Tag: China

Li Zhi 李贄

Published June 6, 2023 by Eveline Josselyn

Li Zhi (1527–1602) was a scholar-official during the late Ming period. After passing the civil service examination in 1551, Li Zhi worked as a teacher in Henan. He later served in the Ministry of Rites and Ministry of Justice, before leaving public service in order to devote himself to teaching for the remainder of his life. He was considered unorthodox and heretical by his contemporaries and later faced arrest and imprisonment for his ideas, whereupon he committed suicide in jail in 1602.

As a scholar, Li Zhi was a strong critic of the mainstream Cheng-Zhu School of Neo-Confucianism, which espoused the writings of Cheng Yi, Cheng Hao, and Zhu Xi. He also criticized Daoist and Buddhist thought, though later in life he would study Buddhism and the writings of Wang Yangming. He is generally considered a member of the Taizhou School, a radical school of thought developed by some of Wang Yangming’s followers and known for its individualist and egalitarian ideology.

Li Zhi’s most prominent work, A Book to Burn (Fenshu), consists of a collection of essays, letters, discourses, poems, and other miscellaneous writings. One main theme Li Zhi expresses throughout this text is the power of well-written literature, which he believed allowed for the expression of thoughts and desires one might not normally be permitted to voice. Li Zhi made this belief clear both through straightforward statements about literature’s significance and through the use of clever allusions to literary and scholarly classics.

In what is perhaps his best-known essay from the Fenshu, titled “Explanation of the Childlike Heart-mind,” Li Zhi promotes genuineness and encourages individuals to take ownership of their lives through authenticity. Li Zhi’s understanding of the heart-mind is distinguished from other conceptions within the Confucian tradition by his validation of an individual’s inner desires in opposition to long-established arguments regarding the dangers of excessive and selfish desires. Li Zhi believed that following the traditional method of cultivating one’s heart-mind by studying the classics and freeing oneself from desire would cause one to lose their childlike heart-mind as it would come to be dominated by outside influence, and ultimately the genuine, simplistic thoughts within one’s soul would be expressed superficially. Li Zhi warns against blindly following the ideas expressed by others and within the classics, as being in touch with one’s childlike heart-mind means being in touch with one’s originality, and thus it is necessary for one to draw their own interpretations from classics, rather than prematurely subscribing to prominent beliefs and sentiments. If one maintains a sense of self and originality, their childlike heart-mind will allow for a true, pure expression of their inner thoughts and desires. With his explanation of the childlike heart-mind, Li Zhi emphasizes the importance of determining one’s genuine desires by discerning them from desires and beliefs that have been influenced by others, ultimately confronting existentialist conceptions of freedom involving questions of how to live one’s life with genuineness and authenticity.

Throughout A Book to Keep Hidden (Cangshu), Li Zhi applies this individualistic approach to the genre of historical biography. In the “Introduction to the Table of Contents of the Historical Annals and Biographies” in the Cangshu, Li Zhi sets forth a pluralistic view of the truth in which there is no objective right or wrong. He argues against the mainstream Confucian understanding of objectivity in morality, asserting that all individuals possess an innate knowledge of right and wrong resulting in countless individual truths. For Li Zhi, individual conceptions of right and wrong are all equally legitimate, as such fundamental ideas inevitably differ between people, time periods, and places. Li Zhi propounds a more pluralistic approach to understanding truth and morality, urging individuals to refrain from holding others to arbitrary and subjective standards of right and wrong and to instead use their innate knowledge to develop their own understanding of such concepts.

FURTHER READING

Handler-Spitz, Rivi, Pauline C. Lee, and Haun Saussy. The Objectionable Li Zhi: Fiction, Criticism, and Dissent in Late Ming China. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2021.

Li, Zhi. A Book to Burn and a Book to Keep (Hidden): Selected Writings. Translated by Rebecca Handler-Spitz, Pauline C. Lee, and Haun Saussy. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016.

Li, Zhi, and Pauline C. Lee. Li Zhi, Confucianism, and the Virtue of Desire. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2012.

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Chan Koonchung

Published May 17, 2023 by Abby Varricchio

Chan Koonchung (1952- ) was born in Shanghai and received his education from the University of Hong Kong before completing graduate study at Boston University. Koonchung has worked in several different industries, such as film and television production before becoming a novelist. He currently lives in Beijing.

Koonchung’s The Fat Years, or directly translated as The Age of Prosperity: China 2013 uses the theme of dystopian technology in order to critique present actions or policies of the Chinese Communist Party and Chinese society. The Fat Years is set in the not-too-distant future , where the entire month of February 2011 is missing from public memory and record. In the year of 2011, the global economy crashed, but China remained unaffected and ascended to become the top global economic power, attaining great domestic prosperity.

The protagonist, Lao Chen, a Taiwanese writer, reconnects with several old friends, who are trying to determine how they partially remember the seemingly missing month. The group also notices everyone is suspiciously content and happy despite not being able to remember an entire month. Throughout the course of the novel, Xi and Caodi, two of Lao Chan’s friends, reveal their memories and travel to nearby regions to in order to understand why no one remembers the month and is unbothered by it. Eventually, the group kidnaps a knowledgeable Politburo member, He Dongsheng, to understand what role government leaders played in the mass amnesia and widespread happiness. He Dongsheng reveals the Chinese government places small amounts of MDMA (ecstasy) in the water and other beverages throughout the country so that everyone is relaxed and happy all the time. He Dongsheng likes this to the United States putting fluoride in its water. Koonchung implies people have chosen to not worry about the “forgotten month” because they are so content with such economic prosperity.

Though it is obvious Koonchung critiques the Chinese Communist Party in The Fat Years, the novel also presents a larger critique of complicity in the face of lost freedom in exchange for excessive material gain within any economic or political system. In Koonchung’s China, citizens gladly traded their individual rights, such as the freedom of expression, for economic prosperity. Koonchung ultimately urges readers from any country to ask themselves what essential qualities of freedom they are willing to surrender in order to achieve wealth, luxury, and prosperity.

FURTHER READING:

Koonchung, Chan. The Fat Years. Translated by Michael S. Duke. New York: Anchor Books, 2013.

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Yan Lianke

Published May 17, 2023 by Abby Varricchio

Yan Lianke (1958- ) is a Chinese novelist known for his satirical portrayals of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its domestic economic and censorship policies. Before Lianke began writing satire, he served as a propaganda writer in the CCP. He currently teaches in Hong Kong.

Born in rural Song County in the Henan Province to illiterate farmers at the beginning of the Great Leap Forward, Yan Lianke’s writing is heavily influenced by his experience with poverty and its entailing despair as a young boy. His novels explore the stark differences between his impoverished childhood and the prosperity of contemporary China through the lens of popular memory. Lianke specifically focuses on what events are openly remembered by the public and how the state influences public recollection. State control of language through censorship of literature, art, and publication affects the selective memory of the past because it reenforces self-censorship.

Lianke also suggests that Xi Jinping’s “Chinese Dream” and the desire for wealth have corrupted the people’s ability to critique the regime and create art and literature, given that most opportunities to achieve economic prosperity are so closely dependent on submitting to state power.

These themes are particularly prominent in the novel The Day the Sun Died (originally published in 2015 in Taiwan). The novel unfolds over the course of one evening, in which nearly an entire village begins to “dream walk” and get into fatal accidents as a result. Eventually, the village slips into a state of moral depravity and its inhabitants begin to act out their suppressed desires. Told through the eyes of a fourteen-year-old boy, The Day the Sun Died seeks to critique Xi Jinping’s optimistic “Chinese Dream” and the taboo surrounding discussion of past state- sponsored violence and tragedy.

FURTHER READING:

Lianke, Yan. The Day the Sun Died. Translated by Carlos Rojas. New York: Grove Press, 2018.

Lianke, Yan. Serve the People!: A Novel. Translated by Julia Lovell. New York: Grove Press, 2007.

Lianke, Yan. Heart Sutra. Translated by Carlos Rojas. New York: Grove Press, 2023.

Lianke, Yan. “On China’s State-Sponsored Amnesia.” Translated by Carlos Rojas. New York Times (2013), www.nytimes.com/2013/04/02/opinion/on-chinas-state-sponsored-amnesia.html.

Lianke, Yan. “Finding Light in China’s Darkness.” Translated by Carlos Rojas. The New York Times, 2014), www.nytimes.com/2014/10/23/opinion/Yan-Lianke-finding-light-in-chinas-darkness.html.

Fan, Jiayang. “Yan Lianke’s Forbidden Satires of China.” The New Yorker, October 2018, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/15/yan-liankes-forbidden-satires-of-china.

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Mengzi 孟子

Published July 7, 2022 by John Lombardini

Mengzi (4th century BCE), better known in the West by the Latinized version of his name, Mencius, was a Confucian philosopher who lived during the Warring States Period (403-221 BCE) in China. The Mengzi, the collection of conversations that bears his name, is one of the Four Books canonized by Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130-1200) that would constitute the core of the imperial civil service examinations in China from 1313-1905. According to tradition, he was a student of Kongzi’s grandson, Zisi 子思.

Mengzi is best known for his argument that human nature is good. According to Mengzi, all human beings are born with four sprouts (compassion, disdain, deference, approval and disapproval) that, if cultivated properly, will grow into the virtues of benevolence, righteousness, propriety, and wisdom. In defense of this view of human nature, Mengzi offered the following thought experiment: if someone saw a child who was about to fall into a well they would react with a feeling of alarm and compassion. For Mengzi, that all human beings would experience such feelings of alarm and compassion indicated that these sprouts are innate and universal. The goal of education is thus to nurture and grow these sprouts in to full-blown virtues.

Mengzi’s theory of human nature undergirded his political philosophy, which centered on the idea of benevolent government. For Mengzi, benevolent government required rule by a virtuous king for the benefit of the people as a whole. This required providing the people with the basic necessities that they needed to live (and which Mengzi viewed as prerequisites, for most individuals, of ethical cultivation), as well instruction regarding the role-specific duties they ought to perform. Benevolent government thus required ethical cultivation by both rulers and subjects.

Further Reading

van Norden, Bryan, trans. Mengzi: with selections from traditional commentaries. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 2008.

van Norden, Bryan. Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism in Early Chinese Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Kim, Sungmoon. Theorizing Confucian Virtue Politics: The Political Philosophy of Mencius and Xunzi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

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The New Culture Movement

Published May 17, 2022 by Catherine Freemon

The New Culture Movement (1917-1921) was a movement in China that criticized conservative, traditional Chinese ideas and sought to advance a more progressive “new culture.” This new culture found its footing in Western ideals like science and democracy and was spearheaded by scholars such as Chen Duxiu, Lu Xun, Hu Shih, Li Dazhao, Chen Hengzhe, Liu Bannong, Cai Yuanpei, He Dong, Zhou Zouren, Qian Xuantong, and Bing Xin. This group, of whom many were classically educated, rebelled against Confucianism and classical values. Its hub was Peking University, where many of the leaders gathered under the leadership of Cai Yuanpei during his time as chancellor.

An important facet was the New Youth magazine, a publication where many of these thinkers were able to speak out through essays, short stories, and other forms of writing. The New Culture Movement espoused liberal ideas like the end of the patriarchal family structure, individualism, the re-examination of the Confucian texts and other ancient writings using modern critical methods (called the Doubting Antiquity School), rights for women, and democratic values.

Further Reading

Goldman, Merle and Leo Ou-fan Lee, eds. An Intellectual History of Modern China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Mitter, Rana. A Bitter Revolution: China’s Struggle with the Modern World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.

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Lu Xun

Published May 17, 2022 by Catherine Freemon

LU Xun (1881-1936) was a writer, essayist, and poet, and an influential figure in China in the early 1900s. In 1918, Lu published his first short story, “The Diary of a Madman,” a dark and satirical political commentary that forcefully attacks the government and culture of China in the early 1900s. Society was based on Confucianism, which values traditionalism and denigrates Western ideas. Through the story, Lu Xun calls for a more humanistic and individualistic society that eradicates the old values of China. This was one of the first works of vernacular fiction in Chinese history, and it was written for the magazine New Youth, which would become the flagship journal for the May Fourth movement. His most famous work is “The True Story of Ah-Q.” Similar to The Diary of a Madman, this story also criticizes Confucian ideals and urges readers to resist them, albeit not as violently as the former. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature because of this work, and it solidified his writing as a pillar of Chinese literature.

FURTHER READING

Xun, Lu. The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Tales of China: The Complete Fiction of Lu Xun. Afterword by Julia Lovell. Translated by Yiyun Li. London: Penguin Books, 2009.

Leo Ou-fan Lee, Voices from the Iron House: A Study of Lu Xun. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987.

Spence, Jonathan. The Gate of Heavenly Peace: The Chinese and Their Revolution 1895-1980. New York: Viking, 1981.

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Kang Youwei

Published May 17, 2022 by jeforte

KANG Youwei (1858-1927) was a prominent Chinese public intellectual and reformer, best known for his socialist interpretation of Confucianism and radical reforms. Kang grew up during the end of the Qing dynasty and was an influential voice in guiding China’s development and modernization at the start of the 20^th century. An advocate of constitutional monarchy, Kang saw Meiji Japan as a model for China’s future development. This view earned him the ire of his contemporaries, leading Kang to be branded as a heretic.

Kang and his student Liang Qichao participated in the Hundred Days’ Reform effort in 1898, the failure of which forced Kang and Liang to flee to Japan to escape execution. Kang’s subsequent travel through Europe and Canada cemented his belief in the danger of revolution, opting instead for reform. Kang would later return to China, and in 1917 attempted to overthrow Sun Yat-sen’s newly established Republic and restore a Qing monarch to the throne. This did not go very well, however, as public sentiment had by this time shifted heavily against monarchism, and after becoming suspicious of his compatriot General Zhang Xun’s motives, Kang abandoned the effort. While public opinion weighed against Kang by the end of his life, his ideas would continue to influence Chinese thinkers for decades to come. His most influential work, Datong Shu (大同書) or “Book of Great Unity,” argued for the dissolution of traditional Chinese family structures (to be replaced with governmental institutions), the liberation of women, the implementation of socialist-style welfare, and the advancement of Chinese technology to improve quality of life.

FURTHER READING

De Bary, Theodore and Richard Lufrano, eds. Sources of Chinese Tradition, vol. 2. 2nd ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.

Brusadelli, Federico. Confucian Concord: Reform, Utopia, and Teleology in Kang Youwei’s Datong Shu. Leiden: Brill, 2020.

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Hundred Days’ Reform Movement

Published May 17, 2022 by jeforte

After China’s defeat in the Sino-Japanese War in 1895, a group of civil service examination candidates led by Kang Youwei wrote the “Ten Thousand Word Memorial,” which advocated for a series of reforms aimed at modernizing China along Western lines. After being largely ignored by the Qing government, in 1898 Kang caught the attention of the Guangxu emperor, who granted him an audience with high government officials.

The emperor agreed with the suggestions of Kang and his fellow reformers, and began to issue edicts. If allowed to stand, these edicts would have radically transformed Chinese society, abolishing the civil service examination system, revising the code of law, and promoting western industry and technology. As these reforms directly targeted traditional Chinese power structures, however, they sparked fierce opposition from the ruling classes, who rallied behind empress dowager Cixi and enacted a coup deposing the Guangxu emperor. As a result of this Kang and his student Liang Qichao were forced to flee to Japan to avoid execution, but six of their fellow reformers were not so fortunate. The Hundred Days’ Reform Movement is especially interesting because despite its failure, many of its proposed reforms were later adopted (such as the abolition of the civil service exam system or the adoption of western science and medicine), suggesting that the movement’s failure could have been as much on the part of the reformers to make their suggestions politically viable as it was a reaction of vested interests against social and technological reform.

FURTHER READING

Luke S. K. Kwong. “Chinese Politics at the Crossroads: Reflections on the Hundred Days Reform of 1898.” Modern Asian Studies 34, no. 3 (2000): 663–95. http://www.jstor.org/stable/313144.

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Hu Shih

Published May 17, 2022 by jeforte

HU Shih (1891-1962) was a Chinese literary critic, politician, and philosopher. He is best known for his advocacy of the use of Chinese vernacular, which greatly democratized literature in China. Born in Shanghai, Hu distinguished himself by becoming a national scholar, and went on the study at Cornell and Columbia University in the United States. At Columbia Hu studied philosophy with the pragmatist John Dewey, whose views would greatly influence Hu. Upon returning to lecture at Peking University, Hu started writing for the journal New Youth, and quickly became a prominent public intellectual. In various publications, Hu advocated for a “new literature” written in vernacular Chinese (baihua) and thus freed from the tyranny and constraints of the “dead” classical language (wenyuan).

This would prove hugely transformative for China’s nascent literary movements, as the switch to vernacular enabled many more people to read, write, and otherwise critically participate in literature. At the same time, Hu advocated for a broad application of Dewey’s pragmatic methodology, including the use of the scientific method in the study of traditional Chinese literature. Following the May Fourth incident in 1919, however, these pragmatist convictions would lead Hu to split with the communists, as he saw abstract doctrines like Marxism or Anarchism as being unable to offer solutions to the real issues China faced. Hu’s relations with the nationalists were similarly tenuous, but he would nevertheless go on to serve as ambassador to Washington and later Chancellor to Peking National University. When the communists seized power in 1949, Hu fled to New York City, before settling in Taiwan, where he would live the rest of his life.

FURTHER READING

Shih, Hu, and Chih-P’ing Chou. English Writings of Hu Shih Chinese Philosophy and Intellectual History, 3 vols. Berlin, Germany: Springer, 2013.

Grieder, Jerome. Hu Shih and the Chinese Renaissance: Liberalism in the Chinese Revolution, 1917-1937. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970.

Chou, Min-Chih. Hu Shih and Intellectual Choice in Modern China. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1984.

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