A Life Course Of Discovering His Cultureself

Wang Zengqi began to write novels during the 1940s when he was studying at the Southwest United University (Xinan Lianda). He was very sensitive to the styles of novels and started the exploration of writing from the very beginning of his career as a novelist. However, he soon got stuck after the attempt of revolution of styles after the middle 1940s. From the end of the 1940s to the end of the 1970s, Wang almost stopped writing novels. It was not until the 1980s that he restarted his career of writing novels and gradually established his own writing style. Wang was generally regarded as the only one who inherited the tradition of modern Chinese literature. In this way, his re-emergence in the 1980s was also interpreted as a "miracle". Nevertheless, under this interpretation, the two periods of Wang’s writing career were directly connected, leaving the 30 years between them totally blank. The ignorance of the 30 years of life of Wang made it difficult to understand how the style of this novelist is formed over time.This paper argues that Wang’s style of novels is actually the representation of his own cultural identity, which is again shaped by the fertile soil of the modern Chinese culture and history during the 20th century. Moreover, this soil is not homogenous; instead, it is rather diverse and changes chronically. In this paper, the cultural genes that determine the formation of Wang’s style were discussed combining with the description of the experiences through his lifetime. For more than half of a century, Wang kept pursuing the dream of a unique style for his novels; and it is this ongoing pursuit that drives him to progress and mature in his writings.The paper was organized by the following structure. The first chapter compared the styles of Wang’s novels written in the 1940s and the 1980s. Through this comparison, the characteristics of Wang’s style of novels were outlined. The second chapter overviewed the life of Wang from his early years in Gaoyou-his hometown, to the period when he was a student in Xinanlianda. The cultural genes of Wang were analyzed in this section. The third chapter analyzed the form and content of Wang’s novels by the end of the 1940s, which reflected his sufferings from the loss of identity in Shanghai. The fourth chapter focused on the thirty years from the 1940s to the 1970s, during which period Wang underwent changes in his worldview, became better able of using the language and realized the cultural genes he inherited, which again paved the road for his reappearance in the 1980s. Finally, the novel "Shoujie" was analyzed, which marked the maturation of Wang’s style. Based on this, it is claimed that the novel style of Wang is the projection of his cultural identity.