Проблемы литератур Дальнего Востока. Часть 1

Секция 3 • Panel 3 Проблемы литератур Дальнего Востока. Т. 1. 2018 364 instant. Let’s put it aside for now”  1 . Beside the age and appearance that are impossible to estimate, Mrs. X also emanates, especially to the irritation of female neighbours, her sex appeal, shamelessness (she drips in the river naked and then sunbathes) and a comfortable approach to intimate male-female relations. She openly talks about sex and her sexual experiences, not necessarily hides her meetings with lovers, and has the accusations of immorality and bad conduct for nothing. Mrs. X is a challenge to patriarchy, a slap in the face of a prudish and conservative society which tries to impose one standard of behaviour and morality for any cost. In the communist China the state reserved the right to control and supervision over the sexual life of citizens. Cheating spouses were stigmatised, similarly to sexually free bachelors or ladies. Especially during the cultural revolution there was an obligation to wear a modest, uniformed outfit, women dressed like men and had short hair.Asexy outfit, make up and dissolved long hair were unacceptable and even dangerous. This is why the detailed descrip- tions of e. g. Mrs. X’s translucent white dress, hair or breasts, are the questioning of morality rules imposed by force, it is an expression of the author’s rebellion against the uniformisation of the all aspects of life, it is the liberation manifesto. The works of Can Xue seems to be her answer, maybe even subconscious one, to cataclysms, unfortunates and disturbances caused by the political changes occur- ring in China. In the plot, the author avoids any references to the actual phenomena or political events and focuses mainly on the relations between the closest per- sons — family members, kin, lovers. However, in her seemingly apolitical works, like in a distorting mirror, we can discern the deformed reflection of realities and atmosphere from the times of her childhood and adulthood — the ideology left its mark and degenerated the most primal and basic levels of human existence. Amutual suspiciousness, the lack of trust, hostility, as features assuring survival in the unstable times, infiltrated also the most intimate relations. In the pantheon of Can Xue’s char- acters, a mother takes the special place. In the Chinese language the word ‘mother’ in the official propaganda meant the Communist Party of China, while the whole nation was called her children. The mother in Can Xue’s is the personification of the party — she is the central and the most important character around whom the life of the whole family is concentrated and dependent on her whims; she is cruel, ruthless and apodictic. Children, i.e. citizens, have to subordinate to her and be obedient, they execute her orders, but dream about freedom. However, when that freedom eventually comes, it turns out that they are unable to live independently, because the mother did not give them any positive examples, but merely degenerated relations and a smothered, slavery personality  2 . The writing of Can Xue, full of bizarre, evil and cruel women, is a challenge to the petrified images of female gender in the Chinese literature. Characters do not 1 Can Xue, Five Spice Street , Yale University Press, 2009, p. 6. 2 Rong Cai, The Subject in Crisis in Contemporary Chinese Literature , p. 124–126.