Whom does art serve?

John Scott

The Execution of Mayor Yin and other stories Chen Jo-hsi Trans. Nancy lng and Howard Goldblatt (Allen & Unwin £5.95)

From the outset of the Cultural Revolution in 1966 I came increasingly to feel that I was, to all intents and purposes, teaching a dead language. The language of Chinese as a literary entity for genuine creative expression seemed, in fact, to have been dying for a number of years before. Ever since Mao had delivered his notorious policy speech on the arts and literature, as far back as 2 May 1942 — the pernicious `Yanan Forum on Art and Literature' — the die had been cast. Chinese literature had become very sick.

Since the Communist government came to power in 1949 practically all creative literature has been written by state decree. Writers have been ordered to descant on the charms of the current political trend, whatever it may chance to be, and just as soon as that particular policy or line falls from favour or is discarded both book and writer are simply forgotten — if they're lucky.

Novels, little more than idealised' fictive forms of government white papers, have been churned out to sell unpalatable policies to the populace. Even literary criticism (if such it can be termed in China) has been geared to reinterpret great works of the past in the light of the current political and economic aims of the state machine, almost as if the Labour Government had ordered academics to reexamine H.G. Wells's War in the Air with a view to nationalizing the aircraft industry.

A small number of literary men of integrity chose to remain in China after 1949, motivated by a genuine conviction to work in harmony with a new regime in which they saw a promise of a muchneeded new lease of life for their nation. None of them, with the possible exception of Lao She, was free to produce anything which came near to doing the writer justice; and by 1967 Lao She himself was done to death by the Maoists.

Following Mao's directive, revolutionary literature and art was supposed 'to serve the people' and the aspirations of the workers, peasants and soldiers. During the Cultural Revolution it was claimed that many of the more revolting productions were actually inspired by the poor benighted plebs; in fact, of course,. they were penned by individual Party Bores. I have in mind one excruciatingly painful work called Yanyang Tian (`Balmy Days of Spring') — one of the world's longest and most boring novels — supposedly reflecting rural life in the Pek ing Green Belt, of which I can only say, echoing the late F.R. Leavis's unkind comment on Proust, that I would as soon recommend a rereading of Clarissa than a single reading of Balmy Days.

I well remember my pre-university days in the distant Fifties when I worked in what was then the only Chinese bookshop in London, Collett's of Great Russell Street. I became increasingly disillusioned with the literary output of the People's Republic in the field of creative writing. Time and again I would start some new, immensely long and much publicized piece of crap de chine, only to find after a few turgid pages that the book was written to the same stereotyped formula that Soviet hacks, such as Constantine Fedin had followed during the days when Zhdanov cracked Stalin's literary whip. At first I thought my Chinese was perhaps at fault, that certain nuances and layers of meaning were escaping my unschooled eye. But as I began to read the great masterpieces of pre-revO1utionary China I was relieved to discover that there was nothing basically wrong with my critical eyesight. I would occasionally come across the odd new novel which would have just sufficient vigour and pace to hold my flagging attention till the final chapter. But when I had finished the book, and was discussing it with visiting members of the Chinese Charge d'Affaires, I would learn that in the time it had taken me to read it the poor author had already fallen from favour and that both writer and book, e.g. New Heroes and Heroines by Kong Que and Yuan Qing had been withdrawn from permanent circulation on the grounds of ideological impurity.

With the death of the Chairman and the passing of his missus and the rest of the Gang one may cautiously suggest that a slightly more liberal period of government has been graciously granted to the populace. Yet I have long felt that the degree of true democracy within any country can be best gauged by the amount of freedom allowed the creative arts. In this connection, before dealing with Chen Jo-hsi's eight short stories, which constitute by far and away the finest pieces of fiction to have emerged from China in the last 30 years, I should first say a few words about another important collection entitled Shanghen ('Scars'). Whereas both collections of contemporary tales cover roughly the same period, i.e. the Cultural Revolution, those in 'Scars' have actually been printed in the People's Republic: Miss Chen's stories were only published in Hong Kong and Taiwan after her departure from the mainland in 1973.

One of the most interesting stories in 'Scars' (I am currently translating the whole collection) is a ripping yarn called Shensheng de Shiming ('The Sacred Mission') — the story of an honest secret policeman who sets out to put right a miscarriage of justice, to vindicate an innocent wretch doing a 15-year stretch for the attempted rape of a neighbour's daughter. Of course, he was framed and convicted by associates of our old pals the Gang of Four.

A degree of sincerity can be detected in such descriptions as the flashback to the terrors of the Cultural Revolution and the summary injustices handed out to those rash enough to stand up for fair play; ,but most of the narrative effect is vitiated by the author's insistent intrusion in guiding, nay, dragging the reader towards the conclusion that justice will always prevail under the wise leadership of Chairman Hua — even the alleged victim of the rape, in her shame for perjuring herself actually changes her name to Al Hua, which, if written slightly differently, sounds the same as the Chinese for 'LOVE HUAI In short, all the stories in 'Scars' have rare moments of revelation, but yet most of the characters' actions and emotions are described in that histrionic style befitting yingxiong dianxing — 'heroic stereotypes' — demanded by the Chinese literary bosses. Applying the acid test of creative expression that reflects the existing degree of freedom, it should not surprise us that the May issue of the magazine Hong Qi ('red flag') carried an article entitled Makesizhuyi zenyang kan 'Renguan' wenti — 'How Marxism looks on Human Rights' — whose gist suggests that it don't look any too kindly on `em. How refreshing then to turn to Miss Chen's infinitely finer collection, in which I particularly loved the story called 'The Big Fish', where an old shipworker sets out to the food market in Nanking to buy his invalid wife a gastronomic treat in the shape of a 'fish supper'. Once at the market the old chap partly through his love for his sick wife, and partly through his typically Chinese appreciation of good food, but mainly through the bullying of the insolent shop assistant, finds himself buying a much bigger and better quality fish than he first intended. After making his purchase and braving the peculiar looks given him by the more privileged class of shoppers, he eagerly goes off to give the old woman her treat: The old man's heart was full of joy. He carefully hung the market basket on the handlebars of his bicycle. Because of the crowd he had to push the bike out to Tung Jen Street. But when he was about to get on his bicycle, someone tapped him on the shoulder. 'Hey, comrade, take that fish back.'

The old man lowered his right leg to the ground and turned to see a middleaged man with small protruding eyes. From his manner and dress, the old man could tell he was a cadre member.

'What did you say?' He thought the man had mistaken him for someone else. 'That fish isn't for sale,' the man said in a low voice, trying to be patient, 'take it back to the cashier's office immediately and they'll refund you what you paid for it.'

'What?' K'uai raised his voice, 'Not for sale? Damn it! Then why the hell didn't they say so in the first place? Now you want to snatch it away when it's about to be dropped in the pot!'

At the old man's curses the cadreman's face hardened and he glared at K'uai. 'If they're all sold out, what'll be left to show the foreign visitors when they arrive?'

K'uai Shih-fu wanted to say something more to give vent to his grievance, but when he heard the words 'foreign visitors' he stopped short. The issue was Closed. He gulped, then blinked his eyes in stony silence. ol the end the old man adamantly refuses to take the fish back in person but gives it to the cadreman to take back in his place, nor, in spite of his poverty, does he wait for the official to return with the refund: He turned abruptly and with a backward kick of his right leg mounted his bicycle.

'Comrade he hasn't given you back Your money' shouted a bystander.

'Tell him to give it to the foreign visitors.' The final irony is in the implication that it Is not the cadre with all his menacing atithority that the old fellow feared but his (Iwn loss of face at the hands of the insolent shopkeeper, and it is again this same of implicit irony and pathos which o'pen Jo-hsi conveys through her mastery wt, register in the finale to the title story, th'ten the narrator learns of the death of k',:e honest old soldier, an ex-KMT officer, :',.nYor Yin, who out of consideration for e lives of his men and his own conver °n to the righteousness of the Commun;Rh cause, went over to the PLA and of after worked diligently for the people D "is district until, during the Cultural Fr.e.volution, he is helped on his way to the `Ing squad by his own nephew, an obnoxINS Young Red Guard. They tied Mayor Yin to a wooden stake ; As they pointed their rifles at him, cri,,e raised his head and shouted again, °rig live the Communist Party! Long bilve Chairman Mao!' His eyes were f °ging as though they would burst 2.,°"1 their sockets, and his lips were uieeding from biting them . . . The !xecutioners began to fire. This time "tem was no shouting, no cheers. No one wanted to go up for a closer look . .. A peasant slapped me on the back and asked, 'How could they shoot him when he was shouting "Long live Chairman Mao?"' 'What was your answer?' I asked.

He shrugged his shoulders and gave a bitter smile. told him to mind his own business.'

We both fell silent. Another burst of wind. Dusk was falling earlier than . usual.

Wow is Lao Yin?' I asked.

'He's dead.'

Hsiao Wu's cousin said he had to attend a meeting, and he hurried off. I didn't ask how Lao Yin had died, for I was reminded of the quotation from Mao Tse-tung that was part of our daily reading: 'People die all the time'.

In the original Chinese edition in the monthly Ming Pao there follows a concluding paragraph which the translators have I feel mistakenly omitted: In 1972 I heard on the radio a broadcast of General Fu Zuoyi's speech on the commemoration of the Uprising in Taiwan of 28 February 1947. His was a quiet but solemn tone of voice. What good fortune, I thought, for General Zuo to have lived under the protection of Chairman Mao. Not long after when the General had passed peacefully away the newspapers said he had been the recipient of the Party and Government's deep solicitude. I was even happier for him.

I am not sure of the translators' reason for expunging this section and can only surmise that they feel it detracts from the delightful ironic Mao quotation. Excellent though their translation is for the most part, truncation is to be avoided in translation, particularly in this case where Chen Jo-hsi is echoing, tongue in cheek, the great historian Sima Qian's use of the often ironic rider at the end of his historical biographies, all the 'more so since the Nationalist renegade General Fu Zuoyi, having opened the gates of Peking to Lin Biao's armies in February 1949 then enjoyed a quiet and happy sinecure for his heroism, and especially since this final paragraph underlines the tragic injustice meted out to the honest Mayor who dies a victim of the Red Guards' misguided interpretation of the slogan encountered earlier in the story: 'Don't let the big fish slip away by going after the small shrimps!' I am mightily heartened by the emergence in the Chinese literary realm of this talented and sensitive lady and assure a place for her works on the syllabus of the Edinburgh University Chinese course. Likewise I am encouraged by the existence of Scars (and other stories) for at least demonstrating that there live young writers in China itself who prove to me that I'm no longer teaching or studying a dead language.