English Literature in China: An
Historical Overview
Yangsheng
Guo © 2001
Introduction English literature might be regarded as one of the first Western “colonizing” and globalizing forces to enter and subsequently “decentralize” the homogenous nature of the Chinese classical literary mind. This process began with the early English version of the Bible and biblical literature. Although Christianity fought its way to China as early as the Tang Dynasty (618 ~ 907) (see Shen, 1987), the Bible was not accessible to ordinary Chinese until the British missionary Robert Morrison completed his translation of the Bible into modern Chinese in 1823. According to a comprehensive study (Gu, 1994), from 1823 to the present, over three hundred million copies of the Bible have been distributed, circulated and sold in China. While biblical literature in the Chinese vernacular has exercised manifold cultural, philosophical, ideological and political influences upon the Chinese, in particular it helped the vernacular (baihua) to establish itself over the classical Chinese (guwen) and promoted general literacy in a society in which public education in the modern Western sense had never been heard of. Many biblical terms, sayings, proverbs, anecdotes and references have become part of the modern Chinese vocabulary. The missionaries’ scope of interest and attention went far beyond religious affairs in China. An account by the well-known American missionary Arthur Smith in his China and America Today (1907) aptly describes the “mental” state of the then rapidly changing China: Fiction was represented in one year by but twenty-one volumes, and in the next by fifty-seven, showing which way the Oriental mental tides run. Among well-known books translated and for sale, were Uncle Tom’s Cabin; Treasure Island; The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes; Tales from Shakespeare; Joan of Arc, and even the Arabian Nights is said to be in preparation. In a paper on this fertile subject read in 1905 at a meeting of the Educational Association, Mr. Darroch judiciously remarked: “If the Chinese are being interested in Western storybooks they are learning to appreciate our way of looking at things. It will not much longer be true that the mind of the Orient is so dissimilar to the thoughts of the Occident that these two must always remain incomprehensible to one another. This is the one touch of nature which will make the whole world kin, and we shall find this mighty nation of 400 millions as susceptible to the thrills of emotion which sweep over our national life, as are our nearer and more intimate neighbours. That this change of sentiment on the part of the Chinese will have prodigious effects on our work as missionaries and educationalists will not, I think, be gainsaid." (P140) This “Orientalist” observation showed how the Chinese seemed to be actively moving in a direction that was particularly pleasing to the Western mind. Previously, various Euro-American colonizing powers had tried every possible means (e.g. religion, trade, diplomatic channels, military operations) to bring China onto the "right" track of history as understood in Western logocentric terms, but their strategies and efforts had failed (Franke, 1967). China was a highly-developed cultural civilization that defied easy conversion and any change seemed to have to take place from within rather than from outside. Yet, China's absence of a unified national religious tradition left the Chinese mind open and vulnerable to literature for spiritual guidance. Ironically, where Western colonizing forces had failed, the Chinese themselves were taking up the task of "colonizing" their own mind with an Occidentalist agenda. At the turn of the twentieth century, a series of English works in
translation opened up to the Chinese a new, secular world of the West.
Between 1897 and 1911, Yan Fu, who returned from England and later became
president of what is now known as Beijing University, translated such
classics as Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays (T.H. Huxley), An
Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (A.
Smith), The Study of Sociology (H. Spencer), On Liberty (J.S.
Mill) and A History of Politics (E. Jenks). Between 1897 and 1918, Lin
Shu translated over one hundred and seventy Euro-American novels, including Uncle
Tom’s Cabin, David Copperfield, Hamlet, and Ivanhoe.
These two great translators captured the heart and soul of Chinese readers;
history has it that their translations sold faster than their publishers
could print them (Guo, 1992). Their unprecedented success prepared the way
for the Literary Revolution and subsequently the epoch-making May 4th
Movement of 1919. This cultural campaign was launched by Hu Shi (1891 ~
1962), whose “Tentative Proposals for the Improvement of Literature” was
written in 1916 in the United States when the author was John Dewey’s
student. The Revolution was marked by a heated and lasting debate over
“cultural choices”, and involved nearly all the forerunners of modern Chinese
literature, whose representative writers were mostly returned students from
English-speaking countries who had been
influenced by a particularly English literary tradition.
According to the archeological efforts of China’s most distinguished
scholar Qian Zhongshu, the first foreign poem translated into Chinese is
Longfellow’s “Psalm of Life.” Many founding poets of modern Chinese poetry
actually modeled themselves upon English poets. For instance, Guo Moruo, the
first modern poet of importance, looked towards Whitman for inspiration, and
Xu Zhimo, one of the most prominent modern poets, transplanted British
(especially Victorian) forms of poetry into China. Modern Chinese drama came
into being when a group of Chinese students adapted Uncle Tom’s Cabin
into a Chinese play in Japan in 1907. (Before then, China had only had
different kinds of local operas, such as Beijing Opera, Huangmei Opera,
Sichuan Opera, etc.) The modern Chinese novel finds its roots in the
translations of Lin Shu. [According to Han (2000), the first full-length
novel translated into Chinese is E. B. Lytton's Night and Morning (1841).
The translation was serialized in a Shanghai literary magazine from 1873 to
1875.] Since the novel had been regarded in China as “lowbrow”, the
tremendous success of Night and Morning established the novel as the
most popular genre in modern Chinese literature.
Despite its increasing popularity, the translation and acceptance of
English literature in China rested predominantly on the individual literary
practices of the first generation of modern Chinese poets, writers and
critics, who were at the same time major translators and literature
educators. There was a kind of unified theme in their efforts: to save China
through literature, through importing and transplanting the spirit of
freedom, democracy, science and universal love widely believed to be embodied
in English literature. For instance, although Guo Moruo went to Japan to
learn medicine and Xu Zhimo was sent to England to learn economics, they both
turned to literature as a more realistic and more economic medicine to cure
the Chinese of their fatal diseases. The best example is seen in the case of
Lu Xun (1881 ~ 1936), the backbone of modern Chinese literature. Lu Xun says
in his “Autobiography”:
…Graduating from
the prep school in Tokyo, I was determined to learn medicine, partly because
I had known that the new medicine had been largely conducive to the Meiji
Reform in Japan. Therefore I entered Sendai Medical School and studied there
for two years. At that time the Russo-Japanese War was going on, and one day,
I happened to see in a film a Chinese have his head cut off for spying. I
realized it wouldn’t help at all to just cure a few Chinese of their physical
illness. There should be a greater movement… first of all advocating of a new
literature and art.
It was this aim and purpose that has constantly given impetus to
modern Chinese translators and writers. And this aim and purpose have served
as the underlying standards for the choice of English original texts and curricular
and pedagogical approaches to those texts in schools.
English Literature in
Chinese Schools English literature found its way into the Chinese school curriculum long before the modern system of public education became established in China. As a school subject, it began with English-speaking missionary schools, which used original Biblical literature for religious purposes, and adopted the then British-American curricular and pedagogical models of choosing excerpts of classical English literature as standard materials for language and literature teaching and learning. Missionary schools in China date back to 1843 (Gu, 1991), when the Anglo-Chinese College founded by Robert Morrison was moved from Malacca to Hong Kong. According to Fu (1988), in 1921 there were 13,637 missionary schools of different levels (from kindergarten to post-secondary) across China, with a total of 358,518 students. By the year 1926 (see Gu, 1991), Christian schools had increased to around 15,000 with more than 600,000 students! All these educational institutions were independent of the then Chinese government, which had neither supervisory nor administrative control over their curricular and pedagogical practice. They formed their own national organizations in China: The Committee of School Textbooks (founded in 1877),which developed in 1890 into the China Education Association, and in 1912 into the China Christian Education Association. These organizations were responsible for establishing school curriculum, compiling school textbooks, laying down educational policies, conducting educational investigations, holding symposiums and seminars, and exchanging and promoting Christian educational experiences in China (see Gu, 1991). The religious purposes and political, social and cultural agenda of these schools were self-evident. In earlier missionary schools, English was not always compulsory, and bilingualism was the norm. Biblical literature, however, was taught at all grade levels. According to the sample curriculum of the famous Dengzhou Wenhuiguan founded in 1864 by Calvin W. Mateer, less than sixty courses were offered from the elementary (years 1 ~ 3) to the secondary (years 4 ~ 9) levels, but biblical courses amounted to ten (see Gu, 1991). Toward the end of the 19th century, English became compulsory, and in some schools all the courses (except of course Chinese) were taught in English. Many teachers were hired from educational institutions in English-speaking countries. In some schools, test and examination papers came directly from Britain and North America. Even students’ experiments were conducted according to American norms and standards. Students were required to live a “Euro-American” way of life from clothing and social etiquette to celebration of Christmas, April Fool’s Day, Easter and Halloween (see Fu, 1988). In this cultural climate, even in the non-missionary schools in China, English and English literature naturally became an important part of the curriculum. English literature education was exclusively American rather than British. There were several reasons for this: most teachers and education administrators had either received their education in missionary schools within China or graduated from European and North American universities, and the modern Chinese public educational system before 1949 was based upon American models and John Dewey’s theories (see Sun, 1992). A weekly school timetable from 1913 shows that English and English literature courses took up more than a quarter of the total classroom hours in secondary schools (4 years), more than a third of the total hours in prep schools (3 years), and close to half of the total hours in teachers’ colleges (3 years) (see Fu, 1988). Although textbooks differed from one another at different levels, they were almost all selected excerpts from British-American classics, ranging from Shakespeare to contemporary writers. Although a complete list of works is not available, those most often selected and taught in secondary schools in the 20s and 30s were, among others, the following: Tales from Shakespeare by C. Lamb & M. Lamb Treasure Island by R. L. Stevenson Selections from the Sketch-book by W. Irving The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by B. Franklin David Copperfield by Charles Dickens The Vicar of Wakefield by O. Goldsmith Ivanhoe by W. Scott Robinson Crusoe by D. Defoe
For lack of detailed records, it is not clear how those texts, used as materials both for language acquisition and for literary appreciation, were taught in the classroom setting. However, bits of information scattered in various historical documents show that the methods adopted were mainly the Translation (Traditional or Classical) Method and the Direct Method (Fu, 1988) which was popular in the West at that time, as well as the long Confucian tradition of rote learning. In the former case, first the teacher would introduce in Chinese or English the background, plots and main characters of the story and possibly the author's autobiographical accounts. Then the text would be grammatically analyzed sentence by sentence, and meticulously translated into Chinese word by word (see Zhang, 1985), with the "literariness" of the original properly addressed in the process of oral and written translation. In the latter case, classroom activities were more oral-based. But in either case, students were required to recite at least parts of the texts regarded as having both linguistic and literary importance, a practice that is still found today in China. An interesting picture of the pedagogical practice in those days can be seen in The Road I Have Taken by the modern Chinese distinguished writer and translator Mao Dun (or Shen Yanbing, 1896 ~ 1981). In 1913, Mao was admitted to the prep school at Beijing University. He writes: At that time the textbooks used were Scott’s Ivanhoe and Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, and each was taught by a foreign teacher. The one who was teaching Ivanhoe tried to use the Beijing Dialect he had learned, only to make us unable to make head or tail of what he was talking about. We had to ask him to explain in English, which was much easier to understand… What made me most happy was the coming of an American teacher, aged no more than thirty, and said to be a graduate from a certain teachers’ university in the United States. His teaching methods were good. He taught us Shakespeare’s plays, first Macbeth, then The Merchant of Venice, then Hamlet, etc. In 1916, Mao was employed by the Commercial Press in Shanghai and worked there in the English section. He commented, “I loved the ‘strange’ phenomenon there that only English was used. I believed this could improve my oral English. At the prep school in Beijing University, although we had had five foreign teachers, my oral English had been always poor, as was the case with most other students there” (see Fu, 1988). The above account seems to reflect more of the then British-American taste and ordinary interest in the foreign than any heightened national spirit of patriotism, anti-imperialism, freedom, liberation, equality and independence. It helps to show that school education before 1949 was dominated by Western missionary forces, by a North American paradigm and by a general pro-West attitude among the policy-makers. It further suggests a general educational reality that was out of touch with the larger national reality of semi-colonization, semi-feudalism, cultural, intellectual and socio-political chaos. Consequently it did not help the younger generation to interpret the multi-layered reality confronting them. As a matter of course, China was time after time thrown into conflicts, contradiction, chaos and despair. However, outside the sphere of schools it was a different picture. From the time of the Literary Revolution and the May 4th Movement to the establishment of the New China in 1949, foreign literature in general and English literature in particular was storming into China. From ancient Greek and Roman literature (mythology, Homer, tragedy, comedy, lyrics and pastoral) to such national epics as Beowulf, Nieberlungen, Song of Roland, le cid, etc., from North European sagas to individual writers such as Shelley, Byron, Hardy, Whitman, Twain, Victor Hugo, Balzac, Goethe, Heine, Jakob Grim, Dante, Boccaccio, Hans C. Andersen, Ibsen and Cervantes, most of the Euro-American classical literary canon was introduced into China and available in Chinese translation, as an adaptation or in the original. On a larger socio-political scale, however, this inundation of Western literature was selectively filtered to inform China’s “national task” of self-preservation, self-strengthening, self-independence, self-renewal and self-transcendence. Since the prevailing theme of modern Chinese literature was the struggle for national survival in the global context of colonization, Western authors and their works were chosen on the basis of their social criticalness, political subversiveness and moral standards. For example, Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” became one of the best-known poems in 20th century China. The famous line “O’Wind, if winter comes/Can Spring be Far behind?” was so deeply embedded in the heart and mind of the younger generation of Chinese that many of them literally sacrificed their lives for the hope of a new China. After 1930s, especially after the breaking-up of Anti-Japanese War, the majority of foreign literature introduced to China was militant and revolutionary, dominated by Russian-Soviet literature. This Soviet influence extended far into the New China. English Literature in the
People’s Republic of China English literature as a serious and systematic curricular component of Chinese life was only possible after the founding of the People’s Republic of China on October 1, 1949. Because of the international,
ideological and geopolitical factors after the establishment of the new
China, the educational curriculum began to model itself on that of the Soviet
Union. As a result, English literature did not achieve any position of
importance in the 1950s, though its classics continued to be selectively,
officially and systematically translated, introduced and published in China.
The Russo-Chinese political debate toward the end of the 1950s brought
English and English literature back to prominence in the Chinese world of
education. Unfortunately, before English literature education had enough time
to establish itself, the Great Cultural Revolution (1966 ~ 1976) almost
destroyed the whole educational system. During that time, foreign literature
was basically banned, with the exception of some Russian writers such as
Anton Chekhov, Fadyev, Gorki, Ostlovsky, and a few Western writers such as
Alphonse Daudet (1840 ~ 1897) and Jack London. (The latter was chosen because
Lenin, according to his wife Krupskaya, loved London’s “Love of Life” to the
extent that he asked her to read it to him repeatedly during his last days.) The
previous century’s efforts to open English literature to a Chinese audience
had laid down a solid and comprehensive socio-cultural infrastructure for
English literature education. Since the end of 1970s, with the practice of an
open-door policy and the new means of transportation, communication and
printing, English literature has been pouring into China at an unprecedented
rate. Currently English literature is represented in the Chinese school
curriculum in diverse ways. Language and literature in China are
believed to be inseparable from each other, as is reflected in the name of
the Chinese course yuwen [(Chinese) language and literature], a course that
for the Chinese is equivalent to “English Language Arts” for North Americans.
Yuwen lasts successively from elementary school all the
way to university. Since some good Chinese translations of English literature
have been regarded as part of the best modern Chinese literature, they have
been selected as standard texts for students to read, analyze, appreciate and
recite. In addition, students are encouraged to do extra-curricular readings
of English literature in translation, which are readily available in China. English as a compulsory course is
taught from Grade Four through to the Ph.D level. Although it can be taught
and learned in different ways and forms, the conventional Intensive Reading
is still dominant. This means that from the secondary school on, the
textbooks are composed mainly of selected English tales, stories, prose
writings, poems and drama. Students are required to memorize some of them,
and to learn At the post-secondary level, while
there are undergraduate, MA and Ph.D. programs of foreign and East-West comparative
literature in the departments of Chinese, English literature education is
best exemplified in the many English colleges, faculties and departments
across China. One good example is the four-year undergraduate English majors
in the Department of English, Southwest China Petroleum Institute (SWCPI), a
polytechnic university, where students in their first and second year focus
on the basic skills of English that
include listening, speaking, reading, writing and English-Chinese and
Chinese-English translation. From the third year on, students take courses in the history of English literature, English prose, fiction, poetry, drama and critical theories. Here are some sample outlines and requirements from SWCPI's Curricular Guideline for English Majors (1997): Selected Readings of British and American Literature
Selected Readings of British and American Drama
Meanwhile, students are required by the Special
Committee on Undergraduate English Majors of the Ministry of Education of the
People’s Republic of China to read the following (from English Curricular
Guideline, 1995): Recommended Readings
for Undergraduate English Majors in China
Fiction
British Literature
American Literature
Australian Literature
Non-Fiction
General
China
The Bible
The above list reflects a growing confidence in opening the Chinese
mind to English literary influence, to a somewhat different literary taste
and to a more conventional standard of evaluation of English literature. It
also, however, reflects a cautious socio-cultural and political concern about
the impact of English literature in China. Many of the works most often read
and appreciated in the English world have not found their way into the list,
and many contemporary influential writings have to give way to the older,
especially 19th century works of realism and critical realism.
While China is cautious in including the more liberal, radical and “politically incorrect” English literature in the school curriculum, English literature studies are nevertheless dominating China’s foreign literature arena. On the one hand, with the current general educational reform, the school and university curriculum is breaking new grounds by including more English literature for both Chinese and in English majors. On the other hand, most modernist and postmodern works, which used to be regarded as “decadent” and even “poisonous”, have now become popular in China. James Joyce’s Ulysses and Nabokov’s Lolita have several versions of Chinese translation; Norman Mailer, Ginsberg, Sylvia Plath, etc. are read extensively; the Imagism, the Lost Generation, Angry Young Men, Beat Generation, Theater of the Absurd, Black Humor, Confessional School, Feminism, etc., have been engaging topics for discussion and students’ theses. Currently, postmodernism and postcolonialism have been the focus of study among the more elite scholars in China. For many years, Freud, Jung, Sartre, Gadamer, Derrida, Lacan, Foucault, Said, Kristeva, etc. have been “deconstructed” and reconstructed against the Chinese context in China. China is developing a postmodern and postcolonial vocabulary of her own, which is enabling her to interpret and speak wisely and eloquently about the past, present and future of the multilayered reality of human experiences in the coming millennium of global integration. References: Cao, Shunqing. (1985). Essays in
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