Greatest modern Chinese writers? [Archive]

JBI

07-28-2015, 02:47 PM

Thank you for the confidence.

The general problem with Chinese literature in the 20th century, is actually that it is specifically that - Chinese. The country has been obsessed with itself for about 100 years now, and very little of its modern literature, particularly prose fiction, transcends.

Lu Xun is the obvious choice as a major Asian modernist, with something that is very much worth reading. Qian Zhongshu is better regarded as a scholar than novelist in China proper, though I feel he was just so-so on both fronts (don't tell my professor, who,being his student, quotes him incessantly as a way of inflating his own prestige). Shen Congwen and Zhang Ailing are relatively well liked and well translated in the Western world, and I would not hesitate to recommend either of them. Of the 80s generation, Su Tong, Mo Yan and my favorite Yu Hua seem to be the best represented. After 1989 though things in terms of fiction have become weak and commercial.

My second recommendation would be probably the most successful novelist in Chinese writing, Jin Yong, who has proven incredibly difficult to translate in any way shape or form, though there was a website with pretty decent English translations available a few years ago. In terms of who Chinese people actually like to read, he is with out a doubt the best liked, and I would say the best achieved living author (though he hasn't written anything in decades).

As for essays, I am not quite so sure what is available in English. There was a great volume of essays titled the Chinese Essay that is floating around. Also Columbia has put out some major anthologies of translation that are worth checking out.

Even with that being said, I would warn most people that the most beloved or relevant Chinese authors are either overly political, or else china-obsessed. Very rarely is anything except China talked about, and even then, most of the 20th century was writing in a political context. With such a context gone, much of it has become too dated for most foreign readers to care about.

For the best scholarship on this sort of stuff, check out C. T. Hsia's work, which pretty much set up and determined the reception of Chinese fiction in the past 30 years since the cultural revolution.

Now, that being said, most likely Taiwan authors have fared better per capita. Chinese American authors, sadly to say, however, are a constant disappointment. Either they are too preoccupied with being Chinese American, or else too preoccupied with being Chinese. Either way they are for the most part not very interesting. The Joy Luck Club reads like a knockoff Color Purple, and Maxine Hong Kingston is mediocre as both author and critic. The problem is simply that the wealth of Chinese sources are either poorly understood, or else not as vivid as they would be in a more authentic Chinese context, whereas the immigrant or American narrative is tainted by the Chinese community's refusal to accept themselves into the proper mainstream of American culture (that is, they cling to a half-culture, a sort of echo of China in the United States). Whereas Jewish fiction and criticism in the US makes sense in the context of Jews traditionally not "belonging" to Europe, and therefore working to struggle into the American narrative, the Chinese experience in American literature is more obsessed with clinging to the past, and fending off integration into the adopted country. Whereas the Jews could look to a lost Europe that would be no more, and the prospects of a future in a new world, Chinese authors seem unable to write a proper narrative, and instead seek to establish a niche by flaunting a "superior" or "exotic" tradition. That is, they promote their otherness as Chinese as a way of selling tickets to the Chinese show, regardless of the fact that a more authentic copy exists in China, or that in every way shape and form except my skin color, I am far more Chinese and versed in Chinese culture.