

Xu Dishan 37

The Peanut 37

I Think 38

Bing Xin 40

A Maze of Stars (selections) 40

Spring Water (selections) 42

Li Jinfa 44

The Abandoned Woman 44

The Expression of Time 45

Yu Dafu 48

Malady of Spring Nights 48

He Haiming 61

For the Love of Her Feet 61

Zhu Ziqing 72

The Moonlit Lotus Pond 72

Xu Zhimo 77

Second Farewell to Cambridge 77

By Chance 79

Wen Yiduo 80

The Dead Water 80

Perhaps (A Dirge) 81

Confession 82

Ding Ling 83

Miss Sophia's Diary (excerpt) 84

Mao Dun 107

Painfoow (excerpt) 107

Ba Jin 140

Family (excerpts) 140

Dai Wangshu 166

Rainy Alley 167

I Think 168

Shen Congwen 169

Border Town (excerpts) 169

Zhou Zuoren 187

Reading in the Lavatory 187

Lin Yutang 193

My Country and My People (excerpt) 193

Lao She 206

Rickshaw (excerpts) 207

Bian Zhilin 229

Evening 229

Dream of the Old Town 230

Fragment 231

Loneliness 231

Xiao Hong 233

Tales of Hulan River (excerpt) 233

Part 2 1949-1976

Introduction to the Revolutionary Era 273

Mao Zedong 276

Changsha 277

Mount Liupan 278

Snow 278

Quotations from Chairman Mao (excerpts) 279

Ai Qing 282

Wheelbarrow 283

Dayanhe-My Wet Nurse 283

On a Chilean Cigarette Package 287

Wang Meng 289

The Young Man Who Has Just Arrived at the Organization Department (excerpts) 290

Zhao Shuli 308

The Unglovable Hands 308

Anonymous 321

The Red Lantern: A Revolutionary Peking Opera in Eleven Acts (excerpt) 321

Part 3 1976 - Present

Introduction to the Post-Mao Era 339

Bei Dao 342

The Answer 343

Let's Go 344

Notes from the City of the Sun 345

The Red Sailboat 347

City Gate Open Up (excerpt) 348

Gu Cheng 356

A Generation 356

Nameless Flowers 357

Farewell, Cemetery 357

I'm a Willful Child 365

Mo Yan 368

Red Sorghum (excerpts) 369

Shu Ting 386

To an Oak 386

A Roadside Encounter 388

Assembly Line 388

Where the Soul Dwells 389

Liu Suola 391

In Search of the King of Singers (excerpts) 391

Yang Lian 412

Norlang 413

Burial Ground 420

The Book of Exile 423

Masks and Crocodile (selections) 424

Can Xue 425

Hut on the Mountain 425

Wang Anyi 431

Love in a Small Town (excerpt) 431

Zhai Yongming 460

Premonition 460

Hypnosis 461

The Language of the '50s 462

Hai Zi 464

Your Hands 464

Facing the Ocean, Spring Warms Flowers Open 465

Spring, Ten Hai Zis 466

Ma Yuan 467

Thirteen Ways to Fold a Paper Hawk 467

Che Qianzi 486

The Night in the End 487

Sign: Inspired by a Letter 488

A Chinese Character Comic Strip 489

An Antique Style Door Screen 490

Yu Jian 491

File o 492

Chi Zijian 512

Night Comes to Calabash Street 512

Yu Hua 525

On the Road at Eighteen 525

Su Tong 534

Raise the Red Lantern (excerpt) 534

Zhang Zao 560

A Starry Moment 560

Into the Mirror 561

Elegy 562

Xi Chuan 564

On the Other Side of the River 564

Blackout 565

Far Away 566

Yu Xinqiao 568

If I Have to Die 568

Epitaph 569

The Dead Are Mourning the Living 570

Self-Introduction 570

Gao Xingjian 572

Soul Mountain (excerpts) 573

Cui Jian 601

Nothing to My Name 601

Permissions 603

Editorial Reviews

"Exceptional. Yunte Huang, scholar, poet, and translator, brings his literary erudition, poetic sensibility, and personal background to bear on his selections from a rich diversity of genres. For the general reader, this ‘big’ book is heavy but reads ‘light’ because it is lucidly presented with smooth translations and succinct introductions. . . . It provides a subtle but ironic counterpoint to the ideological weight of Mao’s Little Red Book."

Leo Ou-fan Lee

"[A] worthwhile anthology …. that manages to combine the established canon with less-well-known selections…. [Its] breadth and variety…will, one hopes, encourage new readers to explore more Chinese literature in full translations."

Julia Lovell

"[A] big, groundbreaking introduction [to modern Chinese literature]…an eye-opening success."

Christian Science Monitor - Steve Donoghue

"An excellent collection. "

Los Angeles Review of Books - Liz Carter

"This is the first anthology to give adequate attention to the diverse, challenging literary currents of the past three decades, when writers built on and expanded the literary creativity of the first half of the twentieth century. With the help of this volume, we see the dry spell of the Mao period as merely an enforced interlude in a century of creative ferment."

Andrew J. Nathan

…it's heartening to see a serious publisher, one whose list is geared to the general reader, invest in an anthology that manages to combine the established canon with less-well-known selections. The breadth and variety of The Big Red Book of Modern Chinese Literature will, one hopes, encourage new readers to explore more Chinese literature in full translations.

The New York Times Book Review - Julia Lovell

★ 01/04/2016
Guggenheim fellow and Edgar Award–winning author Huang (Charlie Chan) edits and does much of the translation in this superb and suitably massive compendium of Chinese literature that stretches from the downfall of the Qing dynasty in 1912 to the present. In his introduction, Huang calls this a "search for the soul of modern China." That search takes readers from the sometimes giddy works of the republican era through the constrained literature of Maoist times to the broad range of styles in the post-Mao period. Among the many novel excerpts are selections from Nobel laureate Mo Yan's Red Sorghum, full of vibrant colors, odors, sounds, and action, and from Nobel laureate Gao Xingjian's thoughtful Soul Mountain. Shorter works appear in abundance as well, with pieces from Lu Xun opening the collection, including "A Madman's Diary," his disturbing allegorical critique of traditional Chinese society. Poetry abounds, ranging from the very brief "mini poems" of Bing Xin to Yang Lian's longer magical verselike poem Norlang, about a male Tibetan deity. While the republican and post-Mao eras receive the lion's share of this collection's pages, the revolutionary era is well represented, by poetry from Mao Zedong himself and selections from the opera The Red Lantern. Huang does not neglect nonfiction works: the book includes Lin Juemin's "Last Letter to His Wife" and even Zhou Zuoren's "Reading in the Lavatory." A treasure trove for any reader interested in Chinese literature. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

"These writings belong to no single canon, obey no single aesthetic or ideological code, advance no one agenda. They are simply the equipment that helped three generations of Chinese men and women find their way through the dangerous twentieth century, and to read through it is to join them on their journey."

Haun Saussy

"A brilliant and unique compilation. From Yu Dafu’s touching tale of finding friendship (1923) to Bei Dao’s account of what it was like to grow up in an apartment containing only three lightbulbs (2010), you will be enchanted by this collection. The Big Red Book changes the way we read our own literature."

Marjorie Perloff

09/15/2015
Embracing the republican, revolutionary, and postrevolutionary eras, this work offers a thoroughgoing overview of a century's worth of Chinese literature. Nearly 50 writers are represented, with genres embracing fiction, poetry, essays, songs, and even speeches, and the scholarly apparatus includes an opening essay and headnotes, time lines, and brief introductions. Huang, an English professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, authored the national best-selling, Edgar-winning Charlie Chan.

Library Journal