How Novelists Use Folklore as Weapons in Contemporary Revolutions of China: With the Examples of Lu Hsun, Hsiao Hung and Dai Sijie

Abstract

Folklore is often used in literature to express nostalgia and depict the everyday lives of a nation’s people. There are few studies, however, on the role of folklore within Chinese revolutionary literature. Through interpreting three female fictional characters: Sister Xianglin in Lu Hsun’s The New Year’s Sacrifice (1924), the Little Child-bride in Hsiao Hung’s Tales of Hulan River (1941), and the Little Seamstress in Dai Sijie’s Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (2000), I interpret how Chinese writers differently regarded folklore as weapons, either allies or enemies, to reveal the miserable lives of women in the fight for liberty during two of China’s contemporary revolutions, the Revolution of 1911 and The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution held between 1968 to 1978. Folklore, in the context of these novels, is manifest primarily through references to folk sorcery cures, shamanic beliefs, and folk songs. Nevertheless, through the novelists’ different attitudes to folklore, we can see the complicated and thought-provoking history of Chinese contemporary revolutions