The remaking of revolutionary literature: a comic series on peasant uprising in the post-revolutionary era

Abstract

This paper focuses on Li Zicheng, a serial long comic story in China’s 1980s. The work was released between the post-Mao and pre-89 eras in the history of the Socialist China, a period known for the increasing liberalization of its society. Meanwhile, it was derived from a renowned socialist literary work of the 1960s, which uses the theme of ancient peasant wars as a metaphor for modern communist revolution and catering to the prevailing ideology of the time. Focusing on visuality, this study concludes through visual grammar analysis that the revolutionary narrative is implicitly diminished in the comics’ narrative space. This finding reveals a microcosm of the way in which literary artists in the early years of reform and opening up received and adapted the revolutionary cultural heritage of the Mao era. With this conclusion the paper attempts to offer an innovative way of interpreting the inheritance and transformation of Chinese socialist culture in the post-revolutionary transition era.

Keywords:

• Li Zicheng
• Lianhuanhua
• revolutionary narrative
• peasant uprising
• traditional literature
• visual adaptation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Lianhuanhua is an indigenous Chinese comic book genre that refers to visual reading materials, including illustrated storybooks and comic literature. In 20th-century China, a country with low literacy and low purchasing power, Lianhuanhua was richly illustrated, inexpensive, and had a wide cross-age readership.

2. The top three were: The Romance of the Three Kingdoms (60 volumes), Chronicles of the Eastern Zhou Kingdoms (50 volumes), and The Sui and Tang Dynasties (44 volumes).

3. John A. Lent, Asian comics (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2015), 34.

4. Zedong Mao, “Report on an investigation of the peasant movement in Hunan” in Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung. Volume 1, (Oxford: Pergamon Press,1965), 28.

5. For example, to highlight the greatness of the peasant revolutions, Lianhuanhua, like other literary forms, have made new assessments of the peasant uprisings in Chinese history, thus elevating them into the driving power of history. In this atmosphere, the military actions of many ancient peasant rebellions rose to the level of justice. For details see Wei Jin, Xinzhongguo xuanjiaolei lianhuanhua yanjiu (1949–1979) [Research on the types of publicity and education Lianhuanhua of new China from 1949 to 1979] (Liaoning University, 2016), 44.

6. Jinhua Dai, Yinxing shuxie 90 niandai zhongguo wenhua yanjiu [Invisible Writing—A Study of Chinese Culture in the 1990s] (Nanjing: Jiangsu People’s Publisher, 1999), 44.

7. This was the propaganda strategy of the Maoist era, emphasizing the victor of the revolution in political discourse. See specifically in Peter Hays Gries, China’s new nationalism: Pride, politics, and diplomacy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 69–74.

8. Three famous novels tell the story of Li Zicheng’s uprising in the late Ming and Qing dynasties, namely, The new popular novel of the fight against the Chuang (新编剿闯通俗小说), The strange story of the Ding Ding (定鼎奇闻), and Qiao’s popular romance of the history (樵史通俗演义)..

9. Zicheng Hong, Zhongguo dangdai wenxueshi [A History of Contemporary Chinese Literature] (Beijing: Peking University Press, 2007), 94.

10. To construct the legitimacy of the Chinese communist revolution, which constituted the most direct and primary source of historical conceptions for generations of Chinese historians, Marxism was the “supreme directive” that long influenced Chinese historiography. Almost all of the debates that have taken place in mainland historiography over the decades have had a direct or indirect link to the materialist conception of history. See Zedong Mao, “The Chinese Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party” in Selected Works of Mao Zedong, vol. 2 (People’s Publishing House, 1991), 622–625.

11. In 1942, Mao Zedong’s “Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art” was published, formally establishing the guidelines of “literature and art for the workers, peasants, and soldiers” and “literature and art as subordinate and subservient to politics.” This publication not only set the fundamental direction of literature in the liberated areas but also made it the only correct direction for literature and art in the new China. In other words, for a long time, being completely influenced by the political situation and having to have a certain way of political discourse became almost the only choice for contemporary Chinese literature. See Mao Zedong, “Zai yanan wenyizuotanhui shang de jianghua,” [Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art] in Mao ze dong xuan ji di san juan [Selected works of Mao Zedong (3)] (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1991; Original work published 1942).

12. Jingmin Wei, “Maozedong yu yaoxueyin de lizicheng” [Mao Zedong and Yao Xueyin’s “Li Zicheng”] Journal of Party History 11, no. 2 (May 2003): 36.

13. Haogang Yan, “‘Li Zicheng’ de jingdianhua, qu jingdianhua yu zai jingdianhua” [The Classicization, De-classicization and Re-classicization of “Li Zicheng”], New Literary Review, no. 3 (2021): 101–107.

14. Zaifu Liu, “Liu Zaifu on Literary Research and Literary Debates,” Wenhui Monthly 9, no. 2 (1988.

15. As early as 1980, a domestic scholarly article questioned the dynamics of peasant revolts, see Kwang-Ching Liu, “World View and Peasant Rebellion: Reflections on Post-Mao Historiography,” The Journal of Asian Studies, No.2(Feb 1981): 259–291.

16. Hong, A History of Contemporary Chinese Literature, 93.

17. Yu Bai, Lianhuanhuaxue gailun [An Introduction to Lianhuanhua Scholarship] (Jinan: Shandong art publisher, 1997), 104.

18. Barker Martin, Comics: Ideology, Power and the Critics, (Manchester University Press, 1989), 270–75.

19. Early communist regimes saw popular culture such as Lianhuanhua as ideal for mass mobilization. See Yaochang Pan, “Fuzhi, yinshua he dazhong chuanbo—Muke he nianhua, lianhuanhua, xuanchuanhua quansheng de shidai” [Copying, Publishing and Mass Communication—On the Peak Period of Woodcut and Poster] Journal of Shanghai University (Social Sciences) 13, no. 5 (September 2006): 130–134.

20. Lihong Mai, Tushuo Zhongguo lianhuanhua [Graphical interpretation of China Lianhuanhua] (Guangzhou: Lingnan fine arts publishing House, 2006), 17.

21. Bai, An Introduction to Lianhuanhua Scholarship, 129.

22. The translation of 绣像 and 全图 may not be authentic, I have translated it directly according to their Chinese meaning.

23. Published in the year Hongzhi of the Ming dynasty (1498), The Complete Illustrations of the Western Chamber 明刊西厢记全图 was already highly illustrated, with 273 illustrations.

24. Clare Painter, J. R. Martin, and Len Unsworth, Reading visual narratives: Image analysis of children’s picture books (John Benjamins Publishing 2013), 45.

25. Painter, Reading visual narratives, 59.

26. Although these political-aesthetic principles were formally proposed in 1968, their ideological roots can be traced back to the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art in 1942, and they existed for many years as a guiding ideology for literary and artistic creation.

27. Xiuqin Li, “Dianxing renwu” (Typical characters), in Nan Fan, ed., Ershishiji Zhongguo wenxue piping 99 ge ci [99 Key words in twentieth-century Chinese literary criticism] (Hangzhou: Zhejiang wenyi chubanshe, 2003), 256–60.

28. Painter, Reading visual narratives, 64.

29. The demands of the Mao era on the class origins and moral qualities of prominent characters were prioritized by the embodiment of proletarian ideology.

30. Before Yao Xueyin’s novel, no record on Huimei had been found in either authentic history or folk history.

31. From The Analects of Confucius, Chapter Xianwen 宪问. The main content is a commentary by Confucius on various phenomena in society at the time and a discussion of certain virtues required of a gentleman.

32. From The Analects of Confucius, Chapter Xueer 学而.

33. Kwang-Ching Liu. “World View and Peasant Rebellion: Reflections on Post-Mao Historiography” The Journal of Asian Studies, No. 2 (Feb 1981): 259–291.

Additional information

Funding

No research funding was used to do this research.

Notes on contributors

Yuxiang Yang

Yuxiang Yang is currently a Ph.D. student majoring in Visual Arts at the Faculty of Creative Arts, Universiti Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. His research interests include popular culture and comic art. His current research project is a visual study of a local Chinese comic book genre, Lianhuanhua. This project is devoted to providing innovative ideas for understanding the relationship between culture and politics in socialist China. Email: [email protected]

Simon Soon is Senior Lecturer in art history at the Visual Art Studies Program, Faculty of Creative Arts, Universiti Malaya. He has written on various topics related to 20th-century art across Asia and curates exhibitions, most recently Bayangnya Itu Timbul Tenggelam: Photographic Cultures in Malaysia. He is also a team member of the Malaysia Design Archive, an independent digital archive on visual culture. He is occasionally an artist, working chiefly through collaboration to explore cultural histories of the Malay Archipelago.

Simon Soon

Simon Soon is Senior Lecturer in art history at the Visual Art Studies Program, Faculty of Creative Arts, Universiti Malaya. He has written on various topics related to 20th-century art across Asia and curates exhibitions, most recently Bayangnya Itu Timbul Tenggelam: Photographic Cultures in Malaysia. He is also a team member of the Malaysia Design Archive, an independent digital archive on visual culture. He is occasionally an artist, working chiefly through collaboration to explore cultural histories of the Malay Archipelago.