| Chapter : | Introduction |
What is the significance of maintaining this spirit in the future development of modern Chinese language and literature? By raising these questions here, we do not mean to draw a clear line between the indigenous Chinese and the exogenous Western. In fact, although the development of modern Chinese literature left no language “uncontaminated,”3 this study is not an attempt to recover an essentialized indigenous Chinese language.
As a matter of fact, in contrast to mainstream modern Chinese literature, Jin Yong’s writing has successfully preserved elements of classical Chinese language and literature by refusing to use too much Europeanized Chinese language. A meaningful connection between modern Chinese language and the languages of classical essays and vernacular stories has thus been well established. In the meanwhile, Jin also developed the writing of modern Chinese by adding an element of “wen” to it. If this so-called “wen” refers to the special color and beauty of Chinese language and its inherent cultural content that derives from classical language, then Jin Yong’s writing has explored an innovative way of combining baihua with wen. Past research on his novels has, however, undervalued the significance of the special language that he created.
Even within the new literary tradition, authors such as Lu Xun, Shen Congwen, and Eileen Chang consciously or unconsciously revived traditional modes of discourse in their modern narratives. The linkage between their articulation of modernity and their Chinese heritage, to a certain extent, makes the writing of modern Chinese less Europeanized. Liu Zaifu’s term “accumulated cultural treasures” (wenhua diyun)4 refers to the process that these writers implemented; the knowledge they prepared as a preface to their writing was deeply rooted in the classical literary tradition, and such knowledge enhanced the cultural spirit of their novels. Ironically, these accumulated cultural treasures were eradicated by the infiltration of “Mao discourse” (Mao wenti) during the Cultural Revolution. As politically progressive writers marched toward a form of discourse that subordinated literature to revolutionary purpose, the beauty of writing in a modern Chinese language completely disappeared.