Chinese Literature

I had thought there would be tons and tons of material on the WWW on this, but after combing the WWW, there proved to be minimal English material on Chinese literature. Most material on the WWW, I regret to say, are in Chinese (using Big-5/GB/HZ codes for display.) So I will fill in the blanks and tell you what little I know, and show you links where I managed to find something worthwhile.

One of the greatest contribution of the Chinese character is its cohesive power for the civilization. While there are hundreds of different dialects in China, there is only one version of written Chinese (this was changed when the Communist introduced the simplified characters as a means of raising literacy, but the effect of this is as yet minimal.) Different locales, regions, ethnic groups, etc. would have split up long ago if it were not for this one fact. Phonetic languages such as English allows for the possiblity that two people drift apart and, in time, will be unable to understand each other. No such problem for those who use Chinese. This is the main reason why China as a civilization, however weak the government, however rampant was civil disorder, lasted for thousands of years without breaking apart.

In the 100's, paper was invented by a eunich, Cai Lun. Before this, texts were either inscribed onto bamboo pieces, which were heavy, with a knife, or written onto strips of cloth, which were expensive. Cai Lun used tree barks to make paper, and presented it to the emperor in the year 105.

In the 1030's, Bi Xing invented the printing press. However, the invention was not used widely, possibly due the the lack of demand in a static agricultural society.

A Brief History of Chinese Poetry

Classical Chinese Poetry - by www.ChinaPage.com

Chinese Poetry - a fairly comprehensive poetry site maintained by Gregory Gao, UIUC

I am giving Chinese poetry a separate section because I think its uniqueness in the world of literature deserves one.

One problem with Chinese poetry is that it doesn't translate very well into English. As a matter of fact, I don't think I am going out on a limb when I say it is impossible. I do so much wish to share this beautiful literary art form with the rest of the world, but it simply can not be done (unless you learn Chinese.)

This is because the subject of a sentence in a Chinese poem is often implied. And through skillful combination and placement of Chinese characters, which are often imprecise and have more than one meaning, a misty yet painting like imagery can be invoked in the reader. Think of an old style Chinese painting, with its outlines much softened by ink that was a tad too watery, but the image was invoked in your mind by a line of text, and you get my meaning. In translation, much of the subtleties, hence its intrinsic beauty, in a poem is often lost. Not only can this not be translated into a foreign language, it can bot even be translated into the everyday-styled text of Chinese without losing its beauty.

As I am fluent in both Chinese and English, believe me when I say I have yet to see what I would call "good" translation of Chinese poetry from anyone, including the master translators and sinologists. Reading the translated version always evoke less feelings in me than reading the original, which is not what a "good" translation should do.

For example, one particular type of Tang Shi (poetry most popular in, you guessed it, the Tang Dynasty) is made up of four sentences, composing of five characters each. A side fact: there is a phonetic system in which Chinese characters are classified into two classes. In each pair of sentences, each character must also be in the opposite phonetic class mentioned before. Imagine an iambic pentameter where every syllable must also adhere to a certain scheme as well, and you might get my drift. So a poem must not only visually and structurally correct, but must also audioly correct. And this is before rhyming even comes in! Now try translating all that into English, and you have a nightmare on your hands.

There are many types of Chinese poetry, each from a different era, each with distinct form and style. The earliest poetry collection was the Shi Jing, which included peoms by the aristocrats as well as peasants. This book first appeared in twelfth century B.C., but was edited by Confucius in sixth century B.C., who only retained the 300 peoms he deemed politically correct, and discarder the rest. Most poems in the Shi Jing were short and simple in form, composed of ten sentences, with three to five characters per sentence. Their contents covered a wide area, ranging from life in general, war to peace, private bed chambers to the royal court, from farming to government, and from politics to romance.

The first famous Chinese poet was Qu Yuan, who died around 299 B.C.. An official of the government of Chu, he was pained by the impotance of his government, and was not afraid of critizing it. For this he was prosecuted and demoted, and in his grief, he drowned himself in a lake. As he was a beloved official, people rushed to his rescue on boats, throwing rice dumplings into the lake so that the fishes will not munch on his body. Thus was the origin of the Dragon Boat Festival. Qu Yuan's famous long poem, Li Sao, was a description of his love and frustration with his country, using the dialects of Chu. Although the Chu dialect also used Chinese characters, it was quite different from the northern dialects, and Qu Yuan's poems were difficult to understand without footnotes. His poems were compiled with works by other Chu poets into a volume called Chu Ci, as in Selected Poems from the Chu Kingdom. Most Chu Ci poems are long and descriptie in form, in contrast with those in the Shi Jing, and is a form of southern folk literature, retaining the customs and languages of the Chu Kingdom.

By second century B.C., Han Fu became the popular form of poetry, named after the Western Han Dynasty of the period. Fu has the form of peoms in Chu Ci, but without using the local dialect, while its content is similar to Shi Jing's poems, but covering a much broader area.

By the eigth century, Chinese poetry reached new heights with the advent of Shi. Over half of all famous Chinese poets were from the two centuries when Tang Shi (Poetry of the Tang Dynasty) was in vogue. Up to the twentieth century, there are still some 2,300 poets, ranging from emperors and ministers to slaves and prostitutes, with some 48,900 poems available for study. From then on, any Chinese scholar would invariably be a poet of some sort. Of these, the top three were Cen Cen, Li Bai, and Du Fu.

Cen Cen's poetry was famous for the grandeur and his tributes to the heroics of those warriors who were fighting for their country in the deserts of the north. His poetry filled a gap in Chinese literature, namely that related to various aspects of warfare, and other poets, whose work were often concerned with personal affairs of little significance, paled in comparison. He was dubbed "the Hero of Shi."

Li Bai was famous for his love for the bottle and his carefree attitude towards life. He had never entered officialdom, was an optimist who had little regards for money and power, and his poems rarely related to real life events. His creativity and his irreverance towards Confucius were the two elements most lacking in traditional Chinese scholars. And he was a magician with poetry, and was dubbed the "God of Shi."

Du Fu was 11 years Li Bai's junior, and was once a low level official. His life was a tragic one, as he met with civil war and poverty, when his son died of starvation. His poetry was often a dark cry against the cruelty and waste of the aristocracy and the oppression suffered by the peasants. His discipline, careful use of characters in pursuit of perfection in his poems earned him the name the "Saint of Shi."

Shi, however, is limited by its strict requirements on form. Longer poems, expressing more complex emotions, or historic poems, such as the Eliad or the Oddyssey, were practically impossible. As music became more popular, a new form of poetry, Qi, emerged to fill this need. Qi began in the eigth century, but reached its zenith in the tenth century (Song Dynasty), therefore was often referred to as Song Qi. Qi was a liberated version of Shi, with less requirements in form or rhyming scheme. It was often sung to a specific tune, with the name of a piece of Qi denoting the piece of music it was sung to. However, the music pieces had long been lost. There were some 800 famous Qi poets in Song Dynasty, with some 200 professionals. The five most famous Qi poets were Li Yu, Su Dong Bo, Liu Yong, Sin Qi Ji, and Si Da Zu.

Li Yu, of the tenth century, was one of the very few emperor poets in Chinese history. He spent the first half of his life in a worry-free royal court, whlie the latter half of his life as a captive of the Song empire as his empire was conquered. The radically different life styles infused his poetry with a heart wrenching beauty that move the reader to tears (at least that's my opinion.) He was a failure as an emperor, but with his straight narratives and sincere emotions, his accomplishment as a Qi poet was unrivalled, earning him the name "God of Qi."

Su Dong Bo, of the eleventh century, was a man of many talents. He was skilled in Fu, Shi, Qi, essays, paintings, and calligraphy. His poems ranged from the expansive, such as a grand depiction of a historic battle site, to the tragically moving, such as in a poem in rememberance of his deceased wife.

Liu Yong, also of the eleventh century, was a poet of decadence and of his time, as his poems all revolved around romance and the sadness of parting. Under his influence, the number of sentences in Qi increased and became longer songs. His creative skills allowed him to express emotions, events, and scenes that proved difficult for others, yet retaining a natural beauty.

Sin Qi Ji, of the twelfth century and southern Song Dynasty, was born and raised in an environment when the Jurchen (the ruling eace of the later Jin Dynasty) had already successfully conquered northern China. He was a patriot through and through, but was limited by the political climate of "survival first" of southern Song. This showed in his Qi, which were powerful and moving like the waves, yet underneath there was an undercurrent of frustrated resignation. Su Dong Bo's Qi were like a thousand horses galloping during a bright dawn, mighty and free, whereas Sin Qi Ji's Qi were like two armies engaged in pitched battle during dusk, unsettling but nevertheless sincere.

Si Da Zu, straddling the twelfth and thirteenth century, wrote the concluding chapter on two hundred years of Song Qi. His Qi contained the distilled essence of all his predecessors, where every character, every sentence, every sound, every phonic(?), was disciplined, refined, and without blemish. This left little room for further improvement in the area of Qi, and the development of Qi stopped in his time.

A Brief History of Chinese Literature

Chinese characters were supposed to have been invented by an officer of Huangdi, way back in the times of Legends. In the year 414, a Buddist monk, Shi Fa Xian, returned to China from India, with eleven volumes of Buddist texts a knowledge of sanscript. In his attempt to translate these Buddist volumes, the existing characters were found to be inadequate in terms of vocabulary and phonics. A result of his translation work was the addition of new vocabulary, many phonetic translation from sanscript, a new form of written text closer to everyday speech (for example, the Cantonese of today is, in strict terms, only a spoken language and can not be written down verbatim, whereas spoken Mandarin can be), and the definition of four phonetic sounds for each Chinese character.

In the eigth century (Tang Dynasty,) as a continuation of development in poetry from Shi Jing, Chu Qi, to Han Fu, prose and short novels became popular, as well as a style of written text that was close to daily speech (unlike the style used for official documents.) Prose was a style similar to poetry of old, but without rhyming or the restrictions on form. Thoughts were to be expressed clearly and simply. Short novels came about due to the corrupt examination system of the time. Students hoping to enter officialdom needed to be tested, and at the time, those who could attract the attention of high officials, by any means, were often favoured to pass. Since the examination essays were often dry and boring, the students enticed the high officials with, what else, short novels attached. However, all these were still written in the form of text used by the aristocracy, and were incomprehensible to the public.

This changed with appearance of texts written in a form similar to everyday speech around the fifth century. In translating sanscript and inventing new vocabulary, many Chinese Buddist texts were incomprehensible to but a selected few. The need to preach Buddism to the public prompted a further translation from official-styled texts into everyday-speech texts. Then, works in this everyday-styled writing by Chinese people began to appear, with contents ranging form war, romance, social events, etc., and this style of writing became common in literature for public.

After a long period of suppression by the neo-Confucians, Chinese literature was, ironically, liberated in the thirteenth century by the conquering Mongolians of the Yuan Dynasty. From Qi, Yuan Qu was developed. Strictly speaking, Qu was more songs than poetry, as they were lyrics to parts of or the entirety of a play. Drama had always been a peasants' art form. But after the scholarly class was expelled from government by the Yuan government, it was given a boost as many scholars could now participate in its development without the fear of neo-Confucian whips. Although developed from Tang Shi and Song Qi, the creativity and scope of Qu far exceeded its predecessors. Scholars, now with their creative energy given a free rein, wrote comedies making fun of the aristocracy, satires about the Confucian saints, and plays glorifying love. Works concerning morality were few and far between, and most works were infused with sincere emotions. This was a phenomenon unseen since the days when the Western Han Dynasty made Confucianism the mainstream, and the only, philosophy.

In the sixteenth century, a new era in literature began: the era of the novels. Three novels of great literary accomplishments appeared in this time: The Three Kingdoms, On the Water Margin, and A Journey West.

The Three Kingdoms was written by Luo Guan Zhong, whose background remained unclear. This novel is a narrative depicting the struggle and eventual unification of the three kingdoms of Wei, Su, and Wu during the third century. While these stories had been passed around in the polulation since the tenth century, it wasn't until Luo Guan Zhong compiled and edited them all into one organized story, and a work of great literary value. Many Chinese plays take their material form this novel.

On the Water Margin was written by Shi Nai An, whose background was also unclear. He might have come after Luo Guan Zhong, as On the Water Margin was written in the everyday-speech style of text, whereas The Three Kingdoms was still written in the official-styled text (albeit a very informal one.) The novel is based on thirty-six poeple in the twelfth century who were based out of a marsh area in what is now Shandong Province. Under the rule of a tyrannical emperor and a flooding Huang He (Yellow River), they were active in the plains of northern China, killing corrupt officials and cruel landlords, robbing them of their money and giving it to the poor. Kinda like thirty-six Robin Hoods banded together. The stories of these thirty-six folk heroes had been circulated by the general populace for hundreds of years, and Shi Nai An compiled them into a volume of valuable literary work. In his novel, the number of heroes was increased three-fold to one hundred and eight. The novel screams a spirit of "rebellion under oppression," with detailed description of how each character was forced to turn from a law-abiding citizen into an unlawful bandit. The method of oppression and prosecution suffered by each character was different, yet the end results were all the same. While popular with the general populace, this novel was much hated by the Confucians, as it was too rich in the rebellious spirit, and revealed too much of the peasants' revolts which occured continuously throughout Chinese history.

A Journey West was written by Wu Cheng Yin (1500-1583), and was also a compilation of stories that had been circulating amongst the general population, based on the quest of the monk Yuan Zhuan, who travelled to India and brought back sanscript texts on Buddism between 627 and 645 A.D.. On his journey, Yuan Zhuan took in three monsters as his pupils. They were the Monkey King, who had great magic and a kind heart; a pig-faced humanoid, who was the essence of all human frailties (selfish, lazy, gluttonous, greedy, opportunistic, and gossipy, etc.); a river monster, who was a normal, undistingushed character with no particular strong or weak points. There was also a white dragon who became a white steed for Yuan Zhuan. This group had eighty-one encounters with various people and monsters on their journey, all caused by mistakes on Yuan Zhuan or the pig-faced humanoid's part, and all resolved by the loyalty and steadfastness of the Monkey King. All characters in the novel other than Yuan Zhuan were ficticious. While the true purpose for Wu Cheng Yin to write this novel has been much debated, it was an undeniably creative and humourous piece of work, two elements often missing in the Chinese society.

Even today, these three novels are on the top of most Chinese people's reading lists. It is not a stretch to say that, in order to understand China, you could do worse than reading these three novels.

In the eigteenth century (Qing Dynasty), the greatest of all Chinese novels, Dreams of A Red Mansion, a work of over one million characters, was published. Its author, Cao Xue Qin (1716-1764), was born and raised in a wealthy and high placed Manchurian family. When he was twenty, the Cao family went broke, and he found himself without any means or skills for survival. It was a hard blow for one who was used to all the comforts and conveniences of a wealthy family. So he began to write, using his own past experience as reference. The work can be viewed as a sort of a Chinese Romeo and Juliet, yet vastly more complicated.

The Dreams of A Red Mansion is composed of one hundred and twenty chapters. It told of the triangular relationship between one man and two women. The man married the woman he did not truly loved, and the woman he loved died on his wedding night. Later, his family went broke, and all the smart and pretty girls (servant girls, relatives, wives, concubines, etc.) in the family either disappeared or died. The man could not deal with such a blow, nor could he forget his love, so he wandered off to a remote corner of the country, and became a buddist monk. Few can finish the entire novel in one sitting, and many emotional readers have to leave the book unfinished and weep when the man's loved one dies.

The value of Dreams of A Red Mansion can be summarized into three points. First, as a literary work, its depth and breath is astounding. The background setting is expansive as the ocean, while its descriptions are minutely detailed. Of the two hundred some characters, everyone has their own distinct personality. Each character can be identified by their speech alone, and once identified, the reader can know how they will react to different situations. Also, Cao Xue Qin stuck to the use of direct narratives, using only speech and action to depict events and the state of mind of the characters. With simple speeches, strong emotional responses are elicited in the readers.

In terms of language, all dialogues in the novel used the local dialect of Beijing, ie. Mandarin. The advantages of this dialect, pleasant sounding with a rich vocabulary, were exemplified in the novel. The novel was influential in Mandarin being made the official dialect of China today.

In terms of social history, the novel presented a cross section of a society that had changed very little since third century B.C.. Through this novel, the readers can see aspects of the Chinese social and family structures, codes of behaviour and ways of thinking, the slavery and political systems, relationships between land owners and peasant farmers, composition of the scholarly class, the art of corruption, the darkness of the judicial system, the neglect for human rights, lives of the aristocracy, the role of power in family relationships, the true meaning of filial piety in a Confucian society, conflicts in the polygamous and eldest-son heriditary systems, concepts of love in old China, the basis for marriages, the status of a concubine, etc.. All these aspects are described in rich and colourful details.

The fact that a special branch of study was established, dedicated to the study of Dreams of A Red Mansion, with many scholars still participating today bears witness to the continued popularity of the novel.

Contemporary Chinese Literature

Lu Xun - the father of contemporary Chinese literature. Known for his sharp wit and biting condemnation of the backwardness of the Chinese masses

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