Chinese modernist satire: Lao She’s Mr Ma and Son (1929), Qian Zhongshu’s Fortress Besieged (1947), and Eileen Chang’s Legends (1944)

Abstract

ABSTRACT Bringing into dialogue modern Chinese literary studies and modernist studies, this essay examines what I call the Chinese modernist satires of Lao She, Qian Zhongshu, and Eileen Chang. Chinese modernism is here understood as plural in itself, encompassing multiple origins, times, influences, politics, and loci. Viewed as part of a global/planetary modernism, early-twentieth-century Chinese modernism was neither imported nor belated. Like the Anglo-American exterior modernists, who worked under the shadow of their formidable high modernist precursors, Lao She, Qian, and Chang belonged to the younger generation of Chinese modernists; Mr Ma and Son (1929), Fortress Besieged (1947), and the short stories collected in Legends (1944) contributed to a distinctive strand of Chinese modernism, which, comparable to the exterior modernism of their British and American counterparts, is focused on satire and comedy. Building connections between the three significant writers in modern Chinese literature, the essay also demonstrates a variety within their Chinese modernist satire.