Panel 24: Generic Transformations in Late Imperial and Republican Chinese Literature

Chair: Michel Hockx, University of Notre Dame

Panelists

Ziwei Jiang, McGill University, “The Gender of Justice in Republican Chinese Detective Fiction”

In the era of Republican China (1912-1949), literary figures in detective fiction, such as private investigators, knights-errant, and burglars, gradually replaced the traditional judicial figures in Ming-Qing court-case fiction. The figure of the “xiadao” (chivalrous burglar) detective, predominantly male, blended Western detective archetypes with the chivalric spirit found in Chinese knight-errant tales and martial arts fiction. Scholars have discussed the translation and localization of Western detective fiction in Republican China, but the intersection of gender and justice remains under-explored.

My paper considers the gender politics behind the depiction of justice in Republican-era detective fiction. It focuses on the series “Nü Feizei Huang Ying” (Female Thief Huang Ying), where female “xiadao” would employ beauty, martial skills, intelligence, and technologies to deliver justice as a team, embodying chivalry and modernity at once. Created by Shanghai writer Yang Xiaoping, the story was serialized from 1948 to 1957 in the detective magazine Lanpi Shu (Blue Book). My paper suggests that in the “translingual practices” of localizing Western detective fiction, Chinese “xiadao” detective fiction infused the idea of poetic justice with the spirit of chivalry. It argues that the introduction of female characters into the male-dominated genre of “xiadao” detective fiction not only created moments of female empowerment but also redefined the concept of justice. Influenced by Republican literati’s male-centric concerns for national salvation, the story presented a gendered, stratified value of justice where female “xiadao” made compromises and sacrifices.

Yan Liang, Grand Valley State University, “Pear and the Lonesome Beauty: Cultural Symbolism of Plants in Traditional Chinese Literature”

In a prose written by the famous late-Ming literatus Zhang Dai (1597-1679), a young woman named Xiao Qing was brought up as an entertainer, sold to a man as a concubine, and later driven out by his primary wife. In her lonesome residence by the West Lake, she was only drinking pear juice as she wasted away and eventually died. Could any other fruit juice be more appropriate for her circumstances? Probably not. In the 18th-century vernacular novel masterpiece The Dream of the Red Chamber, an important female character, Xue Baochai, has her seasonal medication Cold Fragrance Pills buried under a pear tree in the court garden. Could any other fruit tree serve this purpose better? Probably not.

This paper is a study of how the pear is used as a trope for character portrayal in traditional Chinese literature through a close reading of a few works of poetry and fiction from imperial China. The study aims at revealing the inner logic in traditional Chinese perception of the relationship between plants and humans. It also explores the cultural symbolism in literary portrayals based on this relationship. These are topics not much studied in Chinese literary criticism before.