Literature and Modern China

Kexue Xiaoshuo

Yizhi Xiao — 2024-06-21

This article advocates reading kexue xiaoshuo (science novels) as a contact genre embodying a unique subjectivity emerging out of late Qing China’s interactions with the world. Taking its cue from Mary Louise Pratt’s (1948- ) concept of the ‘contact zone,’ this article adopts a contact approach to recount kexue xiaoshuo’s genesis by underscoring an unlikely combination of science and fantasy as interaction and improvisation found in the contact zone. Extrapolating from fictional texts such as New Story of the Stone to the shifting epistemological landscape in late Qing reading culture, this article presents kexue xiaoshuo as a cultural formation like Pidgin English, which records traces of contention between autochthonous and Western intellectual traditions.

Mother, Desire and Oppression

Yimin XU — 2024-06-21

In this paper, I analyse the theme of mother-son incest in a contemporary Chinese science fiction story “Cutting Ties with Mothers (Tuomu)” by Han Song (b. 1965), one of the giants of contemporary Chinese science fiction. With a gendered perspective, I decode implications behind the mother-son incest in the story. I argue this theme serves as a gender metaphor to delineate the power contestation between a male self and a feminized Chinese state. It also sheds light on a male individual’s mental dilemma in contemporary Chinese modernization.

Posthuman in Han Song’s Science Fiction

Yan Dong — 2024-06-21

This paper examines the posthuman in Han Song’s science fiction. It argues that ‘posthuman’ here not merely refers to physically transformed human beings, but signifies also a group of people unable to demonstrate the attribute of individuality. Based on a study of Han Song’s Ditie (Subway) (2010), Gaotie (High-speed Railway) (2012), and Hongse haiyang (Red Ocean) (2004), this paper demonstrates how Han Song conjoins humanism, the nation-state, and scientism to consider the posthuman era as an inevitable civilizational stage.

The Struggle for Subsistence

Shuang Liu — 2024-06-21

With China’s rapid modernization and urbanization in the 1980s, hundreds of millions of farmers have flocked from the countryside to the cities in search of jobs. They are internal migrant workers. Since rural-to-urban migrants are mainly young and middle-aged laborers, their ‘family’ in the cities is often limited to two adults living as a couple, with both partners working. This paper will focus on the literary representation of such couples, further discussing the urban survival of migrant workers and their complex relationship with the city.

By closely reading Jing’s two novellas: “Breathing Loudly (Dasheng huxi)” written in 2005, and “Leaving Beijing (Chujingji) ” written in 2016, this paper will explore the salient features of city-based migrant worker couples in Jing’s fictions. In doing so,this paper examines how these features shed light on migrant workers’ lives in urban spaces, including interactions with native city residents, as well as migrant workers’ perceptions of the urban social world. I argue that city-based couples in literature not only reflect migrant workers’ struggles for existence in the city, but also imply how migrant workers’ desire to seek a better life in the city is at best, to borrow Berlant’s term, a ‘cruel optimism.’ This fantasy of the ‘good’ life with economic gains, a place of one’s own, and social equality often proves to be unachievable.