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Xiao Hong (1911 - 1942) - also rendered as Hsiao Hung; pseudonym of Zhang Naiying |
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Chinese novelist, short story writer, and poet. Xiao Hong led an itinerant life and died a refugee in Japanese-occupied Hong Kong at the age of thirty. Her writing career spanned less than a decade, but her works have stood as models for later generations of writers. Xiao Hong's masterpiece, Tales of Hulan River (1942) came out posthumously. A central theme in her work is the experience of women under patriarchy. "Just before sunrise each morning Wang Asao went out with Little Huan to the square of the front village to slave for the landlord. Though Little Huan was only seven years old, she was already learning how to sweat for the landlord. Spring had come and gone, summer had come and gone.... Wang Asao performed every type of work imaginable, including weeding the fields and planting rice shoots. Now that autumn had arrived she sat with the other village women under the overhanging rush roofs using lenghts of hemp cord to make long strings of eggplants. None of them showed any concern over the mosquitoes and other insects whose bites made their faces and swell up; nor did they pay any attention to the children who were inside the huts screaming themselves hoarse for their mothers." (from 'The Death of Wang Asao,' in The Dyer's Daughter: Selected Stories of Xiao Hong, Chinese-English Bilingual Edition; translated by Howard Goldblatt, Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press. 2005, pp. 3-4) Xiao Hong was born Chang Naiying to a well-to-do landlord family in Hunan
county, in the northeastern part of China (Heilongjiang). She spent an
unhappy childhood under a domineering father, recalling in her memoir
that her father often gave up his humanity over greed. When her mother died, Xiao Hong was nine; she was afraid of her too. "My father changed even more; when someone would on occasion break a glass, he would shout and carry on untul the person was shaking in his boots. Afterwards it seemed as though my father's glance could take in everything around him, and at such times, whenever I passed by him I felt as though my body were covered with thorns." (quoted in Hsiao Hung by Howard Goldblatt, Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1976, p. 17) In 1926 she enrolled in a famous girls' school in Harbin. During these years she read the works of Lu Xun, Xie Bingxin, Upton Sinclair, and others, and became involved in the student movement. When she began an affair with a local teacher, Xiao Hong was expelled from the school. Rejecting's
her father's plans for an arranged marriage, she escaped to
Beijing. Xiao Hong's intended husband followed her there and she agreed
to live with him. They returned to Harbin where he eventually left her
in a hotel, penniless, pregnant, addicted to opium, and in debt to the
hotel proprietor. With the help of Fei Lao-p'ei, editor of the International Gazette, she broke herself of the opium habit. While in Harbin, she met Xiao Jun,
a young writer, who contributed poems and short stories to a Harbin
newspaper under the penname San Lang. Xiao Hong published her works in
the International Gazette and Dadong Newspaper.
Xiao Jun, who was
known as a womanzer, beat her on occasion. Together they began to
contribute to local papers. They also formed a drama club with fellow
writers. In
1931 Japan took over Manchuria, and turned it into "an Auschwitz state
or a concentration-camp state, more than just a puppet state." (Manchuria under Japanese Dominion by Yamamuro Shin'ichi, translated by Joshua A. Fogel, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2006, p. 4) Following a brush with the
Japanese occupiers in 1934, Xiao Hong and Xiao Jun fled to
Shandong. During a brief stay in Quigdao, where they went at the
invitation of Mei Lin, she completed the draft of her first novel Sheng si Chang (1935, The Field of Life and Death). Finally the couple settled with Mei Lin in Shanghai, where they became friends with Lu Xun
(1881-1936), a distinguished writer of the leftist literary world. He became her surrogate father. Over the next several years she constantly moved from place to place, avoiding Japanese manoeuvres, and traveling from Wuhan to Chongquing and finally to Hong Kong. In addition to the hardships of the homeless condition itself, she suffered from stomach ailment, anemia, tuberculosis, and malnutrition. In 1933 Xiao Hong wrote the short stories 'Trek' and
'Tornado.' She and Xiao Jun were published in a
joint collection of short stories, Bashe (1933, The Long
Journey) under the pen names Qiao Yin and San Lang. The book was
banned by Japanese censors. As a writer Xiao Hong made her breakthrough
with The Field of Life and Death. This was the work, in which she used the pen name by which she is known. The book appeared with the help
of Lu Xun, who published it in his own Slave Society Series and wrote a
preface to it. "Even those who have an abhorrence of literature or
those of a practical bent cannot help but be moved by this work,"
Lu Xun said. ('Preface to The Fields of Life and Death' by Lu Xun, in The Fields of Life and Death & Tales of Huan River by Xiao Hong, translated by Howard Goldblatt, 2002, p. 3) The Field of Life and Death was banned by the authorities, but was an instant success and made a strong impact on leftist literary circles and urban readers. It was one of the first literary works to reflect life under Japanese rule. The story depicted village life during the thirties in northeast China and the revolt against Japanese aggression. Much of Xiao Hong's essays, poetry, and short stories appeared in Taibai, Zhongxuesheng, Wenxue, Zuojia, Wencong, Wenxue Yuekan, and Zhongliu under her pen name Qiao Yin. He writings from 1935-36 were later collected in Shang shi jie (Market Street: a Chinese Woman in Harbin), an autobiography covering her days in Harbin, Qiao (The Bridge), and Niuche Shang (On the Oxcart). In 1936, she was asked by the American journalist Edgar Snow to write a brief autobiographical sketch for Living China: Modern Short Stories. Following the death of Lu Xun, who had not undervalued her work, Xiao Hong's literary output nearly ceased. She went to Japan for health reasons and returned to China after the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japan in 1937. All the pieces in On the Oxcart were written in Japan. The title tale, narrated by a child, is about a domestic servant who travels to distant military garrison to discover that her husband has been executed for desertion. Among Xiao
Hong's best-known short stories is 'Hands' (1936), a story of a a dye-worker's daughter who is looked down
on at school because of her black hands. She is deprived of everything she yearns for – knowledge, love,
freedom. Xiao Hong's short stories from the late 1930s include 'Vague
Expectations,' 'Flight from Danger.' and 'A Cry in the Wilderness,'
written during her stay in Chongqing in 1938-39 and published in Kuang ye de huhan (A cry in the wilderness). While in Chongquing she published her remembrance of Lu Xun, Huiyi Lu Xun Xiansheng (1940). Part I of Ma Bole
appeared in 1940; Part II came out the following in serialized form in
a Hong Kong literary magazine. In 1940 Xiao Hong moved to Hong Kong with Duanmu Hongliang, a
leftist
writer, whom he had met in Wuhan after separating from Xiao
Jun. Duammu and Xiao Hong were married in a private ceremony. She was
five months pregnant. The child died in less than two days after birth.
Although at that time she was ill, she published the first volume of a planned trilogy, Ma Bole (1940), a satire of a spineless man, in which she mocks the patriotism of the era and trivializes the ongoing war. Hulanhe zhuan (1942, Tales of Hulan River) focused on Xiao Hong's hometown in Hulan and depicted, in simple yet poetic language, its people still stuck in their old feudal ways. The town has the leading role, but in the character of a lonely young girl, whose grandfather is the only person she knows she can trust, Xiao Hong portays herself. "When the sun sets these people go to bed, and when the sun
rises they got up and begin their work. Throughout the year – warm
spring with its blooming flowers, autumn with its rains, and winter
with its snows – they simply follow the seasonal changes as they go
from padded coats to unlined jackets. The cycle of birth, old age,
sickness, and death governs their lives as they silently manage their
affairs." (Tales of Hulan River by Xiao Hong, translated by Howard Goldblatt, Hong Kong: Joint Publishing, 1988, p. 17) The story is filled with beauty and
pain, cruelty and compassion. With a passion for detail, Xiao Hong evokes domestic images
and observes village stage performances, exorcist rites and festivals,
but also reveals the barbarous side of life with an account of a ritual
killing of a child-bride by her in-laws. "The young child-bride was
quickly carried over and placed inside the vat, which was brim full of
hot water – scalding hot water. Once inside, she began to scream and
thrash around as though her very life depended upon it, while several
people stood around the vat scooping up the hot water and pouring it
over her head." (Ibid., p. 170)
Xiao Hong is not a propagandist. Some Communist critics rejected the novel on ideological grounds. She
was labelled as a lesser writer, not of the same level as Lu Xun. Xiao Hong still had the strength to finish the story 'Spring in a
Small Town' (Xiaocheng sanyue). The American journalist Agnes
Smedley convinced her to seek treatment at Queen Mary Hospital, where
she was diagnosed with tuberculosis. She underwent two surgical
procedures which left her unable to speak, but she was still full of plans for writing. Xiao Hong died of
respiratory problems in January 1942, in a temporary hospital set up by
the Red Cross, shortly after the colony fell to the Japanese. Xiao Hong
did
not reach her thirty-first birthday. On his deathbed, she allegedly murmured, "To die like this...my heart is heavy." (Contending for the Chinese Modern: The Writing of Fiction in the Great Transformative Epoch of Modern China, 1937-1949 by Xiaoping Wang, The University of Texas at Austin, 2010, p. 91) She died of throat infection. Xiao Hong left behind a desk littered with manuscripts. Her ashes were buried in Repulsive Bay (Qianshuiwan), and then in 1957 they were transferred by the Chinese Writers' Association of Guangzhou to Yinhe gongmu, a cemetery in Guangzhou. On November 20,
1944, the poet Dai Wangshu (1905-1950) visited her grave, portraying the
author as not responsive but still living: "A Lonely walk of six hours,
/ To lay red camellias by your head – / I wait through
the night, / While you lie listening to the chitchat of the ocean
tides." ('By Xiao Hong's Tomb, an Impromptu,' translated by Michelle Yeh; allpoetry.com/Dai-Wangshu) Her works were not published until 1980, partly due to her
feminism and willingness to experiment with a narrative style that was
not in tune with the official doctrines of realism. Xiao Hong's short, turbulent life was the subject of Ann Hui's film The Golden Era (2014), starring Wei Tang and Shaofeng Feng.
Selected works:
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