Abstract
This article examines the writings of Ye Zhaoyan, one of the most important contemporary Chinese writes. As the grandson of Ye Shengtao, a leading May Fourth writer, Ye Zhaoyan always feels responsible for connecting the contemporary with the early Republican period. The ways in which he makes the connection are interesting: he disguises under his popular appeals serious and critical reflections upon the relationship between history, memory, and love. I highlight Ye’s active remembrance of what has been repressed by the grand history, his constant examination of the writing of history through creating the writer as a historical figure of modern China, and his embedment of historical experience in the everyday.
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Notes
All translations from Chinese to English are my own.
For a detailed reading of The Gourmet, See Farquhar (2002).
For a detailed study of the “Explorers group,” see Xu (1993).
Old Beijing was written by Xu Chengbei, Old Shanghai by Wu Liang, and Old Tianjin by Lin Xi.
See Wang (1997).
Paul Ricoeur has also warned us of the pitfalls of the written history, because “[w]hat happened in the past is only a partial realization of what had been projected” and therefore what has been recorded about the past events are just this partial realization. (Ricoeur and Kearney 1999, p. 14).
This is a passage from Benjamin’s fragmentary document “Central Park.”
For Eileen Chang’s biography, see Yu (1995).
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Xu, G.G. The writer as a historical figure of modern China: Ye Zhaoyan’s passionate memory and fictional history. Neohelicon 37, 405–418 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-009-0034-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-009-0034-0