Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction to Volume II
- 1 Literature of the early Ming to mid-Ming (1375–1572)
- 2 The literary culture of the late Ming (1573–1644)
- 3 Early Qing to 1723
- 4 The literati era and its demise (1723–1840)
- 5 Prosimetric and verse narrative
- 6 Chinese literature from 1841 to 1937
- 7 Chinese literature from 1937 to the present
- Epilogue: Sinophone writings and the Chinese diaspora
- Select Bibliography
- Glossary
- Index
- References
7 - Chinese literature from 1937 to the present
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2011
By
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction to Volume II
- 1 Literature of the early Ming to mid-Ming (1375–1572)
- 2 The literary culture of the late Ming (1573–1644)
- 3 Early Qing to 1723
- 4 The literati era and its demise (1723–1840)
- 5 Prosimetric and verse narrative
- 6 Chinese literature from 1841 to 1937
- 7 Chinese literature from 1937 to the present
- Epilogue: Sinophone writings and the Chinese diaspora
- Select Bibliography
- Glossary
- Index
- References
Summary
The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) and its aftermath
On July 7, 1937, Japanese troops stationed near the Marco Polo Bridge (Lugou Bridge to the Chinese), ten miles southwest of Beijing (Beiping at the time), used the pretext of searching for a soldier who had gone missing during a drill to demand entry into the city. When refused, they fired shots. The Chinese regiment commander Ji Xingwen (1908–1958) ordered his soldiers to return fire, triggering the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War, which was to change China forever.
The military confrontation was not wholly unexpected. Since Japan invaded and occupied Manchuria in September 1931, tension had been mounting. Chiang Kai-shek’s (1887–1975) policy of nonresistance had been met with opposition from various quarters, as evidenced in the Xi’an Incident of December 12, 1936, in which Marshal Zhang Xueliang (1901–2001) took Chiang hostage in order to extort a promise from him to form a united front with the Chinese Communist Party (hereafter CCP) against Japanese aggression. Ten days after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, Chiang issued a statement condemning the violence as “the last straw,” and in August declared an all-out war of resistance.
Japan had aimed to take China in three months. Advances in the north went largely unopposed; within a month, Beijing and Tianjin fell. On August 13, Japan attacked Shanghai. Faced with the enemy’s superior firepower, Chinese soldiers stood their ground for three months. At Four Banks Storehouse (Sihang cangku) in Shanghai, October 27 to 31, eight hundred soldiers under Commander Xie Jinyuan (1904–1941) held off Japanese offensives, allowing Chinese troops to retreat and Chinese civilians to be evacuated. The campaign ended on November 27.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of Chinese Literature , pp. 565 - 705Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010
References
. Red Poppies. Trans. and . Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002.
. Cold Nights. Trans. and . Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 1978.
. Random thoughts. Trans. . Hong Kong: Joint Publishing Company, 1984.
. Ward Four: A Novel of Wartime China. Trans. and . San Francisco: China Books and Periodicals, 1999.
, and , eds. and trans. Indigenous Writers of Taiwan: An Anthology of Stories, Essays, and Poems. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005.
, ed. Out of the Howling Storm: The New Chinese Poetry. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1993.
. Landscape over Zero. Trans. and . London: Anvil Press, 1998.
. Unlock: Poems. Trans. and . London: Anvil Press, 2006.
. Waves: Stories. Trans. and . New York: New Directions, 1990.
. Witness against History: Literature, Film, and Public Discourse in Twentieth-Century China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003.
. Old Floating Cloud: Two Novellas. Trans. and . Foreword by . Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1991.
, and , eds. Bamboo Shoots after the Rain: Contemporary Stories by Women Writers of Taiwan. New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 1990.
. Exiles at Home: Short Stories. Trans. . Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1986.
. The Book and the Sword: A Martial Arts Novel. Trans. . Ed. and . New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
. The Deer and the Cauldron: The Adventures of a Chinese Trickster. Trans. . Australia: Institute of Advanced Studies, Australia National University, 1994.
. The City Trilogy. Trans. . New York: Columbia University Press, 2003.
. Wild Kids: Two Novels about Growing Up. Trans. Michael Berry. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.
. Love in a Fallen City. Trans. and . New York: New York Review of Books, 2007.
. Lust, Caution. Trans. and with a foreword by . Afterword by . With a special essay by . New York: Anchor Books, 2007.
. The Rice-Sprout Song: A Novel of Modern China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.
. The Rouge of the North. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.
. Traces of Love and Other Stories. Ed. . Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 2000.
. Written on Water. Trans. . Ed. and . New York: Columbia University Press, 2005.
. Journey through the White Terror: A Daughter’s Memoir. Taipei: National Taiwan University Press, 2006.
. Modernism and the Nativist Resistance: Contemporary Fiction from Taiwan. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993.
. The Execution of Mayor Yin and Other Stories from the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Ed. . Trans. and . Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004.
, ed. Reading the Right Text: An Anthology of Contemporary Chinese Drama. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2003.
, ed. and trans. The Isle Full of Noises: Modern Chinese Poetry from Taiwan. New York: Columbia University Press, 1987.
, and , eds. The Last of the Whampoa Breed: Stories of Chinese Diaspora. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003.
, ed. Modern Chinese Literary and Cultural Studies in the Age of Theory: Reimagining a Field. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000.
. The Old Capital: A Novel of Taipei. Trans. . New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.
. Notes of a Desolate Man. Trans. and . New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.
Women’s Literary Feminismin Twentieth-Century China. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
Blooming and Contending: Chinese Literature in the Post-Mao Era. Blooming-ton: Indiana University Press, 1985.
, ed. Contemporary Chinese Literature: An Anthology of Post-Mao Fiction and Poetry. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1985.
. The Boy Who Catches Wasps. Trans. . Brookline, MA: Zephyr Press, 2002.
. Looking Out from Death: From the Cultural Revolution to Tiananmen Square. Trans. and John Cayley. London: Bloomsbury, 1989.
. The Three-Inch Golden Lotus. Trans. . Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1994.
, trans. A Splintered Mirror: Chinese Poetry from the Democracy Movement. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1991.
, ed. Chairman Mao Would Not Be Amused: Fiction from Today’s China. New York: Grove Press, 1995.
. Sea of Dreams: Selected Writings of Gu Cheng. Trans. . New York: New Directions, 2005.
. Selected Poems. Trans. and . Hong Kong: Research Centre for Translation, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1990.
, ed. Twentieth-Century Chinese Drama: An Anthology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983.
. Unwelcome Muse: Chinese Literaturein Shanghai and Peking, 1937–1945. New York: Columbia University Press, 1980.
, and . Culture in the Contemporary PRC. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
. Fusion Kitsch: Poems from the Chinese of Hsia Yü. Trans. . Brookline, MA: Zephyr Press, 2001.
. Literature of the People’s Republic of China. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980.
. ed. and trans. Twentieth-Century Chinese Poetry: An Anthology. Garden City, NY: Double-day, 1963.
. The Drowning of an Old Cat and Other Stories. Trans. . Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980.
. The Taste of Apples. Trans. . New York: Columbia University Press, 2001.
. A Lifetime Is a Promise to Keep: Poems of Huang Xiang. Trans. Michelle Yeh. Berkeley: University of California, Institute of East Asian Studies, 2008.
, and , eds. China and the Internet: Politics and the Digital Leap Forward. London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003.
, ed. Contemporary Women Writers: Hong Kong and Taiwan. Hong Kong: Research Centre for Translation, Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1990.
. Turbulence. Trans. . Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1991.
. Consuming Literature: Best Sellers and the Commercialization of Literary Production in Contemporary China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004.
, and . A Tragic Beginning: The Taiwan Uprising of February 28, 1947. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991.
. Blades of Grass: The Stories of Lao She. Trans. and . Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1999.
, ed. Chinese Stories from Taiwan, 1960–1970. New York: Columbia University Press, 1976.
, ed. The Unbroken Chain: An Anthology of Taiwan Fiction since 1926. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983.
, and , eds. The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996.
, , and , eds. Modern Chinese Stories and Novellas, 1919–1949. New York: Columbia University Press, 1981.
. Dai Wangshu: The Life and Poetry of a Chinese Modernist. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 1989.
. Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China, 1930–1945. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.
. Islands and Continents: Short Stories. Trans. , with and . Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2007.
. The Butcher’s Wife and Other Stories. Ed. and trans. . Boston, MA: Cheng & Tsui Company, 1995.
. Wintry Night. Trans. and . New York: Columbia University Press, 2001.
. Silver City. Trans. . New York: Metropolitan Books, 1997.
. Retribution: The Jiling Chronicles. Trans. and . New York: Columbia University Press, 2003.
, and , eds. Taiwan under Japanese Colonial Rule, 1895–1945. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006.
. Moment in Peking: A Novel of Contemporary Chinese Life. New York: The John Day Company, 1939.
. My Country and My People. London: W. Heinemann, 1939.
, ed. Roses and Thorns: The Second Blooming of the Hundred Flowers in Chinese Fiction, 1979–1980. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.
. The Uses of Literature: Life in the Socialist Chinese Literary System. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000.
. Two Kinds of Truth: Stories and Reportage from China. Ed. . Blooming-ton: Indiana University Press, 2006.
. Revolution Plus Love. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2003.
. China’s Literary and Cultural Scenes at the Turn of the 21st Century. London: Routledge, 2007.
, and . The Literature of China in the Twentieth Century. London: Hurst, and New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.
, ed. Cyber China: Reshaping National Identities in the Age of Information. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
. Big Breasts and Wide Hips. Trans. . New York: Arcade Publishing, 2004.
. Red Sorghum: A Novel of China. Trans. . New York: Viking, 1993.
. Crystal Boys. Trans. . San Francisco: Gay Sunshine Press, 1995.
. Wandering in the Garden, Waking from a Dream: Tales of Taipei Characters. Trans. and . Ed. . Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982.
. Fortress Besieged. Trans. and . Foreword by Jonathan Spence. New York: New Directions, 2004.
. Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters. Trans. . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 1998.
. Feelings above Sea Level: Prose Poems from the Chinese of Shang Qin. Trans. . Brookline, MA: Zephyr Press, 2006.
. Imperfect Paradise. Trans. . Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1995.
. City of the Queen: A Novel of Colonial Hong Kong. Trans. and . New York: Columbia University Press, 2005.
. My Life as Emperor. Trans. . New York: Hyperion East, 2005.
. Rice. Trans. . New York: W. Morrow and Company, 1995.
. Baotown. Trans. . New York: W. W. Norton, 1989.
. Love in a Small Town. Trans. . Hong Kong: Research Centre for Translation, Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1988.
. Love on a Barren Mountain. Trans. . Hong Kong: Research Centre for Translation, Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1991.
. The Song of the Everlasting Sorrow. Trans. and . New York: Columbia University Press, 2008.
. Illuminations from the Past: Trauma, Memory, and History in Modern China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004.
. Rose, Rose, I Love You. Trans. . New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.
. The Monster that Is History: History, Violence, and Fictional Writing in Twentieth-Century China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.
. Running Wild: New Chinese Writers. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.
, and , eds. Writing Taiwan: A New Literary History. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2007.
, ed. China’s Avant-Garde Fiction: An Anthology. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998.
. Personal Matters: Women’s Autobiographical Practice in Twentieth-Century China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004.
. Shanghai Baby. Trans. . New York: Pocket Books, 2001.
. A Girl Like Me, and Other Stories. Trans. . Hong Kong: Research Centre for Translation, Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1986.
. My City: A Hong Kong Story. Trans. . Illustrations by Xi Xi. Hong Kong: Research Centre for Translation, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1993
. Tales of Hulan River. Trans. . Hong Kong: Joint Publishing, 1988.
, and . Forbidden Games and Video Poems: The Poetry of Yang Mu and Lo Ch’ing. Trans. . Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1993.
. No Trace of the Gardener: Poems of Yang Mu. Trans. and . New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.
. Nanking 1937: A Love Story. Trans. and with an Afterword by . New York: Anchor Books, 2002.
, ed. and trans. Anthology of Modern Chinese Poetry. 2nd edn. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.
, and , eds. Frontier Taiwan: An Anthology of Modern Chinese Poetry. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001.
, , and , eds. Sailing to Formosa: A Poetic Companion to Taiwan. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006.
. Modern Chinese Poetry: Theory and Practice since 1917. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991.
. Chronicle of a Blood Merchant. Trans. . New York: Anchor Books, 2003.
. To Live. Trans. . New York: Anchor Books, 2003.
. Three-Legged Horse. Ed. . New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.