The ritual sacrifice of early Chou culture, as described in the (later) Kuo Yu and Tso Chuan, has a mainly sociopolitical function. The ritual’s performance keeps “everyone in his/her proper place” in the social (or human-and-spirit) hierarchy: the enactment of the sacrifice is a demonstration of the power (or power-wealth) of the one performing it—his power over the victim, the spirits, the human spectators—and is also closely tied to the praxis of “regulating the people’s (and spirits’) chaotic desires.” I try to analyze this praxis by turning to Girard’s scapegoat theory of ritual sacrifice: “social violence” is released via the spectators’ identification with the victim. In particular I suggest a parallel between Girard’s notion of the “sacrificial crisis” which occurs when the necessary distance between spectators and victim is lost (leading to the uncontrollable outbreak of war) and the Chou notion of a state of /uan te (chaotic or overflowing virtue-power-desire) which will occur if proper “distance” is not maintained between min-people and shen-spirits. I try to draw some tentative conclusions regarding ancient Greek and Chinese ideas about (human and social) order and chaos, (original) non-differentiation and (original) difference.

Here I explore the decisive influence of Borges’ metafiction on the post-Mao writer Ma Yuan through a close reading of several of Ma’s short narratives. Borges’ self-reflexive techniques—fiction is about itself, draws attention to its own (indefinitely recursive or inwardly-reflected) fictionality—themselves express a fundamental ontological ambiguity, the inter-mixing of different ontological worlds (reality and dream, self and other); Ma uses (plays with) these themes and techniques with exquisite skill and originality. But Ma Yuan’s rejection of the demand for literature’s sociopolitical relevance is brazenly inconsistent with Communist ideology and indeed with China’s whole intellectual tradition, as well as with the post-Mao literary currents under which he worked and published. Ma Yuan is effectively declaring his literary independence from the traditional revolutionary characters and the archetypal plot of Communist struggle; he is reassigning priority to the writer, the ultimate literary architect, and by extension to the reader. In this respect, he joins some of his fellow post-Mao writers in the search for a new subjectivity to replace the restrictive Marxist doctrine that denied writers their creative freedom.

This paper analyzes the “communication gap” between a number of Western feminists and Chinese women intellectuals. Failing to pay attention to the pluralities of feminism, some Western feminists have adopted a one-sided perspective and a dogmatic approach. Elevated by their stance of moral and intellectual superiority and assuming Western feminism to be a universal standard, they fail to listen to alternative points of view from various Chinese women intellectuals, often interpreting these views from a rigidly ideological academic perspective common in contemporary Western identity politics. As a result, radical feminists’ readings of Chinese literature are often flawed. This article also examines the characteristics of Chinese feminology—homegrown feminism and women’s studies—as advocated by Li Xiaojiang and her group, while pointing out its differences from Western feminism due to different cultural, historical, and political contexts. It encourages Western feminist critics to try to recognize, understand, respect, and accommodate differences, in order to enter into a genuine dialogue with Chinese feminists and scholars in women’s studies. To eschew erroneous readings of Chinese literature, critics must turn aside from academic Western feminism as the monolithic standard with which to pass judgment on Chinese literature and writers. By respecting and accommodating the variety of . standpoints on gender among Chinese women writers and other intellectuals, literary critics would almost surely embark upon more balanced and accurate interpretations of gender dynamics in Chinese literature.

This essay presents the genealogy of a category of writing, the Chinese xiao shuo (fiction), by tracing the historical changes in its contents and significations. Zhuang Zi, Xun Zi and Huan Tan defined xiao shuo (“small talk”) as an inferior category of writing, due to its insignificant “contents,” in relation to the great dao of official discourse. Ban Gu was more interested in its “form”: by associating xiao shuo with bai guan, he changed our conception of the origin of xiao shuo, for now it was no longer associated with the elitists’ studies and offices but rather was seen to have sprung from the streets and farmers’ fields. I note that Ban Gu established the first connection between Confucius and xiao shuo by falsely attributing to the Confucian Lunyu the statement (which also could not possibly refer to xiao shuo), “Even though it is [a] small Dao, it must possess something worth knowing.” By the time the expression xiao shuo was finally applied to storytelling during the Tang Dynasty, it had already become a term loaded with meaning and value from its association with other forms of writing. Juxtaposing xiao shuo with the Western term “fiction,” I conclude that unlike “fiction,” which has always denoted the dualism of truth and falsehood (Platonic tradition), xiao shuo primarily signified a value judgment based on the dichotomy between “small talk” and “great Dao” (Confucian/Daoist tradition). The xiao shuo was not a genre of literature (in the modern Western sense) in pre-modern China, and the current translation of xiao shuo as “fiction” (or “novel”) is really an importing of European history/philosophy into Chinese culture.

My paper will focus on the issue of violence of representation, this being examined in the light of Chen Ying-chen’s two short stories, “My Kid Brother, Kang-Hsiung” (“Wo di di di Kang-Hsiung,” 1960) and “Mountain Path” (“Shan lu,” 1983). What interests me is how the heroines in these two stories are represented by Chen Ying-chen, and more particularly, how violence is committed through the representation itself. The questions I want to explore are these: Who or what represents suicide and death? How is it that descriptive power, or an ideology asserted by an author, is able to become a mode of violence in its own right? At a deeper level, and by reading closely these narratives which depict the subtle transformations of the heroines in these two stories, I propose to show how these heroines’ voices, transmitted through the text itself, produce semantic overtones that are not under the control of the author himself.

My paper consists of a discussion of the life and writings of Lao She—a discussion held with Lao She’s son, Shu Yi, on may 15, 1994, and with Lao She’s daughter, Shu Yu, held on June 27, 1994. The discussion with Lao She’s children resulted from my longstanding interest in Lao She and the fact that I was at the time interested in a long-lost speech that Lao She had reportedly given on Mark Twain in 1960. As it turned out, I found the speech and had it published in the US-China Review. Since Shu Yi is himself a writer, and since he has done much research on his late father’s life and writings, I started with him. We discussed many incidents in Lao She' life, as well as the seemingly mysterious circumstances surrounding his death. We talked about Lao She’s social status, his political standing, and his life outside of China—particularly the time he spent in England and the United States. We talked about Lao She’s fondness for opera, his hobbies, and his interest in art. We talked about a number of Lao She’s work—both plays and fiction—particularly Camel Xiangzi. Of great interest, of course, was Lao She’s relationship to the Communist Party. As for Shu Yu, she and I talked about Lao She as a family man—a husband and a father. We talked about the various places the family lived during the war with Japan, about the separation of the family from the father, and about the fact that the children were not allowed to speak of him in public because he was considered a dangerous man. We talked about literacy in the Chinese population and why Lao She wrote plays to accommodate that population. We talked about Lao She during the Anti-Rightest Movement and the Cultural Revolution. Finally, we talked about Lao She’s belief in democracy and how he practiced democracy in his own family. My discussion with Shu Yi and Shu Yu, I hope, is a tribute to a fine writer whose life was cut short by the prevailing system.