Writing in solidarity: Gu Cangwu, Cultural Revolution, Cold War

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article will shed light on the remarkable yet overlooked influence of the Cultural Revolution on renowned Hong Kong writer Gu Cangwu during the Cold War period. Through scrutinizing his untapped works in the 1970s, the article will argue that Gu Cangwu incorporated a Communist perspective in his observations of pivotal local, national, and global events in his poems and writings. Gu’s untapped works show his attempts to use Cultural Revolution ideology and Chinese nationalism as a source of resistance to British colonialism amid Hong Kong’s Defending Diaoyu Island Movement in 1971, a movement in which international recognition of Communist China at the United Nation sparked Gu’s nationalistic fervor and encouraged him to embrace critical realism. The article also puts Gu’s sympathetic portrayals of the Cultural Revolution and Vietnam War in juxtaposition with his decadent narratives of the 1972 Hong Kong landslides, showing that his effort to build local solidarity with Chinese nationals and the people suffering in the global conflict of the Cold War was based on a stance in opposition to capitalist-imperialist-colonial aggression. More significantly, transcending the simplistic Cold War binary between communist totalitarianism versus liberal capitalism and foregrounding the specific experience of the Cold War in the Hong Kong context, the case of Gu Cangwu demonstrates that the production of Hong Kong literature in the 1970s occurred at the intersection between local ideological contestation and global Cold War tensions.