Table Of ContentWriting Lives in China, 1600–2010
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Writing Lives in China,
1600–2010
Histories of the Elusive Self
Edited by
Marjorie Dryburgh and Sarah Dauncey
School of East Asian Studies, University of Sheffield, UK
Introduction, selection and editorial matter © Marjorie Dryburgh &
Sarah Dauncey 2013
Individual chapters © Respective authors 2013
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2013 978-1-137-36856-0
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work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2013 by
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Contents
List of Figures and Tables vii
Preface viii
Notes on Contributors x
Introduction: Writing and Reading Chinese Lives 1
Marjorie Dryburgh
1 Chinese Life Writing: Themes and Variations 21
Marjorie Dryburgh and Sarah Dauncey
2 Self-representation in the Dramas of Ruan Dacheng
(1587–1646) 57
Alison Hardie
3 How to Write a Woman’s Life Into and Out of History:
Wang Zhaoyuan (1763–1851) and Biographical Study
in Republican China 86
Harriet T. Zurndorfer
4 The Fugitive Self: Writing Zheng Xiaoxu, 1882–1938 110
Marjorie Dryburgh
5 Destabilising the Truths of Revolution: Strategies
of Subversion in the Autobiographical Writing
of Political Women in China 133
Nicola Spakowski
6 Zhang Xianliang: Recensions of the Self 159
Chloë Starr
7 Whose Life Is It Anyway? Disabled Life Stories in
Post-reform China 182
Sarah Dauncey
v
vi Contents
8 A Look at the Margins: Autobiographical Writing
in Tibetan in the People’s Republic of China 206
Isabelle Henrion-Dourcy
Bibliography 236
Index 260
Figures and Tables
Figures
7.1 ‘Study Comrade Zhang Haidi, the Lei Feng of our time’ 187
7.2 ‘Study Zhang Haidi and become a new communist
with revolutionary ideals, sound morals, good
education and a strong sense of discipline!’ 189
7.3 ‘The meaning of life rests with contributing and not
demanding – Zhang Haidi’ 192
Tables
8.1 Comparison of the content of the Dharamsala and
Beijing editions 225
vii
Preface
The origins of this volume lie in conversations conducted over many
years that led us to consider the meanings and uses of life stories
written in China or about Chinese people, past and present. Many
of these conversations were not, at first, about life writing in its
own right, but about the ways in which life stories of self or others
featured in our work – as illustrations of social change, eye-witness
accounts of historical events, challenges to hegemonic narratives or
supplements to fragmentary archival records – and the challenges
inherent in drawing these personal stories into understandings of
wider changes. The advice offered to scholars on the use of these
life narratives was often cautious, and sometimes discouraging. Life
narratives – whoever their authors or intended audiences – might
be of some interest, but they were to be understood as lesser sources:
less robust, less objective and less ‘representative’ as historical sources
than the archival record; of less ‘literary’ value and interest than fic-
tion, drama or poetry; less revealing, because of distinctively Chinese
generic traditions, of lives and selves than auto/biographical work
produced elsewhere.
However, the volume of extant works – some now available in
translation, others not – pointed to powerful personal, social and
political interests that underlay auto/biographical production; and
the relatively recent proliferation of critical and theoretical studies of
life narrative across cultures offered increasingly sophisticated tools
for disentangling those interests. Despite those warnings, therefore,
it seemed more productive to engage with those supposedly imper-
fect auto/biographical artefacts, to understand how and why they
were produced and what effects they were designed to achieve, than
simply to set them aside or lament their shortcomings. The new
conversation that this work stimulated led more or less directly to
the interdisciplinary international workshop, Writing Lives in China,
held in March 2008 at the University of Sheffield, UK, and thence to
this volume.
The contributions to this volume were all presented at the 2008
workshop, and we would like to express our sincerest gratitude to all
viii
Preface ix
workshop participants for their interest in extending the boundaries
of our understanding of life writing in China, and to the contribu-
tors for their continued commitment to the book. The workshop was
made possible by generous support from the British Academy, the
Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange
and the White Rose East Asia Centre, as well as the School of East
Asian Studies and the Humanities Research Institute at the University
of Sheffield, which helped to host the workshop.
In addition to the authors included in this volume, we would
like to thank those workshop participants who made significant
contributions to our discussions, but whose work it was sadly not
possible, for a variety of reasons, to incorporate in the present vol-
ume. These include Katherine Carlitz (University of Pittsburgh), Lynn
A. Struve (Indiana University, Bloomington), Margaretta Jolly (Uni-
versity of Sussex), Tan Tian-yuan (School of Oriental and African
Studies, London), Yvonne Schulz Zinda (University of Hamburg),
Sarah Schneewind (University of California, San Diego), Jennifer
Eichman (Lehigh University), Yi Jolan (National Taiwan University),
Karin-Irene Eiermann (acatech, Berlin), Jeremy Taylor (University of
Nottingham), Lena Henningsen (University of Freiburg) and Jesse
Field (University of Minnesota). Our research and ideas were further
honed by discussants Tim Wright (University of Sheffield), David
Pattinson (University of Leeds) and Naomi Standen (University of
Birmingham). We would also like to thank Ms Mary Jo Robertiello,
Professor Wu Pei-yi’s long-time companion, who made possible his
attendance at the workshop.
Finally, we would like to dedicate this volume to Professor Wu
Pei-yi, best known for his seminal work The Confucian’s Progress, who
gave a keynote paper at the workshop but unfortunately passed away
a year later in April 2009. An enthusiastic participant, we remember
him for the breadth and depth of his knowledge of Chinese biog-
raphy and autobiography that informed our discussions and for his
intellectual curiosity that stimulated further enquiry in us all. This
volume is all the richer for his insight and observations, and it is a
shame that he was unable to see it completed.
