The Writing Of Chengdu In The Historical Transition From Li Jiren’s Novels

Li Jieren was an intellectual with a conscious pursuit of regional culture.“The River Trilogy” narrates important historical events while also paying attention to the microscopic daily life of Chengdu.The two constitute a highly three-dimensional and concrete narration of Chengdu in the process of modernization transformation.From the perspective of modernization,this paper analyzes how Chengdu,as a central city in southwest China,has been involved in the process of national modernization step by step from “a pool of stagnant water” to catch up with the “great wave” of history,and the author presents the complex psychology of hesitation between the traditional city memory and the pursuit of modernity in this process.Li Jieren’s writing in Chengdu was rooted in his profound real life experience.He focused on the historical changes of Chengdu in the late Qing Dynasty with conscious folk consciousness and folk standpoint.As a typical traditional agricultural society,Chengdu inevitably has the dual attributes of comfort and self-sufficiency and backwardness and conservatism.Among them,the author’s nostalgia for the memory of the lost Chengdu turns into an imaginative construction of " literary Chengdu",and also contains the author’s implicit cultural criticism of the stagnation of the traditional society and the urgent need for change.On the other hand,in the modernization process of external impact and local resistance,through the grasp of the realistic attitude of the civil society and the people at the bottom in the historical tide,Li Jieren has a perspective of the modernity deduction of Chengdu in the late Qing Dynasty from “micro wave” to “great wave”.In the traditional and modern Chengdu writing,we can find that Li Jieren’s conscious attitude of returning to the folk of Bashu and his reflection on modernity,which reflects the ambivalence of modern intellectuals wandering between tradition and modernity.