村子里的积极分子 - a Positive Element in the village
22nd June 2007: Classes are finishing. In 现代文学 I gave my three minute speech about Zhang Ailing's "The Rice-Sprout Song" 《秧歌》。It's unavailable on the mainland because she wrote it in 1955 in quite an anti-communist vein, just before becoming American. Thus although a lot of Chinese readers adore Zhang Ailing's more "bourgeois" work - great stories about Shanghai playboys and emotionally complex, beautifully dressed heroines - this tragedy set in the Land Reform period is unknown to most here. The Chinese version has only been published in Taiwan. You can find the full text in simplified Chinese online at several sites - but all of them are missing the last six chapters, so the climax and denouement are lost. So far I've found two substantial mainland reactions to《秧歌》online, one at Tianya and one at Douban. The Tianya man says he read a copy printed by the "Dalian Publishing Co." which he thinks might have been illegal. I wonder if it included the last six chapters. I know the Taiwanese version does.
I didn't realise any of this until after I'd told Ms. Gao I wanted to talk about Zhang Ailing. Could I really stand in front of thirty Chinese first-year students and talk about a book that's banned in the PRC - or at least restricted - for political reasons, albeit stupid outdated ones? Apart from possibly making the teacher uncomfortable, it just seems very rude.
Last week, the night before I was due to talk about it, I scrolled through my contacts to see which Chinese friend I should ask for advice. I chose a girl I'd spoken to about the novel the week before but who also strikes me as politically correct (the PRC version). I rang her and explained my concerns, and that I didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings or cause anyone trouble. She understood straight away, and I gathered she was pleased that I was being so careful. She said,
"I don't think it's a big problem. You don't need to say that it's controlled on the mainland - you can just say you haven't found it in Dalian and don't know about elsewhere. Other than that you can introduce its content and literary aspects..."
"Mm, well I'll stick to what's inoffensive... I just really don't want to upset anyone, and I don't want to be one of these foreigners who comes to China and goes around shouting about how ignorant everyone is and how their government is controlling them..."
"Well, I don't think you're like them. I remember when [our mutual friend from the US] said that thing about our government forcing women to have abortions, and the media covering it up - that made me so angry."
I didn't address this and waited for it to pass. She said,
"But you... I think you stand with us." [“你站在我们这一边”]
"Really - that makes me happy." (Mostly intrigued, actually.)
We decided the best thing was to consult the teacher first, so the next day I found her in the corridor between classes and said, "Ms. Gao! May I have a word? I'd like to talk to you about my Zhang Ailing topic before I introduce it. You see, I planned to talk about her novel "The Rice-Sprout Song" - do you know it?"
Ms. Gao likes me, as I've said, because I look so alert all through her two-hour class. Little does she know it's because I'm furiously trying to follow what the bejaysus she's saying. She looked interested and said,
"I haven't read it but I would really like to hear about it."
"Ah. Well, but my problem is that it turns out it's never been published on the mainland, and that it's said she wrote it as anti-communist propaganda for the Americans. It's set during Land Reform. I don't know much about all that, but I'm worried that... I'm not sure I should..."
Ms. Gao asked me to tell her what the book was actually about, but we were interrupted by a man who'd come to count the students, presumably to ensure that egg production was being maximised and there weren't extra students sitting around with less-than-model laying records. Later, Ms. Gao told me there was no problem - it would be great to hear about this novel by Zhang Ailing that no-one else had read, and there was no need to mention the political problems: just talk about its "主要内容" (like, what it's about) and its merits etc.
So this week when she lectured on Zhang Ailing, she said "so now let's invite this British student to - what is your name, actually?"
“我叫刘凯琴，陈凯歌的凯，小提琴的琴。”
“刘凯……什么？”
“琴！” said all my classmates.
“那咱们请这位英国学生来--”
“Irish!” said all my classmates. They're so lovely. Straightforward, not entirely un-feckless teenagers in pastel colours.
"Oh really? This Irish classmate then, to introduce..."
I stood up and said "Wow I'm pretty nervous ha ha ha talking in front of you all sorry about my dodgy Chinese. Well anyway so basically there's this novel right and well I'd read her other stuff before, like her what's it called, more "bourgeois" - "bourgeois"? - yeah, "bourgeois" stuff, but anyway this is different, it's this novel and she wrote it in English first and then in Chinese which is interesting and online I read this one Chinese person's reaction where they were like, they kept trying to read it but couldn't get past the first page because it was so rustic and it was about peasants and they weren't used to Zhang Ailing writing that kind of stuff, so anyway and then these other Chinese critics said it just wasn't a very good book, and I wondered -"
Ms. Gao said "But could you tell us a bit about its 主要内容 (like, what it's about)?"
"Ah yes, so it's about this peasant husband and wife during the Land Reform and the wife lives in Shanghai earning money as a servant and the husband is back in the village and he's got land and been made a Labour Hero, and the wife hears the news about how the Land Reform is brilliant and everybody's living better in the country so she leaves her city life and returns to her husband and little daughter. But it turns out she's made a mistake because the country is poorer than ever, there's just nothing to eat, and so anyway but Zhang Ailing is always best at portraying subtle relationships between people, and here we see the husband and wife really do love each other because the husband realises that the wife realises she's been had, and they have no income now but he's glad she's back, and she's basically happy to be back with him too despite the desperate situation they're now in. And then it just gets more and more tragic and they all die."
"What's the conclusion? How does it end?"
"Well, the key point is that the 区公所 (District Public Office) have a meeting and pass a resolution that at the New Year everyone has to kill a pig for the families of soldiers and pay their respects. But nobody's able to fulfil this because everyone is starving and in the end there's a riot, the peasants riot."
Ms. Gao looked slightly tense and said, "But what has this got to do with the protagonists?"
"Er, er, the protagonists? The connection is, er [stutter] sorry... my..."
”没关系，慢慢说。I mean, is the riot against the protagonists?”
"Er... no. It's against the District Public Office. Actually the husband riots with them. And the little girl has followed her dad to where they riot and she gets, what's that word, trampled to death. And so on. It's very depressing."
"I see. [pause] Is that it?"
"...Yes."
The class clapped and Ms. Gao praised me for a bit and then to my surprise told the class outright that the novel is unavailable on the mainland. I sat down. Awaken Good Things was sitting next to me and while the teacher moved the subject on he asked me,
"That peasant woman - when she comes back from the city, what's her attitude, does she try to help?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, does she make a Positive Effort to work with the other peasants to improve the situation?"
"Positive... positive... er..." [积极, a new word for me and an important vintage communist virtue, as in "村子里的积极分子," a "Positive Element in the village"] "...well, not so much. I suppose Zhang Ailing doesn't really concentrate on that... it's not like other literature about Land Reform. She mostly writes what people feel and how they relate to each other..."
In fact Zhang seems to treat the whole thing with a certain bitter irony. And I left out a lot from my retelling, like Comrade Gu who comes from the city to gather material for a film script (a bit like Comrade Gu in 陈凯歌's film Yellow Earth) but just finds himself constantly hungry (so eats at the county town on the sly), and the finale where the heroine burns down the village supply store and herself. But anyway, I thought it was interesting that Awaken Good Things had that expectation of literature dealing with Land Reform, considering how many decades it's been and how young he is.