LIBRO XIV [DE LAS EMPRESAS ASOCIATIVAS DE TRABAJO]

2 Wenxue shenghuo 1:1 (1. 3« 1931)*

3 These points were first made by Li Yishui in his review article 'Xinren Zhang Tianyi de zuopin' A,

^ /ifc o o , Beidou 1:1 (20. 9. 1931) and was reiterated by Hu Feng "jSC in his article 'Zhang Tianyi

lun' Xl ff which appeared in his collection of essays Wenyi bitan « » Shanghai, 1936.

'The Twenty-one has a first person narrator, but much of the narrative description is told from a common generalised viewpoint, describing the feelings of both the narrator and his companions. At the opening of the story the narrator declares:

The whites of everyone's eyes had become bloodshot .... As soon as they had had something to eat or drink, everyone lay down.

In the early part of the story, the narrator gives the

appearance of being somewhat distanced from the action that he is describing. It is only with the reference by the narrator to one of his companions as "brother" ^ that it becomes clear that the narrator is one of the number whom he is describing. Later on in the story the narrator is wounded in battle, falls down and passes out. It is only then that his description becomes personalised and deals specifically with the narrator's individual concerns and feelings. When the narrator comes round he finds his friend and comrade-in-arms Shen Zhenguo pouring water on his head. Shen binds his wounds for him. This is, however, only a temporary lapse into self-description on the part of the narrator and it is not long before he continues with his more detached and generalised descriptions of the group.

The story itself, to state it briefly, describes a company of soldiers ordered to take up a defensive position in the path of the advancing enemy. Hand-to-hand fighting ensues and there are many casualties on both sides. Those who have survived the battle assemble themselves and heads are counted. Twenty-one soldiers are left not including their two officers. The company commander attempts to rally his men but an undercurrent of

resentment runs through them. The narrator's friend Shen Zhenguo gives expression to the mood of the men and a mutiny ensues.

The company commander succeeds in running away but the other officer is shot by the angry men. The end of the story leaves the reader uncertain as to what will happen to these twenty-one disgruntled soldiers. Will they be court-martialled or shot for mutinying and deserting?

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noticeable in this story and it is a characteristic of this type of story that we will notice again in the stories 'The Bread Queue* and ’Hate1* The mutiny seems to be the result of a general realisation by the men that those in command have led them into danger and the outcome has been the death of many soldiers on both sides of the fray. This feeling that the officers are the villains of the piece is further reinforced in the reader's mind by an incident that occurs after the mutiny and

the flight of the company commander: one of the enemy soldiers is discovered to be lying alive in the blood and mire. Rather than killing him as an enemy, the twenty-one survivors of the battle look on him as one of their own kind and help him to get up. This theme of realising that the person one had thought of as one's enemy is no different from oneself recurs in the later story 'Hate*.

This story comes closest to being didactic near the end when the narrator describes the feeling of camaraderie amongst the survivors;

Everyone gathered together to leave, everyone was as though joined together by a piece of skin, no-one could be parted from anyone else, for once parted they would cease to have existence.

Contemporary criticism of Zhang's early realist fiction.

The literary critic Li Yishui wrote a critical article about *] Zhang entitled 'The new man Zhang Tianyi*s literary works' and based his critical assessment on the seven short stories discussed above: 'Dream lasting Three and a Half Days',

'Retaliation', 'From Emptiness to Fullness1, The Three Brothers', 'After moving House','San taiye and Guisheng' and 'The Twenty-one'. Li Yishui picked out for special praise the last of these works

'The Twenty-one' suggesting that the other stories tend to have defects: 'San taiye and Guisheng', for example, does not give the reader a "tangible picture of peasant life and peasants";

'After moving House1, gives no clear insight into the activities

and objectives of the adult revolutionaries. Li Yishui also makes the observation that even the more progressive writers of earlier generations tended when portraying characters outside their social milieu to dream them up in their imagination rather than describing 'living' people. Although Zhang is guilty of such defects, there are, according to Li, signs in these stories, and particularly the last three stories which do not deal with the educated petit-bourgeoisie, that Zhang is a writer whose horizons are widening, and given the right material, he should go on to perfect his creative art.

'A Diary of Ghostland'; Zhang's first published attempt at extended fiction.

In the final section of Li Yishui's review article, there is a discussion of Zhang's 'A Diary of Ghostland'. Li says of the work; ,T,A Diary of Ghostland' is a microcosmic portrait of an unadulterated capitalist society - a microcosmic portrait based on caricature." Where 'A Diary of Ghostland' fails according to Li is in its lack of a recognisable target: "we do not know which type of democratic country, or which capitalist system is being satirised, and as a result it loses its value as a work of satirical literature." The thrust of Li's argument appears to be that Zhang in writing 'A Diary of Ghostland1 was attempting a project beyond the scope of his youthful capabilities.

The text of 'A Diary of Ghostland1 runs to 136 pages in volume 2 of the 19^3 edition of the collection Jirenji (Liangyou Book Company, Shanghai). The 'novel' consists of kk undated diary entries written by Han Shiqian i 2 ^ during a visit to Ghostland. The Diary entry format is one that Zhang used before in his short stories 'The Black Smile' and 'Dream lasting Three and a Half Da y s 1; it is an unoriginal vehicle for ^hang's material. In an attempt to reduce the artificiality of the medium, the work opens with an introductory, explanatory

1 Apparently serialised in 1930 in the periodical Youzhi zhoukan, <X £$) %ii. If) ft) » this work was first published in book form by the Zhengwu shuju ^ M 1 Shanghai in 1931 •

Usually described as a novel 'J "■ ^ L 1 Li Yishui classifies it as a 'middle-length work of fiction1 ^ ^ 'J'

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letter written by Han to the 'author* offering his diary as material that might possibly be worked up into a piece of literature *

It will be remembered that a similar blurring of the precise identity of the author was a technique used in the piece 'Bad Dream*, the only difference being that the disowning remark

appears in the very last line of 'Bad Dream* whereas Han's letter to the 'author' occurs before the story proper commences in

'A Diary of Ghostland*.

'A Diary of Ghostland' describes in an imaginative and some­ times hilarious way a society characterised by strange social customs, class divisions, a nefarious parliamentary system and duplicitous political manoeuvrings, Y/here unfortunately it fails is in trying to encompass too much material. In opting for the diary-entry format Zhang gave himself a free hand to include any material that suited his satirical bent. The consequence of this freedom is that 'A Diary of Ghostland* satirises capitalism at one moment, democracy at another and Chinese modern romantic literature at a third. The reader is left wondering what parody of early twentieth century life the hapless narrator will describe next. Disorganised though this chronicle of the world's ills seems to be, there is, however, a plot thread running through the diary entries. This thread has as its common unifying element a presidential election contested by two opposed political

factions, one advocating squatting toilets, the other advocating the sitting variety. There are two candidates for president:

Dong Fangdan JE. , who is supported by Ian Jun 111 ; and Ba Shandou 2 L tLl , who is supported by wealthy patrons Lu Lelao 0 and Pan Luo , members of the sitting toilet party. The sitting party plan, on gaining presidential power, to convert all comfort stations to sitting toilets. They also want to sign a treaty with a neighbouring country called Lampi in order to safeguard Ghostland's textile industry. On the day of the presidential election, the narrator Han and his friend Xiao Zhongne attend the election proceedings. The rich patrons of the two presidential candidates make speeches in support of their respective proteges, then

the election. In the course of the game, Yan Jun is told by his banker that he has exhausted his financial resources. Thus Ba Shandou, the sitting party candidate, is deemed to be the winner by default. Magnanimously, Lu and Pan allow Yan Jun to retain a large part of the fortune he has just gambled away. A celebratory banquet is held at the presidential palace. During the course of the banquet leaflets are found on the floor of the

*i dining hall denouncing ''gambling" politics and rigged elections. The new president immediately orders the special branch to

investigate the source of the leaflets. Some time later, rumours that the new government has signed a secret treaty with Lampi are reported in the press and there seems every likelihood that war will break out as a result. News comes that there has been

is sent to sort out the trouble. War is averted by calls for peace amongst the populace. It is announced that a peace

conference is to be held. Meanwhile the squatting party threaten to ask the government difficult questions in parliament. They declare that 79% of the population are suffering from bowel disorders as a result of the change from squatting to sitting toilets. When the peace conference rally is held there are shouts of "Down with Lui Down with Pan!" At a meeting of parliament attended by the narrator Han and his friend Xiao, fighting breaks out when a social taboo is infringed as a

representative of the sitting party tears off the nose covering of a squatting party representative. The session ends in

disorder with calls for the dissolution of parliament. At L u ’s mansion, the leading lights of the sitting party plot how to discredit Yan Jun in the eyes of the public, after a secret dispatch arrives revealing that the banks are supporting Yan Ju n ’s plans to expand oil production. A priest called Zhu Shen'en offers to take responsibility for spreading

false rumours about Yan Jun. A few days later Xiao comes to Han with the news that Yan Jun and priest Zhu were the master-

1 This would appear to be a thinly-veiled allusion to the activities