From Xiao Hong's writing to see the development of "Northeast Consciousness" of Northeastern writers after 918

The September 18 Incident had an unexpected "benefit" for the Northeast, that it finally provided Northeasterners with the opportunity to speak at the center of the ideological stage. The birth of the "Northeastern Exiled Writers Group" finally ended the aphasia state of Northeast China, one of the most "modern" regions in China, in China's modern elite culture and serious literature.

Of course, the literary activities of the vast majority of writers in the so-called "Northeast Exile Writers Group" did not begin with their exile in Guannei. However, their writing before leaving the Northeast did not have the opportunity to be widely read and discussed outside the small circle. However, what I want to talk about today is not this obvious fact; because from this fact it can be seen that the marginalization of Northeast culture at that time was too easy; also because this marginalization also went to the political isolation after the Japanese occupation have close ties.

What I am interested in is that in the comparison of their works before and after leaving the Northeast, there is another more interesting symptom: the exiled writers in the Northeast who almost all had the same experience in Harbin, before leaving Harbin and Northeast China, they rarely described this place in a positive way. Unique Russian elements such as the Belarusian group, but only as "scenarios" involved. For the reason, some commentators believe that: "Northeastern exiled writers" merged into "left-wing writers" in Shanghai, "the pain of exile and the context of Shanghai's left-wing literature made these Northeastern writers break through the closure of regions and ideas, and become proletarians in the international arena. In the pattern of the class revolution and the survival of the Chinese nation, we reshape the literary vision and rediscover the memory of our hometown” [1]. In this critic's view, what the Northeast has brought to "Northeastern writers" is "the closure of regions and ideas."

So, what are the facts? Do the later "Northeastern exiled writers" (or "later exiled Northeastern writers"? There are subtle differences between the two expressions) need to go to Shanghai to find the vision of "international proletarian revolution"? In terms of the proportion of non-Chinese residents, Harbin is the largest in China; among them, the largest group is the "White Russia" who no longer enjoys the privileges of the colonists; in September 1920, the Beiyang government closed the Russian embassy in China. After the museum, they lost the nationality of the country that had perished; in the same year, the "Middle East Railway Dependents" controlled by Russia were restructured into "Eastern Province Special Areas" for the Chinese government to directly exercise governance. By 1926, even Harbin The municipal self-government council was also reorganized, and Russian-born members lost their leadership in municipal affairs.

Zhu Ziqing, who came to visit in the summer of 1931, said that "Shanghai under the rule of Master Yang, Qingdao and Beidaihe, where the new aristocrats spend their summers, are like two worlds" ("Westbound Newsletter"). At the starting point of his literary career, facing Harbin, a city drawn from the "Red Road" Middle East Railway under the control of the Soviet Union at that time, all ethnic groups were mixed from bottom to top, and Northeast China was keen to learn Russian. Writers, it seems, are not so unfamiliar with the discourse of the "proletarian revolution" of internationalism. For example, the protagonist of Shu Qun's debut novel "Children Without a Motherland" is a white-Russian teenager, while the protagonist of the second novel is a North Korean.

The rediscovery of Harbin in Shanghai will indeed give the Northeastern writers a new understanding: a "international" city like Harbin that was no longer at least partly under the "rule of foreigners" before September 18 is not "reasonable" should”, thus gaining three aspects of Harbin’s driving force for writing Russian elements: on the one hand, as a feature of Harbin, Russian elements have become a symbol of nostalgia; on the other hand, as an exile, Belarus has also gained A certain concern of the writers - writing about their diaspora, can both express their conversion to the nation-state "China" with the theme of the suffering of those who "lose their homeland/motherland", and express their ill-timed "resistance to revolutionaries" to the left. In addition, facing the readers and critics in Shanghai, writing with Russian elements is one of the most effective resources for Northeast exiles to achieve "defamiliarization" and attract readers. In other words, the thorough implementation of the "international proletarian revolution" in the "plan for the salvation of the Chinese nation" is the education of the left-wing cultural circle in Shanghai to these homeless people outside the customs.

The Russian-style "landscape" - of course, here is the "so-called landscape" of the Shigaraya pedestrian "is a cognitive device", and "landscape is closely connected with the inner state of loneliness"[2]- —The white Russian, Russian food, Russian, etc. on the streets of Harbin broke into the nostalgic works of exiled writers in Northeast China, reflecting their loneliness, anxiety, and pain when they recalled their hometown during their wanderings, and also helped them locate their hometown. It is precisely because of the first two driving forces mentioned above that the writing of Russian elements in the exiled writers in the Northeast has also produced two aspects. In the first case, they often clumsily imitated the tone and attitude of the left-wing writers in Shanghai when they wrote about the foreign fashions on the "Ten Mile Foreign Market", adopting an attitude of "identification" and giving them symbols of Chinese capitalist cities The "semi-colonial" task of defamiliarization and abstraction. The other aspect highlights the kindness, familiarity and identification with Russian elements.

The case written by Xiao Hong may be more persuasive for us to understand the symptoms discussed in this article; because in the contemporary ideological scene, she has been constructed as "brave pursuit of personal happiness", "love of writing", " The "meta image" of "women's literary and artistic youth" who refuses to be thoroughly politicized; most people tend to forget that Xiao Hong is a writer from the Northeast who participated in the left-wing literary and art movement, she is the daughter of the Northeast, and the Hulan "Wild Girl" by the river. Careful reading of Xiao Hong's writings on a similar Russian "landscape" in Harbin from September 18 to July 7, when the Northeast exiles suffered from anxiety, poverty and identity crisis, will help us to understand. In this type of writing, even Xiao Hong, who is most immersed in the personal style of the Northeastern exiled writers, has similar emotions to other writers.

At the beginning of 1936, Xiao Hong wrote two consecutive works "Interview" and "Sophia's Sorrows", which directly focused on the life of overseas Chinese in Russia. Among the Russian images in these two essays, the most obvious feature is Xiao Hong's concern and confirmation of the specific identity of the conversation object, such as "Jews" or "Caucasians". It is a deconstruction of Belarus' "Russian" identity; the country Sophia wants to return to is no longer "Russia", but "Soviet Union", a country that has abandoned the national identity of the Russian Empire; The landlady who was judged by Xiao Hong to be the daughter of a Jewish general who was a friend of the Jewish general's daughter. A virtual image belonging only to her class, there is no same "Russia" for different ethnic groups and different social classes.

Further analyzing Xiao Hong’s understanding, it is not difficult to find that Xiao Hong realized that there were multicultural and multilingual residents in the former “Russian Empire”, and the fragment that fell in Harbin after the collapse of the empire was of course the same. In "Sophia's Sorrows", she asked Sophia: "Are the Gypsies a 'poor party'? Why do the Chinese call them a 'poor party'?" This shows that she even realized that the "Russians" have various internal There is a relationship between oppression and oppression among ethnic groups, and she was able to learn in Harbin the fundamental oppression of this special Russian "nation-state" that had been the "empire" itself; this also made her read Lenin's It is easy to understand and agree with the assertion in "On Imperialism" that most of the lands within the borders of the Russian Empire are colonies. This knowledge may even map to her general understanding of nationalism.

But perhaps more worthy of our attention is Xiao Hong's dismantling of his political identity in addition to dismantling the identity of the Russian diaspora. In "Sophia's Sorrows", she found, "Those who scolded 'the poor party', they have become the poor party", she used Sophia's mouth to point out the economic and social status of the Belarusian expatriates in Harbin. The disparity is so great that it is difficult for the "poor party" to enter the hospital run for the Russians. Such observation, of course, has completely surpassed the essentialist leftist standard Russian writing, and poured her identification with the bottom Russian diaspora; and to establish this kind of identification bridge shared by "I" and "Sophia", the first Of course, it is the recognition of their actual low social status, and the second is to "dance, sing," "talk about clothes, talk about women, Western women, Oriental women, Russian women, Chinese women...", that is to say , through the rediscovery of one's true class status and gender identity.

However, in the end, Sophia, who decided to return to her hometown, was not able to return to her hometown because of her "poor party" status. It is said that Xiao Hong, who was in Hong Kong, once considered returning to the "occupied" Northeast China. Such an idea is obviously not tolerated by the political correctness of nationalism (of course, it is also unrealistic for her, who suffered from poverty and illness in her later years). And at least, for Xiao Hong when she wrote "The Sorrows of Sophia", "The Hometown That Can't Go Back" has completed her projection of the image of Sophia; the Russians and Russian elements that once made her nervous, rejected, and even hidden a little jealousy, It has become the object of her expression and devotion here.

At the end of 1937, in the "July" magazine in Wuhan, Xiao Hong talked about Harbin again, but this time it was his experience of participating in "political activities" twice when he was in middle school. "The Completion of a Railway" is about an anti-Japanese march recognized by left-wing ideology, while "Idiot at the end of 1929" is about an anti-Soviet march criticized by left-wing ideology; however, Xiao Hong produced a similar Irony tone. The "foolish" action is "foolish", and the other action is nothing more than "finishing" the railway that the imperialists demanded. It can be seen that Xiao Hong is not a (Chinese) nationalist after all. Guo Shumei believes: “The Harbin experience determines the high starting point for left-wing writers (in the northeast—the author’s note), because it provides them with a natural vision of internationalism”[3], which is different from the transition from “nationalism” to the left. The "internationalist" Shanghai left-wing writers constitute a contrast. For Xiao Hong, this may be another reason why she is relatively alienated from nationalism in addition to the women's stance mentioned by people for a long time.

In short, for Xiao Hong and the group of exiled writers in the Northeast, the Russianized city of Harbin is the starting point of their literary activities and the starting point of their political life. The strong sense of Chinese nationalism generated by direct confrontation with Japanese rule, when being shaped, expressed and transmitted, often relies on the local scenery of the Northeast; whether it is the left-wing literary movement, it is more looking forward to their Kanto native land. , or the city of Harbin, their own dream, provides them with profound resources for writing, resisting and thinking. However, in this process of "rising" from local landscape to nationalism, there are obvious gaps, and it is in this gap that we can truly understand the September 18 incident and the exile caused by this event. The depth of the wounds in the hearts of Tohoku writers——

In the previous article, we talked about the reason why most Northeastern writers have a subtle identification with the Russian diaspora (although the situation is more complicated in Xiao Hong’s case). The problem: the Belarusian exiles are stateless, who have lost their entire country and live in a foreign country; while the Northeast exiles have returned to the embrace of the "motherland" and left the "occupied zone" of foreign invaders! But this theory Is the difference really decisive for them? Xiao Hong’s friend Li Jiewu’s letter excerpted in August 1937 said that the pro-Japanese propaganda of the 29th Army was: “Not to be provoked by the Communist Party, not to be used by Northeasterners, Don't be the second of the 19th Route Army." [4] In the thirty li of her poem "Sand" in Japan, she also said that she was wandering "from a foreign land to a foreign land", equating Shanghai and Tokyo as " foreign land". Luo Feng also said in his postscript to "By the Hulan River" in 1937 that some people in Peiping proposed to expel the exiled Northeasterners from (actually controlled) the territory.

As for Xiao Jun, who was greeted warmly by the Russians after arriving in Shanghai, but was criticized by other left-wing writers, Lu Xun later reminded him that most of the Russians in Shanghai were Belarusian "police detectives" hired by the Bureau of Works of the Concession. This shock is not to be mentioned. Therefore, in the Belarusian narratives of exiled writers in the Northeast, what arouses the vigilance of left-wing writers is not only that “national discourse” may overwhelm “class discourse”—(it is accused of being too “sympathetic to Belarus”); it is also the purity of “national discourse” This question, this narrative dangerously implies (under the discrimination and exclusion of some Guannei) the questionable allegiance of "Northeasterners" to "China".

It is no wonder that some Northeasterners are also self-examined (such as the article "Northeasterners Don't Forget to Be Chinese" in Du Chongyuan, a political activist from Northeastern China. However, thinking of the assertion by Kaneya Kyoto that the discovery of "landscape" as a "cognitive device" is one of the symbols of the origin of modern Japanese literature, I may put forward the following point of view for discussion: Harbin's ( The appearance of “landscapes” (often with Russian elements) in the exiled writers of the Northeast may be the source of the modern literature of the Northeast, that is, the source of the undercurrent of modern literature with Northeast consciousness.

"Diaspora" is a common vocabulary in postcolonial critical discourse; however, Aziz Ahmed points out that a distinction should be made between "migration" that is active, consciously changing environment and cultural identity, and "migration" that is largely forced" disperse". In this sense, is the writing of the Northeast native writers in those days and now also suitable for the discourse of "diaspora"? Is Xiao Hong's experience from a foreign land to a foreign land an example? When exiled writers in the Northeast express themselves, they should shout "Fighting back to my hometown" means no doubt about reintegrating my hometown into China and the two-in-one that I can return to my hometown. But when they whispered, it was different.

Xiao Hong wrote to her brother on September 18, 1940: "I remember a joke. When we were young, our grandfather often told us that we were originally from Shandong. And we will be the future great-grandfather again, and our descendants may be there saying that they also had a great-grandfather in the past, who fled to the south on a fishing boat." , can never return to the ending of going to the northeast. What she is lamenting is the fate of the people from the northeast who can't grasp their roots, and the situation where people from the northeast appear and disappear.

Today, the Northeast is going through, to exaggerate, a disaster that is not too inferior to that of September 18; Northeasterners are going through an exile no less than that after September 18. However, how do today's Northeastern writers view this process? I think their writing can be summarized as "ruin literature", depicting the Northeast as a ruin, because a previous stage, an abnormal and absurd By chance, this wilderness has become a kind of utopia (this is based on the isolation of time and space, the utopia that Mor Utopia is willing to go to), so once everything returns to normal, once the closed time and space are opened, it will inevitably be ruins. .

An example can be given at will: In the first half of this year, “Too Many Disappointed People in Our Northeast” was a hit: The article said that in the era of planned economy, orange juice (!) flowed out from the tap of a state-owned enterprise when it was turned on. But this kind of writing is actually a historicalization and allegoryization of Northeast Africa, a fable of the impossible modernization of the socialist planned economy. This is a manifestation of the lack of true Northeast consciousness, and only a confirmation and farewell to the ruins. , Just because it has been identified as a ruin, there is no real pain of losing the identity of the Northeast like Xiao Hong. In their view, perhaps the Northeasterners have never appeared, and we are all just fake Northeasterners.

At a time like this, it may be of unprecedented significance for us to re-read the works of Xiao Hong, Shu Qun, Luo Feng, and Xiao Jun during the last great diaspora of Northeastern literati. Is it possible for us to realize that a different way of life once existed in the Northeast, just as they realized the particularity of urban life in Northeast China such as Harbin in Shanghai? Can we take a sincere attitude and understand life in the planned economy era in Northeast China as An organic existence, not an abstract caricature? Is it possible for us to be like Xiao Hong and be "disappointed" for not being a "Northeasterner" instead of being "disappointed" for being a Northeasterner? Are we Is it possible to make this disaster like the September 18 disaster, instead of destroying us, it really shapes us?

2017/9/18

[1] Yang Hui: "Secret Writing—The White Russian Narrative of Northeastern Writers in Exile in the 1930s"

[2] Pedestrian Karatani, translated by Zhao Jinghua: The Origin of Modern Japanese Literature, p. 18

[3] Guo Shumei: "The "Red Road" and the Left-wing Literature Trend in Harbin"

[4] "Middle Stream", Vol. 2, No. 10, Shanghai, August 5, 1927