Chapter 45 Section Two: The Composition and Prospects of "New Century Literature"

Chinese literature in the 1990s has undergone some changes. After entering the new century, the changes have become more obvious, and some new aesthetic features have emerged. I have already discussed them in some articles. Here, the main emphasis is on the composition of "new century literature" . The composition of "new century literature" is very different from that of the 1990s. The main changes are that migrant workers' literature, sub-native narratives, "post-80s" writing, and Internet literature have become very important constituent elements. A very complicated issue facing today is still the issue of caring for people and who to care for, and I have always believed that the issue of caring for people should be prior to the question of who to care for.I have elaborated on this point in the article "The Problem of Mental Ability in Novels in the New Century".Caring for the bottom class is a great tradition of Chinese realist literature, but the name of the popular bottom class writing is suspicious. Since modern Chinese literature, there have been writings concerned with the bottom class. This issue was mentioned in .In the new century, the so-called "underclass writing" mainly refers to the literature of migrant workers.Migrant literature is an important part of "New Century Literature". The concept of migrant workers comes from folklore. It is not rigorous and scientific in itself, and the imagination of migrant workers in literature is often tinged with compassion and sympathy. Migrant workers are often equal to Migrant Workers. At the end of 2006, I participated in the National Academic Symposium on "Creation Practice and Future Development of Migrant Work Literature". At the meeting, some people thought that Migrant Work Literature could not be defined, but from an objective point of view, Migrant Work Literature is still a special literary phenomenon and a part of modern society. It is a unique and transitional type of literature in the transition period, so the concept of migrant literature must be redefined.At almost the same time, a newspaper solemnly issued a statement that it would no longer use the term "migrant workers". What these two things have in common is great sympathy for migrant workers.But the meaning of migrant workers is very complicated, and the members of the migrant workers group are also more complicated. For example, some people divide migrant workers into gold-collar workers, white-collar workers, and blue-collar workers.Most of the migrant workers' literature in the new century limits this theme to the subject matter of migrant workers, and focuses on narratives from the perspective of migrant workers, which is a new exploration of the subject.Most of the subjects of Migrant Work Literature come from rural areas to cities. They are full of hope for future life and long for success, but they often encounter disappointment and failure in reality.It should be pointed out that the authors of migrant literature are not necessarily migrant workers.In the past few years in the new century, Luo Weizhang's "Our Way", "Sister-in-Law Ballad", Liu Qingbang's "Wheat", Chen Yingsong's "Taiping Dog", Bai Lianchun's "Veins", Chi Zijian's "All Nights in the World", Yu Xiaowei's "My "Walking on the Streets of Shenzhen" and other works can be called masterpieces of migrant literature.It should be noted that such works created by migrant workers and some writers may be a transitional phenomenon like educated youth literature, but migrant worker literature is extremely important in Chinese society in the process of modern transformation and urbanization. It covers almost every aspect of the political economy, morality and ethics of Chinese society at this stage, and is full of various spiritual conflicts, expressing the sense of drift and alienation in the face of the city, which cannot be ignored.The most important thing is that once they flood into the city, they will face material poverty and spiritual poverty at the same time, and they can only be "on the road" and become rootless forever.Luo Weizhang's "Our Way" focuses on expressing this situation.

Closely related to migrant literature is sub-native literature, which is also a new literary phenomenon in the "new century literature".During the period of modern transitional society, the rural population flooded into the cities in large numbers, which made most of the rural areas hollow. There was no young and middle-aged labor force, leaving only the elderly, children and some women.Sensitive to this reality, some writers began to reveal the problem.It can be said that the current sub-local literature is very similar to the problem novels of the May Fourth period. They are trying to reveal social problems and present a real picture of social life, but they have not proposed fundamental solutions to the social problems involved.In other words, sub-local literature does not lack the ability to reveal negative reality, what it lacks is the ability to call for love, lead to goodness and light, and positively cultivate people.In the sub-native literature, the rural land is no longer the beautiful homeland imagined in the previous literature, nor is it the wilderness where the barbaric and ignorant, but mercilessly presents a scene of helplessness—the people here are being influenced by the concept of urban life. The shock of the city, but faced with the empty countryside.In the sub-native literature, when facing such an empty village, the writers first reveal the real problems, and then focus on the spiritual level of the people in the village.What Jia Pingwa reveals is a rural land that even the author himself cannot define. It is trapped in "nameless narration" and seems so empty. The traditional culture (Qin opera) is dying, and the new culture is nowhere to be found. Like Jia Pingwa's incense, they are all lit for the demise of traditional culture.The novels of Li Peifu, Liu Xinglong, He Shen, Wang Hai and others all show similar characteristics.In Asian rural literature, people living in rural areas often shout two words loudly: enter the city!Liu Qingbang's "Going to the City" shows the ultimate in this aspect. Song Jiayin has always dreamed of going to the city, but in reality he is retreating steadily, helplessly and sadly retreating to the countryside.Migrant work literature depicts the spiritual state of rural people after entering the city, while sub-rural literature not only expresses the spiritual emptiness of the countryside and the people living in it, but also expresses the conflicts of urban residents after entering the countryside.Chen Yingsong's novels often pay attention to this point. All the tragedies in "Masiling Murder" come from the inability to communicate between people. The gap between rural people and urban people becomes deeper and more terrifying with the development of society. This novel is like a bloody warning sign.

"Post-80s" writing is a major spectacle of "new century literature".I don't advocate dividing writers by birth year, but most of the writers born in the 1980s are writers who focus on themes of youth and growth in the current literary world, so there is no need to deny it.Therefore, like the personalized writing in the 1990s, the writing of the "post-80s" has many common characteristics, which cannot be ignored.Under the social background that marketization is increasingly dominant, the works of "post-80s" writers have changed the situation of the traditional literary world with their astonishing market performance and brand-new literary features as soon as they appeared. The writing of the "post-80s" has brought the relationship between literature and the market closer than ever before, and the circulation of the literature and literature is astonishing. "Post-80s" have shown a different style from other writers as soon as they entered the literary world, and their writing concepts and objects are very different from other writers.Most of them are unwilling to take on the cultural responsibilities of traditional writers, let alone the enlightenment tasks of literature, and they pay more attention to people's real experience and immediate consumption.Therefore, in the writing of the "post-80s", it is difficult to find keywords such as ideals, beliefs, and love that were closely related to the theme of youth in the past. It no longer advocates a healthy and upward growth experience like traditional literature, and it is replaced by loneliness. Depressed growing up experience. , The growth experience of the protagonists in the book is accompanied by loneliness.At the same time, sex, repression, and violence have also become key words in the writing of "post-80s". The growth experience of an alternative girl described in Haruki's "Beijing Dolls" is sharp and painful. Sex and rebellion accompany a girl's growth process. .

Although the Internet literature that started in 1999 has not yet fully matured, as a component of "new century literature", it has already become a part of the world.Internet literature shows different characteristics from traditional literature. It has the randomness and quickness of publication, which is very different from the traditional literature in the form of media. Such characteristics make Internet literature have the nature of equality and universality.In the traditional way of disseminating literature, only writers and poets can publish their works, but Internet literature makes literature become universal, vulgar and random.At the same time, online literature is also non-profit. People pay more attention to the number of views and click-through rates on the Internet. For example, in the early days of online literature, graffiti articles spread all over the world overnight, and then he disappeared.Regrettably, due to reasons such as the possibility of being anonymous when publishing, online literature appears to be a mixture of mud and sand, good and bad, while being cathartic.However, the strong power of Internet literature has created a large number of Internet literature writers who have a wide influence among readers: Tuya, Shazi, Pizi Cai, Li Xunhuan, Xing Yusen, Cai Zhiheng, Annie Baby, Hua Feihua, Murong Xuecun, Zhuying Qingtong, He Yuanwai, Ning Caishen, Xu Zhaoshou and so on.Their works are either lighthearted, decadent and rebellious, or virtual fantasy, all of which have had a wide influence on readers.

As mentioned earlier, the development trend of "globalization" has had an increasing impact on Chinese writers since the 1990s. In the early 1990s, Chinese writers imagined the "West" as a mirror of future China. , the mirror ceases to exist.Previously, our culture sometimes wandered between radical and conservative, between advocating westernization and promoting tradition. After the arrival of "New Century Literature", Chinese writers have gradually gained cultural self-confidence. The complex transformation of the pioneer writers who grew up in the 1980s, they went to the world to learn and publicize their actions. This is illustrated. Since 2006 The craze for Chinese studies also illustrates this point.A subtle change is that the current Chinese writers have already regarded themselves as part of the creators of world literature, and no longer regard world literature as purely Western literature. The mentality of being opposed to Western literature is gradually changing, towards Moving in the direction of communion and symbiosis.To a certain extent, it reflects the rising national self-confidence and cultural self-confidence.

"New century literature" has become a part of world literature in both literary creation and theoretical research. On the one hand, it is the spiritual attitude of Yu Hua, Mo Yan and other writers, and on the other hand, it is the performance of some literary theory researchers and critics. .Since the beginning of the new century, writers have gone abroad to study one after another, and some writers such as Yu Hua have gone abroad with their works. Some of them used to be "Western" learners. "The similarities of writers, such as Ma Yuan and Borges, Can Xue and Kafka, Yu Hua and Kafka, Xu Xing and Salinger, etc., but with the deepening of the understanding of "the West" in the 1990s, their Transformation one after another, some people call it the "victorious escape" of pioneer writers.The key to this statement is "victory", which means that Chinese writers began to have their own creations and ended blind imitation of "the West".Therefore, starting from the 1990s, writers no longer fell into the embarrassment of being accused of being "China's Borges" or "China's Kafka", and began to have their own artistic personality.The same is true in the study of literary theory. Since the 1980s, Chinese literary theory research and criticism have often followed the "Western", formalism, psychoanalysis, new criticism, archetypal criticism, Marxist criticism, structuralism, narratology, reception theory A series of criticisms such as ideology, deconstruction, feminism, postmodernism, new historicism, and postcolonialism have all come along the path of "Western" criticism, and the literary theory that really belongs to China is almost speechless.However, in recent years, Chinese literary theory research has almost synchronized with the "Western". Chinese literary theory researchers began to work with "Western" literary theory researchers to construct new theories, and they have natural advantages.