Pa Chin and His Writings: Chinese Youth Between the Two Revolutions

420 Pages·1967·11.78 MB·English

by  Olga Lang

PA CHIN AND HIS WRITINGS
CHINESE YOUTH BETWEEN THE TWO REVOLUTIONS
HARVARD EAST ASIAN SERIES, 28
The East Asian Research Center at Harvard University
administers projects designed to further scholarly
understanding of China, Korea, Japan, and adjacent areas.

PA CHIN AND
HIS WRITINGS
CHINESE YOUTH
BETWEEN THE
TWO REVOLUTIONS
BY OLGA LANG
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS I967
© Copyright 1967 by the President and Fellows o£ Harvard College
All rights reserved
Distributed in Great Britain by Oxford University Press, London
Preparation of this volume was aided by a grant from the Ford Foundation
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 67-17314
Printed in the United States of America
то THE MEMORY OF MY FATHER

FOREWORD
The aspirations and self-image of youth were essential ingre-
dients of the Chinese revolution from 1919 to 1949, and the fiction
of this era in the new vernacular style has left us a major clue to
the moods and motives of the rank and file of revolutionists. The
novelist Pa Chin was a leading writer of this period. His widely
read stories led the literary attack successively on the traditional
family system, on the repressive measures of the Kuomintang
regime, and finally against the Japanese aggression. An optimist,
writing for youth topically and dramatically, extolling self-sacri-
fice and duty over love. Pa Chin gave young Chinese intellectuals
an ideal image of themselves and their role in society, and so
prepared them to participate in the revolution. His novels ideal-
ize the rebellion of youth against family authority and the clan-
destine propaganda work of student groups against the regime in
power. His young characters find themselves by sacrifice. But
their culture and society give them no real sanction for an asser-
tive individualism, no basis for defiance of their peer group, and
in the end they enter rather easily into a new conformity.
Olga Lang makes plain that Pa Chin's writing was animated
by his faith in that most idealistic and self-sacrificing of revolu-
tionary credos, anarchism. His young characters break loose from
the tyranny of family, in situations reminiscent of those long
since stereotyped in the Hung low meng (Dream of the Red
Chamber), but then they give themselves up to the new cause
of revolution. Even without the family system, their acceptance
of duty at the cost of personal frustration seems as fated as ever.
Mrs. Lang's analyses of Pa Chin's plots show them to be full of
suffering and struggle, with a good deal of death and suicide. Pa
Chin is always serious, often extremely sentimental, even lachry-
mose, and seldom humorous, a man dedicated to destroying pres-
ent evils so as to remake the world in ways naively hoped for but
not specified.
vii
vili FOREWORD
Olga Lang's preparation for this study is without question
unique. She was born and grew up in Russia. Her own family
gave her a background in Russian and French literature and an
early interest in the populist movement. In her early youth she
studied Russian and European history and literature at the uni-
versities of Leningrad and Moscow. Even in high school she had
read widely in the history of the Russian and international labor
movements, and she studied this subject thoroughly after the
Revolution, when she worked several years for Russian trade un-
ions and wrote extensively on the international labor movement
for various publications. All this has given her insight into the
influence of international anarchism and Russian populism upon
Pa Chin's political ideas and of Russian and French writers upon
his literary work. Living in China from 1935 to 1937, she studied
Chinese and did research in Peiping on the Chinese family sys-
tem (see her book, Chinese Family and Society [New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1946]). At the same time, she had an opportunity
to meet many Chinese students and so became aware of the great
influence Pa Chin had upon them.
From a mastery of Pa Chin's voluminous output, Mrs. Lang
has reconstructed the experiences of his early life, mapped out
the phases of his literary career, appraised the influences upon
him, and given us a bird's-eye view of the major writings with
which he helped to shape the ideals of Chinese students who sup-
plied the cadres of the rival revolutionary parties. While this
pioneer work makes no pretense to be the last word on its subject,
it opens the way to a clearer and much-needed view of the per-
sonal concerns and aspirations of China's revolutionary genera-
tion. This has significance now for all of us.
East Asian Research Center
Harvard University
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I want to acknowledge with gratitude the help I received from
many sources.
My deep thanks are due to Professor C. Martin Wilbur for his
valuable suggestions and constructive criticism beginning with
the early stages of my work, and to Professor Chi-chen Wang who
gave me the benefit of his intimate knowledge of Chinese life and
literature and carefully checked many of my translations. I also
appreciate the help of Professors Donald Keene, William Th. de
Barry, Leon Stilman, C. T. Hu, Chiang Yeh, John Meskill, and
Ivan Morris, who read my manuscript and made many pertinent
remarks. I am very grateful to professors Benjamin J. Schwartz and
Ezra F. Vogel, whose encouragement and valuable comments
helped me to bring this study into final shape. I have greatly
profited from the sympathetic cooperation of the director of the
project Men and Politics in Modern China at Columbia Univer-
sity, Mr. Howard L. Boorman, who put at my disposal the rich
files of the project and helped me with his advice.
I am indebted to my friends Mr. Tsing Yuan, Dr. Harriet Mills,
Mr. Lu Kuang-huan, Mr. Ku Kung-k'ai, Miss Loretta Pan, and
Miss Ida Pruitt who checked my translations and helped me to
understand some problems of Chinese life. I greatly appreciate
the advice and suggestions of my friends and colleagues Dr. Sophia
M. Robison, Mrs. Sophie Erlich, Mr. Thompson Bradley, and
Dr. Monroe Beardsley who have read parts of my manuscript.
Miss Nym Wales kindly granted permission to use her unpub-
lished biography of Ting Ling.
For editorial assistance I am indebted to Mrs. Cornelia Mills,
Mrs. Lea Kisselgoff, and the staff of the East Asian Research Cen-
ter at Harvard University. My warm thanks go to the staff of the
East Asiatic Collection at Columbia University and to Mr. Donald
Klein for their untiring cooperation and kindness.
I received financial help from the Advisory Committee for the
ix
χ ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
research project Men and Politics in Modern China at Columbia
University and from the Faculty Research Committee at Swarth-
more College.
Above all I am grateful to the Director of the East Asian Re-
search Center at Harvard University, Dr. John K. Fairbank, whose
encouragement, wise advice, and editorial assistance made the pub-
lication of this book possible.
Olga Lang
Swarthmore, Pennsylvania
October 1966