One 3,000 years and 2 lots of 30 years Han Dong Trans. Nicky Harman

The first 30 years ran from 1949 to 1979, that is, starting with Mao Zedong and finishing with Deng Xiaoping. In those days, there was only one kind of literature – one which served politics. Any piece of writing at odds with the official ideology was criticized or banned, and regarded as flouting the law. The smallest slip-up on the part of the author and he or she would be ousted from the Writers Association, and sent to prison or to a Reform through Labour camp. Authors like this became outcasts - the victims of the anti-Rightist campaign of the 1950s, are one example. The vigilance of Party functionaries and the whims and fancies of certain leaders meant that there were no fixed rules even for writers who were willing to toe the Party line. Writing was a dangerous business. You were required to court disaster, but you had no idea when or where or why it would strike. The dictatorship of the proletariat was the sword of Damocles suspended over the heads of authors. No one knew when it would fall, but fall it would, and blood would be shed. Such was the fate of authors whose works were published. Well then, could you just write and not try and get published? No way. Someone would be sure to report you, and very likely it would be your sleeping partner, your wife, husband or children, or a friend you’d known for years. There was a crime then known as counter-revolutionary thinking. It not only meant that you couldn’t write things down; if you even had an unorthodox thought in your head and you were fingered, you could end up with a prison sentence. It was an age when you did not dare reveal anything about yourself even in your private diary: literature was chopped off at the root and became just another object.

From the end of the 1970s and throughout the 80s, as China opened up to the outside world, there was an accompanying liberation in people’s thinking. In the literary domain, an enormous numbers of books by Western authors flooded into China in translation. A new generation of writers fell on them and devoured them, overcome with feelings of ravenous hunger and in a rush of heady excitement. Inevitably, the choice of books to translate and read was made unsystematically and indiscriminately – different periods, regions, languages and types of writing were all lumped in together. Anything Western must be good – the very fact that it was from the West was a mark of its worth, in other words ‘The foreign moon was rounder than the Chinese moon…’. Any overseas writer fortunate enough to visit China in those days was unconditionally praised, fawned on, even worshipped. It was rare for anyone to express doubts or reservations or offer a dissenting opinion. The same Chinese writer would accord the same value and stature to two Western writers who had a completely different outlook and style. Chinese literature was a soup, Western writers were just the nutrients to be stirred into it. 1980s writing was filled with enthusiasm and excitement, forming an eclectic, crude mixture. There was a mad rush to write new experiences down, but there was little real desire to examine the underlying ideas and writing techniques, or find new ways to deal with reality. New writing was short on substance; instead authors got carried away with a bizarre array of writing styles. Still, it was an amazing time to live through. I miss the atmosphere of the literary world of the 1980s even though I don’t rate its achievements very highly. We were living a fantasy, and not a very glorious one either.

I haven’t time here to go further into the points I have raised. What I do want to say is that the hope for Chinese literature can only lie with the small number of authors who work away quietly on their own – even if they are almost unknown. The second 30-year period is now over and – I’ll say it again – don’t underestimate what 30 years can do. It’s long enough for you to develop a new digestive system! Chinese authors now have access to information, means of communication, stores of knowledge and real-life experience, all benefits we have enjoyed during 30 years of reforms, 1979-2009 – and we have open access to our 3,000 year-old tradition too. We can’t retreat from reality any longer. In terms of the drama of life and themes for our work, this period beats any other. The responsibility falls on each one of us as an individual to make use of all this in our own writing. The recent pronouncement by the German sinologist, Wolfgang Kubin, that ‘contemporary Chinese literature is rubbish’, had the Chinese literary world up in arms. Not a single one of the literary big shots has admitted to having any responsibility for contemporary literature. I would, if I was speaking on behalf of Chinese writers. Disgrace or glory, we all have to take responsibility. That’s the only way we can see hope for the future.