Eliminating Defects,Discovering And Constructing

After the all-out outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War,many schools,cultural institutions,academic organizations and publishing units moved westward into Yunnan under the pressure of the war,and Yunnan became one of the important areas in the rear of the national Anti-Japanese War.During this period,the special status of Yunnan was widely concerned by the academic circle,and a large number of intellectuals began to travel or study deeply in Yunnan.During these trips and investigations,they wrote a series of travel essays on Yunnan for the purpose of recording their personal lives,academic research,and providing reference materials for the founding of the Anti-Japanese War.This paper will take the Yunnan travel essays of the intellectuals who entered Yunnan during the Anti-Japanese War as a whole.This paper will also analyze the way of writing Yunnan in their essays and the changes in the connotation of Yunnan in the texts,as well as the construction process of the nation state behind the changes in the writing way and connotation.In the special period of the Anti-Japanese War,the intellectuals in Yunnan integrated the consciousness of the nation and the state into their essays,and described Yunnan with the knowledge discourse needed by the Anti-Japanese War,so that Yunnan showed new characteristics in their literary writing.First of all,after the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War,Yunnan’s strategic position rose abruptly and became the focus of common concern of all sectors of society.During this period,the rise of travelographists related to Yunnan was a popular move,due to the importance of the national government,scholars’ strong sense of social responsibility and mission in the period of national disaster,Yunnan’s unique natural scenery and cultural characteristics.Secondly,the travel essays of Yunnan intellectuals who entered Yunnan paid attention to breaking the barbaric image of Yunnan in the historical and literary context before the war,and to presenting the history and current situation of Yunnan during the Anti-Japanese War.During the Anti-Japanese War,there was a contradiction between Yunnan’s wild image and frontier development.Strengthening communication and promoting understanding was an important way to resolve the contradiction.At this time,the description of Yunnan’s history and present situation in Yunnan travel essays promoted the mainland’s understanding of the frontier.Thirdly,the intellectuals who entered Yunnan went deep into the ethnic areas in the mountains of Yunnan,examined and thought about the border areas with the cultural consciousness formed during the war,endowed the border areas with new cultural connotations,and regarded the people and culture of the border areas as the source of the vitality of the Chinese nation and the new resources for the reconstruction of the national spirit of China during the Anti-Japanese War.Finally,when entering Yunnan,the intellectuals not only looked at the lofty mountains and colorful folk customs,but also looked at the people at the bottom,concerned about the suffering people and criticized the unreasonable social phenomena.In short,the Yunnan travel essays discussed in this paper are the works of the intellectuals who entered Yunnan to "discover" and "construct" Yunnan with the knowledge and discourse formed during the war in the special time and space of the Anti-Japanese War.These works profoundly reflect the modern Chinese intellectuals’ nation-state consciousness and social responsibility.