China and the West

Virginia Woolf and China : general.
2008 / 2013
Cao Xiaoqin : Virginia Woolf was introduced in 1932 by Ye Gongchao and Chinese readers became acquainted with Woolf through Julian Bell's teaching in National Wuhan University (1935-1936). In the 1930s Woolf's novels influenced Ling Shuhua, Xu Zhimo and Lin Huiyin. From 1949 to 1979 there occurred a sudden silence in Chinese Woolf studies. During these decades of 'New China' literature by modernist writers such as Virginia Woolf were regarded as 'decadent' and therefore these works were 'totally denied, unable to be published openly, hardly found in libraries, and never taught in university classrooms'. From the 1980's on, there was a revived interest in Woolf among Chinese scholars. The large scale Chinese translations of Woolf's works began in the 1980s. Qu Shijing introduced Woolf in 1989. Chinese Woolf studies began increasingly systematic from the late 1990s.

2009
Jin Guanglan : The reception of Woolf has witnessed two stages, in which she is reviewed generally in a positive light. Te first stage from the early 1930s to the late 1940s may be characterized by so-called 'interaction' which sets the tone for the first part of the second stage. The first stage focuses on the interpretation and imitation of Woolf's stream-of-consciousness techniques, involves critique of her feminist essay 'A room of one's own', and culminates in Ling Shuhua's autrobiography, produced with the help of many British intellectuals including Woolf herself. The second stage of Woolf's reception begins in the 1980s with only a few scattered translations and critical essays, given that Woolf was closely connected with modernism, and associated with the various degrees of difficulty. Large scale translation and research of her works appear in the 1990s, which spawned what might be called 'Woolf fever' in the field of foreign literary criticism in China. Up to now, almost all of her novels and essays have been translated into Chinese, and several secondary research books as well as a great number of critical articles have been published.
The political spects of Woolf – her concern with political issues, her representation of politics in her writings, her involvement in the public world, and her role as a public intellectual – are largely ignord. In fact, she continues to be generally regarded as an antipolitical writer. The few critical articles that explore Woolf's feminism deal only with her explicit representation of feminism in 'To the lighthouse' and her theoretical explication of androgyny in 'A room of one's own'.
Woolf's cultural impact on contemporary Chinese writers is great. As promising writers or poets in China, such writers of the first generation of Woolf studies had a keen understanding of literature. In addition, they had bilingual and bicultural advantages, as well as exposure to the literary milieu of Woolf. Their direct contact with the Bloomsbury group made it possible for them to know the new literary trend. Although, the criticism generated during the first stage of Woolf scholarship is small in quantity, it is good in quality.
The future of Woolf studies in China is promising because more and more intellectuals are engaged in researching her works.

2010
Lee Kwee-len : Virginia Woolf's reputation as a writer, critic, and writer has long traveled far and wide. While her popularity in Europe has been well documented, her reception in the Chinese-speaking world--which enjoys the largest population on earth--has been little discussed. This study represents an effort to trace the reception and influence of Woolf and her work in China and Taiwan, which share similar cultures and languages but have been separated by socio-political ideologies, back to as early as the 1920s. The discussion is temporally divided into four periods, from the pre-separation period before 1949, the pre-open-policy period before 1978, the pre-21st century period, through the most recent decade in the very beginning of the twenty-first century. Each period is shown to demonstrate its unique characteristics. The three decades before the Nationalist government retreated to Taiwan enjoyed a privilege of direct contact or correspondence with Woolf herself and her contemporaries. Such a privilege was nevertheless limited to the elite few, which in turn limited Woolf's overall reception. The next period witnessed a Woolf never so forlorn in the Chinese-speaking worlds. In China, she was totally silenced along with her modernist comrades. Her reception in Taiwan appeared somewhat better but was still hardly commensurate with the efforts introducing her and her contemporaries. The last two decades of the twentieth century saw her reception on the rise in both Taiwan and China. Their somewhat different readerships, however, distinguished the ways in which she had been received: while Taiwan was warm and quick to notice her social concerns, China was more critical in attitude and focused more on her literary theories. During the 2000s, Woolf's reception is argued to have matured to such an extent that it turns into influences as evidenced in the various artistic creations in response to her works and the various appropriations of her image as a feminist writer. From the sporadic budding in the first half of the twentieth century to its full blossom in the last decade, Woolf's reception is examined against its receiving environment and argued to vary with different factors at different times.