Literary Societies in Republican China provides a new and comprehensive perspective on the fascinating literary world of the most turbulent period in recent Chinese history: the Republican era of 1911-1949. Wedged between the fall of the Empire and the founding of the Communist state, the Republican period witnessed enormous social, political, and cultural changes. Traditionally the period is seen as one of transition: from the country being partially colonized and occupied to being an independent nation-state, from Confucianism to socialism, from writing in classical Chinese to writing in the everyday vernacular. Modern scholarship, however, has become suspicious of such attempts to analyze history, including cultural history, as a journey from A to B via C. Instead, attention has turned to the 'thick description' of complex historical phenomena without worrying about whether or not they fit into some neat linear scheme. Inevitably, such scholarship benefits from collaboration and teamwork, from the juxtaposition of different insights and different materials in order to gain in overall breadth. Literary Societies in Republican China represents such teamwork and such breadth. The thirteen essays by eleven scholars from North America, Europe, and Asia present detailed discussions of particular literary groups active on the Republican-era literary scene. Some of these groups are familiar representatives of what used to be considered the 'mainstream, ' while others represent literary styles that have hitherto been considered 'marginal' or that have been ignored altogether. Each of the essays in this volume looks in detail at literary societies both as producers of literary views and texts and as organizations with sometimes very complex social structures. The result is a unique blend of literary, cultural, and social history, unrivalled in any English-language scholarship on China to date

Literary Societies in Republican China provides a new and comprehensive perspective on the fascinating literary world of the most turbulent period in recent Chinese history: the Republican era of 1911-1949. Wedged between the fall of the Empire and the founding of the Communist state, the Republican period witnessed enormous social, political, and cultural changes. Traditionally the period is seen as one of transition: from the country being partially colonized and occupied to being an independent nation-state, from Confucianism to socialism, from writing in classical Chinese to writing in the everyday vernacular. Modern scholarship, however, has become suspicious of such attempts to analyze history, including cultural history, as a journey from A to B via C. Instead, attention has turned to the "thick description" of complex historical phenomena without worrying about whether or not they fit into some neat linear scheme. Inevitably, such scholarship benefits from collaboration and teamwork, from the juxtaposition of different insights and different materials in order to gain in overall breadth. Literary Societies in Republican China represents such teamwork and such breadth. The thirteen essays by eleven scholars from North America, Europe, and Asia present detailed discussions of particular literary groups active on the Republican-era literary scene. Some of these groups are familiar representatives of what used to be considered the "mainstream," while others represent literary styles that have hitherto been considered "marginal" or that have been ignored altogether. Each of the essays in this volume looks in detail at literary societies both as producers of literary views and texts and as organizations with sometimes very complex social structures. The result is a unique blend of literary, cultural, and social history, unrivalled in any English-language scholarship on China to date.

The novella, as the editors of this volume explain, is in many ways the ""native habitat"" of modern Chinese literary production - the ideal fictional form for revealing the various facets of contemporary Chinese culture. The seven novellas collected here resoundingly support their claim. Featuring works by award winners and rising stars, women and men, By the River presents a confluence of some of the most compelling voices in China today. Together, their narratives reflect the rich diversity of Chinese experience in the modern era. These novellas are stories of coming of age in the countryside, of romance in the shadow of an electrical power station or in the watery landscape of a lost love, of a daughter's epic journey to find her estranged mother. Whether telling of love or loss, of work or play along the river of experience, the narratives are replete with details that bring literary depth to the everyday - the mark of the novella. These details and the novellas into which they are woven defy simple answers to moral and political questions about modern life, leaving readers with the feeling that their world has been made larger, that they have seen through different eyes for a moment, if not forever. Reflecting modern Chinese life in the city and in the country, and among diverse regional cultures, By the River showcases the best of contemporary Chinese long-form fiction.

"Chinese Reportage" details for the first time in English the creation and evolution of a distinctive literary genre in twentieth-century China. Reportage literature, while sharing traditional journalism's commitment to the accurate, nonfictional portrayal of experience, was largely produced by authors outside the official news media. In identifying the literary merit of this genre and establishing its significance in China's leftist cultural legacy, Charles A. Laughlin reveals important biases that impede Western understanding of China and, at the same time, supplies an essential chapter in Chinese cultural history.

Laughlin traces the roots of reportage (or "baogao wenxue") to the travel literature of the Qing Dynasty but shows that its flourishing was part of the growth of Chinese communism in the twentieth century. In a modern Asian context critical of capitalism and imperialism, reportage offered the promise of radicalizing writers through a new method of literary practice and the hope that this kind of writing could in turn contribute to social revolution and China's national self-realization. "Chinese Reportage" explores the wide range of social engagement depicted in this literature: witnessing historic events unfolding on city streets; experiencing brutal working conditions in 1930s Shanghai factories; struggling in the battlefields and trenches of the war of resistance against Japan, the civil war, and the Korean war; and participating in revolutionary rural, social, and economic transformation. Laughlin's close readings emphasize the literary construction of social space over that of character and narrative structure, a method that brings out the critique of individualism and humanism underlying the genre's aesthetics.

"Chinese Reportage "recaptures a critical aspect of leftist culture in China with far-reaching implications for historians and sociologists as well as literary scholars.