• No results found

Profile Ding Ling. L Ding Ling in Yanan in 1938 when she was 32

N/A
N/A
Protected

Academic year: 2021

Share "Profile Ding Ling. L Ding Ling in Yanan in 1938 when she was 32"

Copied!
5
0
0

Loading.... (view fulltext now)

Full text

(1)

Profile

Ding Ling

Ding Ling is one of China's most important writers and one of the few to have attracted attention abroad. Her literary career, spanning sixty years, embodies the classic tension of the individualistic revolutionary in a love-hate relationship with the revolutionary organisation. In the twenties, like most young intellectuals of her generation, she was a rebel in search of a cause. Marxism provided it and Ding Ling joined the Communist Party in 1931. Her first stories of life in the communist camp were, however, critical of the apathy and inertia of Party officials and of their effect on idealistic youth. But when Mao Zedong tabooed such writing in his' Yanan Talks', Ding Ling conformed.

The success of her Soviet-style novel The Sun Shines on the Sanggan River and the more generous atmosphere following the establishment of a unified People's Republic in 1949, helped Ding Ling emerge as a top figure in the cultural establishment. Having used this position to advocate more independence for writers, she fell from favour in the 1957 purge. For the next 22 years she was under detention of one degree or another, only being rehabilitated in 1978.

Like most of the great names in modern Chinese literature (Guo Moruo, Lu Xun, Mao Dun, Shen Congwen, Ye Shengtao), Ding Ling - originally named Jian Bingzhi - came from a gentry family with a tradition of public service. She had the additional advantage of a mother who was something of a suffragette. Ding Ling was born in 1907 and, as a twelve-year-old schoolgirl, was already cutting her hair short, attending political meetings, leading demonstrations

and teaching elementary maths at the evening school for the local poor. This precocious activism soon took her away from Hunan (which was also Mao's province) to Nanjing and Shanghai. Here she mingled with anarchists, students, and penniless writers, leading the typical Bohemian life of a Chinese intellectual of the nineteen-twenties. Her early stories are set

L...

-

- . - -

-Ding Ling in Yanan in 1938 when she was 32

in this milieu and express the tensions of her position as an ' emancipated Nora' (after the character in Ibsen's The Doll's House).

The most famous of these early stories was ' The Diary of Miss Sophie', published in the anthology In the Darkness in 1928. It explores through a first-person narrative the mind of a young, Westernised girl in the city. She has no family connections and tuberculosis further cuts her off from social life and reinforces her painful self-absorption. Attracted to a handsome knightly figure, she indulges in fantasies of physical love. At the same time, the girl's unflinching analysis of her own situation causes her to reject him.

Other stories of Ding Ling's early period also focus on characters who are at the mercy of their ambivalent responses to a hostile environment. Prostitutes dream of the life they might have had; a country girl is destroyed by her longing for the city's unattainable luxuries; a woman is

(2)

ostra-36 INDEX ON CENSORSHIP 1 / 1 9 8 0

cised for a love affair, only to be betrayed by her lover. This material was taken as symbolic of the frustrations of educated young Chinese women who knew of sexual equality and female independ-ence but were far from achieving it. Ding Ling was their champion both in her writing and her life.

The novella Wei Hu (1930) can also be seen as showing a parallel between Ding Ling's life and work. A new element is introduced into the contradictory fusion of love for another and love of oneself. Wei Hu is a romantic figure just back from the Soviet Union. In his blue cotton worker's clothes, he dazzles the girls with his talk of Chopin and Turgenev. At the end, however, he is faced with a choice between literature and revolution. Wei Hu chooses revolution, symbolically leaving behind his manuscripts and diaries.

The author herself tried to combine the two in revolutionary literature. She became active in the League of Left-wing Writers, an umbrella

organisation which, under the patriarchal Lu Xun, dominated serious literature in the early thirties. By 1931 Ding Ling was editing one of its maga-zines, The Big Dipper. Her editorial advice to readers was to forget themselves by thinking only of the masses: ' Do not let yourself be isolated from the masses, do not consider yourself a writer. Remember, you are one of the masses, you are speaking for them, speaking for yourself.' As Ding Ling strove to apply the injunction to her own fiction, she turned her back on Miss Sophie. * Flood' was hailed as a significant advance in leftist literature when it was published in 1931, although there were also criticisms that the proletariat - in the shape of the Communist Party - was not prominent enough in the story.

In the same year, 1931, Ding Ling and her common-law husband, Hu Yepin, joined the Communist Party. Hu was arrested and executed shortly after by the Nationalists; and in 1933 Ding Ling too disappeared, causing an outcry among her sympathisers in the West. After three years in detention, however, she managed to leave Shanghai and made her way to Yanan. Thirty years later the Cultural Revolution produced the smear (which tainted many writers) of selling out to the Nationalists, in Ding Ling's case of exchanging sexual favours for freedom, but then she had always been a favourite subject of gossip.

On her arrival in the newly-established

Com-Works of Ding Ling in English

Diary of Miss Sophie in Harold Isaacs

(ed) Straw Sandals: Chinese Short

Stories MIT Press, Boston, 1974 The Flood and News in Edgar Snow (ed)

Living China: Modern Chinese Short Stories, Harrap, London, 1974

In the Hospital in Renditions, Hong Kong,

Autumn 1977

Thoughts on Women's Day in New Left Review No 92, London, 1975

The sun shines over the Sangkan river.

Foreign Language Press, Peking, 1953; also in Chinese Literature No 1, Peking, 1953

Life and creative writing in Chinese Literature No 3, 1954

munist base area in Northwest China in 1936, her fame warranted a personal reception by Mao. Ding Ling was at first assigned to be a secretary in the Eighth Route Army (as the local com-munist forces were then termed), later becoming director of an acting troupe which toured the towns and villages spreading the message of resistance and pioneering the production of simple, low-brow propaganda which the Party needed to drum up popular support.

Before long, she became editor of the literary column of Liberation Daily. Through this column and two stories written in 1941,' In the Hospital' (extract follows) and ' When I was in Xia Village' (about a revolutionary who has prostituted herself to gain military information from the Japanese), Ding Ling publicised an uncomplimentary view of life under communist rule. Both stories focus on women who suffer for their participation in the revolution, their loyalty being rewarded by social ostracism from less enthusiastic peers in the Party and from a cold and obdurate peasantry.

The sexual inequality prevalent in the revo-lutionary camp itself was the controversial subject of' Reflections on Women's Day', published in March 1942. Ding Ling was aggrieved that women, especially if they were single, were a constant subject of rumour and gossip, the result of male prejudice.' This has nothing to do with our theories, doctrines and the speeches we make

(3)

PROFILE: DING LING 37

at meetings. We all know this to be a fact, a fact that is right before our eyes, but is never men-tioned.' There was social pressure on married women as well. They were expected to please everyone: if they had no children, they were constantly asked why on earth they had married; if they had children, they were too busy to participate in political life and could be divorced for ' political backwardness'.

Such criticisms, her two stories, and her encouragement of the views of dissenters like Wang Shiwei caused Ding Ling's demotion to reporter. The Literary Column of the Party newspaper was abolished. Mao's two speeches at the Yanan Forum on Literature and Art made it clear that the revolution, that is, the Party, did not want writers to follow their own conscience (as Ding Ling had urged women to do); they were to depict life as the Party wanted it to be seen. At this time Ding Ling retreated from her inde-pendent position and joined in the political criticism of Wang Shiwei, herself announcing his expulsion from the Writers' Association and tainting him with the hated label of Trotskyite. In her journalism, she revived the propagandist style which she had developed with her drama team when she first arrived in Yanan. * Tian Baolin', a piece eulogising the leader of an agricultural co-operative, even led to an invitation for dinner with Mao. She still found it difficult, however, to produce work which was perfectly in harmony with the Party line. When her descrip-tions of guerrilla life i n ' The 109th and the Jin-Ji-Lu-Yu Area' (1946) were examined by the commanding officer he censored passages which ridiculed their nominal allies, the Nationalists. Ding Ling objected but was told that published work must conform to Party policy and not be subject to the tastes of one person, even if that person is the writer.

In The Sun Shines on the Sanggan River Ding Ling achieved a successful fusion of creative initiative and Party doctrine which was to be a standard for later writers. Recognition of her achievement came in the form of a Stalin Literary Prize in 1951 and a series of high posts in the early fifties. The novel was the result of several months Ding Ling spent in 1946-7 as participant and observer in the land reform movement in different parts of Hebei province.

In general terms the plot conforms to the

. - • ' < : ?*•.

Ding Ling, with her husband, Chen Ming, her rehabilitation in 1978

after

Party interpretation of the events described, but Ding Ling brought life to the social algebra by giving human faults to the positive characters. Despite the presence of an omniscient third-person narrator, the reader is allowed to do some

character evaluation on his own account. This is even true of what in Party terminology was the ' motive force' in the whole operation, the work team, who are portrayed as far from perfect. In particular, the team leader is complacent and out of touch with the real needs of the peasant poor, although early in the story it is stated that the team leader,' like Mao, was not with the masses all the time but knew what was best for them.' Such political lapses escaped attention until Ding Ling's fall in 1957.

In the meantime, Ding Ling held a string of high posts in the early years of the People's Republic, on the editorial committees of the two main literary magazines, the Literary Gazette and People's Literature, in various professional literary bodies, as delegate to conferences in Budapest, Moscow and Paris, as head of the literature section in the Central Committee's Propaganda Department, and as director of the

(4)

38 INDEX ON CENSORSHIP 1/1980

prestigious Central Literary Research Institute. From this powerful position Ding Ling was able to influence a new generation of Chinese writers, although she also condemned those of whom the Party disapproved.

In her lectures on literature in the fifties, the stress was on the process of creation rather than Marxist study. She accepted the need for political study and directives, but the balance should always be tipped in favour of the individual creator. The important thing for a young writer to achieve was to link his knowledge of Marxism with his own experience. This was the way to establish professional literary standards. Like most writers and editors, she considered the stress in t h e ' Yanan Talks' on quantity before quality to be out of date.

In such a heroic time . . . we should have a goal to struggle for, to write a good book that has a high degree of consciousness and art, not just for one's own enjoyment, or the praise of a few friends, but to be cherished by thousands and thousands of readers, pondered over and forever imprinted in their hearts, a book they are happy to refer to, not just popular for a time, but lasting into the future . . . I do not oppose the writing groups and such organisa-tions as we have now, but I believe it is wrong for a writer never to be without guidance. A writer is not like a child who cannot leave his nurse, he should grow independently. No matter how literary creation is guided, a work is created through the individual.

The liberal artistic policy of t h e ' Hundred Flowers' period allowed writers more independ-ence in their analysis of Chinese society. Young writers like Liu Binyan and Wang Meng produced bitter stories of the disillusionment of youth, in tones which echo Ding Ling's ' In the Hospital'. When t h e ' Rectification Movement' brought this brief flowering to an end, Ding Ling was found guilty of encouraging such writing. In 1958 she was formally expelled from the Writers' Union and from the Party. It was also the culmination of a power struggle with her main rival, Zhou Yang, who since 1953 had been eroding her power. Ding Ling would not confess to any ' crimes ', maintaining always that she was a loyal servant of the Party. It was evidently difficult to persuade other writers that she had departed from Party

policy in any way, to judge by the number and length of the meetings held on her case.

After three and a half months of criticism meetings (the last with an audience of 1,350 people from all over China), Ding Ling was deprived of her rights as a citizen and sent to a remote area in Heilongjiang for' reform through labour'. Her husband, Chen Ming, shared her fate. Her deten-tion continued for 22 years, among them five (1971-5) in solitary confinement, when she had to learn to talk to herself to prevent madness. In 1975 she and her husband were sent to a village in Shanxi. There at least they were allowed a more comfortable life while Ding Ling's case was lengthily reassessed.

During her period of punishment she continued to write, but her manuscripts were frequently confiscated and are now lost. Since her rehabilita-tion in 1978, she has been preparing a new edirehabilita-tion of selected works and a sequel to The Sun Shines on the Sanggan River, entitled Days in the Cold. Ill health restricts her writings to mornings; years of maltreatment mean that she is unable to sit still for longer than two hours at a time, and now she often writes standing at a converted easel. So far she has only published one piece of writing, the profile of a young farm worker written in 1966 and reconstructed from memory. The outline of the tale is itself unexceptional, but the details and theme betray its authorship.

Once again we see a young girl, the Du Wanxiang of the title, setting forth full of ideals, ready to serve the revolution, only to be exploited and abused. The pattern is not, however, identical to that of' In the Hospital' (see extract which follows). Du Wanxiang is no weak-willed city school-girl but a tough and selfless peasant lass; her hard life on the land has made her physically strong (despite her weakling appearance) and psychologically self-sufficient. Thus she is able to accept the marriage arranged for her, to accept a life of service among strangers.

Like her creator, Wanxiang is sent to the bleak Northeast in 1958, * a bitter place where criminals and exiles were sent in the old days '. In this bleak landscape, the girl is unperturbed, although she finds little companionship in the husband she has joined. Keeping house for him alone gives her no sense of fulfilment, so she asks the brigade leader for work. He tells her to do whatever work she finds, but she ends up as a dogsbody for the

(5)

IN THE HOSPITAL 39

busy and lazy alike:

As time went on more and more people made use of her. At first they expressed their

gratitude, later they took her for granted. Seeing her willingness, some women even asked her to do things which they could do themselves . . . some borrowed grain coupons or money from her, then forgot to pay her back. Wanxiang kept no account of these debts. Everyone was glad to have such a person in their area. The brigade leader never bothered about family matters: on the surface life was like the smooth surface of a lake, he was satisfied.

In the end, Wanxiang's talents are discovered and she becomes a worker's model, touring the area and giving speeches, speeches from the heart which do, at least in the last few sentences of the story, manage to communicate her enthusiasm to others. Like Ding Ling herself, the woman's lonely work for the revolution is at last recog-nised and rewarded. • John Beyer

Ding Ling

In the hospital

Every day Lu P'ing would repeat her exhortations, sometimes pretending to be angry. But the rooms remained as dirty as before. The orderlies were uneducated and would shove everything into the corners, and the laundry women wouldn't come for several days. Used cotton and gauze could be seen all over the courtyard, breeding whatever flies had survived the cold. Lu P'ing had no choice but to put on a face mask, wrap her hand up in a kerchief, grab a broom, and sweep out the courtyard. Patients, some of the local people, and even nurses surrounded her and watched. But before long, they brought the courtyard back to its original state, with not one of them feeling the least bit guilty.

In addition to Doctor Chang's wife, the wife of a department head in some other organisation was also there. They were both nurses in the obstetrics ward and had studied a total of three

months of nursing; they could recognise several dozen characters and the names of a dozen or so Chinese medicines. They had neither interest nor expertise in nursing, but they and nurses like them had no choice but to work. New fears were weighing on them. They were apprehensive about the influx of girl students coming in from the outside, especially when many of them attracted the husbands of less gifted women; consequently divorce cases were frequently a problem. Of course, among the nurses, there were some who had shown real repentance and the willingness to surmount difficulties in moving toward independ-ence, but the majority of them were worried and confused.

These two wives put on airs, especially the organisation head's wife who was already twenty-six or twenty-seven years old. She wore a Sun Yatsen uniform which she had made herself, and decorated her thinning, dull hair with a ribbon. Thinking herself beautiful, she would parade haughtily about the courtyard, her stomach bulging out. The two women were utterly without any spirit of service to others, they were dirty and lazy, and the only time they showed some interest in anything was when they mended their own shoes and socks, or when they washed and starched their own clothes. So Lu P'ing had to keep after these women and when that didn't work, then she had no choice but to do their work for them. And because she simply could not relax about whatever they did, she had to keep careful watch when they sterilised the instruments, bathed and changed the babies, and made cotton balls and gauze rolls. To avoid causing pain to the sick or the women who had just given birth, Lu P'ing herself would change the dressings for those who had been operated on or who were suffering infection. Although this kind of goodness that was second nature to her was not popular, and was looked down upon by many people, it was some-thing which had already been instilled into her when she was a small child.

As soon as it was afternoon, Lu P'ing would be a bit happier, that is, whenever there was no one in labour and she had some time which was relatively free. She would attend discussion meetings, and voice opinions which she had drafted the previous night. She was long on enthusiasm, but short on experience. While speak-ing and debatspeak-ing, she would spout off about thspeak-ings

References

Related documents

In this paper, it is shown how, by properly arranging the actuators and representing the platform orientation using Euler parameters, a bilinear model can be derived and this

Beside high surface area, mesoporous surface and crystal phase, it is reported in some of the studies that particle size has important effect on photocatalytic activity

Topics include descriptive and structural linguistics, the relationship between grammatical categories and linguistic meaning, ethnographic approaches to the study of language

La EDT “… es una descomposición jerárquica, basada en los entregables del trabajo que debe ejecutar el equipo del proyecto para lograr los objetivos del

The project proponent appointed Ematech Solutions Ltd, a private Firm of Experts duly registered by National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) to carry out

For example, studies investigating the acute effects of methylenedioxi-methamphetamine (MDMA) on driving performance indicate that MDMA improved driving performance in

Option 3: Student selects a two-part integrated natural science complete two years of foreign language in high school or 8-10 course sequence, which cover biological and

Molly screw cost is only the holding cost.. A 12 pack requires three years before it is completely consumed. The tissue may become brittle during that time... 4.23