A Cultural Analysis On Feelings Of Remembering Past Times In Zhang Ailing And Bai Xianyong's Novels

Zhang Ailing and Bai Xianyong are two important writers at the Modern and Contemporary age of Chinese literature. They have similar family background and life experiences, more eminently, their novels are characterized with strong feelings of remembering past times. There are lots of comments and researches have been made on Zhang Ailing and Bai Xianyong at home and abroad, and many scholars have written papers to compared the two writers, but few of them made cultural analysis on their feelings of remembering past times. From the cultural point of view, this article tries to compare the similarities and differences between their feelings of remembering past times in Zhang Ailing and Bai Xianyong' s novel creation, especially on the respect of their ideological content and aesthetic seeking.The characteristic of remembering past times in Zhang Ailing and Bai Xianyong' s novels is closely related to their life experiences, personality and social cultural background. Zhang Ailing was born in a declined noble family, and she was influenced by both west and east cultures, especially by western modern spirit, which made her, develop a sentimental sense and nitpicked looking on life. In her novels, Zhang Ailing took old feudal culture as its cultural background and paid emphasis on discovering ugly human nature. While, as a son of one of senior generals of Kuomintang, in addition to the influences of ups and downs of traditional Chinese cultureand doctrines of Buddhism, and with his warmhearted nature, Bai Xianyong witnessed the sinks and emerges of his father' s generation and great changes of history. All these made his novels full of feelings that bewailed the times and pitied the people, and he paid particular attention to establish historical feelings in his novels.