This chapter chronicles the development of Chinese youth literatureâloosely defined as non-curriculum publications primarily read by children and young adultsâwithin the dynamic social, political, and cultural context of modern China.1 As Zipes (2006) has reminded us, researchers must recognize the âcomplex historical transformationâ that childrenâs literature has gone through and avoid âsimplistic assumptions about its role and meaning in different cultures throughout the worldâ (p. xxix). To conduct a comparative study of how youth literature published in mainland China and the United States has represented the Sino-Japanese War (1937â1945), we should first be conscious of differences in the history of young peopleâs leisure reading in the two countries. An introduction to Chinese youth literature will not only keep us abreast of the context of the Chinese works to be examined in this study, but also highlight some of the concepts, standards, and assumptions widely understood in American youth literature research but not readily applicable to Chinese juvenile works.
This chapter contains three parts. It begins with a chronological overview of Chinese youth literature, followed by an examination of lian huan hua (èżçŻç», hereafter LHH), which was a popular format of pictorial reading materials enjoyed by Chinese youth for most of the twentieth century. The ambiguous relationship between LHH and what is commonly âcountedâ as youth literature in China will be discussed in the final part.
The Historical Transformation of Chinese Youth Literature
It is generally understood that Chinese children did not have the luxury of accessing leisure reading materials tailored for their literacy skills and interest until the early twentieth centuryâthis was at least one-and-a-half centuries later than John Newberyâs commercially successful publishing enterprise in London began to provide middle-class English children with books for entertainment. Prior to the birth of modern Chinese childrenâs literature, China boasted a long history of offering beginning learners primers, readers, and Confucian moral texts. Among the best-known primers are The Thousand Character Text (ććæ) (sixth century), The Hundred Family Surnames (çŸćź¶ć§) (tenth century or later), and The Trimetric Classic (äžćç») (thirteenth century), all of which feature rhyming text. Children were expected to learn Chinese characters along with embedded moral messages by chanting and memorizing the text. The Trimetric Classic, for example, opens with âPeople at birth are naturally kindhearted,â a widely quoted passage that conveys Mencius philosophy on the inherent goodness of human nature.
For pre-modern Chinese child readers, illustrated books were rare exceptions rather than a reasonable expectation. They might have shared the fictional English girl Aliceâs interest in books with pictures, but not her assertiveness when she famously asks âwhat is the use of a book ⊠without pictures or conversations?â in Aliceâs Adventures in Wonderland. In fact, illustrated books could receive disrespect and even hostility in an orthodox Confucian education context. LU Xun started schooling at age eleven in 1892 under the instruction of a traditional Confucian scholar. In his memoir Dawn Blossoms Plucked at Dusk, Lu (1928/1973) informed us that the teacher forbade the reading of books with pictures by meting out reprimands and physical punishment to transgressors. Literacy textbooks that juxtaposed Chinese characters and images existed, but this type of illustrated books, titled Miscellaneous Characters (æć) or some variation of the term, was intended for lower-middle-class youth who would learn vocabulary for practical use in daily life as well as in farming, commerce, craftsmanship, etc., as opposed to pursuing the career of a Confucian civil servant (Zhang, 1992).
Luâs memoir presented childrenâs seemingly innate yearning for pictures in books. He recalled that one of his classmates found The Trimetric Classic so boring that even stealing a few looks at the ghastly portrait of the âgod of scholarly talentâ (éæ) on the first page of the primer was satisfying and exhilarating (Lu, 1928/1973). Lu readily admitted that he was fascinated by the few illustrated books he found outside school: a gardening book that had many pictures, two Buddhist karma stories that depicted deities and demons, a beloved Classic of Mountains and Seas (ć±±æ”·ç»), which contained myths and images of fantastical creatures and monsters.
None of those titles was specifically intended for a child reader. Luâs experience is typical of Chinese childrenâs leisure time prior to the availability of youth-oriented literature: children made do with âwhat they could cull from the popular literature and entertainmentâ (Scott, 1980, p. 109) intended for a general audience. As Philippe AriĂšsâs (1962) scholarship on European family life has made us aware, the compartmentation of youth and grown-ups in dress styles, games, and pastimes evolved with the idea of childhood that distinguishes children from adults. Famous examples of shared cultural consumption in China included Romance of the Three Kingdoms (äžćœæŒäč) (fourteenth century) and Journey to the West (è„żæžžèź°) (sixteenth century), stories that have migrated fluidly among oral folk literature, print versions, performance art, and modern new media to this day. It is important to point out that, after Chinese authors of the early twentieth century started making conscious efforts to create youth literature, young people still shared a great deal of popular reading materials with adults, a phenomenon that will be explored in the next section on LHH.
Another noteworthy title Lu (1928/1973) mentioned was The Twenty-Four Filial Exemplars in Pictures (äșććććŸ), the first illustrated book he ever owned, initially with great delight. First compiled during the Yuan dynasty (1260â1368) and widely circulated since, the text is a collection of twenty-four stories in which children (both young and adult children) sacrifice their own safety, health, and other interests to feed, nurse, and entertain their parents. Significantly, Luâs copy was a gift from an elder, suggesting that the book was considered appropriate for a young reader. It is tempting to debate whether an illustrated version of Filial Exemplars, dated before 1900, is a close contender for being the earliest Chinese youth literature, but it is with more certainty to identify an age-old belief (or admittedly wishful thinking half the time) in the educational and transformative value of role modelsâ stories on youth. This is a belief we still havenât given up about youth literature, at least about those works approved by ...
