Moving Forward In The Thorns

In the 20th -century Chinese literature, Liu Yichang is the first one who bases onthe positon where west culture and Chinese culture meet. He created some maturestream-of-consciousness novels with strong ethnic characteristics by inheriting thetraditional Chinese aesthetics habits consciously and integrating them with westernmodernism. Among his creations,"The drinker" may be the most important one in thestream-of-consciousness novels. From the 1960s on when "the drinker" had just beenreleased, Liu Yichang had always devoted to explore the creation of modern novels.In the past several decades, his experimental novels have become an indispensablecomponent of Hong Kong literature. In addition, persisting in the combination ofrealism and modernism, Liu yichang can make his fictions be close to Hong Kong'sunique culture and the mentality of the people there. Beyond the realistic world, abroad citizen cultural space were constructed in the whole fictions of Liu yichang.It is necessary to clarify the 20th century literature of Hong Kong, summarize thewhole process of development, and observe the Hong Kong's popular literature andserious literature in it. Thus, we can know the background under which Liu yichanglived and wrote so that a preliminary evaluation of his works could be given. Thisresearch of Liu yichang's fictions mainly focus on "the drinker", his shortexperimental stories and some known ones in "the new anthology of essays". Notonly do we analyze the unique living conditions and mentality of people reflected bythose works, summarize what the writer felt in Hong Kong which was characterizedby a strong business flavor, but also we state the inheritance Liu inherited andinnovation he achieved in the skills of writing through combining Liu's consistentconcepts on writing. After that, the paper analyzes the cultural background underwhich Liu wrote. Actually that was also the times other Hong Kong writers wentthrough who lived in the same periods with Liu.The paper attempts to clarify Liu yichang's novels in a more comprehensiveway,including main contents, characteristics and the way of writing, so that we canrecognize the importance of him in Hong Kong literature. More than that, theinternal and external motivations of why those achievements could be made are given.The paper could be considered as a case study which hope to be helpful to a furtherunderstanding of Hong Kong literature.