representing a different type. The easiest way to find out a Chinaman's temperament is
to ask him whether he likes Taiyti more or Paots'a more. If he prefers Taiyii, he is an
idealist, and if he prefers Pacts'a, he is a realist. If he likes Ch' ingwen, he will
probably become a good writer, and if he likes Hsiangyun, he should equa lly admire
Li Po's poetry. I like T'anch'un, who has the combination of Taiyii's and PaotsVs
qualities, and who was happily married and became a good wife. The character of
Paoyii is decidedly weak, and far from desirable as a "hero" to be worshipped by
young men, but whether desirable or not, the Chinese, men and women, have most of
them read the novel seven or eight times over, and a science has developed which is
called "redology" (hunghsueh, from Red Chamber Dream], comparable in dignity and
volume to the Shakespeare or Goethe commentaries.
The Red Chamber Dream represents probably the height of the art of writing novels in
China, all things considered, but it represents also only one type of novel. Briefly,
Chinese novels may be classified into the following types, according to their contents.
Their best-known representative works are given below:
1. The novel of adventure: Shuiku Ckuan (All Men Are Brothers).
2. The supernatural novel or tale of wonder: HsiyuchL
3. The historical novel: Three Kingdoms.
4. The love romance: Red Chamber Dream.
5. The pornographic novel: Chinp' inmei (Gold-Vase-Plum).
6. The novel of social satire: Julinwaishih.
7. The novel of ideas: Chinghuajuan.
8. The novel of social manners: Strange Things of the Last Twenty Years.
A strict classification is, of course, difficult. The Gold-Vase-Plum> for instance,
although four-fifths pornographic, is probably the best novel of social manners in its
ruthless and vivid portrayal of common characters, the gentry and the "local rich," and
particularly of the position of women in Chinese society of the Ming Period. To these
novels proper we should have to add tales and short stories in the broad sense, which
have a very long tradition, best represented by Liaotsai (Strange Stories Jrm a Chinese
Studio} and Chinku CKikuan (Madame Chuang's Inconstancy and Other Tales), the
last representing the best collection of old popular stories that have come down
through the ages.
I have grouped these more or less in the order of their popular influence. A catalogue
of common novels in "circulating libraries" on the street would show that novels of
adventure, in Chinese called "novels of chivalry," easily top the list. A strange
phenomenon this, of course, in a society where chivalric, dare-devil deeds are so often
discouraged by teachers and parents. Yet psychologically it is most easy to explain. In
China chivalric sons, who are likely to involve their families in trouble with the police
or the magistrate, have been driven out of the home into the gutter, and chivalric
citizens who are too public-spirited and who must meddle in other people's affairs,
when they see injustice done to the poor or the helpless, have been driven out of
society into the "green forests" (a term for bandits). For if the parents do not "break"
them, they are likely to break their families, owing to the absence of constitutional
protection. A man who insists on seeing justice done to the poor and oppressed in a
society without constitutional protection must indeed be a hero of the "unbreakable"
sort. It is obvious that those who remain in the home and in respectable society are the
type that is not worth the trouble of "breaking" at all. These "good citizens" of China
therefore admire the sons of the forest very much as helpless women admire the
he-man with a swarthy face, an unshaven beard and a hairy chest. What is more easy
and more exciting than for a consumptive lying in bed to read All Men Are Brothers
and admire the prowess and exploits of Li Kuei? And it should be remembered that
Chinese novels axe always read in bed.
The tale of wonder or novel of supernatural beings, involving fights of giants and fairies, covers a large store of folk tradition that lies very close to the Chinese heart. In
the chapter on the "Chinese Mind" it has been pointed out how, in the Chinese mind,
the supernatural is always mixed with the real. The Hsiyuchi, translated in outline by
Dr. Timothy Richards in A Mission to Heaven, describes the exploits and adventures
of the monk Hsiiantsang in his pilgrimage to India, in the company of three
extremely lovable semi-human beings, Sun the Monkey, Ghu the Pig, and the
Monk Sand. It is not an original creation, but is based on a religious folk legend.
The most lovable and popular character is of course Sun the Monkey who represents
the mischievous human spirit, eternally aiming at the impossible. He ate the
forbidden peach in heaven as Eve ate the forbidden apple in Eden, and he was finally
chained under a rock for five hundred years as Prometheus was chained. By the time
the decreed period was over, Hsiiantsang came and released him, and he was to
undertake the journey, fighting all the devils and strange creatures on the way, as an
atonement for his sins, but his mischievous spirit always remained, and his
development represents a struggle between the unruly human spirit and the holy way.
He had on his head an iron crown, and whenever he committed a transgression,
Hsiiantsang's incantation would cause the crown to press on his head until his head
was ready to burst with pain. At the same time Chu the Pig represents the animal
desires of men, which are gradually chastened by religious experience. The
conflict of such desires and temptations in a highly strange journey undertaken by a
company of such imperfect and highly human characters produces a continual series
of comical situations and exciting battles, aided by supernatural weapons and magic
powers. Sun the Monkey had stuck away in his ear a wand which could at will be
transformed into any length he desired, and, moreover, he had the ability to pull out
hairs on his monkey legs and transform them into any number of small monkeys to
harass his enemies, and he could change himself into a cormorant or a sparrow or a
fish or a temple, with the windows for his eyes, the door for his mouth and the idol for
his tongue, ready to gobble up the hostile monster in case he should cross the
threshold of the temple. Such a fight between Sun the Monkey and a supernatural
spi rit, both capable of changing themselves, chasing each other in the air, on earth,
and in the water, should not fail to interest any children or grown-ups, who are not too
old to enjoy Mickey Mouse.
This love of the supernatural is not confined to the tale of worider, but finds its way to
all types of novels, invalidating in parts even such a first-class novel as the Tehsao
Paoyen> which is a novel of adventure and home love combined. It has invalidated
Chinese tales of mystery, as in the Paokung An (Cases of 'Paokung], and makes the
development of the detective story impossible, which is due also to such causes as the
lack of scientific reasoning and the cheapness of Chinese lives. For when a Chinese
dies the general conclusion is that he is dead, and that is final. The Chinese detective,
Paokung, who is, by the way, a magistrate himself, solves his mysteries and murders
always by visions in dreams instead of by Sherlock Holmes's reasoning.
In looseness of plot, the Chinese novel is like the novels of D- H. Lawrence, and in length like the Russian novels of Tolstoy and Dostoievsky. The similarity between
Chinese and Russian novels is quite apparent. Both have an extremely realistic
technique, both revel in details, both content themselves with telling the story without
the subjectivity characteristic of the novels of Western Europe. Fine psychological
portrayal there is, but there is very little room for the author to expand over his
psychological knowledge. The story is told primarily as a story. In unmit igated
delineation of stark depravity, too, the Gold-Vase-Plum has nothing to lose by
comparison with The Brothers ICaramazov. The plot is generally best in the class
described as love romances, but in the novel of social manners, which has been in
vogue in the last three decades, the plot wanders and disperses into a series of badly
connected anecdotes and short stories interesting in themselves. The short story itself
did not even come into being until the very last decade, when modern writers are
trying to create something similar to what they have read in Western literature in the
original or in translation.
On the whole, the tempo of the Chinese novel reflects very well the tempo of Chinese
life. It is enormous, big and variegated and is never in a hurry. The novel is avowedly
created to kill time, and when there is plenty of time to kill and the reader in no hurry
to catch a train, there is no reason why he must hurry to the end. A Chinese novel
should be read slowly and with good temper. When there are flowers on the way, who
is going to forbid the traveller from stopping to cull them?
XL INFLUENCE OF WESTERN LITERATURE
When two cultures meet, it is natural and logical that the richer one should give and
the other should take. It is true but it is sometimes hard to believe that it is more
blessed to give than to take. China has apparently gained much in the last thirty years
in literature and thought which must be entirely credited to Western influence. This
acknowledgement of the general superiority of Western literature in richness came as
something of a bad shock to the self-styled "literary nation" that is China. Some fifty
years ago the Chinese were impressed only by European gun-boats; some thirty years
ago they were impressed by the Western political system; about twenty years ago they
discovered that the West even had a very good literature, and now some people are
making the slow discovery that the West has even a better social consciousness and
better social manners.
That is a rather large morsel for an old and proud nation to swallow, but perhaps
China is big enough to swallow it. Anyway, in literature the change has come.
Chinese literature has undergone a more profound change in style and content than it
ever went through in the past two thousand years. Directly due to the foreign
influence, the spoken language has come into its own as a literary medium: the
emancipation of the language has come from a man imbued with the Western spirit.
Its vocabulary has been greatly enriched, which means the increase of new concepts, scientific, philosophical, artistic and literary, generally more exact and more
well -defined than the old material of our thinking. With this enrichment of the raw
material of our thought has come a change in style, which has been so modernized
beyond recognition that old scholars find great difficulty in following the new pattern
and would be at a complete loss to write a magazine article that could be accepted
regarding either style or content. New forms of literature, like the vers libre, poems
in prose, the short story and the modern drama have come into being, and the
technique of writing novels has been greatly modified. Above all, the old standards
of criticism, on the whole rather similar to those of the French neo-classical school
that made the appreciation of Shakespeare impossible for a century and a half in
Europe, have been abandoned, and in their place we have a fresher, richer and broader
literary ideal, which in the end must bring about a closer harmony between literature
and life, a greater accuracy of thinking and a greater sincerity of living.
Of course it is more blessed to give than to take. For with this change there has come
chaos. Progress is fun, but progress is painful. More than that, progress is always ugly.
With the profound intellectual upheaval that is going on in Young China's minds, we
have lost a centre of gravity in thought and we have lost a cheerful common sense.
The task of adjustment between the old and the new is usually too much for the
ordinary man, and modern Chinese thought is characterized by an extreme immaturity
of thinking, fickleness of temper and shallowness of ideas. To understand the old is
difficult, and to understand the new is not too easy. A little bit of romanticism, a tinge
of libertinism, a lack of critical and mental ballast, extreme impatience with anything
old and Chinese, extreme gullibility in accepting the yearly "new models" of thought,
a perpetual hunt for the latest poet from Jugoslavia or the newest novelist from
Bulgaria, great sensitiveness toward foreigners in revealing anything Chinese, which
simply means a lack of self-confidence, an eighteenth-century rationalism, fits of
melancholia and hyper-enthusiasm, the chase of slogans from year to year like a dog
biting its own tail梩 hese characterize the writings of modern China.
We have lost the gift of seeing life steadily and seeing life whole. To-day literature is
clouded by politics, and writers are divided into two camps, one offering Fascism and
