Chinese Literature for Children

Abstract

Chinese Literature for Children Nellvena Duncan Eutsler (bio) Chinese Popular Literature and the Child, by Dorothea Haywood Scott. Chicago: American Library Association, 1980. Dorothea Haywood Scott in her Chinese Popular Literature and the Child provides a valuable service for the Westerner recently attracted to Chinese literature. The book provides an articulate overview of Chinese literature, with background material for those who wish to explore further the long traditions of literature for children. Chinese popular literature had its beginnings between 1765 and 1123 B.C. and is thus the longest unbroken literary tradition in the world, with a wider audience than any other. Chinese literature reflects the historical changes within its culture: a diversity of minority peoples and their various dialects, invasion from without and turmoil from within, and everchanging political philosophies. Through various media the literature has been preserved from ancient times, and Scott recognizes their literary process as a "story of change within continuity." Scott considers Chinese children's literature in the light of the Chinese system of education. She points out that Chinese thought and pedagogy reflect the influence of sages such as Confucius, Mencius, the Buddhist monks, and the Taoists. She notes the impact caused by differences between scholarly classical writing and colloquial language. The Chinese, who have long been aware of the difficulties posed by these differences, have initiated recent language reforms that have revolutionized the style of Chinese writing; their literature now reaches a much wider audience. Their entire educational process had for centuries inhibited learning by its stylistic and classical requirements. At last the words of Feng Meng-lung, the late Ming Dynasty author and scholar quoted by Scott, have been heeded: "In this world literary minds are few but rustic ears are many." [End Page 183] In order to appreciate and understand Chinese children's literature, we must understand the traditions which shaped China's attitudes toward their children. Not until early in the twentieth century did China recognize the special needs of her children, although Chinese children had access to printed stories centuries before the English or American child had access to a book. Oral traditions have been as influential for Chinese children as for children from other cultures. By 960 A.D. the storytellers had become a highly professional body of public entertainers. Their prompt books served as the basis for later novels. Although, as Scott points out, there are no traditional collections of Chinese myths and legends, myths are found imbedded in the whole body of early Chinese literature. Chinese classics provide central sources in the Orient as do the Old Testament, Perrault, Grimm, and others in the Western world. As in the tradition of Western children's literature, Chinese children had their primers (the Thousand Character Classic and the Three Character Classic) and their early picture books (the Fifteenth Century Illustrated Chinese Primer, the earliest known extant copy of which is dated 1436). They had these books long before western civilization had Babes Booke in manuscript form (1430), or Caxton's Aesop's Fables (1484), or a hornbook (1540), or Orbis Pictus (1658). Scott does not discuss the omission of fables, but she explains that older literary collections contain few stories about animals. This evidence seems odd, since animals play an important role in Chinese myths. In her chapter on "Myths, Legends, and Symbols," however, Scott discusses animal legends and the Chinese use of animal symbolism. It is a shame that when she notes the nine resemblances of the dragon, she lists only "the horns of a deer, the neck of a snake, the scales of a carp," and leaves the reader with "and so on" for the others. Scott calls fifteenth-century Chinese novels "folk epics," in spite of the fact that Ch'ên Shou-Yi in his Chinese Literature: A Historical Introduction (1961) points out that China "is the only outstanding nation with a literary attainment completely devoid of an epical tradition." Ch'ên Shou-Yi explains this phenomenon by arguing that China's ideal human type has been the sage and not [End Page 184] the hero. Perhaps fifteenth-century novels, in spite of their length, would better be labeled fantasies in the tradition of Hans...