Landscape As Method:On Xiao Hong’s Creation

For Wendy J.Darby,landscape is not purely an environment or a background,but a web of meaning,producing meaning and being produced by meaning,containing specific identity markers and corresponding cultural memories.This thesis uses landscape as a method to restore the intrinsic connection between Xiao Hong’s landscape writing and her memories of her hometown.It is based on her strong memories of her hometown that Xiao Hong is able to build her spiritual home in her landscape writing to soothe her homesickness in a foreign land,and the landscape becomes Xiao Hong’s spiritual ’homeland’ to resolve her identity anxiety.Whether it is the unfamiliar presentation of a foreign landscape or the nostalgic depiction of a hometown landscape,the landscape becomes Xiao Hong’s home,the former by narrating the landscape of another country to relieve her inner anxiety,the latter by presenting the landscape of her hometown to build her spiritual homeland.As a writer with a conscious and strong feminine/modern consciousness,Xiao Hong,through the artistic construction of the landscape,tries to present the enlightened consciousness of the people at the bottom of the northeastern borderlands and their "resilience and struggle for life" through her strong subjective presence.Xiao Hong’s landscapes are a perfect example of his own enlightened consciousness.Xiao Hong’s own difficult experiences add a heavy red undertone to this enlightened consciousness writing.Xiao Hong’s sense of individuality,identity anxiety,and family sentiments are thus all fused into her landscape writing,and her literary creations have become indispensable classics in the genealogy of modern Chinese literature because of the unique and long-lasting artistic charm of her highly local and national landscape writing.The introduction discusses the origins and rationale of the study,introduces the history and current status of the chosen topic,the significance of the study,and compares the theoretical research on landscape.In the first part,"Landscape as a Foreign Land",we explore the intrinsic connection between Xiao Hong’s experience of a foreign land and the experiences of the protagonists of her works as foreigners in a foreign land,taking into account her identity as a wanderer and her life experience of "running from and to a foreign land".Xiao Hong’s writing on the landscape is an analysis of how it carries/resolves her identity anxiety.In the second part,in ’Landscape as Home’,Xiao Hong’s landscape writing is placed in the context of her love for her hometown.In the small town of Hulan in the northeast,which gave her warm childhood memories,’the wild vegetables that grew in July blossomed in August’.Her garden,her hometown,her villagers,their life and death,love and hate,love and soul,are all presented in her landscapes,and her works constitute a "style painting","customs painting" or "ethnography" of the black land of the Northeast."Her works constitute a ’style painting’,’customs painting’ or’ethnography’ of the black land of the Northeast.In the construction of the above-mentioned physical landscapes,Xiao Hong reveals the world of folklore,where life and death are intertwined with warmth and pain,saddens the sadness of her people,rejoices in the joy of her people,and admires their resilience and tenacity on the road of life.Xiao Hong’s landscape writing thus became a worthy home for her lifelong wanderings,a dwelling place for her soul.Her love and grief,her attachments and nostalgia,her home and homeland,are all brilliantly displayed in her landscape writing.In the third part,’Landscape as Enlightenment’,Xiao Hong’s landscape writing is not merely a construction of her spiritual home,but also contains her modern consciousness,enlightenment and national imagination.In her landscape writing,Xiao Hong searches for the most genuine state of human beings,with a view to awakening the consciousness of life existence;through a rational gaze of examination and reflection,she also discovers the self-consciousness of individual existence in the midst of group enlightenment and the awakening of female consciousness in a patriarchal society.In the perspective of landscape theory,the character and memory of individuals/nations/states are related to their landscapes.Or rather,the landscape is the initial memory of the individual/nation/state,an important representation of individual/collective memory,and a constituent element of individual identity,national cohesion and "imagined community".It is in this sense that Xiao Hong meticulously constructs her landscapes,uncovering the feudal and backward roots of the nation,while at the same time discovering individual existence and consciousness of life,revealing the spirit of the underclass people’s unyielding and indomitable will to live and feel for their country.