Panel 44: Memory and Writing in Modern China and Hong Kong

Chair: Duosi Meng, University of Illinois Chicago

Panelists

Xinyang Zhou, University of Chicago, “In Their Own Words: Republican Chinese Children’s Everyday Life in Diaries, 1930s–1940s”

Twentieth-century China marked a transformative period for Chinese children. Children and childhood became focal points for debates on family reform, educational modernization, and state-building. The young generation now represented multiple roles: subjects of care, subjects of discipline, and resources for production and reproduction. To reconcile these objectives, reform-minded educators introduced many experimental programs, including promoting children’s diary writing as a pedagogical and self-disciplining tool. The educational initiative craved out an opportunity for children to write about their lives and a physical space for them to publicize their voices. By reading children’s diaries alongside and against model diaries compiled by adults from the 1930s and 40s, this paper elaborates on the physical and emotional experiences of Republican Chinese children. It shows that these experiences resonated with adults’ expectations while sometimes diverging from what adults had conceptualized. On the one hand, children effectively adopted the patriotic language and portrayed themselves as active participants in nation-building. On the other, the young generation interpreted their environments in ways that deviated from adult anticipations. These variations reveal an alternative and more nuanced reality of children’s lived experiences throughout the 1930s and 40s. Moreover, these “outlying” writings reveal the power, limit, and unexpected legacy of diary writing as a disciplinary practice. Diary writing, a pedagogical device intended for modeling the youngsters, turned out to be the gateway through which children expressed themselves beyond the prescribed models. The first section discusses the rise of children’s diary writing as a practice and the second explores the texts’ content.

John Hanzhang Ye, University of Minnesota, “The Battle Ground of Memory: An Investigation of the Interactive Dynamics of Memory of the Second World War in Postcolonial Hong Kong”

This study investigates the mnemonic practices of the Hong Kong Battle in the Second World War in Hong Kong’s postcolonial context, treating the collective memory as a product of dynamic interactions between mnemonic agents, including the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) government, ex-servicemen associations, non-governmental history interest groups. The study reveals the complexity of memorizing the colonial past for the different parties, and how the memorizing of the same historical period should be understood as an interactive process between the mnemonic agents in Hong Kong’s changing political context. This study treats political context not as an independent actor, but one that should be channeled by mnemonic agents into memory practices. After the handover of Hong Kong from the British to China, the SAR government needed to reframe the commemoration of the deceased in the Second World War and fulfill its task to incorporate Hong Kong into the China’s narrative of the anti-Japanese War. The rise of localism offered a political opportunity for the constellation of the official memory to emerge as a reaction by various history interest groups. The constellation of the official memory and the celebration of the bravery of those fight under the British flag, however, does not necessarily reinforce colonial nostalgia and stereotype but helps history interest groups to narrative Hong Kong’s identity as an organic integration of both Chinese and Western.

Duosi Meng, University of Illinois Chicago, “Outside the Window: Chinese and Jewish Exile Writers in Shanghai (1938–1948)”

This paper explores the poetry of both Chinese and Jewish exile writers, shedding light on the intersecting narratives of the Eastern and Western diasporas in Shanghai during the tumultuous period from 1938 to 1948. Through a comparative analysis of poems, it seeks to unravel the intricate layers of experience shared by writers from diverse cultural backgrounds who found themselves in the throes of displacement, exploring their transient connections to the city as outsiders. From 1938 to 1948, Shanghai emerged as a temporary sanctuary for approximately 20,000 Jewish refugees and became a flourishing ground for their cultural endeavors. The poems by Jewish refugees and exile writers in Shanghai provide multifaceted perspectives on the essence of political writing, the significance of cultural-geographical spaces in displacement, the clash of cultural values, and the pivotal role of languages in navigating their identity crises and survival. Meanwhile, the works of many Chinese exile writers from the same period articulate their urgent call for resistance against the Japanese invasion and their concurrent critique of contemporary events, revealing their profound connections to the city and showcasing their pioneering endeavors within the landscape of Chinese modernism.

By juxtaposing these Chinese and Jewish narratives, this paper offers a distinctive perspective on the fusion of Eastern and Western impacts during this pivotal era in Chinese history. It underscores the diverse cultural tapestry woven by these individuals within the fabric of Shanghai.