Modern Chinese Letters and Epistolary Fiction

Abstract

The appearance of modern love-letters in China dates back to 1915, with the publication of a manual claiming to offer advice and models for courtship by letters composed in classical Chinese. The movement for a new literature, using vernacular Chinese in forms largely borrowed from Western literature, was not immediately reflected in private letter exchanges. Like the popular-fiction magazines which preceded them, the new literary magazines in the first half of the century fostered a sense of a shared public realm between contributors and readers. The fiction inspired by the new literary movement included in its earliest phase a stream of epistolary short stories and novels. Much of it was produced by students and staff at Peking Women's Normal College: the new epistolary fiction in China tended to emphasize thoughts and feelings rather than plot and to tease readers with apparent autobiographical reference.