The Unworthy Scholar from Pingjiang

Republican-Era Martial Arts Fiction

John Christopher Hamm

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780231549004
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Chinese History
• Index: Literature

Xiang Kairan, who wrote under the pen name "the Unworthy Scholar from Pingjiang," is remembered as the father of modern Chinese martial arts fiction, one of the most distinctive forms of twentieth-century Chinese culture and the inspiration for China's globally popular martial arts cinema. In this book, John Christopher Hamm shows how Xiang Kairan's work and career offer a new lens on the transformations of fiction and popular culture in early-twentieth-century China.

The Unworthy Scholar from Pingjiang situates Xiang Kairan's career in the larger contexts of Republican-era China's publishing industry, literary debates, and political and social history. At a time when writers associated with the New Culture movement promoted an aggressively modernizing vision of literature, Xiang Kairan consciously cultivated his debt to homegrown narrative traditions. Through careful readings of Xiang Kairan's work, Hamm demonstrates that his writings, far from being the formally fossilized and ideologically regressive relics their critics denounced, represent a creative engagement with contemporary social and political currents and the demands and possibilities of an emerging cultural marketplace. Hamm takes martial arts fiction beyond the confines of genre studies to situate it within a broader reexamination of Chinese literary modernity. The first monograph on Xiang Kairan's fiction in any language, The Unworthy Scholar from Pingjiang rewrites the history of early-twentieth-century Chinese literature from the standpoints of genre fiction and commercial publishing.

Index

Page numbers refer to the print edition but are hyperlinked to the appropriate location in the e-book.

adventure fiction, 70; detective fiction relation to, 91–92, 248n66; Liang Qichao on, 80, 248n66; nationalism relation to, 79, 248n66

advertisements/marketing, 83, 87; authorial persona and, 48, 95, 166; Rivers and Lakes campaign of, 165, 166; of thematic subgenres, 72–73, 76, 90, 91, 247n46

Allen, Sarah M., 51

All-Story Monthly, The (Yueyue xiaoshuo), 72

ancestral lineage, transmission of, 151, 155–57, 158, 164, 169, 194–95

Annals of the Dragon and Tiger (Longhu chunqiu) (Xiang Kairan), 22, 234n14

“Art of Pugilism, The” (“Quanshu”) (Xiang Kairan), 18, 20, 34, 78

authenticity, 49; classical-language xiaoshuo and, 167; in commercial fiction, 50–51; narratorial persona impact on, 240n42; of Rivers and Lakes publications, 29, 130, 131–32. See also facticity; historicity

authorial persona: construction of, 8, 47–48, 161; of Huo Yuanjia in Modern Times, 218; interdependence of work with, 48–49; marketing/promotion of, 48, 95, 166

author-narrator: on dao, 222; on facticity and supernatural relation, 167–68; function of, 11–12, 26, 40, 42–49, 240n42; in martial arts fiction, role of, 44, 48; in Modern Times, 193–94, 200–201, 213–16, 228; in Repent and Be Saved, 43; on Rivers and Lakes facticity, 259n46; on Rivers and Lakes starts and stops, 121–23; on Rivers and Lakes transmission of tale, 170–71; in Sojourners, 220–21, 223, 228; on the strange, 42; superstition distancing by, 146–47; in “Three Monkey Tales,” 41–43, 48, 50, 54–55; in “Turning Pale,” 43–44, 45, 48; on writing as commercial endeavor, 35–37, 40, 215–16; as xiaoshuo feature, 11–12, 26, 40, 42–49

Autumn Harvest Uprisings, 28

Banye feitou ji (The Flying Head at Midnight) (Xiang Kairan), 22, 45–47, 51, 131, 234n14

Banyue (Half Moon Journal), 89–90, 112, 125, 251n29

Bao Tianxiao, 115, 158; on death rumors, 28, 254n64; “A Female Gallant for the World” by, 85–86; as The Grand Magazine editor, 23, 73, 79, 84; martial arts fiction promotion of,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Notes on Conventions
• Introduction
• One. The Writer’s Life
• Two. Xiang Kairan’s Monkeys: Xiaoshuo as a Literary Genre
• Three. Thematic Subgenre: Martial Arts Fiction
• Four. Form and Medium: The Serialized Linked-Chapter Novel and Beyond
• Five. Marvelous Gallants of the Rivers and Lakes
• Six. Chivalric Heroes of Modern Times
• Conclusion: The Unworthy Scholar from Pingjiang
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index