Wang Anyi, Taiwan, and the World: The 1983 International Writing Program and Biblical Allusions in Utopian Verses

Abstract

Issues in Sino-American literary exchange during the Cold War is a growing field of study in recent years. Literary historians note that “cultural Cold War” institutions such as the International Writing Program have been funded by conservative organizations to inculcate core Western values like liberal democracy as a bid to counter communism. Hence, whether individual Chinese writers during the Cold War era gave in to or resisted ideological brainwashing has become a critical field for study. By focusing on Wang Anyi’s American experience and its influence as described in her 1983 Utopian Verses, this article argues that in addition to the analyses of institutional constituencies, the current cultural Cold War paradigm has to take into account the actual interaction between writers and the institutions, and among the writers themselves. I examine how Wang was skeptical of, yet deeply attracted to, the Taiwanese left-wing novelist Chen Yingzhen’s religious and socialist utopianism. Chen’s socialist ideals and his religious faith provided Wang with a concentric framework to first position China and Chinese literature within a worldly context, and next, within the concept of utopian idealism. Nonetheless, such idealized utopianism was conditioned by the Cold War backdrop of ideological conflict.