The Chinese Literary Conquest of Xinjiang

Abstract

In recent years, a new genre of fiction has emerged in China known as Xibu wenxue (literature of the Western regions). While many of the authors contributing to this growing body of literature have lived and worked in the northwest all their lives, others were sent there to serve in the army or to xiafang (to go down to the countryside), most notably during the Cultural Revolution. Whether set in Xinjiang, Tibet, Mongolia, Gansu, or Qinghai, these writings invariably reflect a keen sense of the physical geography of the borderlands and its impact on people's lives. Time and time again the protagonists pit themselves against the harsh and untamed backcloth of the Western regions to emerge revitalized, purified, and with a new sense of self-awareness.' In portraying alienation from the Chinese cultural heartland as an opportunity for self-renewal and personal development, these works echo a sentiment that would not have been unfamiliar to those exiled to the northwest in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (WaleyCohen, 1991: 158). Whether disgraced officials or simply serving a tour of duty in Xinjiang, these men were early pioneers, and like the protagonists of Xibu wenxue, they also frequently found salvation in a journey that left them spiritually cleansed, ready to fulfill their social role and to carry out their duty in the service of the state.2