Проблемы литератур Дальнего Востока. Часть 1

Секция 3 • Panel 3 Проблемы литератур Дальнего Востока. Т. 1. 2018 360 The cultural changes which occurred in China after the collapse of empire and the May Fourth Movement caused that writing and publishing women along with their new feminine style, language and topics have entered the literary scene. The crucial work which arose a heated discussion and broke the taboo connected with presenting psyche and the sexuality of women was a tale entitled Miss Sophie’s Diary by Ding Ling in which the main character, a spoiled and manipulative hypo- chondriac, openly describes her desires and emotions, part of which not fitting the virtuous lady  1 . The early works of Ding Ling present the dilemmas of Chinese people looking for a new identity and trying to liberate themselves from the old norms and precepts. The emancipatory attempts were not supported by families and society, young women trying to live independently and modern confronted the lack of understanding and support  2 . Moreover, it turned out quite soon that the liberation is illusionary and the new ideologies, such as communism, do not bring tangible changes of Chinese society’s thinking and behaviour, despite they proclaim equality and officially postulate equality for women. In fact some aspects of the Confucian ideal of woman were merely modified, e.g. women may work outside the household but they occupy inferior positions and are subjected to men; they may choose a husband independently but they must get the party's consent. In the party structures women were treated as inferior beings, as Ding Ling herself experienced painfully when public condemnation and severe punishment followed her publication of a text accusing CPC of the instrumental and inferior treatment of comrades. The domination of men and masculine topics in the Chinese literature was a matter of fact over the long decades of People's Republic of China as well as the domination of realism and the so-called communist literature, the style which dominated the Chinese literary scene until the end of cultural revolution in 1978. In 1980’s there were changes in art and culture accompanying the wave of economic changes and the policy of opening. The new styles, voices and names have emerged. One of the most interesting and outstanding was a young writer, Can Xue. The exceptionality of her style and themes has quickly drawn the attention of cri- tiques in China and abroad. In the foreword to the translation of the one of her novels there was a sentence “Can Xue is an anomaly in Chinese literature”  3 expressing the delight with her originality. Can Xue ( ↻䴚 ), whose real name is Deng Xiaohua ( 䛃 ሿॾ ), usually is called as the Bruno Schulz of contemporary China. She is one of the most interesting characters of the Chinese literary scene and the completely sepa- rate voice of the Chinese literature. Her artistic nickname means ‘dirty spring snow which does not want to melt’ and reflects her opinion about herself — as a person 1 Ding Ling. Miss Sophie’s Diary , Beijing: Panda Books, 1985. 2 Vide Hershatter G. Women in China’s Long Twentieth Century . Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007, passim. 3 Innes C. Foreword , in: Can Xue, Old Floating Cloud , 1991, p. ix.