Milestones on a Golden Road: Writing for Chinese Socialism, 1945-80 (Contemporary Chinese Studies)

Literature created under and by a repressive regime is rarely
accorded the same respect as works that go against the party line. Yet,
as Richard King's Milestones on a Golden Road argues,
these works deserve serious attention as part of an attempt, however
misguided, to create a Chinese socialist culture.

King presents eight pivotal works of fiction produced in four key
periods of Chinese revolutionary history: the civil war (1945-49), the
Great Leap Forward (1958-60), the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), and
the post-Mao catharsis (1979-80). Taking its cues from the Soviet
Union's optimistic depictions of a society liberated by
Communism, the official Chinese literature of this era is characterized
by grand narratives of progress.

Addressing questions of literary production, King looks at how
writers dealt with shifting ideological demands, what indigenous and
imported traditions inspired them, and how they were able to depict a
utopian Communist future to their readers, even as the present took a
very different turn. Early "red classics" were followed by
works featuring increasingly lurid images of joyful socialism, and
later by fiction exposing the Mao era as an age of irrationality,
arbitrary rule, and suffering - a Golden Road that had led
to nowhere.

Richard King is Professor of Chinese studies at the
University of Victoria, teaching Chinese literature and film, Asian
popular culture, research methods, and Chinese language. He is the
editor of Art in Turmoil: The Chinese Cultural Revolution,
1966-76 (UBC Press, 2010).