The Decline And Collapse Of Rural China

Wu Zuxiang,born in Maolin,Jing County,is a famous Anhui writer in the history of modern Chinese literature.In 1934,Wu Zuxiang collected and published his ten novels,named after the Xiliu Village in Beiping where he lived at the time.The research on Wu Zuxiang and his "Xiliu Collection" is not common in the academic community,and there are also many inaccuracies in related studies.For example,in the history of mainland literature,Wu Zuxiang has often classified as a social analysis writer.A close reading of “Xiliu Collection” can find that not only the works have their own characteristics,but also the educated youth with different social identities,ordinary people of different professions,variety of female groups,and the shadow of the times covering the whole society.The whole collection deserves more detailed and in-depth thinking and research.Therefore,this article takes "Xiliu Collection" as the main research object,using text reading methods,narrative theory,etc.,not only regards "Xiliu Collection" as a whole,but also conducts specific analysis of its works,striving to deeply understand the characters,stories,and artistic effects portrayed in "Xiliu Collection".This paper tries to grasp the painting of the collapse of rural China,and tries to elaborate from three aspects.The first part is to capture "who is in decline" and analyze the characters and social landscape in “Xiliu Collection”.The “Xiliu Collection” is set in the 1920 s and1930s in the southern Anhui countryside.It concentrated deeply shaped the rural characters in the south of Anhui,described their different trajectory,but the fate of the collapse.“Xiliu Collection” presents the entire society at that time to readers,to let us clearly see a microcosm of rural China facing decline,collapse,and ongoing collapse.The second part is "why the collapse",from the thinking in the cultural and institutional level of “Xiliu Collection”,the reasons for the collapse of the rural society in southern Anhui.Wu Zuxiang integrated his thoughts on the culture and institution of that time into the writing of the southern Anhui countryside.The collision of modern and traditional promoted the disintegration of traditional local culture,and the sudden deformation of southern Anhui province brings infinite despair to the people.The chaos of traditional family order and the squeeze of social living environment directly led to the variation of psychological space.Wu Zuxiang also took the rural ritual system,traditional clan system,economic and social system as the key points,deeply showing the disintegration of the rural system in southern Anhui.The third part tries to analyze the creative art of “Xiliu Collection” from "how to reproduce",mainly focusing on the use of narrative perspectives and the unique writing art.The first-person narration and third-person narration,not only the inheritance of traditional narrative skills,but also the attempt of new narrative techniques,presenting a special,diverse and innovative characteristics.The sketch-style realistic creation and abrupt ending art also show Wu Zuxiang’s mature and amazing literary creation ability.Wu Zuxiang’s accurate observation of the social reality in the 1930 s and his unique emotion for his hometown in southern Anhui enabled him to focus on the changing rural China,achieving this literary expression that combined both art and real rural China,and restored the complex appearance of rural China nearly a hundred years ago.This kind of objective and realistic novel creation seems to be associated with the current rural Chinese writing in the field of non-fiction writing and arouse the resonance.