Hua li contemporary_chinese_fiction_by_su_tong_and_yu_hua_sinica_leidensia____2011

Contemporary Chinese Fiction
by Su Tong and Yu Hua

Sinica Leidensia
Edited by
Barend J. ter Haar
Maghiel van Crevel
VOLUME 102

Contemporary Chinese Fiction
by Su Tong and Yu Hua
Coming of Age in Troubled Times
By
Hua LI
LEIDEN • BOSTON
2011

This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Li, Hua, 1969–
Contemporary Chinese fiction by Su Tong and Yu Hua : coming of age in
troubled times / by Hua Li.
p. cm. — (Sinica Leidensia, ISSN 0169-9563 ; v. 102)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-90-04-20226-9 (hardback : alk. paper)
1. Chinese fiction—20th century—History and criticism 2. Bildungsromans—
History and criticism. 3. Su, Tong, 1963– Qi qie cheng qun. 4. Yu, Hua, 1960–
Hu han yu xi yu. 5. Comparative literature—Chinese and English. 6. Comparative
literature—English and Chinese. 7. Identity (Psychology) in literature. 8. Group
identity in literature. 9. Youth in literature. I. Title.
PL2443.L4325 2011
895.1’3099283’0904—dc22
2010053916
ISSN 0169-9563
ISBN 978-90-04-20226-9
Copyright 2011 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing,
IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP.
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Fees are subject to change.

In Memory of Grandfather Fengxiang and Aunt Guoxiang

CONTENTS
Acknowledgments .............................................................................. ix
Introduction ........................................................................................ 1
Chapter One Bildungsroman/Chengzhang Xiaoshuo as a
Literary Genre ................................................................................ 13
Chapter Two The Changing Patterns of the Bildungsroman
in Modern Chinese Literature ..................................................... 33
Antecedents of the Bildungsroman: Zhuan in Pre-modern
Chinese Literature ..................................................................... 34
Bildungsroman in Modern Chinese Literature ......................... 39
Chapter Three Fallen Youth: A Solitary Outcast ...................... 75
Coming of Age in the Toon Street Series ................................. 94
Role Models and Peer Community ............................................ 102
A Failed Catcher in the Rye ........................................................ 110
Sexuality, Violence and Death .................................................... 114
A Solitary Hero on the Street ...................................................... 120
The Boat to Redemption ............................................................... 122
Chapter Four Fallen Youth: A Trembling Loner ...................... 131
A Degenerating and Helpless Parental Milieu ......................... 158
Guanglin’s Self-sufficient Peer Community ............................. 168
Sexuality .......................................................................................... 173
Time and Death—the End of Adolescence .............................. 175
After Cries in the Drizzle ............................................................. 180
Chapter Five Tragic and Parodistic Bildungsroman ................. 187
Farewell to Revolution .................................................................. 188
Unfulfilled Bildung ........................................................................ 195
Glossary ............................................................................................... 207
Bibliography ........................................................................................ 215
Index .................................................................................................... 225

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I have received valuable assistance and unstinting encouragement
from my former mentors at the University of British Columbia in the
development and completion of this research project. I am enormously
grateful to Michael S. Duke for his unfailing support and guidance
during my studies at the University of British Columbia; to Timothy
Cheek for being a constant source of inspiration and encouragement;
and to Jerry D. Schmidt for broadening my understanding of classical
Chinese literature. I would also like to express my thanks to Bruce
Fulton, John X. Cooper, Catherine Swatek, Alexander Woodside, and
Alison Bailey for their advice and support. I also thank the Faculty of
Graduate Studies at UBC and the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation for
their generous support through fellowships.
Special thanks are due to Su Tong and Yu Hua for granting my
request for interviews with them. I would also like to thank Allan H.
Barr for his generosity in allowing me to refer to his English transla-
tion in manuscript form, and for his critical insights and comments at
an early stage of this project. I am also obliged to Philip F. Williams
for his longstanding help and encouragement during the revision of
the manuscript. I would also like to express my appreciation to Ma
Shanshuang for the calligraphy on the front cover. In addition, I wish
to express my gratitude to Katelyn Chin and the other editors at Brill
for their expert editorial assistance, as well as to the two anonymous
reviewers for their helpful comments and advice. Finally, I would like
to thank my colleagues in the Department of Modern Languages and
Literatures at Montana State University for their support and encour-
agement during the later stages of this project.
This book is fondly dedicated to the memory of my grandfather Bai
Fengxiang and my aunt Li Guoxiang.

INTRODUCTION
They experienced a unique coming of age. Exactly
how the Cultural Revolution affected this genera-
tion is still unclear.
—J. W. Esherick, P. G. Pickowicz, and A. G. Walder,
The Chinese Cultural Revolution as History
The focus of this study is coming of age in troubled times as portrayed
in contemporary Chinese chengzhang xiaoshuo/Bildungsroman fiction.
Selected works of two major Chinese writers—Su Tong (b. 1963) and
Yu Hua (b. 1960)—are treated as cultural metaphors reflecting on the
growth and future of Chinese youth in the abnormal era of the Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution (hereafter the Cultural Revolution).
This study discusses how this fiction’s images of youth deviate from
the one promoted by Mao Zedong (1893–1976), in which Chinese
youths are compared to “the sun at eight or nine in the morning” and
the socialist new man.1
It will be argued here that the particular nar-
ratives by Su Tong and Yu Hua that I have selected for analysis form
a body of tragic and parodistic Bildungsroman against both the earlier
modern Chinese chengzhang xiaoshuo, especially those written during
the first seventeen years of the People’s Republic of China (hereafter
PRC) as well as the traditional European Bildungsroman genre.
The overall thesis and ensuing discussions about the tragic and par-
odistic nature of Su Tong’s and Yu Hua’s chengzhang xiaoshuo will
be illustrated from two comparative perspectives: the terrain of mod-
ern Chinese chengzhang xiaoshuo written from the May Fourth era
to contemporary times, and the theoretical framework of traditional
European Bildungsroman. By anchoring the two authors’ chengzhang
xiaoshuo in the terrain of modern Chinese coming-of-age stories,
I argue that the coming-of-age narratives written from the May Fourth
1
Mao Zedong, “Talk at a Meeting with Chinese Students and Trainees in Moscow”
(November 17, 1957), in English Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (Peking:
Foreign Language Press, 1976), 288. The full quotation is, “The world is yours, as well
as ours, but in the final analysis, it is yours. You young people, full of vigor and vital-
ity, are in the bloom of life like the sun at eight or nine in the morning. Our hope is
placed in you...The world belongs to you. China’s future belongs to you.”

2 introduction
era to 1966 betray a tendency toward a gradual victory of the collec-
tive spirit over individualistic self-cultivation, and of national salvation
over enlightenment humanism. The young protagonists in these nar-
ratives fulfill their Bildung by merging their individuality with a mass
movement, and find the meaning of their lives by devoting themselves
to revolutionary and communist careers. In contrast, the coming-of-
age narratives written by Su Tong and Yu Hua in the late 1980s, early
1990s, and the twenty-first century demonstrate a reverse tendency.
By highlighting their young protagonists’ autonomy, subjectivity, and
individuality during the Cultural Revolution, Su Tong and Yu Hua
define themselves as being naturally opposed to the collectivism by
which the Chinese Communist Party (hereafter CCP) seeks to imple-
ment its authoritarian social and political policies at the expense of
human individuality. Close readings of Su Tong’s and Yu Hua’s cheng-
zhang xiaoshuo reveal how the old Maoist utopian vision has given
way to an essentially pessimistic view of the future of Chinese young
people coming of age in the late 1960s and 1970s. This dark perspec-
tive casts its shadow upon the optimistic image of the successors to
the cause of proletarian revolution governed by the CCP. In both Su
Tong’s North Side Story (Chengbei didai, 1994) and Yu Hua’s Cries in
the Drizzle (Zai xiyu zhong huhan, 1991), with the Cultural Revolu-
tion as their historical background, teenagers—representing the hope
of society—grow up in a morally degenerate and politically suppressed
society. They are dissatisfied, restless and unable to find meaning in
their lives. Despite being confronted with trials and ordeals that in
another setting would have probably led them to maturity, their goals
remain unclear and their lives mostly meaningless. They wait in vain
for their future to arrive.
Using Su Tong’s North Side Story and Yu Hua’s Cries in the Drizzle
as a departure, I will also discuss and analyze the Bildungsroman ele-
ments in some of the two authors’ novellas, short stories, and better-
known full-length novels, such as Rice (Mi, 1991), My Life as Emperor
(Wo de diwang shengya, 1992), Binu and the Great Wall (Binu, 2006),
The Boat to Redemption (He’an, 2009), To Live (Huozhe, 1993), Chron-
icle of a Blood Merchant (Xu Sanguan maixue ji, 1996), and Brothers
(Xiongdi, 2005–2006). Many of these works are not necessarily Bil-
dungsroman in the strict sense of that term. However, they mostly do
engage at some level with the coming-of-age structure. By discuss-
ing these works in the framework of Bildungsroman, I will attempt
to show how the coming-of-age structure has expanded and changed

introduction 3
in the two writers’ fictional oeuvre over their career, and reveal the
connection between their fiction and their real-life coming-of-age
experiences.
By placing Su Tong’s and Yu Hua’s coming-of-age fiction in the
theoretical framework of traditional Bildungsroman as a literary genre,
I argue that these coming-of-age narratives share a common quality
as parodistic Bildungsroman with Western novels, such as Thomas
Mann’s (1875–1955) The Magic Mountain. Bildungsroman is a Ger-
man term that means “novel of formation,” “novel of initiation,” or
“novel of education.”2
This type of narrative appears in nearly all major
literary traditions. Scholars and critics such as Hegel, Dilthey, Lukacs
and Bakhtin have all investigated this literary genre in their treatises.
The traditional Bildungsroman follows its hero’s path from childhood
to maturity, usually moving from an initial stage of youthful egoism
and irresponsibility to a final harmonious integration with society. Yet
with Su Tong and Yu Hua, the tradition is turned on its head, because
the young protagonists in their stories never recognize their “identity
and role in the world” or achieve maturity after experiencing various
kinds of ordeal and spiritual crisis.3
In the present book, the term “parodistic Bildungsroman” and the
connotation of parody resonate with those concepts as applied by
both Martin Swales and W. H. Bruford in their analyses of Thomas
Mann’s The Magic Mountain. In his book The German Bildungsro-
man from Wieland to Hesse, Swales registers the tragic and parodistic
resonance of The Magic Mountain by questioning the process and end-
ing of the protagonist Hans Castorp’s Bildung. Swales maintains that
“Hans Castorp is and remains ‘mittelmässig,’ mediocre, or perhaps
more accurately, undistinguished by any dominant characteristic, pro-
pensity, or quality” after his seven-year sojourn in an alpine sanato-
rium.4
Castorp’s development deviates from “the traditional sense [of
Bildungsroman] in which...a novel hero’s development...is learning
consistently and cumulatively from his experience to the point where
he can then enact the values he has acquired.”5
In addition, Swales
2
For a brief introduction about the Bildungsroman as a literary genre, see M. H.
Abrams, A Glossary of Literature Terms, 7th ed. (Toronto: Harcourt Brace College
Publisher, 1999), 193.
3
Ibid.
4
Martin Swales, The German Bildungsroman from Wieland to Hesse (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1978), 119.
5
Ibid., 118.

4 introduction
questions both the cloistered social world in which Castorp constructs
his Bildung and the external or workaday world he finally enters at the
end of his Bildung. He argues that “the ‘hermetic’ and sick world of the
sanatorium” where Castorp has received his education in philosophy
and other higher things in life “bears no relationship to the common
realm of ordinary human encounters and interaction”—the educative
environment in traditional Bildungsroman.6
Furthermore, the battle-
field that Hans Castorp enters at the end of the novel is “a chaotic and
violent confusion” that would not allow him to fulfill his “relationship
with human society.”7
Castorp’s transformation into cannon fodder
for the World War is truly tragic and parodistic compared to the tradi-
tional Bildungsroman, in which the young hero nearly always ends up
in fine spirits and well prepared for whatever challenges the real social
world might foist upon him. In his article “‘Bildung’ in The Magic
Mountain,” W. H. Bruford emphasizes the parodistic implication of
the novel by linking Castorp’s aestheticism to a sort of agreeable sick-
ness and death. Bruford argues that The Magic Mountain parodies the
traditional Bildungsroman “in that the hero comes to terms, in the
course of it, not so much with life as with death, or at least with death
as the ever-present shadow of life.”8
These tragic and parodistic ele-
ments, which Swales and Bruford identify in The Magic Mountain,
are also prominent in Su Tong’s and Yu Hua’s coming-of-age fiction.
Therefore, I use the terms “parody” and “parodistic” in the same vein
as Swales and Bruford do.
In addition, chengzhang xiaoshuo is used as the Chinese counterpart
to the German term Bildungsroman. In order to avoid repetition, the
term “coming-of-age narrative” is also used to refer to Bildungsroman.
In the European literary tradition, Bildungsroman normally refers to
the full-length novel, but in the present context the terms chengzhang
xiaoshuo and “coming-of-age narrative” are not confined to the full-
length novel, but also include the novella and the short story. To avoid
confusion and in order to differentiate the lengths of the works chosen
to be analyzed, when the full-length novel is discussed, the term Bil-
dungsroman is used. Shorter fictional works in the Bildungsroman mode
6
Ibid., 124–125.
7
Ibid., 124.
8
W. H. Bruford, “‘Bildung’ in The Magic Mountain,” in Thomas Mann’s The Magic
Mountain, ed. Harold Bloom (New Havern: Chelsea House Publishers, 1986), 83.

introduction 5
are referred to as “coming-of-age novellas,” “coming-of-age stories,”
or “coming-of-age short stories.”
The methodology of the present work involves a combination of
close readings of original Chinese literary texts and literary analysis
informed by scholarship on the Bildungsroman genre, recent Western-
language and Chinese-language scholarly works on Su Tong and Yu
Hua, as well as drawing from psychological and sociological theories
of adolescence. An important aspect of the present work is an exami-
nation of the historical and cultural contexts of both modern and con-
temporary China and Chinese literature. In addition, I draw Su Tong’s
and Yu Hua’s biographical information from the two authors’ auto-
biographical essays, interviews published in academic journals, and
various scholars’ research articles. Those different sources cross-refer
to each other, and jointly provide a reliable picture of each author’s
real-life experience.
The chief scholarly significance of studying Su Tong’s and Yu Hua’s
coming-of-age fiction is threefold. First, this study expands the bound-
aries of scholarship relating to the literary genre of Bildungsroman.
To be sure, the Bildungsroman is a Western literary concept. While
Chinese writers such as Su Tong and Yu Hua may not necessarily have
been deeply influenced by the European tradition, their coming-of-
age fiction bears many affinities with this literary genre. By referring
these two Chinese authors’ fiction to the theoretical corpus of the Bil-
dungsroman, I explore the interaction between the literary genre and
individual Chinese literary works, and demonstrate how these Chi-
nese narratives enrich the Bildungsroman literary genre by providing a
body of tragic and parodistic chengzhang xiaoshuo. With their cultural
and historical particularities, they enrich the Bildungsroman as a lit-
erary genre in particular and world literature in general. Second, the
present study contributes to our understanding of the social history
of the Cultural Revolution. The thematic content of the two authors’
coming-of-age fiction is analyzed, and the authors’ perceived views
about the effects of the Cultural Revolution upon Chinese youth are
evaluated. Readers of these narratives should focus not only on their
young protagonists, but also on the world in which these young people
have lived and found themselves alienated. These narratives provide a
fresh perspective on human suffering in general, and in particular, on
the suffering of the Chinese people through the man-made disaster
of the Cultural Revolution. Third, this study provides a new perspec-
tive from which to read Su Tong’s and Yu Hua’s fiction. Through the

6 introduction
lens of Bildungsroman, I will reveal how the two authors have engaged
with the coming-of-age structure or Bildungsroman elements in their
stories at various career stages.
Many insightful research papers and articles have been published
on the writings of Su Tong and Yu Hua. However, most of them
focus either on the authors’ so-called “avant-garde” stories written in
the 1980s, or on Su Tong’s new historical novels such as My Life as
Emperor and Empress Dowager Wu Zetian (Wu Zetian, 1993), his fam-
ily sagas such as the Maple-Poplar Village Series (Fengyangshu cun
xilie) and Rice, or the “women” series such as “Blush” (Hong fen, 1992)
and “Embroidery” (Cixiu, 1993), along with Yu Hua’s more realistic
full-length novels To Live and Chronicle of a Blood Merchant.9
While
these articles make various helpful and interesting assertions about
the works of these two major Chinese writers, unfortunately, there
remains no systematic and comprehensive analysis of Su Tong’s and
Yu Hua’s coming-of-age stories.
9
In her article “On Su Tong,” Wang Haiyan examines how Su Tong’s fiction
uncovers dichotomies of narration versus lyricism, urban versus rural, fatalism versus
defiance, and individual accounts versus group-based histories. See Wang Haiyan,
“Su Tong lun” [On Su Tong], Anqing shifan xueyuan xuebao, 1994, no. 4:80–85. In
“A Review at the End of the Century,” Zhang Yingzhong discusses Su Tong’s fiction
of the Toon Street Series, Maple-Poplar Village Series, and his historical series, and
argues that Su Tong is obsessed with “reflecting upon the past.” See Zhang Ying-
zhong, “Shiji mo de huimou” [A Review at the end of the century], Xiandai wenxue
zazhi, 1994, no. 5:30–33. For a discussion of various themes in Su Yong’s stories, see
Zhao Hongqin, “Wu ke taobi: Su Tong yu nanfang” [Nowhere to escape: Su Tong
and the South], Zhejiang shida xuebao, 1994, no. 3:40–44; Huang Jinfu, “Chuzou yu
fanhui: Su Tong xiaoshuo jianlun” [Leaving and returning: a brief discussion of Su
Tong’s stories], Zhejiang shida xuebao, 1994, no. 3:45–47; and Wu Yiqin, “Su Tong
xiaoshuo zhong de shengming yishi” [Implications of life in Su Tong’s stories], Jiangsu
shehui kexue, 1995, no. 1:116–121. Literary criticism of Yu Hua’s full-length novels
has mainly been undertaken by Chinese scholars and critics such as Chen Sihe, Wu
Yiqin and others. Chen Sihe indicates that Yu Hua refashions or revives accounts of
Chinese folk society in these novels. See Chen Sihe, “Yu Hua: you xianfeng xiezuo
zhuanxiang minjian zhihou” [Yu Hua: after transition from avant-garde writing to
narrative on folk society], Wenyi zhengming, 2000, no. 1:68–70; For his part, Wu Yiqin
attempts a comparison of the writing style between Yu Hua’s early stories and his
novel Chronicle of a Blood Merchant, stressing that the latter work marks Yu Hua’s
farewell to “hypocritical works.” See Wu Yiqin, “Gaobie xuwei de xingshi” [Farewell
to hypocritical form], Wenyi zhengming, 2000, no. 1:71–77. In their writings, the crit-
ics Yu Xian and Zhang Hong discuss one of the most prominent techniques in Yu
Hua’s novels—namely repetition: Yu Xian, “Chongfu de shixue” [Poetic repetition],
Dangdai zuojia pinglun, 1996, no. 4:12–15; Zhang Hong, “‘Xu Sanguan maixue ji’ de
xushi wenti” [Questions on the narrative of Chronicle of a Blood Merchant], Dangdai
zuojia pinglun, 1997, no. 2:19–23.

introduction 7
Despite the neglect of literary critics, both Su Tong and Yu Hua
think highly of their coming-of-age fiction and the influence of their
childhood experiences on their writings. Though the two writers
have drawn upon diverse writing styles and plot arrangements, their
coming-of-age fiction all deals with the theme of an individual’s self-
realization and socialization. As both Su Tong and Yu Hua remarked
in my interviews with them, their writings have been deeply influ-
enced by their childhood experiences during the Cultural Revolution,
and are replete with projections of sufferings they either witnessed or
encountered.10
In an article titled “Drawing upon Childhood,” Su Tong states:
I recall my occluded and lonely childhood with love-hate senti-
ments...Whether carried out of love or out of hatred, of all the baggage
carried throughout my life as a writer, the memories of childhood have
perhaps been the heaviest burden in one’s entire suite of luggage. No
matter if these memories are grey or bright, we must carry them along
and treasure them. We have no alternative...We are bound to employ
childhood to record some of our most mature thoughts.11
In the preface to the Italian version of Cries in the Drizzle, Yu Hua
emphasized that this is a book of resurrected memories:
My experience is that writing can constantly evoke memory, and I believe
these memories belong not merely to myself. They are possibly an image
of an era, or a brand left by the world on a person’s spirit...Experience is
always more stark and powerful than memory...Memory cannot restore
the past. It only reminds us once in a while of what we had before.12
The dearth of scholarship on Su Tong’s and Yu Hua’s coming-of-age
fiction is the motive force behind the writing of this book. I hope that
this book’s analysis of the two writers’ fiction with the coming-of-age
theme will fill this void. More importantly, I hope to establish that
Su Tong’s and Yu Hua’s constant aim in their writings is to examine
the existence of human beings whom history has tended to margin-
alize. While not necessarily aiming at overt political criticism, their
10
My interview with Yu Hua took place on 6 July 2010 in Beijing; my interview
with Su Tong took place on 12 July 2010 in Shanghai.
11
Su Tong, “Tongnian shenghuo de liyong” [Drawing upon childhood], Shijie
4:163.
12
Yu Hua, “Wo yongyou liangge rensheng” [I have two lives], in Wo nengfou
xiangxin ziji? [Can I believe in myself?] (Beijing: Renmin ribao chubanshe, 1998),
148.

8 introduction
works seek to identify how individuals, especially the young, survived
or failed to survive in the 1970s China.
This book is structured in five chapters corresponding to the dual
comparative frameworks of tragic and parodistic Bildungsroman. The
first two chapters introduce the European Bildungsroman as a literary
genre and review the history of modern Chinese chengzhang xiaoshuo
respectively. These lay a comparative foundation for Chapters Three
and Four, which deal solely with Su Tong’s and Yu Hua’s coming-
of-age narratives. The concluding chapter discusses the two authors’
fictional works from two comparative perspectives. The detailed layout
of each chapter is elucidated in the following paragraphs.
Chapter One introduces the Bildungsroman/chengzhang xiaoshuo as
a literary genre. I make an analytical review of various Western criti-
cal perspectives on the nature of Bildungsroman as a literary genre,
and emphasize its crucial tension between outwardness and inward-
ness. This is followed by a further discussion of the differences and
overlap between autobiography, memoir, autobiographical fiction,
and the Bildungsroman. Specifically, I have chosen to base my dis-
cussion on the definitions and theories employed in M. M. Bakhtin’s
Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, Franco Moretti’s The Way of the
World: The Bildungsroman in European Culture, Jerome Buckley’s Sea-
son of Youth: The Bildungsroman from Dickens to Golding, and Mar-
tin Swales’s The German Bildungsroman from Wieland to Hesse. Then
I flesh out the term chengzhang xiaoshuo—the Chinese counterpart
of Bildungsroman—and outline its importance in modern and con-
temporary Chinese literature. More importantly, I formulate my own
definition of Chinese chengzhang xiaoshuo and my criteria of selecting
works for discussion in this book.
In Chapter Two, I begin with an examination of the Chinese lit-
erary tradition of autobiographical and biographical writings in pre-
modern Chinese literature. I argue that classical Chinese biographies
and autobiographies prepared the soil for the rise and efflorescence of
the Bildungsroman form during the twentieth century. Next, I discuss
the literary context of modern Chinese fiction from the May Fourth
Movement in 1919 to the 1990s, exploring the changing patterns of
the chengzhang xiaoshuo within different social discourses in mod-
ern China. In the process of reviewing the history of modern Chi-
nese chengzhang xiaoshuo, I argue that the fictional representation of
youth from the May Fourth era to 1966 reveals a gradual withdrawal
of individualistic subjectivity and a surfacing of a collectivist spirit.

introduction 9
In contrast, chengzhang xiaoshuo written during the 1980s and 1990s
herald a reversion to a more individualistic and less collectivistic spirit,
returning to a greater emphasis on subjectivity overall.
Chapter Three focuses on Su Tong. I unfold a thematic analysis of
Su Tong’s chengzhang xiaoshuo embodied in his Toon Street Series
(Xiangchunshu jie xilie) and his latest full-length novel The Boat to
Redemption. The thematic analyses of these narratives are interwoven
with relevant biographical material and literary viewpoints associated
with Su Tong. The Toon Street Series includes the full-length novel
North Side Story, and such short stories as “Memories of Mulberry
Garden” (Sangyuan liunian, 1984), “Roller Skating Away” (Cheng hua-
lunche yuanqu, 1991), “The Sad Dance” (Shangxin de wudao, 1991),
and “An Afternoon Incident” (Wuhou gushi, 1991). Toon Street is
not only a geographical setting for Su Tong’s stories, but also signi-
fies a specific temporal space—1966–1976, the period of the Cultural
Revolution. As Su Tong writes in one of his stories, “Toon Street is
a hallmark of southern China; it is also a symbol of degeneration.”13
It represents the epitome of a spirit of hopelessness in early-to-mid
1970s China. The teenagers growing up in this street unreflectively
demonstrate their autonomy, individuality and subjectivity amidst
social and political chaos. None of the trials the young heroes experi-
ence can be used to develop their fortitude or move them upward in
a trajectory of ascent. Instead, these experiences lead only to reversals,
and even sometimes destruction. In addition, this chapter contains
some discussion of Su Tong’s better-known works, such as Rice, My
Life as Emperor, and Binu and the Great Wall, along with highlighting
some Bildungsroman elements in these narratives. These sections help
flesh out how the coming-of-age structure developed, expanded and
changed in Su Tong’s other fictional works over his career.
Chapter Four deals with Yu Hua’s full-length novels, Cries in the
Drizzle and Brothers, and four short stories entitled “On the Road at
Eighteen” (Shibasui chumen yuanxing, 1986), “The April Third Inci-
dent” (Siyue sanri shijian, 1986), “Timid as a Mouse” (Wo danxiao
ru shu, 1994), and “I Have No Name of My Own” (Wo meiyou ziji de
mingzi, 1994). I argue that in these narratives Yu Hua focuses more
on the psychological development of the teenage characters; overall,
13
Su Tong, Nanfang de duoluo [The degeneration of the South] (Taibei: Yuanliu
chuban gongsi, 1992), 118.

10 introduction
these works constitute a haunting history of fear, restlessness, and day-
dreaming. Yu Hua presents a philosophical reflection on youth and
their maturity in a time of trouble. Maturity is no longer perceived
as an acquisition, but as a loss. I also interlard biographical material
and literary viewpoints of Yu Hua into my analysis of his fiction. This
helps demonstrate the connection between Yu Hua’s real-life coming-
of-age experiences and his fiction. This chapter also contains some
brief discussion of Yu Hua’s more famous novels such as To Live and
Chronicle of a Blood Merchant, indicating how these novels resonate
with the structure of his coming-of-age narratives.
In the final and concluding Chapter Five, Su Tong’s and Yu Hua’s
fictional works are discussed from two comparative perspectives. I draw
connections and reveal contrasts between these two Chinese writers’
works and earlier modern Chinese chengzhang xiaoshuo, as well as the
European Bildungsroman tradition, and explain exactly how Su Tong’s
and Yu Hua’s chengzhang xiaoshuo are tragic and parodistic.
The negative outcomes of the youthful adventures presented in Su
Tong’s and Yu Hua’s chengzhang xiaoshuo provide an alternative per-
spective to flesh out the disastrous effects of the Cultural Revolution on
the Chinese people, especially the young. Over the past three decades,
numerous books have been written to recount the Chinese people’s
sufferings during the Cultural Revolution in such formats as the mem-
oir, oral history, and fiction. These works include Feng Jicai’s Voices
from the Whirlwind: An Oral History of the Chinese Cultural Revolu-
tion, Rae Yang’s Spider Eaters: A Memoir, and Zhang Xianliang’s Half
of Man Is Woman (Nanren de yiban shi nüren, 1985). In academia,
some Chinese historians have asserted that “the Cultural Revolution
has had a riveting impact on the fledgling field of contemporary Chi-
nese studies.”14
For example, Anita Chan completed a substantial trea-
tise on the Red Guards in Children of Mao: Personality Development
and Political Activism in the Red Guard Generation as early as 1985.15
More recent studies such as Roderick MacFarquhar’s and Michael
Schoenhals’ Mao’s Last Revolution and Joseph W. Esherick’s, Paul G.
14
Joseph W. Esherick, Paul G. Pickowicz and Andrew G. Walder, The Chinese Cul-
tural Revolution as History (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2006), I. The
essays in this volume reflect a new era of research by scholars who have immersed
themselves in the flood of new source materials from the Cultural Revolution.
15
Anita Chan, Children of Mao: Personality Development and Political Activism in
the Red Guard Generation (London: Macmillan, 1985).

introduction 11
Pickowicz’s and Andrew G. Walder’s The Chinese Cultural Revolution
as History have undertaken more systematic and comprehensive exam-
inations of this historical event.16
As keen social observers and creative
writers, Su Tong and Yu Hua have chosen a specific literary genre—
the Bildungsroman—to visualize the tragic coming-of-age experiences
of Chinese adolescents in a time of tremendous social upheaval. Their
coming-of-age stories compel us to consider the cultural, educational
and psychological consequences of the Cultural Revolution upon the
writers’ own peers as well as upon later generations.
16
Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals, Mao’s Last Revolution (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006).

CHAPTER ONE
BILDUNGSROMAN/CHENGZHANG XIAOSHUO
AS A LITERARY GENRE
When discussing post-Mao fiction, especially the experimental writ-
ings by Yu Hua and Su Tong from the late 1980s, critics in both China
and US have noticed the “youth consciousness” or “youth mentality”
embodied in these writers’ narratives.1
This “youth mentality” is
understood as a response to a spirit of “pervasive restlessness” in con-
temporary China, whereby “the entire society slips out of paternalistic
protection and unity, the sense of family is disappearing, and people
are obliged to secure a position of their own.”2
This restlessness is
intensified by the marketized economy and a related growth of insen-
sitivity toward cultural values within society. Yu Hua’s first nationally
renowned short story, “On the Road at Eighteen,” reflects this youth
mentality and has been cogently interpreted as a “miniature of the
Bildungsroman.”3
In similar fashion, all of Su Tong’s narratives in the
Toon Street Series deal with various coming-of-age experiences within
his generation. This youth mentality and the re-emergence of Chinese
fiction dealing with a young hero’s coming-of-age experience in the
1980s highlight a literary genre that will be the focus of this book—the
Bildungsroman or chengzhang xiaoshuo.
In this study, I will draw upon Su Tong’s and Yu Hua’s full-length
novels North Side Story and Cries in the Drizzle and some of their
coming-of-age short narratives as a point of departure for systemati-
cally exploring how the two authors have exploited the conventional
1
Chinese critics Wang Zheng and Xiao Hua are probably the first to discuss the
“youth mentality” or “youth consciousness.” Their analyses and arguments have been
frequently cited by other critics and scholars. For detailed discussions, see Wang Zheng
and Xiao Hua, “Hubu de qingnian yishi: Yu Su Tong youguan de huo wuguan de”
[The complementary youth consciousness: Things relevant or irrelevant to Su Tong],
Dushu [Reading] (July/August 1989): 102–107; Xiaobing Tang, “Residual Modernism:
Narratives of the Self in Contemporary Chinese Fiction,” Modern Chinese Literature 7,
no. 1 (Spring 1993): 12–13; Rong Cai, “The Lonely Traveler Revisited in Yu Hua’s
Fiction,” Modern Chinese Literature 10, no.1/2 (Spring/Fall 1998): 178.
2
Wang and Xiao, “Hubu de qingnian yishi: Yu Su Tong youguan de huo wuguan
de,” 103–104.
3
Tang, “Residual Modernism: Narratives of the Self in Contemporary Chinese
Fiction,” 12.

14 chapter one
genre of Bildungsroman to visualize and conceptualize their personal
real-life coming-of-age experiences from the Cultural Revolution.
I will also explore how the generic structure of the Bildungsroman has
been developed and transformed during the two authors’ careers by
discussing and analyzing their other narratives. Analysis of Su Tong’s
and Yu Hua’s works within the context of the theoretical corpus of
the Bildungsroman/chengzhang xiaoshuo is necessary not only because
the Bildungsroman framework is indispensable to an understanding of
Su Tong’s and Yu Hua’s work, but also because the “‘Chineseness’ of
these texts is historicized and becomes relational to the outside world”
when they are placed in comparative perspective.4
The interaction between a literary genre and an individual literary
work that fits within the genre is one of the major concerns in this
study. When Martin Swales discusses the German Bildungsroman, he
points out that an understanding of the concept of genre is requisite
to “any understanding of literary texts,” and that the vitality of any
genre lies in the interaction between general “expectation” and specific
practice, between theory and its “individuated realization in an actual
work.”5
The genre provides a certain “expectation” for the individual
novels, and in turn, these novels “vivify” that “expectation” by means
of their “creative engagement with it.”6
No matter how much or to
what degree the actual work has fulfilled a reader’s expectations of
it, the specific literary work will help to illuminate the genre’s fea-
tures. The genre serves as a “structuring principle within the palpable
stuff of an individual literary creation.”7
However, when we study an
individual work through the lens of one specific literary genre, the
first question we confront is the applicability of this genre to the work
under discussion, especially when the individual work is in a differ-
ent socio-historical setting from where the genre originally emerged.
These are the questions need to be answered before this study can
proceed forward: Can we apply the generic framework of the Bil-
dungsroman, which emerged in European middle-class culture in the
nineteenth-century, to the fiction by Su Tong and Yu Hua written in
4
Yingjin Zhang, “Introduction: Engaging Chinese Comparative Literature and
Cultural Studies,” in China in a Polycentric World: Essays in Chinese Comparative
Literature, ed. Yingjin Zhang (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998), 7.
5
Martin Swales, The German Bildungsroman from Wieland to Hesse (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1978), 10–12.
6
Ibid.
7
Ibid.

bildungsroman as a literary genre 15
the PRC during the 1980s and 1990s? How can we justify the retroac-
tive applicability of the term chengzhang xiaoshuo, which had not been
extensively used by critics until the 1990s, to Chinese literary works
from the early twentieth century? In addition, how relevant are the
respective authors’ personal coming-of-age experiences to their fic-
tion? These questions will be addressed and clarified as this chapter
traces the history of Bildungsroman and its Chinese counterpart cheng-
zhang xiaoshuo. I will first explore the origin and development of the
Bildungsroman as a literary genre, review its principal thematic con-
cerns, and respond to some crucial questions that have been raised in
the writings of such scholars as M. M. Bakhtin, Martin Swale, Franco
Moretti, Jerome Buckley, Jeffrey Sammons, and Fritz Martini. Next, I
will flesh out the term chengzhang xiaoshuo and outline its importance
in modern and contemporary Chinese literature.
Before looking into the emergence of the genre Bildungsroman in
nineteenth-century Europe, it is necessary to understand the dialecti-
cal relation between literary genre and social reality. P. N. Medvedev
and M. M. Bakhtin have argued that “genre appraises reality and real-
ity clarifies genre.”8
A literary genre is the conceptualization or visu-
alization of some aspects of reality, and the creation of new genres
is more of a response to “social changes in real social life” than the
mere “result of purely mechanical processes or the revival of neglected
devices.”9
Social changes bring about new views of experience, and
result in a broadening array of genres in literature as well as oral dis-
course. Once a new literary genre arises, it can provide the reader with
a new lens with which to observe some aspects of reality, and can
“become common in spheres remote from [its] origin.”10
An under-
standing of this dialectical relation between literary genre and social
reality helps explain the emergence of both European Bildungsroman
novels in the nineteenth-century and Chinese chengzhang xiaoshuo in
the twentieth-century.
The emergence of Bildungsroman novels was a response to moder-
nity in Europe at the turn of the eighteenth century. In his study of this
8
P. N. Medvedev and M. M. Bakhtin, The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship:
A Critical Introduction to Sociological Poetics, trans. Albert J. Wehrle (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985), 136.
9
Gary Saul Morson and Caryl Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 277.
10
Ibid.

16 chapter one
literary genre, Franco Moretti calls Bildungsroman the “symbolic form”
of modernity.11
In traditional society, a youth was usually considered
merely biologically distinct from the adult; generational differences
in patterns of cognition were generally ignored. Young people were
expected simply to imitate their parents’ lifestyles and career path. This
is a “pre-scribed” approach to the life stage of youth in which there
is no culture or subculture to distinguish and emphasize the worth of
being young.12
However, at the turn of the eighteenth century, Europe’s
industrial revolution brought major social changes to traditional Euro-
pean society, the countryside was increasingly being abandoned for
the city, and the world of work was changing at an incredible and
incessant pace. Modern young people were thus facing an uncertain
exploration of societal space and a seemingly unlimited potentiality for
self-transformation through apprenticeship, travel, or adventure. This
was in sharp contrast with the “colorless and uneventful socialization
of the old youth” prior to the great changes wrought by the industrial
revolution. Under the new social and economic circumstances, the life
stage of youth became “a specific image of modernity” because of its
attributes of mobility and inner restlessness. The great narrative of the
Bildungsroman thus came into being to correspond to the “symbolic
centrality” of the life stage of youth in modernity. Among the charac-
teristics of the modern life stage of youth, the Bildungsroman abstracts
a symbolic life stage of youth that is epitomized by the attributes of
mobility and interiority.13
We will see in my later discussion, a narra-
tive in the Bildungsroman genre always develops around the tension
between mobility (outwardness) and interiority (inwardness), between
socialization and individuality.
Youth is a period of life that is full of contradictory developments—
“individuality and socialization, autonomy and normality, interiority
and objectification.”14
In his introduction to Season of Youth: The Bil-
dungsroman from Dickens to Golding, Jerome Buckley calls the sea-
son of youth “the space between.”15
This notion was inspired by John
Keats’ words: “The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature
11
Franco Moretti, The Way of the World: The Bildungsroman in European Culture
(London: Verso, 1987), 5.
12
Ibid., 4.
13
Ibid., 4–5.
14
Ibid., 16.
15
Jerome Hamilton Buckley, Season of Youth: The Bildungsroman from Dickens to
Golding (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974), vii.

imagination of a man is healthy; but there is a space of life between, in
which the soul is in a ferment, the character undecided, the way of life
uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted.”16
The space between childhood
and adulthood is far from happy; young people are easily “bruised and
wounded” when they encounter reality. “The happy season of youth,”
argues Buckley, is merely “an illusion of those who have lost it.”17
Bildungsroman novels first appeared in Germany in the last third
of the eighteenth century. They were “principally concerned with the
spiritual and psychological development of the young protagonist.”18
Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship was pivotal in the develop-
ment of this genre in Germany. Dozens of monographs and hundreds
of articles deal with the development and meaning of the type of novel
that uses Goethe’s work as its model.
Even though Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship was written
as early as 1795, the term Bildungsroman was not coined until the 1810s
by a then obscure professor of rhetoric in Dorpat, Germany: Karl von
Morgenstern.19
Morgenstern’s invention of the term Bildungsroman
was a theoretical response to Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprentice-
ship. Morgenstern was the first scholar to define the Bildungsroman
as a genre, and explains what the term means in this comment on
Goethe’s work:
It will justly bear the name Bildungsroman firstly and primarily on
account of its thematic material, because it portrays the Bildung [forma-
tion/education/ acculturation] of the hero in its beginning and growth to
a certain stage of completeness; and also secondly because it is by virtue
of this portrayal that it furthers the reader’s Bildung to a much greater
extent than any other kind of novel.20
Morgenstern thus linked the word Bildung to both the hero and the
reader. Martini further points out that Morgenstern’s creation of the
term resulted from his defense of “the novel as a moral means of
16
John Keats, The Poem of John Keats, ed. Jack Stillinger (Cambridge, Mass.:
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1978), 102–103.
17
Buckley, Season of Youth: The Bildungsroman from Dickens to Golding, vii.
18
James Hardin, “An Introduction,” in Reflection and Action: Essays on the Bildungs-
roman, ed. James Hardin (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991), ix.
19
Fritz Martini, “Bildungsroman—Term and Theory,” in Reflection and Action:
Essays on the Bildungsroman, 1–25.
20
Lothar Kohn, Entwicklungs—und Bildungsroman (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1969), 5.

18 chapter one
education, as opposed to the conception of the novel as mere enter-
tainment, pleasure, fantasy, and as an escape from reality.”21
Though Morgenstern was the first scholar to introduce the term
Bildungsroman in a formal and systematic manner, this kind of novel
had already been analyzed by the critic Friedrich von Blanckenburg in
his “Essay on the Novel” as early as 1774. The source of this advance
in theoretical understanding of the novel theory lay in Blanckenburg’s
appreciation of Christoph Martin Wieland’s Agathon (1767), and “the
way in which it overtly (and thematically) transforms the traditional
novel genre by investing it with a new psychological and intellectual
seriousness.”22
For Blanckenburg, Wieland’s principal achievement
resided in his ability to get inside a character to portray the complexity
of human potential. Through interaction with the outside world, this
complexity of human potential yields the tangible process of human
growth and change. Although Blanckenburg did not use the term
Bildungsroman, he revealed a clear understanding of such a novel’s
fundamental features when he developed his theory of the novel of
inwardness. Blanckenburg argued that a novel should be evaluated “on
the basis of the extent to which it portrays the inner soul, the inner
history of the person portrayed.”23
However, it was above all Wilhelm Dilthey who brought the term
Bildungsroman into general usage in 1870. Dilthey derived his defi-
nition of the Bildungsroman from his analysis of Goethe’s Wilhelm
Meister’s Apprenticeship:
A regulated development within the life of the individual is observed;
each of its stages has its own intrinsic value, and is at the same time the
basis for a higher stage. The dissonances and conflicts of life appear as
the necessary growth points through which the individual must pass on
his way to maturity and harmony.24
In Das Erlebnis und die Dichtung (Poetry and Experience/1906),
Dilthey identifies the theme of the Bildungsroman as the history of a
young man
21
Martini, “Bildungsroman—Term and Theory,” 24.
22
Swales, The German Bildungsroman from Wieland to Hesse, 13.
23
Martini, “Bildungsroman—Term and Theory,” 21.
24
Wilhelm Dilthey, Das Erlebnis und die Dichtung: Lessing, Goethe, Novalis, Höl-
derlin (Leipzig & Bern: Teubner, 1913), 394. English translation is quoted from Swales,
The German Bildungsroman from Wieland to Hesse, 3.

Who enters into life in a blissful state of ignorance, seeks related souls,
experiences friendship and love, struggles with the hard realities of the
world and thus armed with a variety of experiences, matures, finds him-
self and his mission in the world.25
There are some limitations in Dilthey’s definition of this genre.
For example, it is questionable whether the “fulfillment and har-
mony” to which Dilthey refers should be the “necessary goal of the
Bildungsroman.”26
Despite the narrowness of Dilthey’s gloss for the
Bildungsroman, it remains the most frequently cited definition of this
genre. In the wake of Dilthey’s contribution, the term Bildungsroman
has been applied ever more widely in literary scholarship.
In Germany, the early Bildungsroman soon generated several
noticeable subtypes. For instance, the Entwicklungsroman or “novel
of development” chronicles a young person’s overall socialization and
maturation in the gradual transformation into an adult; the Erziehun-
gsroman or “pedagogical novel” depicts a youth’s training and formal
education; and the Kunstlerroman or “artist novel” recounts the early
formative years of an artist.27
Some scholars who have been cautious in applying the term Bil-
dungsroman have attempted to distinguish it from these designa-
tions of subtypes or subcategories. For instance, Melitta Gerhard has
attempted to make Bildungsroman more precise by categorizing it
as a subgenre of the Entwicklungsroman. According to Gerhard, the
Entwicklungsroman is the more general term, embracing those novels
that treat the protagonist’s maturation through his confrontation with
the world. Gerhard suggests that the Bildungsroman is a specific sort
of Entwicklungsroman that flourished during the late eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries.28
On the other hand, Martin Swales prefers Bildungsroman over
Erziehungsroman and Entwicklungsroman because of the Bildungsro-
man’s cultural and philosophical features. The Erziehungsroman deals
with the educational process in a specific and limited way—“a certain
set of values to be acquired, of lessons to be learned.”29
However, in a
remarkable fusion of theory and practice, the Bildungsroman reveals
25
Hardin, “An Introduction,” xiv.
26
Swales, “Introduction,” in The German Bildungsroman from Wieland to Hesse, 3.
27
Buckley, Season of Youth: The Bildungsroman from Dickens to Golding, 13.
28
Hardin, “An Introduction,” xvi.
29

20 chapter one
the growth of the young protagonist by focusing on the character’s
inner life and psychological development. The word Bildung connotes
the cultural “values by which a man lives.”30
Compared with Bildung-
sroman, the term Entwicklungsroman is fairly neutral and bears less
“emotional and intellectual” flavor than does Bildungsroman.31
In recent decades, many literary critics and scholars have doubted
not only whether a given individual novel is a Bildungsroman, but
also whether or not the genre itself is as “important and prevalent” as
many earlier critics had assumed. In his article entitled “The Appren-
ticeship of the Reader: The Bildungsroman of the ‘Age of Goethe,’”
Dennis F. Mahoney enumerates several scholars’ arguments. For
example, upon examining various nineteenth century German nov-
els, Jeffrey Sammons concludes that the Bildungsroman is a “phan-
tom genre.” Harmut Steinecke points out that “German novelists and
theoreticians tried to find compromises between Wilhelm Meister and
the Western European novel of society” before Dilthey brought the
term Bildungsroman into general usage in 1870. Only after 1870 did
novels of the Wilhelm Meister tradition become viewed as “typically
German.” Furthermore, scholars such as Hans Vaget have proposed
the term “novel of socialization” to delineate “the contents and objec-
tives of the novels in question and [link] them to developments within
other European literature.”32
In spite of the lack of consensus between scholars on the connota-
tions of the term Bildungsroman, there is nonetheless one area of agree-
ment, namely that the interaction of outward experience and inward
reflection is the main concern of the Bildungsroman as a novelistic
genre. With this consensus in mind, I shall thus turn to a brief discus-
sion of such aspects of outwardness (plot) and inwardness (theme) as
humanism, discursiveness, and educational value.
Jerome Buckley summarizes the principal elements of the plot of
the Bildungsroman as follows: “Childhood, the conflict of generations,
provinciality, the larger society, self-education, alienation, ordeal by
love, the search for a vocation and a philosophy of life.”33
The child
responds to these “experiences that might alter the entire direction of
30
Ibid.
31
Ibid.
32
Dennis F. Mahoney, “The Apprenticeship of the Reader: The Bildungsroman of
the ‘Age of Goethe,’” in Reflection and Action: Essays on the Bildungsroman, 100.
33
Buckley, Season of Youth: The Bildungsroman from Dickens to Golding, 18.

his growing mind and eventually influence for better or for worse his
whole maturity.”34
Among the narrative elements, we need to pay spe-
cial attention to the absence of fatherhood, setting out on a journey,
the tension between potentiality and actuality, and the accommoda-
tion between the young protagonist and the social world.
The role that fatherhood plays in the Bildungsroman is noteworthy.
The growing child in many nineteenth-century English novels is often
orphaned, fatherless, or at least alienated from his father.35
“The loss of
the father, either by death or alienation, usually symbolizes or parallels
a loss of faith in the hero’s home and family and leads inevitably to
the search for a substitute parent or creed.”36
Therefore, “the defection
of the father becomes accordingly the principal motive force in the
assertion of the youth’s independence.”37
Setting out on a journey is another key element in the plot of the
Bildungsroman. According to Buckley, “The journey from home is in
some degree the flight from provinciality” to a larger society, as well
as the flight from the bonds imposed by the parental generation, with
whom the protagonist has usually been in conflict.”38
This sort of pro-
vincial protagonist often initially enters the city in a spirit of bewil-
derment and credulity. Buckley accentuates the double role that the
city plays in the young man’s life: “It is both the agent of liberation
and a source of corruption...The city, which seems to promise infi-
nite variety and newness, all too often brings a disenchantment more
alarming and decisive than any dissatisfaction with the narrowness of
provincial life.”39
Besides the narrative elements of fatherhood and setting out on the
journey, the tension between “potentiality and actuality” is also cen-
tral to the growth of an individual hero in a Bildungsroman novel. On
the one hand, the Bildungsroman explores “the sheer complexity of
individual potentiality”; on the other hand, it recognizes that “practi-
cal reality—marriage, family, career—is a necessary dimension of the
hero’s self-realization.”40
This tension becomes part of the ordeal with
which the youth has to grapple in order to achieve maturity. At the
34
Ibid., 19.
35
Ibid.
36
Ibid.
37
Ibid.
38
Ibid., 20.
39
Ibid.
40

22 chapter one
end of most Bildungsroman narratives, the young protagonist achieves
a reasonable accommodation between the competing priorities of the
individual and society. This is especially common in the English novel
of adolescence, in which there is always “a certain practical accommo-
dation between the hero and the social world around him.”41
“Accommodation” does not mean resolving the tension between
the individual and society, but rather “learn[ing] to live with it, and
even transform[ing] it into a tool for survival.”42
In other words, the
protagonist “realizes his deepest interiority in the outside world,” and
recognizes “the discrepancy between the interiority and the world.”43
In the end, the protagonist finally makes peace with his reality. In
his article, “The Bildungsroman for Nonspecialists,” Jeffrey Sammons
emphasizes the “evolutionary change within the self”:
Bildung is not merely the accumulation of experience, not merely matu-
ration in the form of fictional biography. There must be a sense of evo-
lutionary change within the self, a teleology of individuality, even if the
novel, as many do, comes to doubt or deny the possibility of achieving
a gratifying result.44
The concern of the Bildungsroman is the growth process itself, not
any particular goal that adulthood may make possible. “It does not
matter whether the process of Bildung succeeds or fails, whether the
protagonist achieves an accommodation with life and society or not.”45
In this sense, it allows the novel to preclude any simple sense of final-
ity, of “over and done with.”46
Not surprisingly, many Bildungsroman
narratives remain open-ended.
The Bildungsroman is a noticeably subjective genre focusing on
the protagonist’s inner life and psychological development. The term
Bildung “involves a belief in inwardness as the source of human
distinction.”47
In 1923, Thomas Mann commented on the German
reverence for Bildung:
41
Ibid., 34.
42
Morreti, The Way of the World, 10.
43
George Lukacs, The Theory of the Novel: A Historico-philosophical Essay on the
Forms of Great Epic Literature (Bambridge, Mass.: The M.I.T. Press, 1971), 136.
44
Jeffrey L. Sammons, “The Bildungsroman for Nonspecialists: An Attempt at a
Clarification,” in Reflection and Action: Essays on the Bildungsroman, 41.
45
Ibid.
46
47
Ibid., 151.

The finest characteristic of the typical German, the best-known and also
the most flattering to his self-esteem, is his inwardness. It is no accident
that it was the Germans who gave to the world the intellectually stimu-
lating and very humane literary form which we call the Bildungsroman.
Western Europe has its novel of social criticism, to which the Germans
regard this other type as their own special counterpart: it is at the same
time an autobiography, a confession. The inwardness, the “Bildung” of a
German implies introspectiveness; an individualistic cultural conscience;
consideration for the careful tending, the shaping, deepening and per-
fecting of one’s own personality or, in religious terms, for the salvation
and justification of one’s own life.48
Bildungsroman novels demonstrate “an intense and sustained concern
for the growth of an individual in all his experiential complexity and
potentiality.”49
And “it is precisely this interest in the inner life and
processes of the individual that confers poetic seriousness.”50
The Bildungsroman was born of the humanistic ideal of late eight-
eenth-century Germany. According to Sammons, “the concept of Bil-
dung is intensely bourgeois; it carries with it many assumptions about
the autonomy and relative integrity of the self, its potential self-creative
energies, its relative range of opinions within material, social, even
psychological determinants.”51
Therefore, the Bildungsroman is closely
related to “the early bourgeois, humanistic concept of the shaping of
the individual self from its innate potentialities through acculturation
and social experience to the threshold of maturity.”52
It is a novel form
with “a concern for the whole man unfolding organically in all his
complexity and richness.”53
Closely related to the inwardness of the Bildungsroman is its intel-
lectual flavor. Novels such as Wilhelm Meister and David Copperfield
not only present the growth of a young protagonist, but also explore
the “nature and the limitation of human consciousness.”54
They reveal
“the protagonist’s capacity for self-reflection...[which] is part of the
whole living process in which he is embedded.”55
This self-reflective
48
Quoted by Swales, The German Bildungsroman from Wieland to Hesse, 159.
49
50
Ibid.
51
Sammons, “The Bildungsroman for Nonspecialists: An Attempt at a Clarifica-
tion,” 42.
52
Ibid, 41.
53
54
Ibid., 35.
55
Ibid., 36.

24 chapter one
discursiveness, preoccupied with the development of mind and soul,
in turn, has an educational impact upon the reader. Says Lukacs:
This form has been called the “novel of education”—rightly, because its
action has to be a conscious, controlled process aimed at a certain goal:
the development of qualities in men which would never blossom without
the active intervention of other men and circumstances; whilst the goal
thus attained is in itself formative and encouraging to others—is itself a
means of education.56
It is not only essential for the protagonist of the Bildungsroman to
reflect throughout his ordeals and trials, but also crucial for the reader
to reflect.
Even though novels written in the tradition of Wilhelm Meister
were numerous and important in nineteenth-century Germany, the
Bildungsroman was by no means the only kind of novel to come out
of the country in that period of time. Nor should it be regarded as a
narrowly German literary practice. We find this style of novel in Eng-
lish, French, and other European literature from the late eighteenth
to the early twentieth century, in such works as Stendhal’s The Red
and the Black, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, George Eliot’s The Mill on
the Floss, Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations and David Copperfield,
Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage, and Thomas Mann’s The
Magic Mountain.
One could also explore the influence of the Bildungsroman on the
genres of biography, autobiography, memoir, and the biographical or
autobiographical novel. M. H. Abrams has tried to distinguish these
literary genres by emphasizing the nuances of the contents in his Glos-
sary of Literary Terms:
Late in the seventeenth century, John Dryden defined biography neatly
as “the history of particular men’s lives.” The term now connotes a rela-
tively full account of a particular person’s life, involving the attempt to
set forth character, temperament, and milieu, as well as the subject’s
activities and experiences...Autobiography is a biography written by the
subject about himself or herself. It is to be distinguished from the mem-
oir, in which the emphasis is not on the author’s developing self but on
the people and events that the author has known or witnessed, and also
from the private diary or journal, which is a day-to-day record of the
56
Lukacs, The Theory of the Novel: A Historico-philosophical Essay on the Forms of
Great Epic Literature, 135.

events in one’s life, generally written for personal use and satisfaction,
with little or no thought of publication.57
It is sometimes difficult to draw a sharp line between autobiography
and the autobiographical novel. Buckley has tried to distinguish one
from the other by means of the differing approaches to narration
adopted in the autobiography versus the autobiographical novel. He
argues that the autobiographer is typically “the older man, indulging
in fond retrospect, often more than a little sentimental in his view
of his youth, recalling what it pleases him to remember.”58
The auto-
biographer is pretty much limited by his own point of view of his
own experience, and has to be very self-conscious “through modesty,
through fear of unwanted self-exposure,” and owing to fear of being
criticized as “egotistical.”59
Compared with the autobiographer, the autobiographical novelist
has a distinct advantage in being able to freely “conceal or reveal what
he will of his past by assigning to his hero some of his own acts and
feelings and inventing as many others as he chooses to complete a dra-
matic characterization.”60
In contrast to the relatively senior autobiog-
rapher recalling his memorable past, the “autobiographical novelist is
usually a younger man, nearer in time to his initiation, self-protectively
more ironic, still mindful of the growing pains of adolescence, repro-
ducing as accurately as possible the turbulence of the space between
childhood and early manhood.”61
Meanwhile, he must keep the fiction
independent of himself as an author.62
From this review, we can see that biography, autobiography, mem-
oir, diary, and biographical or autobiographical novels share common
thematic concerns with the Bildungsroman. One could even label them
as Bildungsroman when they are profoundly engaged in the explora-
tion of values, ideas, and the hero’s growth process, inwardness, sub-
jectivity, and philosophical traits.
However, in Bakhtin’s article, “The Bildungsroman and its Signif-
icance in the History of Realism (Toward a Historical Typology of
the Novel),” the Russian critic identifies the fundamental differences
57
Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms, 22.
58
Buckley, Season of Youth: The Bildungsroman from Dickens to Golding, 25–26.
59
Ibid.
60
Ibid., 26.
61
Ibid.
62
Ibid.

26 chapter one
between the Bildungsroman and other related genres, particularly the
biographical novel, the travel novel, and the novel of ordeal. The dif-
ferences revolve around the “dynamic unity” versus the “static unity”
of the hero’s image.63
The biographical novel focuses either on “deeds,
feats, merits, and creative accomplishments” or “on the structure
of the hero’s destiny,” while “the hero himself remains essentially
unchanged.”64
As for the travel novel, Bakhtin indicates that it empha-
sizes “a purely spatial and static conception of the world’s diversity”
with the “absence of historical time.” The hero is just “a point moving
in space” and “has no essential distinguishing characteristics.”65
Simi-
larly, in the novel of ordeal, the hero remains “complete and unchang-
ing” throughout the novel, and his relatively static qualities are merely
being “tested and verified,” instead of being developed or shaped. In
sum, Bakhtin registers the static and constant nature of the hero—
“ready-made and unchanging”—in the biographical novel, the travel
novel, and the novel of ordeal. In sharp contrast, Bakhtin accentuates
the dynamic and changing nature of the hero in the Bildungsroman.
Here, “the changes in the hero himself” and his personal evolution
over genuine national-historical time acquire significance in the plot.
The Bildungsroman reveals “the assimilation of real historical time and
the assimilation of historical man that takes place in that time.”66
In
other words, it is the interaction between ourwardness and inwardness
that defines the genre.
The Bildungsroman has also attracted the attention of feminist writ-
ers and critics in the twentieth century. The genre has been called “the
most salient form for literature influenced by neo-feminism”67
and
“the most popular form of feminist fiction.”68
Feminist critics have
explored a number of novels that deal with a woman’s search for self-
identity and values. In these narratives, during the heroine’s quest for
“self-knowledge and self-realization,” not only does she encounter
63
M. M. Bakhtin, Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, trans. Vern W. McGee
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), 10–59.
64
Ibid., 17.
65
Ibid., 10–11.
66
Ibid., 19.
67
Ellen Morgan, “Humanbecoming: Form and Focus in the Neo-Feminist Novel,”
in Image of Women in Fiction: Feminist Perspectives, ed. Susan Koppelman Cornillon
(Bowling Green: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1972), 183–85.
68
Barbara A. White, Growing Up Female: Adolescent Girlhood in American Fiction
(Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1985), 195.

outward difficulties such as “an uncomprehending husband [or] eco-
nomic dependence”; she also struggles with “the elusiveness of the
total self” and “human cognition.”69
The critics analyze these narra-
tives in the light of both Bildungsroman criticism and feminist theo-
ries. For example, in The Voyage In, a collection of essays on “fiction
of female development” complied in 1983, Dilthey’s definition of the
Bildungsroman is accused of being sexist because women have often
not been afforded the same opportunities as men, such as leaving the
countryside for the city, severing family ties, or playing an active role
in society. Citing a number of English and American novels of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the authors of The Voyage In set
forth a definition of “the fiction of female development...tak[ing]
into consideration specifically female psychological and sociological
theories.”70
James Hardin concludes that “in effect, a form of female
Bildungsroman is constructed that roughly parallels the general the-
matic and structure of the ‘male’ variety.”71
This outline of the development of the Bildungsroman genre reveals
both the formal characteristics and thematic concerns of the genre.
More importantly, it indicates that the emergence of the narratives of
Bildungsroman genre is a response to the historical condition of moder-
nity in nineteenth-century European society. This revelation will help
us understand the emergence of Chinese chengzhang xiaoshuo in early
twentieth-century China.72
As in Europe, the appearance of Chinese
Bildungsroman narratives in the early twentieth century is the Chinese
writers’ response to the rise of a new identity of youth as a key stage
of life as well as Chinese intellectuals’ vision of rejuvenating an old
Chinese civilization so as to build a newly modernizing nation-state.
The “youth mentality” or “youth consciousness” detected by critics
in the narratives of Su Tong, Yu Hua and their contemporary writers
has long been manifested in the stories written by authors such as Ding
Ling (1904–1986) and Yu Dafu (1896–1945) as early as in the 1920s.
69
70
Hardin, “An Introduction,” xvii.
71
Ibid.
72
Some research articles have discussed the youthful images in the narratives writ-
ten in early twentieth century, especially the lonely young travelers. See Rong Cai,
“The Lonely Traveler Revisited in Yu Hua’s Fiction.” Also see Leo Ou-fan Lee, “The
Solitary Traveler: Images of the Self in Modern Chinese Literature,” in Expressions of
Self in Chinese Literature, eds. Robert E. Hegel and Richard C. Hessney (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1985), 282–307.

28 chapter one
The emergence of the Chinese Bildungsroman paralleled the emer-
gence of the May Fourth generation. The term youth was endowed
with strong historical and political implications when Liang Qichao
(1873–1929) eulogized the young and christened China “a young
nation-state” in his essay “Ode to Young China,” (Shaonian Zhongguo
shuo, 1900), thereby attempting to insert China into a “global image
of a modern world.”73
Chinese youth discourse was instrumental to the implementation of
all kinds of new “political projects to modernize China,” particularly
in the wake of the May Fourth movement of 1919.74
Youth discourse
finds its embodiment in young people with identities as “modern stu-
dent,” “new youth,” and “revolutionary youth” in different historical
periods.75
Celebrated cultural figures such as Lu Xun (1881–1936), Hu
Shi (1891–1962) and Guo Moruo (1892–1978) all belonged to this new
generation of youth-oriented Chinese. With the launch of the journal
Qingnian zazhi (Youth Magazine) by Chen Duxiu (1879–1942) in Sep-
tember 1915 (renamed Xin qingnian [New Youth] the following year),
the typical identity of Chinese youths changed from one of “modern
student” in the Western-style new schools to that of enlightened “new
youth.” This journal became a base for theoretical developments in
new youth discourse. While retaining its political symbolism, the term
youth took on additional and diverse cultural and intellectual dimen-
sions: “independence, dynamism, and even aggressiveness, and urg-
ing a radical revolt against various aspects of the Chinese tradition.”76
Under these socio-historical circumstances, Chinese writers of the May
Fourth generation conceptualized and visualized youth-oriented social
change in their creative writing. They produced a corpus of fiction that
fits smoothly into the genre of Bildungsroman. A detailed discussion
of various characteristics and patterns of development in Chinese Bil-
73
Xiaobing Tang, Global Space and the National Discourse of Modernity: the His-
torical Thinking of Liang Qichao (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1996),
37. “Shaonian zhongguo shuo” was originally published on Feb. 10, 1900 in Qingyi
bao (The China discussion). For more about Liang Qichao’s thoughts, see Joseph R.
Levenson’s Liang Ch’i-ch’ao and the Mind of Modern China (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1959).
74
For detailed discussion of the formation of the youth discourse in the early
twentieth-century, see Mingwei Song, “Long Live Youth: National Rejuvenation and
the Chinese Bildungsroman, 1900–1958” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2005), 10.
75
Ibid., 26–54.
76
Lin Yu-sheng, The Crisis of Chinese Consciousness: Radical Antitraditionalism in
the May Fourth Era (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1979), 65.

dungsroman from the May Fourth era down to contemporary times
will be presented in Chapter Two.
As a literary genre, the term Bildungsroman was introduced to Chi-
nese readers a few years later than the Bildungsroman novel, a roman-
tic version of this genre—Goethe’s The Sorrow of Young Werther, was
first translated into Chinese by Guo Moruo (1892–1978) in 1922.
The genre was formally introduced in the summer of 1943, when the
poet and scholar Feng Zhi’s translation of Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s
Apprenticeship appeared. In his preface to the translation, Feng Zhi
rendered the terms Bildungsroman and Entwicklungsroman as xiuyang
xiaoshuo (novel of cultivation) and fazhan xiaoshuo (novel of devel-
opment) respectively, offering Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship as an
example.77
Similarly, in December 1979, Liu Banjiu translated the term
Bildungsroman as jiaoyu xiaoshuo (novel of education) in his preface
to his translation of Green Henry.78
There is no reliable record indicating who first used the term cheng-
zhang xiaoshuo to refer to the Bildungsroman. The word chengzhang
literally means “to form and grow,” which closely matches the con-
notations of the German term Bildung. The literature and film critic
Dai Jinhua and the fiction writer Cao Wenxuan were said to be the
first to use chengzhang xiaoshuo publicly in a seminar on Cao’s story,
“Red Tile” (Hongwa), sometime between 1997 and 1999.79
However, as
early as 1993, the literary critic Li Yang had already used the term to
describe the Mao-era novel The Song of Youth in his book Struggling
Against Predestination.80
Since the late 1990s, this term has been used
extensively by Chinese literary critics. For example, in A Textbook for
Contemporary Chinese Literary History (Zhongguo dangdai wenxueshi
77
This preface was written in the summer of 1943, and revised in 1984. Johann
Wolfgang Von Goethe, Weilian Maisite de xuexi shidai [Wilhelm Meister’s Appren-
ticeship], trans. Feng Zhi and Yao Kekun (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1988).
78
Gottfried Keller, Lü yi hengli [Green Henry], trans. Liu Banjiu (Bejing: Renmin
chubanshe, 1980).
79
In the preface to Sang Di’s Kanshangqu hen chou [It seems ugly] (Beijing: Dazhong
wenyi chubanshe, 1999), Cao Wenxuan pointed out that it was time for literary crit-
ics to use the term chengzhang xiaoshuo as a literary genre. Also see Xu Meixia, “Lun
dangdai chengzhang xiaoshuo de neihan yu ge’an” [The connotation and case study
of contemporary Chinese Bildungsroman] (Master’s thesis, Xiamen University, 2003).
The author wrote that in an interview, Sang Di told the author that Cao Wenxuan and
Dai Jinhua were the first people to use the term chengzhang xiaoshuo.
80
Li Yang, Kangzheng suming zhi lu [Struggling against predestination] (Changc-
hun: Shidai wenyi chubanshe, 1993).

30 chapter one
jiaocheng), Chen Sihe refers to Wang Meng’s “Newcomer in the Orga-
nization Department” (Zuzhibu xinlai de nianqingren) as a chengzhang
xiaoshuo.81
In this treatise, the term chengzhang xiaoshuo is used to
refer to Chinese Bildungsroman in order to remain consistent with
current Chinese academic usage of the term.
Although the term chengzhang xiaoshuo has been widely utilized
in China only since the 1990s, the tardiness of this term’s acceptance
in China does not prevent us from using it retroactively in reference
to Chinese fiction written in the early twentieth century. After all, the
term chengzhang xiaoshuo represents a theoretical response to coming-
of-age narratives by several generations of Chinese writers through-
out the twentieth-century. There is bound to be a time lag between
the emergence of a specific type of fiction and the development of
a generic term to characterize this type of fiction. This is evident in
the creation of the term of Bildungsroman in Europe. As my previ-
ous discussion shows, Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship was
written as early as 1795, but, as a theoretical response to this novel,
the term Bildungsroman was not coined until the 1810s by Karl von
Morgenstern, and it was only brought into general usage in the West
by Wilhelm Dilthey in 1870.
As a specific literary genre, the chengzhang xiaoshuo has been recog-
nized and studied by Chinese writers and literary critics only since the
1990s. A few master’s theses and PhD dissertations have been written
to explore the development of Chinese chengzhang xiaoshuo and to
attempt to fill the theoretical void within this genre for modern Chi-
nese literature. For example, in Mingwei Song’s 2005 PhD dissertation
“Long Live Youth: National Rejuvenation and the Chinese Bildungsro-
man, 1900–1958,” he conducts an historical study of “the evolution
of the youth discourse together with its political, ethical, and cultural
effects” by “look[ing] into the figural formation of youth as represented
in the Bildungsroman” from 1900 to 1958.82
Similarly, Fan Guobin
“elaborates the narrative forms of [Chinese] Bildungsroman from 1949
to 1976” in his PhD dissertation “The Formation of the Subject: A
Study of the Contemporary Bildungsroman,” which was published in
81
Chen Sihe, Zhongguo dangdai wenxueshi jiaocheng [A textbook for contempo-
rary Chinese literary history] (Shanghai: Fudan daxue chubanshe, 2001).
82
Song, “Long Live Youth: National Rejuvenation and the Chinese Bildungsroman,
1900–1958.” 5.

book form in 2003.83
That same year, Sun Jing’s master’s thesis posits
that the development of the modern Chinese Bildungsroman amounts
to “historic proof of the nation’s modernization...[and] the abstract
symbol of national development.”84
In another master’s thesis in 2002,
Tian Guangwen argues that puzzlement is the main theme of com-
ing-of-age narratives written in the 1990s.85
In these scholarly works,
each author develops his own definition of the chengzhang xiaoshuo.
These definitions tend to focus mostly on the formal elements of the
genre while neglecting the most significant concern of most writers
of actual Bildungsroman: complex inwardness. In this study, I define
chengzhang xiaoshuo as the Chinese counterpart of the European Bil-
dungsroman. It is a specific author’s visualization of his own or his
contemporaries’ coming-of-age experience in its local socio-historical
setting in order to provide some complex internal reflections on social
reality. Chengzhang xiaoshuo is an organic unity of form and theme,
and a dynamic interaction between its aspects of outward experience
and inward reflection. Its aspect of outward experience is revealed by
means of principal elements of the plot: childhood, inter-generational
conflict, setting out on a journey (in either symbolic or physical form),
ordeal by love, and the search for a vocation and a philosophy of life.
Its aspect of inward reflection deals mostly with individual subjectivity
along with emotional and cognitive maturation. The genre’s thematic
tension is largely between individuality and socialization: on the one
hand, the chengzhang xiaoshuo explores the complexity of individual
potentiality; on the other hand, it recognizes practical realities such as
marriage, family, and career as a necessary dimension of the young
hero’s self-realization. In essence, chengzhang xiaoshuo principally
concerns itself with the spiritual and psychological development of the
83
Fan Guobin, “Zhuti zhi shengcheng—dangdai chengzhang xiaoshuo zhuti yan-
jiu” [The formation of the subject: a study of contemporary Bildungsroman] (PhD
diss., Nanjing University, 2002). It was published in book form with a slightly different
title in 2003, see Fan Guobin, Zhutide shengzhang: 50 nian chengzhang xiaoshuo yan-
jiu [The formation of the subject: a study of the 50 years of Bildungsroman] (Beijing:
Zhongguo xiju chubanshe, 2003).
84
Sun Jing, “Zhongguo xiandai chengzhang xiaoshuo de xushixue yanjiu” [The
study of narratology of contemporary Chinese Bildungsroman] (Master’s thesis,
Qingdao University, 2002).
85
Tian Guangwen, “Kunhuo de zhangwang: xinchao chengzhang xiaoshuo lun”
[The puzzled look: on the new wave of Bildungsroman] (Master’s thesis, Shangdong
Normal University, 2002).

32 chapter one
young protagonist, and discloses the dynamic and malleable nature of
the young hero.
The major author-based foci of this book are the chengzhang
xiaoshuo written by Su Tong and Yu Hua. However, before analyzing
the two authors’ coming-of-age narratives, I will examine the history
of modern and contemporary Chinese chengzhang xiaoshuo and detect
the changing pattern of Chinese Bildungsroman in different historical
periods.

CHAPTER TWO
THE CHANGING PATTERNS OF THE BILDUNGSROMAN
IN MODERN CHINESE LITERATURE
Though the Bildungsroman is a literary genre that originated in the
West, some crucial attributes of this genre can be observed in pre-
modern Chinese biography—especially the genre’s tendencies for self-
expression, self-reflection, and self-consciousness. The genre’s emphasis
upon individuality and subjectivity are also explored in the writings
of various May Fourth literati during the first half of the twentieth
century. Since then, the tension between a young protagonist’s indi-
viduality and his socialization has become one of the recurrent themes
in modern and contemporary Chinese literature. This chapter begins
with an examination of biographical and autobiographical writing in
pre-modern Chinese literature, and continues with an investigation
of the changing patterns of chengzhang xiaoshuo during two periods:
from the May Fourth era to 1966, and from the 1980s to the early years
of the twenty-first century. My analysis will demonstrate that changing
narrative patterns in modern Chinese coming-of-age narratives reflect
the way the maturation of Chinese youth is entangled with their con-
temporary history, as well as the psychological impact of the tension
between their assertion of an autonomous self and their participation
in the collective and revolutionary cause. I argue that the trajectory of
the Chinese Bildungsroman from the May Fourth era to 1966 reveals
the process by which individuality and subjectivity gradually become
subordinate to the discourse of revolution and collectivity. During
this period, the social integration of Chinese youth is designed to
meet the needs of the particular historical period, and Chinese youth
go through phases as modern students, subsequently as progressive
new youth, and finally as tamed revolutionary youth.1
However, the
coming-of-age fiction written after the 1980s (the post-Mao era) see
1
Mingwei Song, “Long Live Youth: National Rejuvenation and the Chinese Bil-
dungsroman, 1900–1958” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2005). In his study, Min-
gwei Song detects Chinese youth of that time grow from “modern student,” to “new
youth,” and finally to “revolutionary youth.”

34 chapter two
a gradual revival of individuality and subjectivity, and a marginaliza-
tion of revolution and collectivity. Youth are no longer viewed as a
force that will necessarily rejuvenate and modernize China. Instead,
youth become associated with marginality and dysfunction. The image
of fallen youth is especially prominent in the coming-of-age fiction
written by Su Tong and Yu Hua, and will be examined in detail in
Chapter Three and Four. The present chapter will provide a historical
background for the ensuing discussions of Bildungsroman fiction by
Su Tong and Yu Hua, as well as a backdrop against which the two
authors’ works are shown to be both tragic and parodistic.
Antecedents of the Bildungsroman: Zhuan in Pre-modern
Chinese Literature
When we look back through China’s literary tradition, we cannot find
a truly novelistic form of Bildungsroman until early in the twentieth
century. However, certain traits of Bildungsroman such as introspec-
tion and self-consciousness (including self-reflection and didactic
self-examination) are prominent in many traditional Chinese liter-
ary genres, such as poetry, prose, personal correspondence, and the
novel. Poetry (shi), the dominant literary genre in pre-modern China,
is one source of this introspective quality, which is especially notice-
able in many Tang (618–907) Buddhist poems. Later, Northern Song
(960–1127) poetry introduced more intellectualized and philosophi-
cal qualities. Ouyang Xiu (1007–1072), Wang Anshi (1021–1086) and
other early Northern Song poets incorporated an increasing amount
of narrative material in order to foreground philosophical issues more
effectively. Later, Su Shi (1037–1101) and Huang Tingjian (1045–1105)
made introspective intellectualism one of the dominant features in
their writing.
In pre-modern China, the literary forms closest to the Bildungsro-
man were biography and autobiography. What we would recognize
today as biography went under a variety of different generic terms,
including zhuan (biographies), xu (prefaces), muzhiming (tomb
inscriptions), ji (records), zhi (notices), lei (dirges), and nianpu (annal-
istic biographies).2
2
Pei-Yi Wu, The Confucian’s Progress: Autobiographical Writings in Traditional
China (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1990). This is a pathbreaking

changing patterns of the chinese bildungsroman 35
Among these genres, the zhuan most resembles that of biography.
Zhuan was a category first used by Sima Qian (145–86 BC) for record-
ing the biographies in the Shiji (Records of the Historian), the first
comprehensive history of China from the ancient past of the mythi-
cal Yellow Emperor (Huangdi) up to the Western Han dynasty (202
BCE–8 ACE).3
The zhuan form was adopted by subsequent histori-
ans to compile dynastic histories. From the very beginning, the zhuan
was closely associated with historiography. It was the “main vehicle
of historiography” with the “didactic function of the world.”4
Zhuan
historiographers usually shunned personal observation and first-hand
knowledge. Despite writing about subjects with which they were
familiar, for the most part they relied heavily on archival materials
and second-hand accounts. Any information based on their personal
observation and knowledge would be included as an appendix to the
zhuan and introduced by remarks such as “historians generally say”
or “in appraisal we say.” Biographers in pre-modern China tended to
maintain the “convention of the impartial, invisible, and unobtrusive
narrator.”5
The zhuan was considered a branch of history instead of literature
or belles-lettres. Before the Song dynasty (960–1279), this genre was
not included among the writings of literary critics and belles-lettres
anthologists. For instance, Lu Ji (261–303) made no reference to the
zhuan in his pioneer treatise, Wen fu (Rhyme prose on literature); nor
did Xiao Tong (501–531) include the zhuan among the thirty-seven
genres he listed in Wenxuan (Anthology of literature)—the earliest
extant multi-genre anthology of Chinese literature.6
The zhuan typi-
cally focuses upon the historical aspects of a man’s life and the docu-
mented features of his career rather than on the inner and reflective
self. In so doing, the zhuan does not attempt to trace the ongoing
intellectual and spiritual development of its biographical subject.
study of autobiographical writings in traditional China. In the book, Pei-yi Wu exam-
ines the ecology of biography and autobiography in pre-modern China.
3
Sima Qian (145–86 BC), Records of the Grand Historian of China (translated from
the Shih chi of Ssu-ma Ch’ien), trans. Burton Watson (New York: Columbia Univer-
sity Press, 1961).
4
Pei-Yi Wu, The Confucian’s Progress: Autobiographical Writings in Traditional
China, 4.
5
Ibid., 5.
6
Ibid.

36 chapter two
Attention to the differences between autobiography and biogra-
phy in pre-modern Chinese literature has long been neglected. The
major subgenres of Chinese autobiography for the most part imitate
biography by adding zi (self) to a title of the biographical subgenre.
Pei-Yi Wu identifies Tao Qian’s (362–427) “Biography of Master Five
Willows” as China’s first “self-written biography,” or autobiography.7
Before the end of thirteenth century, autobiographical authors strictly
followed the zhuan biographical convention of the “impartial, invisible
and unobtrusive narrator” and “recorded the external events, usually
public and official, but seldom tried to probe inner stirrings or dis-
close complex motives.”8
The early Chinese autobiography’s subser-
vience to history provided the author with no adequate vehicle for
self-expression.
Since the end of the thirteenth century, however, the biographi-
cal constraints on Chinese autobiography loosened. Breakthroughs
occurred in such areas as introspective and confessional accounts.
Zen Buddhist accounts of enlightenment constitute the beginning of
full-blown Chinese autobiographical expression, adding new spiritual
fervor to self-written narratives of the long and arduous search for
fundamental personal transformation. The next three centuries, from
the entirety of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) up through the early
decades of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), witnessed the emergence
of many Neo-Confucian autobiographical writings, in which authors
reflected at length upon the nature of their lives and the cultivation
of their learning. Some of these writings were in the form of travel
journals, in which authors not only depicted the external landscapes
through which they wandered, but also explored their own nature.
Here, travel was a metaphor for self-reflection—a journey inward and
a peregrination of the soul.
One critic posits the influence of the Wang Yangming School of
Neo-Confucianism as the main cause of the rise of interest in self-
reflection, self-examination, and most importantly, humanity. Certain
Neo-Confucians “examined their consciences and confessed their mis-
deeds with a depth of anguish and remorse unthinkable in classical
Confucianism”;9
hence, the autobiographical writings in this period
7
Ibid., 15.
8
Ibid., xi.
9
Ibid., xii.

changing patterns of the chinese bildungsroman 37
can be called “spiritual autobiography.”10
Examples can be found in the
writings of some Neo-Confucian and Buddhist thinkers. Deng Huoqu’s
“The Record of a Quest in the South” (Nanxun lu) describes his frantic
and ultimately fruitless wanderings in search of enlightenment;11
Hu
Zhi’s “A Record of Learning through Difficulties” (Kunxue ji) relates
his gradual awakening to the full significance of the concept of the
innate knowledge of good (liangzhi).12
De Qing, one of the prominent
Buddhist thinkers in the late Ming dynasty, draws upon the nianpu
(annalistic biography) form to recount his childhood and later path
to enlightenment.13
However, the influence of the Wang Yangming School cannot fully
explain the general intellectual climate of self-consciousness, which
was revealed not only in autobiographical writings, but also in fiction,
drama, and other literary genres. The economic and social conditions
of the late Ming dynasty had a powerful impact on the new perception
of self. The historian Cynthia Brokaw points out:
The commercial boom of the late sixteenth century created new eco-
nomic opportunities and encouraged social mobility, providing a natural
context for a reevaluation of the powers of the individual and his or her
role within society. The increased participation of peasants in handicraft
industries, the rise of merchants to positions of social prestige and politi-
cal influence, the opening of new educational opportunities through the
publication of popular educational literature—these changes might well
have led thoughtful observers to reflect on both the greater effectiveness
and the heavier responsibility now attached to individual effort. Great
opportunities for advancement increased the individual’s sense of con-
trol over destiny, but also intensified personal pressures to succeed in a
context where of course not everyone could succeed.14
So we can propose that the proliferation of autobiography in the late
Ming dynasty might also be seen in part as a response to the new
10
Ibid., 127.
11
Deng Huoqu (1498–1570), Nanxun lu [The record of a quest in the south], Ca,
1599.
12
Hu Zhi (1517–1585), “Kunxue ji” [A record of learning through difficulties],
in Mingru xue’an [Philosophical records of Ming Confucians] (Taibei: Shijie shuju,
1965), 221–224.
13
De Qing (1546–1623), Zuben Hanshan dashi nianpu shuzhu [Unabridged and
annotated annalistic biography of Master Hanshan], ed. Fu Zheng (Suzhou: Honghua
she, 1934).
14
Cynthia Brokaw, review of The Confucian’s Progress: Autobiographical Writings in
Traditional China, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 53, no.1 (June 1993): 182–183.

38 chapter two
economic, social, and intellectual demands placed on individuals to
demonstrate their worth in a time of intense change.15
During the seventeenth century, further progress was made in auto-
biographical writing. A few autobiographers focused on an imaginative
portrayal of the individual by borrowing literary techniques and even
lifting entire episodes from fiction. This kind of autobiographical writ-
ing has been described by Pei-yi Wu as “self-invented.”16
For example,
the autobiographical writings of Wang Jie and Mao Qiling no lon-
ger imitated earlier historiographical models, but were instead heavily
influenced by popular fiction of the Ming.17
After 1680, some three
and a half decades after the Ming-Qing transition, experimentation
with forms of autobiography largely ceased as autobiographical writ-
ings reverted to their earlier historiographical conventions. Some crit-
ics attribute this retreat to the fading of the Wang Yangming School,
but surely there are other reasons. By the early Qing dynasty, writers
already had more literary genres at their disposal for self-expression
and psychological exploration—especially popular literary forms such
as vernacular fiction and drama; they were not limited to autobiogra-
phy. For example, literary critics have praised A Dream of Red Man-
sions as a “supreme work of psychological realism,” emphasizing the
novel’s skill at entering directly into a character’s consciousness.18
In
this sense, A Dream of Red Mansions can be read as a Bildungsroman
novel in pre-modern Chinese literature with its in-depth exploration
of young men’s and women’s psychological and spiritual develop-
ment, their increasingly acute recognition of themselves and the out-
side world, and their social integration within a declining elite family.
Yet it was not until the early twentieth century that Chinese readers
encountered autobiography and Bildungsroman of a different type—a
variety that had been influenced by Western models.
15
Ibid., 183.
16
Wu, The Confucian’s Progress: Autobiographical Writings in Traditional China, xii.
17
Wang Jie (1603?–1682?), “Sanrong zhuiren guang zixu” [Expanded self-account
of the useless man Sannong], in Lidai zixu zhuan wenchao [A historical survey of
Chinese autobiography], ed. Guo Dengfeng (Taibei: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1965),
1:32–67. Mao Qiling (1623–1716), “Ziwei muzhiming” [Self-written tomb notice and
inscription], in Mao Xihe xiansheng quanji [Complete works of Master Mao Xihe],
35: II: Ia–20b. 1761.
18
C. T. Hsia, The Classic Chinese Novel: A Critical Introduction (New York: Colum-
bia University Press, 1968), 246; Kirk A. Denton, The Problematic of Self in Modern
Chinese Literature: Hu Feng and Lu Ling (Stanford, California: Stanford University
Press, 1998), 33.

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