A Difficult Breakthrough

Abstract

There is an important literary tradition that is the representation of the lower class.¹ Peddlers and laborers rarely appear in historical or philosophical writings. But in the history of literature this tradition has gone through different stages from nineteenth-century critical realism to May Fourth literature in twentieth-century China. Consequently, it is no surprise that the concept of the “the lower class” has once again appeared in twenty-first-century Chinese literature. A group of writers has begun to pay renewed attention to the historical fate of the lower class; magazines have created columns addressing lower-class issues; and the concept has appeared with increasing frequency in literary criticism. In short, the concept seems to have brought excitement to the literary world once again. Of course, as literary history indicates, every attempt to renew this tradition is rooted in its particular historical context. At present, the wide usage of the notion of the lower class has to do with at least two phenomena. First, the differentiation of social strata over the last 20 years is becoming an unavoidable problem that cannot be contained by fast economic growth or the arrival of modern life. Second, people have chosen “class” (jieceng) as a sociological category, of which the lower class is, at least on surface, a subcategory. Many agree on delineating social classes based on the possession of organizational, economic, and cultural resources.²

* Originally published in Wenxue Pinglun (Literary Review) 4 (2006): 50–60.