I remember the first time I was conscious of being a woman - it was the first year of secondary school. We had just won the War of Resistance Against Japan and my home town of Guiyang was full of American soldiers. I went to a school more than fifteen kilometres away from home. When I came home for the weekends I would see a lot of American soldiers. Chewing on their gum, they would give the 'thumbs-up' gesture and call out: -"Cool, man!" They drove their jeeps around recklessly, with girls dressed up to the nines. They would call lecherously out to me: - "Want a ride, pretty girl?" It used to make me feel oddly insulted. One time my cousin and I had been swimming in the crystal clear stream. We were sitting in the sun on a bridge in our swimming costumes, when a group of drunken American soldiers came along. At first they just flirted and laughed with us, but then started to be more physical, and actually pushed my cousin into the river. When my cousin's brother saw what had happened he was furious, and in perfectly fluent English set about giving them a piece of his mind. When the Americans heard that he could 'talk foreign,' they were suddenly rather embarrassed and were persuaded to apologise. Some time after that there was the 'Shen Chong incident': an American soldier raped a female student at Beijing University. The culprit was deported to the United States, but was subsequently released an innocent man. This triggered a wave of student demonstrations across the country. These events, combined with my personal experiences, engendered in me a deep-seated feeling of humiliation for my country.
In the last year of High School, I resolved somehow to escape from that remote city on its mountain plateau. On my own, I hitched a ride to Chongqing to sit the university entrance examinations. I rode on the back of a goods van, jiggling along with the wooden crates in the back, threading my way between the misty clouds and the jutting peaks. Famous landmarks on the way like 'The Seventy-Two Turns' and 'Hangman's Rocks' had me quaking in awe. In Chongqing I managed eventually to find Sha Ping Embankment, the old address of Chongqing Central University, where the examinations for the south-western region were held. The students had long since gone home for the vacation. We sat the examinations in the sweltering daytime heat which reached as high as 38-39°C, and at night lay in the empty shell of the student dormitory being devoured by hungry bed bugs. In those days universities admitted students independently, so I had to spend twenty days sitting the examinations for three universities. When I was back in Guiyang, I discovered that my high school had already decided to recommend me for entry without examination to Beijing Teacher Training University. Before long, letters of acceptance came in quick succession from Beijing University, Beijing Central University and Beijing Central Political University. I was naturally over the moon, and caused something of a sensation at home! My father was set against me leaving to go to the north, on the grounds that Beijing was under imminent threat of being surrounded by the Communist Party forces and would sson be engulfed in the chaos of war. For a seventeen-year-old girl to go there would be tantamount to leaping voluntarily into the fiery furnace. He insisted that I should stay at home. If I was going to go on to university, then Guizhou University down the road would have to do. After much quarrelling, pleading and even threats of suicide, he relented and agreed to my leaving our city in the mountains, but would only allow me to go as far as the Central University of Nanjing. If I had actually gone there at that particular time, I would have been transplanted over to Taiwan with Nanjing University a few months later, and my life story would have turned out very differently. However, I insisted on rushing headlong to the centre of the student revolutionary movement - Beijing. I had my mother's support, but we still told my father that I was going to Nanjing. She gave me ten silver coins, thereby consenting silently that on reaching Wuhan I would change course and head north to Beijing.
When I finally reaching Wuhan, I found the reception point for students headed for Beijing. The team leader was a first year student from the Wuhan University Physics Department. Also in favour of the revolution, he wanted to transfer to the History Department at Beijing University and be a first year student over again. We took a river boat together to Shanghai and then a sea ferry to Tianjin. During the journey the team leader taught us songs from the 'Liberated Areas' controlled by the Communists. We did not learn them together as a group, but by passing them on from one person to another. Maybe it was because I learnt quite quickly, but he always liked to teach me first, and then we would separate to go and teach other people. Within three days everyone had learnt the few songs he knew. Of course the favourite song was "The Sky in the Liberated Areas is Bright and Clear", but there were also "The Land in the Mountains is Good, Covered with Fine Yellow Rice and Corn" and "You Are the Beacon Lighting the Ocean Before Daybreak" and so forth. When the Beijing University students came to meet us at Qianmen Station waving great flags, we got into large trucks and sang these songs out loud - songs which were strictly forbidden in the interior areas. It was a deeply stirring moment: the ancient buildings with red walls and green tiles, singing banned songs which might have led to us being arrested and killed. This really was like reaching the city of freedom I had envisioned so many times in my dreams.
My university days in actual fact lasted only five months, but they were one of the few high points in my life. The entrance examinations I had taken were for the English department, but for some unknown reason the university had me registered for the Chinese department, apparently because Shen Congwen had liked what I had written in my answers. I was profoundly inspired by the intense academic atmosphere pervading China's institutions of higher education and the extraordinary, lofty erudition and nobility of the teachers. The curriculum for first year students contained: Chinese Literature (including composition) with Shen Congwen; Analysis of Contemporary Literary Works with Fei Ming; Interpretation of the Novel with Tang Lan; General Theory of Western Philosophy with Qi Liangji. Also courses in Experimental Chemistry and first year English Language. The teaching approach in university was quite different from in high school. I really enjoyed attending the taught courses and always did the background reading and completed the coursework conscientiously. I especially enjoyed the half-hour walk to the laboratory on the Shatan campus where we performed the chemical experiments.
I enjoyed studying, but concentrated my thoughts on the revolution as well. In the autumn of 1948, the student movements were going through a quiet patch. The 'Anti Hunger, Anti Persecution' movement had ebbed away. The Kuomintang were arresting pro-revolutionary students and some of the movement leaders were fleeing to the Liberated Areas. Before the winter vacation of 1948, we were still able to attend classes as normal. We were proposing a small-scale petition entitled 'For Survival, For Life.' I was waving my little flag along with everyone else as we marched from our campus to the main campus as Shatan to petition Hu Shi, the university chancellor. In those days, the main campus was set around a courtyard known as Song Gong Fu. We lined up in an orderly fashion in the courtyard. Hu Shi stood on the platform in front of the Jiemin Hall to receive us, wearing a black gown. He was perfectly civil, but his expression showed signs of distress. I have since forgotten what he said, but remember his look of resignation on his face. The outcome of this particular petition was that all students would receive funding who did not already receive it and that anyone who applied for winter clothing would be issued with a black padded overcoat. I wore my black coat at my graduation ceremony.
I was also attending the Beijing Drama and Folk Dance Societies, and threw myself body and soul into the art and literature of the revolution, which were quite new to me. I stayed awake night after night and read round the clock: Quiet Flows the Don, How the Steel was Tempered, Gorky's The Mother, and poetry by Mayakovsky. The Drama Society put on a production of the one-act Soviet play The Forty-First. My job was back stage prompt. In the bitter turmoil of a personal struggle between revolution and passion, the protagonist, a Red Army soldier girl has no choice but to shoot her blue eyed lover boy - a White Army officer whom she has captured. Every time I watched this scene I was moved to tears. The Folk Dance Society met twice a week. An old student from the other campus would come in to teach us folk dances from Xinjiang: how starkly those beautiful dances and songs contrasted with the faintly audible sound of gunfire and the atmosphere of battle around the city. Yet the two are seemingly quite naturally fused in my memory. By day I sang and danced like a thing possessed, by night I stood on the roof on sentry duty to protect the university or proofread revolutionary propaganda. The Beijing University Press was next to the campus in those days. In the dead of night, the pro-revolutionary workers would put in extra shifts to print secret texts and pamphlets, which we would then check, either in the print room or sometimes out in the moonlight. My keenest memory is of checking a booklet which had on the cover "Conversation by Candlelight" by Zhou Zuoren as a decoy, while the title page read somewhat shockingly: "As a great river flows day and night, so the blood of the Chinese people is shed day and night." It was a collection of the thoughts and experiences of a Beijing University student who had been to the Liberated Areas, a work both richly exuberant and deeply moving.
On the 29th of January 1949 when the People's Liberation Army marched triumphantly into Beijing, my life entered a new phase. My first impression of the 'New Society' was the revolutionary literature and art of the Yan'an Cultural Troupe. The amorous Xinjiang songs and dances were immediately removed from the repertoire; in their place appeared resounding yangko style songs from the north-west and deafening drumming rhythms. The Cultural Troupe sent a representative to the university to coach us, and a small group of our own was formed. After we had learned what to do, we went out to perform in the streets. Sometimes we danced to the yangge wearing red sashes tied round our waists, or we used red cord to carry drums which we would beat so hard the heavens trembled. Some of the townsfolk reacted with smiles and applause, others were hostile and gave us a more frosty reception. We were all bursting with pride, however, imagining ourselves to be announcing the demise of the Old Society and heralding the advent of the angels and heroes of the New.
In 1952, I became the youngest assistant teacher in the Beijing University Chinese Department, one of the first generation of new-style intellectuals to be trained by the Communist Party after Liberation. I relished my status with pride and was inspired to perform great feats. By 1957 a string of nearly twenty young teachers had emerged from the Chinese Department. There were ten of them in the literature section where I worked. There were very few periodicals in Humanities subjects at that time, and even then they tended only to publish articles by well-established senior academics. Younger writers had little opportunity to have their pieces published. Our group decided to set up a medium-sized academic journal of our own especially for articles by younger people. We had two meetings to decide on the work to be included in the first two issues and decided what the titles were to be. Everyone was very excited about having a journal of our own. After the meeting we approached our various professors to ask for donations to cover our expenses. This was in May 1957. My professor, Wang Yao, who was piercingly intelligent and had a shrewd understanding of the state of affairs, advised us to abort the project immediately. We were dumbfounded, thinking he was over-reacting and that he lacked faith in the Communist Party.
History has a knack of playing tricks. An incident involving 'open conspiracy' by 'well known writers through the ages' did much permanent harm to the Chinese intelligentsia. It caused their imagination to seize up from then onwards. Not one of the eight of us who had been involved with the journal escaped being tainted. We were all labelled 'rightists'. After all, conspiring to collaborate on a journal is apparently the same as wanting to break away from the Party leadership, and wanting to break away from the Party leadership constitutes opposition to the Party. So, the ten new post-1949 appointments to the Literature Section of the Chinese Department had now become rightist faction. I was suddenly singled out as the unwitting ringleader of the faction, dubbed an 'extreme rightist', and summarily expelled from the Party and from public employment. I was given sixteen yuan a month to live on and went to the countryside to do supervised labour.
Around the time of these events, my second child was just amonth old, and my daughter was four and a half. To this day I have no idea which leader I had to thank for taking pity and delaying my departure to the countryside by six months, so that I could breast-feed the baby. I was a very healthy woman and produced plenty of milk. However, the baby had constant diarrhoea from taking my milk. The old people crowed that it was because I had a poor state of mind, and this put the 'fire' element in my milk. I have no idea how I survived those six months. I remember pondering over and over the same questions: when the children grew up, would they still be allowed to attend the Pioneer Movement, would they be allowed to join the Communist Youth League? In the future would they be required to record the fact that their mother was an 'enemy of the people' on every form in their files? Would they be blacklisted as 'children of counter-revolutionaries' their whole lives? Who could I call upon to answer these questions? My former colleagues had long since started avoiding me like the plague. Living with these problems was like being buried alive, suffocated, tormented. The six months flew by and soon it was the last day of my leave. That afternoon I received notification that I was to leave for the countryside immediately; the very next day I packed up and left, without even having time to wait until the weekend for a chance to say goodbye to my husband who was teaching in a village school of a nearby suburb.
In the high mountains of the Beijing suburbs we had to carry stones, mend the reservoir, build pigsties. I put all my strength into the work and derived a certain glow of health from the physical labour. Apart from being careful not to lose my footing and fall over or let the stones roll down off my shoulders, my mind was completely free of thoughts. Half dead with fatigue, on returning home I would fall asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow, and the multitudinous concerns of the day would melt into dreams. My relationship with the physical work grew more and more intimate, and this gradually gave rise to a loathing and impatience towards mental effort, especially when I was with peasant people. During those few years when the country was gripped by untamed famine, all we had to eat was apricot tree leaves, to which we added left-over maize and corn cobs ground into a powder. Later on, many people became ill, but I enjoyed good health throughout. I think this was due in part to my adeptness at appreciating the peace of mind and purity of spirit there was to be had from work, but it was also one of the benefits my female gender afforded me. There were many male 'rightists' had to live cooped up in a stuffy, dark and cold building the peasants stored their tools in, whilst I was the only female 'rightist', and since men and women could not be expected to live together, I had to lodge with normal people. They chose the most reliably poor and upstanding peasant household for me to live in. The old man had spent most of his life tending livestock for his landlord. He was over fifty and only after the landlord's property and herd had been divided up did he have the opportunity to marry a woman to live out his remaining days with. The strange thing was that the old couple had no concept of class distinctions, and looked after me as their own daughter. I came to hold deep affection for these people who had suffered so much. The old man kept the production team's sheep, wandering up in the mountains where there were walnut trees in abundance and squirrels in great numbers. The old man would sometimes scrounge a few walnuts from a squirrel's nest or pick up a few peanuts, half a sweet potato, a cob of maize. Every few days we would be able to sit down together and enjoy these rare treats. The old woman kept three chickens. By keeping eggs aside from the fixed quota we were bound to sell, we were able to have an egg banquet once or twice a month, with three eggs each!
By Autumn 1961 the zeal of the Great Leap Forward had passed, and the famine grew less severe. The reservoir was shown to be fundamentally incapable of holding water. Pigs returned to every house; the collective pigsty had been built in vain. The countryside suddenly relaxed. I was assigned less strenuous work, driving four pigs to graze up in the mountains. The leadership wanted to perform a miracle by showing that pigs could grow fat without any grain being bought. I was up and out at dawn and back at dusk. I drove my little pigs out in the morning sun and walked off into the walnut groves high in the mountains. I loved the solitude of being one person in union with nature. But these were circumstances under which it was difficult to refrain from thinking. In daydreams I planned out my future, thinking it would be best to find a secluded dwelling and continue doing manual labour and being self sufficient for food. But I had no grain ration tickets and no registered address, so where could I go to find my retreat? The temples and churches had long since fallen into ruins, so even monks and nuns had nowhere to go. Lives followed so many different paths. I had never before had such an insight into peasant life. Although we were poor, we fed ourselves without difficulty and wanted nothing. Like a tree in the natural world growing and dropping leaves, returning in the end to nature. What need did I have of the rigidity of my previous life? Or rather of the future life my past had determined for me? Then again, was I really in a position to decide my own future at all? It was all like a dream. Pondering thus, it was the traditional Chinese way which resolved the issue: be happy and satisfied with life, and be resigned to all encounters. It seemed I had thought my way to a solution, yet I was tranquil and calm. Every day I tended my little pigs, sang heartily out loud in the mountain woods or hummed softly, or else drilled my English or recited lines in the open fields.
At the end of 1962 I had orders to return to Beijing University to take up a public appointment. My job this time was as resources assistant. Supposedly to prevent my 'contaminating' the pure, undefiled students, I was to be allowed no direct contact with them. I had to prepare teaching materials for lecturers and produce annotated editions of classical poetry for them to use in class. As far as I was concerned, it was a reward for hardship endured. Firstly, it was an opportunity to wall myself up in the resources room away from the cold stares of other people. Secondly, having to compare every word and phrase in various editions and come up with a definitive explanation was intensive training which stopped up the gaps in my knowledge of classical Chinese. Thirdly, the wonder of the poetry provided a beautiful spiritual world for me to indulge in.
Then in 1966 came the historically unprecedented and earth-shattering Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. I need not recount in detail all the humiliations and injustices. I recall the reminiscences of the first-rate Chinese philosopher Feng Youlan: "They hauled me up onto a platform to be publicly criticised and denounced. Popular feeling was running high, but I remained inwardly calm. The tree of enlightenment does not exist, nor the reflection in a mirror. With no possessions to lose, why stir up the dust?" It seemed that the traditions of Chinese culture, Daoist and Buddhist thought, really did help intellectuals live through the crisis. It might be hard to believe, but with the onslaught of the Cultural Revolution I was once again branded a 'rightist' and my husband a 'capitalist reader and reactionary gangster.' In a flash we were 'struck down into the dust and trampled by a thousand feet.' The things in our house were listed and confiscated, every day under the burning sun we had to undergo 'reform through labour' and be denounced. But in our hearts we really thought this Revolution was bringing hope for China. We felt we could foresee the tremendous changes in store for China. At the time propaganda on the principles of the Paris Commune was still widespread: the income of the Party and Government leadership should not exceed the highest wage of skilled labourers, universal suffrage, equality. We all thought that if the country could be transformed in that way, then who could complain about a bit of pain and suffering? Only later did we understand that it was all a façade. We had sown dearly but reaped nothing, and the country's vitality had been heavily plundered.
The greatest and most irreconcilable loss for me personally was the death of my mother. We lived in the university campus then, near the student dormitory buildings which were the centre of the fighting between different factions. On the roof of the main building there were people armed with catapults - injuries were common. My two children became tail members of a rebel faction. My nine-year-old son was good at climbing trees, so often climbed right onto the roof to install loudspeakers for one faction, or to dismantle the speakers of another. In those days screeching propaganda squawked from loudspeakers everywhere. My thirteen-year-old daughter was a shrewd debater and who jumped to challenge any issue she considered unjust. She was often in trouble or quarrelling with people. The atmosphere of the times was such that these incidents could have led to bloodshed, all because they were the 'children of reactionaries'. I had no option but to farm them out to my mother who lived between Beijing University and Qinghua University. I could never have known that a few days later someone would seek my mother out to forbid her from harbouring 'reactionary brats.' If she insisted on keeping them she would have to hang black identification plaques round their necks to prevent them from 'mixing with the masses.' My mother was angry, worried and frightened. That evening she complained of a splitting headache and went to hospital. The experienced doctors had long since been denounced. One 'revolutionary doctor' misdiagnosed a ruptured brain tumour as meningitis and the next day my mother died an unpleasant death.
The raging storms of the Cultural Revolution calmed temporarily in 1969. We moved to the 'Seventh of May' Cadre College in a quiet place called Liyu Zhou. My daughter, just turned sixteen, announced that she "was not going to circle the rafters like a swallow, but wished to soar like an eagle." She and her gang rushed off to Beidahuang on the Chinese-Soviet border, and she became a soldier in the Heilongjiang Provincial army unit.
Liyu Zhou was the product of the movement to surround lakes with cultivated land as applied at Lake Poyang in Jiangxi Province. A dam was built to hold back the lake water and the reclaimed land was to be cultivated. The area was one large swamp, desolate and uninhabited, devoid of human dwellings. We did all the work ourselves taking local materials, using reed and bamboo to build a house and starting to cultivate the lake bed. The white sails dotted across Lake Poyang looked like swans gliding across a blue sky. The two of us with our eleven-year-old son lived for three years in this insect-infested place which even the peasants had deserted. Although my husband and I were put to work in different brigades, every fortnight on our day off we could gather as a family and stroll by the lakeside. Those were the best of times. Apart from disturbances such as marching drill, emergency musters and' searching high and low to seek out class enemies', it was a peaceful time and we could breathe a sigh of relief after the incessant turmoil of 'class struggle' that had gone before. Because I had past experience of manual labour and did not find work so strenuous, I quickly became an exemplary rice-transplanter and an expert bricklayer. The future seemed uncertain. Nothing could be predicted, so people opted not to dwell on it too much. I retreated to the country idyll in my dream world. I imagined I had a thatched hut with chickens pecking round the front door and ducks quacking in the back yard, beanpoles in the front garden and melons round the back. I was happy with my lot. My friend Peng Lan (rest her soul) wrote a poem which became widely known: "Looking back over the past thirty years and more, the cause and the writings have all faded into obscurity. Watching the glow of the setting sun at Liyu Zhou, throngs of workers and peasants now sing songs of triumph." I think people like this poem precisely because of the melancholy and irony it captures.
Our 'leaders' continued to guide and educate us: we should take root in the villages and become the forefathers of the Liyu Zhou peasants of the future. I too saw the chance to fulfil the aspirations of my country idyll. But in 1972 suddenly it was decreed that a decision had been taken to move all the inhabitants of Liyu Zhou back to university. We had no idea of the whys and wherefores, nor were we sure whether to be concerned or relieved. We were all frantically busy. The chickens were killed and we had a great chicken banquet. The pigs kept at the house were slaughtered, the water pump, engine and all the work tools it had taken such effort to purchase were all abandoned, as was our own thatched hut. We loaded up the truck and drove slowly along the edge of the lake along thedam. I felt aggrieved. During the two years on this deserted embankment I had buried more than ten friends: six perished when their boat sank as they crossed Lake Poyang to buy produce; two died when their truck skidded and overturned; three committed suicide and the others died from infections caused either by the insects, or by the lack of medicines and healthcare.
I am not a believer in fate. The choice of one road ahead to follow out of the thousands of possibilities is made purely by chance. In the mid-seventies, a few foreign students were enrolled in Beijing University. To begin with they were North Koreans and Africans, then gradually Americans and Europeans started to trickle in. No one was particularly keen to teach foreigners. No one had any experience of them, and contact with foreigners could lead to trouble. What to do if they asked awkward questions? Give the wrong answer and you could be charged with having 'illicit foreign connections.' Moreover, the teaching material was difficult to organise: teach the old stuff and the students would not listen, yet with introducing new material came the fear of making mistakes. This was why none of us was eager to teach the foreigners. My position gave me no leeway for bargaining; I simply had to do as I was told, and I was instructed to teach Modern Literature to a foreign student class. The class had twenty or so students, mostly Europeans and Americans as well as some Australians and Japanese. I had no idea what fundamental changes would be wrought on my subsequent life by the three years I spent teaching this class. To teach contemporary Chinese Literature I had to break right away from the usual teaching methods, or none of them would have listened to me. In order to give them a proper understanding of Chinese literary works, I had to investigate the relationship between Western and Chinese Literature and the way in which Western Literature had been disseminated in China. This was a topic which had been ignored in academia for many years and it fascinated me. I undertook a systematic study of Western influences on Chinese Literature in the twentieth century, of how misunderstandings and distortions had been brought about. From this starting point I went on to forge unbreakable links with the discipline of Comparative Literature. Thanks to a favourable report by some American students, I was then granted the unexpected opportunity to go to Harvard University to study for a year, which was followed by two years as visiting scholar at the University of California at Berkeley.
I cherish the memories of my time at Harvard, especially in the student boarding houses. Each boarding hall was in a large courtyard. Mine was called Lowell House, and was situated on four sides of a green lawn. The hall housed about two-hundred students, amongst them undergraduates, research students and even some of the younger teachers. The research students gave the undergraduates tutorial classes in the hall's own small teaching rooms, proffering guidance of all kinds and showing them the ropes. The hall's warden took great pains to foster an informal, family-like atmosphere. Every Thursday at four o'clock he gave a tea party with biscuits which his wife made. A shaggy dog lay sprawled on the livingroom floor. Anyone in the boarding hall could go for coffee and a few biscuits and strike up a conversation with any of the professors or other university people who would turn up from time to time. Every Tuesday evening there was a raucous ice-cream party. On these occasions ear-splitting rock and roll music would pound in the dining hall and there were ten flavours of ice cream to choose from. The story went that a Harvard alumnus had been so poor as a student that he was unable to afford ice-cream, which he loved very much. When he made his fortune later in life he established a fund to enable fellow members of the boarding hall to gather once a week and eat as much ice-cream as they liked, free of charge. Every Friday there was a 'High Table' dinner, for which the stage platforms were rearranged to form a long banqueting table which was covered with a snow white tablecloth. Round the table were seated professors and younger teaching staff who were former members of the Hall. The bells of the Lovell Hall clocktower chimed out in accompaniment to these dinners. After the meal, the professors mixed freely with the students and chatted with them. These were isolated instances, of course, but they gave me an insight into the means by which the Harvard traditions were handed down from generation to generation by these unchanging rituals.
Actually, my year in Harvard did little to advance my research. I was busy attending lectures during the day and then went to evening classes in English. My major course was Comparative Literature, a subject I was passionate about. One of the founder members of the Department was Professor Irving Babitt, who vigorously encouraged the study of Confucius. It was under Babitt's influence that a group of Chinese students, among them Wu Mi and Mei Guangdi, began once again to study Chinese culture, this time in a worldwide cultural context. The head of the department at the time, Claudio Guillen, also thought that a full treatment of general literary theory was only possible if the two great poetic traditions of East and West were exposed to one another and compared. I was transfixed by this seemingly brand new discipline. I borrowed and read many books on the subject, and bought more books on Comparative Literature with all the money I could scrape together. I decided to dedicate the remaining half of my life to the field of Chinese Comparative Literature.
The time flew by, and the year was soon over, even though it still felt as if I had just arrived. My understanding of the field was especially deepened in the Summer of 1982, when I was invited to New York to attend the Tenth Annual Conference of the International Comparative Literature Society. My university kept urging me to return to China, but I decided to continue my studies in the United States. Fortunately, the University of California at Berkeley offered me a visiting research post. Without hesitating, I headed straight for the West Coast.
The gentleness and cultivation of Harvard University had already rubbed off on me, the tradition and gentlemanly ways of New England. On reaching the West Coast I effectively underwent a second spiritual liberation. I remember attending Claudio Guillen's seminars, when exactly forty-five minutes into the lecture his secretary would appear with a tray of coffee, with the words: - "Professor, your coffee." This meant it was time for the break. At the first lecture I attended in Berkeley, I suddenly heard a panting noise behind me and turned round to see large dog sitting there. It seemed to be common practise for students to take their dogs to lectures. The professors would sometimes deliver lectures perched on the edge of the table, students would ask questions whenever they felt the need. There was no trace of stuffiness between the teachers and the students, but lots of humour, and certainly no trace of a secretary bearing coffee. The college was lively, quite different from the tranquillity of Harvard. In the main square, people would give speeches, there was juggling and breakdancing, people in saffron robes with shaved heads bouncing up and down chanting "Hare Krishna" and a woman poet who would appear at the same time every day, dressed completely in black and strolling along the road blowing soap bubbles. At the gates there were stands selling food from all comers of the globe, like an international market. No-one seemed to like eating in the canteen, but preferred to sit and eat outside in the warm sunshine. When I told people about the 'High Table' dinners at Harvard, they snorted their disapproval and took me for some sort of idiot. Comparing the two, I think I preferred Berkeley: it suited my character and I felt less inhibited.
My academic supervisor was a famous professor in the Departments of Comparative Literature and East Asia. His research into Lao She and Xu Zhimo and into their relationship with foreign literature was enlightening. His work on Yuan and Ming drama and narratives provided a completely new perspective. I loved attending his seminars on Modem Chinese Literature. My most vivid memory is of a discussion on Zhao Shuli's story Xiao Erhei's Wedding. My fellow students expressed their views freely and said exactly what they thought about the characters in the story. One American girl said she liked San Xiangu best and hated the village cadre. This surprised me: the consensus was more usually that San Xiangu was a no-good forty-year-old widow who wore too much make-up and teased men, while the village cadre on the other hand was upholding justice by reprimanding San Xiangu. But this American student had a valid point: she thought San Xiangu was an innocent victim. She had a zest for life and she had the right to life in the way she chose, but suffered the prejudice and bullying of the society around her. The village cadre was a busybody, poking his nose in just because someone wore their make-up a bit thick, an example of the archetypal Chinese parent-official 'mandarin' figure. I had a keen sense of how these different opinions revealed the variety of cultural and social concepts of worth. These differences were not irrelevant coincidences; they actually served to provide additional angles from which to understand and appreciate the writing. It was precisely these different interpretations which enabled the life of the writing to ripen and endure. This seminar group armed me with many similar examples with which in later years to enrich the content of my teaching of aesthetic principles.
While at Berkeley, I wrote a book Intellectuals in the Chinese Novel, which was one of the obligations which my Berkeley scholarship carried with it. Later it became one of the Berkeley East Asian Research Publications series. I had not entertained the opportunity of writing any other books while I was there. The other was a series of recollections of the twenty years which were supposed to be the best years of my life. I wrote it with the intention of leaving an authentic record so later generations would know about that period of history, about people's lives and thoughts and feelings. That was back in 1982, when no-one knew which path China's future would follow or what the consequences of speaking the truth would be. My co-author Caroline told me that American banks offered safe deposit-boxes to rent where you could store your secrets safely, and that these boxes were quite inexpensive. She said she would help organise one for me. My book could remain in the box until after my death if need be. It was a miracle that I was able to write it at all. Caroline did not know a word of Chinese, and my English was often halting and woolly. What we relied on was instinctive understanding and intuition. Caroline consistently and indefatigably kept up a stream of questions, and from my sincere but inevitably rather fragmentary replies painstakingly reconstructed my train of thought. At the time there was no intention to publish, so I spoke from the heart, unfettered by misgivings. I did not think China would develop so quickly. Two years had passed, and now it seemed that there would be no need to initiate the safe deposit-box plan. In 1984, the night before I was to return to China, Caroline and I decided to submit the book to the University of California Press to be published under the title Facing the Storm.
For bearing my soul warts and all, many people sympathised with my book. Its publication in 1985 attracted renewed interest from the media. More than twenty newspapers and magazines, including the "New York Times", the "Los Angeles Times" and the "Christian Science Monitor" in the United States, "The Daily Telegraph" in the United Kingdom, the "Frankfurter Allgemeiner" in Germany and the "Canadian Hamilton Post" published reviews and rated it highly. The following year, the German publishers Scherz published a German translation, changing the title to When a Hundred Flowers Bloomed. The same year the book won the United States West Coast‘Bay Area Best Book Award'. Most of the credit for this is due to Caroline for her exquisite, smooth writing. The most pleasing thing was that eight years after publication, the book still aroused the interest of the famous Japanese Sinologist, Professor Maruyama Noboru of Tokyo University. As a result of his personal involvement, his wife Maruyama Matsuko and a former pupil from my foreign student class, Shiramizu Noriko, now a teacher at Yokohama University, collaborated in producing a Japanese translation, which was published in January 1995 by Iwanami Press. I think the book's value is its authenticity. Just as my friend John Shevens, who had worked in China for more than a decade in the 1930s, wrote in his long Preface:
"This book's greatness lies in the fact that it is not an merely anecdotal account of titillating events. [Yue Daiyun's] narration is sincere and sensitive. In her view mistakes are not all identical, but are caused by individuals powerless to prevent them in the face of complicated historical circumstances. Persistent and dauntless, this is a woman who holds in store rich resources of bravery and strength, an eternal mother who refuses to surrender. In the face of indescribable hardship and testing circumstances she protected her family, as well as her own and her children's futures [...]. Her appalling experience has given us an illustration of humanity's persistence of spirit, the significance of which far exceeds the bounds of the current era. Perhaps the events she lived through are not obviously comparable with events in other locations, yet which country has not at some point in its history gone through a period of incomprehensible violence?"
It occurred to me that these were the reasons why several universities used my book as supplementary teaching material for Modem Chinese History classes, and even now I often receive letters from abroad from students wanting to discuss related issues with me.
In the warm sunshine at Berkeley, two years of blue skies and gentle breezes slipped by. By this time my son and daughter were both at American schools and my husband was over for a visit. In China there was a large-scale campaign against 'spiritual pollution', like the black clouds gathering before a storm. I had a serious talk with a friend who had arrived in America at the same time as me: now that our time was up, did we want to go back? This was the grave question upon which the remaining halves of our lives depended. My friend persuaded me to stay where I was, saying that to go back straight away was like walking straight into a trap, asking for trouble. If by some extraordinary twist of fate there was another Cultural Revolution, then the remaining halves of our lives were over. He treasured his freedom, preferring eight hours' temporary work in a restaurant in exchange for eight hours of freedom to write. I was not so convinced. Life is short; was it not an enormous waste to be forced to spend time working at things I did not enjoy and which were of no benefit to me? At this time my husband was restless to return home. He was conservative by nature. He disliked American food and detested American television; the only American things he liked were cream, popcorn and the libraries, but he missed his own small room lined with old books: it really was a case of 'no place like home.' In the Autumn of 1984 we returned to Beijing, mindful of the 'lofty sentiments and aspirations' of our 'preferring to be criticised'. Strangely there was absolute clam in Beijing University. Even my defiance of orders and my 'lingering abroad' were rarely referred to. The only thing was that I was often asked to work out what my salary in China was as a percentage of my income while abroad.
Times had really changed. For a while I was unable to grow accustomed to the new freedoms I had gained: I was like a bird suddenly roused from sleep, which, unused to the bright light, instinctively spreads its wings and flies up and away. A new university in the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone was being built and established. My husband and I were invited by its intelligent and perspicacious chancellor to participate in this undertaking. He hired me as head of the Chinese Department, and consented to my starting up China's first Institute for Comparative Literature, while my husband set up the first Institute of National Studies since 1949. For the very first time in several decades, Chinese intellectuals were able to go about their own business, move freely around their own country and do what they wanted without having to watch out for the real meaning behind people's expressions or having to negotiate a minefield of difficulties. We did not resign from our duties at Beijing University, but travelled between Guangdong and Beijing, spending one semester in each place. Shenzhen was a vibrant and beautiful new place, full of vigour and vitality. In the Summer of 1985 various eminent figures in the field of Comparative Literature in China had their first opportunity to gather. Using Shenzhen University as a base, they convened the inaugural conference of the Chinese Comparative Literature Society and hosted an international symposium, also conducting the first study group in Comparative Literature. The keynote lecture of the conference was given by the mainstay of the resurgence of Chinese Comparative Literature, professor Ji Xianlin, world-renowned for his work on Chinese, Western and Indian cultures. He assumedthe role of honorary chairman of the inaugural conference, until professor Yang Zhouhan from Beijing University was elected first President of the Society. Present at the conference were one-hundred-and-thirty representatives from more than ten higher education establishments and publishing houses. The one-hundred-and-thirty people in the study group also attended the conference as nonvoting members. These younger people were to form the backbone of Comparative Literature studies in the future. The conference also made a step towards asserting the international status of the study of Comparative Literature in China. The President and the Secretary of the International Comparative Literature Society, and the President of the American Comparative Literature Society came to the conference in person to offer their encouragement. Other renowned scholars in the field who attended included American Professors from Duke University, Princeton University, the University of California and the head of the Hong Kong University Department Comparative Literature and other Hong Kong scholars.
Comparative Literature in China developed in leaps and bounds during the five yeas which followed. As professor Ji Xianlin said, Comparative Literature had already "[...] become a discipline [...] In the last few years, those in the field of literary and artistic theory in China have shown a great interest in Comparative Literature. Younger students are particularly passionate about the subject." In 1985 the Ministry of Education formally approved the establishment of the Beijing University Institute for Comparative Literature, and appointed me as its director. I threw myself at the job with vigour and glowed with an inner passion. We selected and edited the twelve books in the Shenzhen University Comparative Literature Series and the eighteen in the Beijing University Comparative Literature Series. The set of ten books of Chinese Literature we planned are now published in France, Japan, Russia, South Korea, the United Kingdom and Germany. Our compilation of university teaching ma terial A Course in Chinese and Western Comparative Literature is also available. Since early 1989, the number of officially published books on comparative literature has exceeded three-hundred-and-sixty; including articles on Comparative Literature which have appeared in various periodicals the figure is over three-thousand-two-hundred.
Since I have been back in China the open door policy has been very much a reality in my opinion, a wonderful thing. Even though prices have soared and life is as hard as ever, things in the past were still worse, so I have no complaint. I concentrate on the academic achievements and the talented people that can be fostered for China's future as a result. I have no desire to become involved with politics - in fact the further away from politics I stay, the better. The experiences of the last forty years have clarified one principle: a person's talents and time are strictly limited commodities. Without the right opportunities, concern and effort, even dedication and sacrifice are all in vain. Someone as impulsive and poor at planning as me is especially unsuited to politics. I submerge myself in reading and teaching, and am happy in an environment which allows me to do this. I think I have found the most appropriate modus vivendi. Leave politics to the politicians. In a modern society there is a need for specialists in every sphere of activity; politics is not my sphere.
From 1984 to 1989 I read and wrote without respite. Too much time had been wasted already. I had not read seriously for twenty years, thanks to distractions such as bricklaying, working the land and heaving stones about. While I am consumed with a passion for books, I also suffer the feeling that the foundations on which my work is based are not sufficient. Among the courses on permanent offer at Beijing University are 'Principles of Comparative Literature', 'Western Literary and Artistic Movements in the Twentieth Century and the Analysis of the Chinese Novel', 'Marxist Literary Theory: East and West' and 'Comparative Poetry'. Beijing University was the first institution to offer courses such as these. They are taken up by more than one-hundred-and-fifty students from the Chinese, English and Western Language Departments, as well as visiting students from other colleges. The reception I am given by the students forces me to be meticulously well-prepared, which benefits my own systematic accumulation of knowledge.
In 1987 and 1988 two publications of mine appeared: Comparative Literature and Modern Chinese Literature (Beijing University Press) and Principles of Comparative Literature (Hunan Literature and Arts Publishers). The first book for the most part charts the process by which my own thinking developed, and is divided into three sections. The first section concentrates on my own perception of comparative literature as a discipline; the second discusses the relationship between Chinese and foreign literature; the third consists of critical textual analysis of the Chinese novel in the light of an overview of trends of thought in Western literature and art. The other book, Principles of Comparative Literature, does not make ground-breaking discoveries, but is useful in a general way. My teacher. Professor Ji Xianlin, writes in his foreword: "This high-calibre book is of tremendous use, and comes not before time. As the poet Du Fu wrote: "A good rain knows the seasons and falls in Spring as it should." I willingly liken this book to welcome rain in Spring." My mentor Wang Yao pointed out the link between the first fruits of my academic labour and my personality: "If an individual is able to select the appropriate object, angle and method of research to suit his personal mental qualities, the composition of his intellect, the particulars of his mode of thinking and his aesthetic instincts, then he is in a position to give free rein to his intellect and to to make greater accomplishments. The scope of Comrade Yue Daiyun's scholarly research evidently reflects her personal qualities such as the breadth of her intellect and her pioneering spirit. She is able to offer universal inspiration with which to confront today's torrent of new disciplines and methods."
The discussion in Principles of Comparative Literature centres on subjectivism, literary genres, comparative poetry, interdisciplinary conformity, Western style literary and artistic movements and modern Chinese Literature. The book continues to serve as an initial introduction to Comparative Literature for university students and research students. It is also used as teaching material in many colleges. I am frequently invited by universities abroad to chair conferences or deliver lectures. In 1990, McMaster University in Canada awarded me an honorary Doctorate in Literature. They told me it was the first time this remarkable honour had been conferred on a Chinese scholar, let alone a woman.
We have always done whatever we could to enable Chinese scholars to participate in the activities of the International Comparative Literature Society. In 1985 at the Eleventh Conference of the International Society's, the President of the Chinese Comparative Literature Society, professor Yang Zhouhan, was elected Vice-President. After Yang Zhouhan's untimely death in 1989, I took over his duties and was subsequently elected President of the Chinese Comparative Literature Society in 1990. At the 1990 conference of the International Society in Tokyo I was formally elected Vice-President of the International Society and re-elected at the 1994 conference in Canada. Well-received papers I have presented at annual conferences over the last ten years include Realism in China and Europe: two competing polemics - Lukács György and Bertolt Brecht versus Hu Feng and Zhou Yang (Munich); Mirror metaphors in China and the West (Tokyo); A theory of Chinese meaning in a global language perspective (Edmonton, Canada). The Chinese Comparative Literature Society has undergone significant development over the last few years. Its current membership is eight-hundred-and-sixty-two. Local Comparative Literature Societies have been established in sixteen provinces and cities. In addition, the Chinese Comparative Literature Society has spawned twelve specialised research groups, concentrating on topics such as Sino-French comparative culture, Chinese and foreign cinema, Post-Modernist studies, Chinese and foreign biographical literature, Chinese and foreign women's literature, comparative literature of Chinese national minorities and translation studies. The Chinese Comparative Literature Society also maintains close links with Chinese Literature Societies in the United States, France and the United Kingdom.
In fact comparative literary studies in China have become a leading force in the field worldwide. At meetings of various sizes in Munich, India, the United States, Brazil, Venice, Tokyo and Tunisia we have represented the voice of China - of the East. In August 1984, the Fourteenth Conference of the International Comparative Literature Society was convened in Canada. Papers by more than sixty Chinese scholars qualified and their authors were invited to attend. When I am invited to give a paper in front of more than six hundred people, I feel a profound pride for my homeland and the magnificence of Chinese culture, but I have also keen sense of personal inadequacy. My predecessors, such as Zhu Guangqian, Qian Zhongshu and Ji Xianlin were true scholars of Comparative Literature, men of erudition and wisdom, their knowledge spanning past and present, China and abroad, with a command of several languages. My generation have lost more than a decade owing to political turbulence and have little hope of matching their level. To forge yet further ahead on the basis of their work is a formidable prospect indeed. I am not pessimistic, though; the emerging generation has entirely restored my confidence. They will surpass us in a short time and take their place on the world stage.
The most unforgettable thing about the conference in Canada was the application by the delegation from the Chinese Comparative Literature society to host the sixteenth conference of the Society in Bet sixteenth conference in the year 2000. The young Professor Meng Hua put forward the terms and conditions of the application in fluent French, boldly and enthusiastically inviting the assembled company to come to China and experience the marvels of Chinese culture and witness China's economic miracle. The even younger Professor Wang Ning reported in fluent English on the preparatory work underway and the efforts being made to raise the necessary funds to enable more scholars from Third World countries to attend. Their speeches elicited rapturous applause. The assembly decided that the committee of the International Comparative Literature Society should meet in Beijing in 1995 to assess the proposal. At the same time, the Chinese Comparative Literature Society and the Beijing University Institute for Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies would jointly host an international symposium on 'Cultural Dialogue and Cultural Misinterpretations.' Whether the application to hold the 16th conference of the Society in Beijing will win over applications from Venice, Sydney, Brazil and South Africa remains to be seen pending the final resolution of the 1997 conference in the Netherlands. I am confident of our chances. As the waves of the Yangtze River roll in succession, so the future belongs now to the younger generation. I wish them success as they continue to stride forward, and congratulate them on surpassing our generation.
Sixty years on, and I am no longer a young woman. Looking back, I have no regrets. I have made mistakes and been stupid at times, but I have enjoyed life's every moment and have never meant any harm. I have put all my effort into all I could do. If I could live my life again, with all its turns of fate, I would make all the same decisions.
Beijing University, May 1995.
Translated from the Chinese by: Justin Watkins
CHINESE GLOSSARY
Anti Hunger, anti Persecution 毁慰塒
毁 漲 fanji'e, fan pohai
Beidahuang 北大荒
Beijing 北京
Beijing Central Political Uiversity 北京中央政治大学
Beijing Zhongyang Zhenzhi Daxue
Beijing University Drama Society北大剧艺社Beida Juyi She
Beijing Writers Association 北京作家协会 Beijing Zuojia Xiehu
Beijing university Press 北京大学出版社
Beijing University Insititute of Comparative Literature 北京大学比较文学研究所Beijing Daxue Bijiao Wenxue Yanjiu Suo
Beijing Teacher Training University 北京师范大学Beijing Shifan Daxue
Beijing University History Department 北京大学历史系
Beijing Daxue Lishi Xi Beijing University Folk Dance Society 北大民舞社Beida Minwu Shi
Boyang鄱阳
capitalist reader and reactionary gangster 走资派黑帮 zou zi pai heibang
children of counter revolucionaries 反革命子女 fan geming zinu
Chinese Literature 中国文学 Zhongguo Wenxue
class struggle 阶级斗争jieji douzheng
Communist Youth League 共青团 Gong Qing Tuan
Comparative Literature and Modern Chinese Literature比较文学与中国现代文学 Bijiao Wenxue yu Zhongguo Xiandai Wenxue
Conversation by Candlelight 烛夜谈 Zhu ye tan
Chongqing 重庆
Chongqing Central University 重庆中央大学 Chongqing
Du Fu 杜甫 enemy of the people 人民的敌人 renminde diren
extreme right 极右派 ji youpai
FeiMing 废名
FengYoulan冯友兰
For Survival, for Life 要生存，要生命 yao shengcun, yao shengming
Foreign Literature Society 外国文学学会 Waiguo Wenxue Xuehui
Forty-first" ("The) 第四十一 di-sishiyi
General Theory of Western Philosophy 西洋哲学概论 Xiyang Zhexue Gailun
Great Leap Forward 大跃进 da yuejin
Great Proleterian Revolution大革命Da Geming
Guangdong 广东
Guiyang 贵阳
Guizhou 贵州
Guizhou University 贵州大选 Guizhou Daxue
Guomintang 国民堂
'Hangman's Rocks'吊尺岩 diao shi yan
Hu Shi 胡
Hunan Literature and Arts Publisher湖南文艺出版社 Hunan Wenyi Chuban Shi
Institute for Comparative Literature 比较文学报 Bijiao Wenxue Suo
International Comparative Literature Association 国际比较文学学会 Guoji Bijiao Wenxue Xuehui
Institute of National Studies 国学研究所 Guoxue Yanjiu Suo
Interpretation of the Novel 小说分析 Xiaoshuo Fenxi
Ji Xianlin 季羡林
Jiemin Hall 孑民堂 Jiemin Tang
Heilonjiang 黑龙江
"Land in the Mountains is Good, Covered with Fine Yellow Rice and Corn" (The)山那边呀好地方，一片稻麦黄又黄 shan nabian ya hao difang, yi pian dao mai huang you huang
Lao She 老舍
leaders 领导 lingdao
Li Yuzhou 鲤鱼洲
liberated areas 解放区 jiefang qu
MeiGuangdi 梅光迪
Meng Hua 孟华
Ming 明
Nanjing 南京
Peng Lan 彭兰
Principles of Comparative Literature 比较文学原理 Bijiao Wenxue Yuanli
QiLiangji 齐良骥
Qian Zhongshu 钱鍾书
Qianmen 前门-31
parent-official mandarin figure 腑改腹儆的模式 fumu guande moshi
Peoples Liberation Army 解放军 Jie Fang Jun
Pioneer Movement 少先队Shaoxian Dui
Red Army 红军
reactionary brats 黑帮子女 heibang zi nu
revolution 革命 geming
rightists 右派 youpai
San Xiangu 三仙姑
Seventh of May Quadre School 五七干校 wu qi gan xiao
Seventy-Two Turns (The)七十二拐 qishi'er guai
Sha Ping Embankment 沙坪坝 Sha Ping Ba
Shanghai 上海
Shanghai Foreign Languages University 上海外国语大学 Shanghai Waiguoyu Daxue
Shatan 沙滩
Shen Chong 沈崇
Shen Congwen 沈从文
Shenzen 深圳
Shenzen University Chinese Department 深圳 大学中文系 Shenzhen Daxue Zhongwen Xi
Sky in the Liberated Areas is Bright and Clear (The) "解放区的天是明朗的天" jiefang qude tian shi mingliangde tian
Song Gong Fu 松公府
spiritual pollution 精神污染 jingshen wuran
Taiwan 台湾
Tang Lan 唐兰
Tianjin 天津
Tianjin Teacher Training University 天津师范大学 Tianjin Shifan Daxue
North-Eastern Teacher Training University 东北师范大学Dongbei Shifan Daxue
"You Are the Beacon Lighting the Ocean Before Day-break') 你是灯塔，照亮著黎明前的海洋 ni shi dengta, zhaoliangzhe liming qiande haiyang
Wang Ning 王宁
Wang Yao 王瑶
White Army 白军 Bai Jun
Wu Mi 吴密
Wuhan 武汉
Wuhan University Physics Department 武汉大学物理系Wuhan Daxue Wuli Xi
Xiao Erhei's Wedding 小二黑结婚 Xiao Erhei Jiehun
Xinjiang 新疆
Xu Zhimo 徐志摩
Yan'an 延安
Yan'an Cultural Troupe 廷安 文艺团
Wang Yao 王瑶
yangge 秧歌
Yangzi 杨子
Yue Daiyun 乐黛云
ZhaoShuli 赵树理
Zhou Zuoren 周作人
Zhu Guangqian 朱光潜
*Head of the Beijing University Institute of Comparative Literature. Consultant Professor at the Shanghai Foreign Languages University and Associate Professor at the North-Eastern Teacher Training University and Tianjin Teacher University. In 1990 she was awarded an honorary Doctorate and Professorship by the McMaster University, Canada. Vice-President of the International Comparative Literature Society and of the Beijing's Association. Author of numerous articles and publications, including: Principles of Comparative Literature; Comparative Literature and Modern Chinese Literature; Intellectuals in the Chinese Novel (also published in English) and Facing the Storm (also published in English, German and Japanese).
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