China and the West

Gründung der Zhongguo lü xing ju tuan (China Travel Drama Troupe) durch Tang Huaiqiu in Shanghai.

Hong, Shen. Hong Shen xi qu ji. [O'Neill and Hong Shen]. [ID D28773].
The fictive conversation between two representatives of modern American and modern Chinese literature takes place in January 1933 and their meeting place are the opposite shores of the Pacific Ocean. The conversation turns around the question of imitation and originality in the dramatic work and concerns mostly O'Neill's Mourning becomes Electra. At the start Hong Shen reproaches O'Neill with having unduly copied Aeschylus and his Oresteia. Nonetheless, his admiration belongs to O'Neill for he writes ; "I like very much to read your plays. They explain the oldest affairs and conflicts with the aid of the latest scholarly notions. This is very correct and I admire you for it". Yet despite this admiration, O'Neill seems in this conversation to be no more than the speaker of Hong Shen's ideas. O'Neill appears as an older school-fellow. Hong Shen accepts to be instructed by him, but in reality O'Neill says only what suits Hong Shen's ideological and artistic design. This then is equivalent to asserting that the statements in this dialogue are Hong Shen's own statements.
Hong Shen writes : "Food and love are to great needs in human life : man cannot avoid satisfying these two physiological needs. Numerous writers from ancient until modern times have described various murders committed to provide food. But few have described this truthfully and deeply. There are many who have described murders for the sake of love ; however, there the relationships are usually distorted or delineated superficially. It would be very difficult to find one who can describe these conflicts as deeply as did O'Neill."

Liang, Shiqiu. [The heritage of literature]. [ID D28854].
Liang said, that it was wrong to conclude that Shakespeare was in favor of the bourgeoisie because of some contemptuous statements by aristocrats about the common people in Shakespeare's plays. He argued that, since there were many expressions of sympathy for poor people in Shakespeare's works, it would be just as easy to prove that Shakespeare is a 'proletarian writer'.

Xiao Qian studies at the Faculty of English and the Faculty of Journalism at Yanjing University under Edgar Snow.

Zhang, Yuerui. Meilijian wen xue [ID D29501].
Liu Haiming : Zhang felt that Twain 'described things realistically' and was 'consistently humorous'. He regarded Twain as a 'humorist' who 'maintained a compassionate, paceful, forbearing attitude towards human weakness'.

Ai, Qing. The sailor's tobacco pipe.
"If I am to paint a picture of Whitman or Mayakovsky, I will definitely add a sailor's tobacco pipe in their lifetimes."

Zhang, Yuerui. Meilijian wen xue [ID D29501].
Zhang devoted a short paragraph to Herman Melville observing him as one of 'the modern important satirists in the New York Group to critique both human hypocrisy and the bloody colonial wars in the Western world'. Apart from his passing remarks on Typee, Omoo, Mardi, and White-acket, he notices 'the theme of incest in Pierre', a book that 'embodies Melville's deepest pessimism'. He concluded that 'Moby Dick was not even recognized as a great novel until the 1920s', displaying his sympathy for the ignored American. His introductory words ignited a wide interest in Melville.

Yeats, W.B. Vacillation. In : Yeats, W.B. The winding stair and other poems. (London : Macmillan, 1933).
http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/wbyeats/bl-wbye-vac.htm.
IV
… A rivery field spread out below,
An odour of the new-mown hay
In his nostrils, the great lord of Chou
Cried, casting off the mountain snow,
"Let all things pass away.'…
[The great lord of Chou : .vermutlich Zhou Gong 11. Jh. v. Chr.]

[While in Paris, Monroe Wheeler sent Marianne Moore and her mother some Chinese handkerchiefs and writing paper with matching envelopes.]
Letter from Marianne Moore to Monroe Wheeler ; March 3, 1933.
The word of China's glores – that is to say of your having them – rejoices us. It is so possible to go to a country and see the proffered wonders, missing the true ones ; not to mention being swallowed up in population and seeing nothing of the people who are wonders. You epitomize China – for us in your comparison of it with Japan ; not that one doesn't admire the special proficiencies of Japan, the dexterity, sense of scenery, concise imagination and so on, but for sagesse as Lachaise called it, one takes China ; and of course at present our sympathies establish new loyalties. The handkerchiefs almost frighten us by their perfection. Even a bungler must see that maintained rectangles in drawn-work so tenuous and complicated, required genius and many years' apprenticeship ; and the fineness of the material is to begin with a constant wonder. This paper was a piquant sight to western eyes – the etched red dog on the green cover sheet not being the least feature. I think the two red gum leaves are perhaps the masterpiece, though one has leanings toward the frog - & toward both envelopes. To think of hazarding two such birds near P. Office cancellation marks seems blasphemy. Accuracy and liveness so remarkable – presented freely in this was as if it were an everyday affair, make one breathe eastier having set up for a writer rather than as a painter. (If I could read Chinese I might be in deeper trouble)… To have seen Mei Lan Fang would in itself be enough reward for going to China – let alone several times, and personally, as you have. I liked him so much the one time I saw him in New York, that I was well satisfied not to go to anything else at the theatre afterward that season… I was lured to New York to make a call, and of my own accord went to the Institute to a lecture on American, Spanish, and Chinese alpine flora and to a series of bird and animal motion pictures by Drs. Bailey and Niedbrock of Chicago… Mother has been scorning me for writing a letter to a child in Samoa, on Chinese paper…

Moore, Marianne. Emily Dickinson. In : Poetry ; no 41 (Jan. 1933). [Review of Letters of Emily Dickinson, edited by Mabel Loomis Todd (Harper & Brothers)].
An element of the Chinese taste was part of this choiceness, in its daring associations of the prismatically true ; the gamboge and pink and cochineal of the poems ; the oleander blossom tied with black rib bon ; the dandelion with scarlet ; the rowan spray with white.

Letter from Marianne Moore to William Rose Benét ; August 21, 1933.
I was born pro-Chinese and bombs busting in air from Japan have not reversed my allegiance ; but I feel that the shrinking Noguchi was a song-bird murtured by Cuckoos.

Xu, Mingji. Yingjili wen xue [ID D30613].
Xu's brief account represents a general understanding of Jane Austen under many aspects : subject matter, style, characterization, satire, innovation, artistic achievements etc.

Lowry, Malcolm. Ultramarine : a novel. (London : Cape, 1933).
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/241398.Ultramarine.
Ultramarine is the story of Dana Hilliot's first voyage, as mess-boy on the freighter Oedipus Tyrannus bound for Bombay and Singapore: of his struggle to win the approval of his shipmates, trying to match their example in the bars and bordellos of the Chinese ports while at the same time remaining faithful to his first love, Janet, back home in England. Alternating between Dana's own narrative and the ribald humor and colorful language of the sailors' conversation, Ultramarine depicts a boy's initiation into the company of men.
The ships's frequent entries into and exists out of seaports like Qingdao, Ningbo and Shanghai.

Margery Fry reist in China. Sie gibt Vorlesungen and chinesischen Universitäten, trifft Ling Shuhua und Chen Yuan. Als erste führt sie die Bloomsbury in China ein, indem sie ein Gemälde ihres Bruders Roger Fry Professor S.K. Wang, dem Präsidenten der Wuhan Universität überreicht.

Hilton, James. Lost horizon [ID D32168].
Zusammenfassung
Hugh Conway, a veteran member of the British diplomatic service, finds inner peace, love, and a sense of purpose in Shangri-La, whose inhabitants enjoy unheard-of longevity. Among the book's themes is an allusion to the possibility of another cataclysmic world war brewing. It is said to have been inspired at least in part by accounts of travels in Tibetan borderlands, published in National Geographic by the explorer and botanist Joseph Rock. The remote communities he visited, such as Muli, show many similarities to the fictional Shangri-La. One such town, Zhongdian, has now officially renamed itself Shangri La (Chinese: Xianggelila) because of its claim to be the inspiration for the novel. The book explicitly notes that, having made war on the ground, man would now fill the skies with death, and all precious things were in danger of being lost, like the lost histories of Rome ("Lost books of Livy"). It was hoped that, overlooked by the violent, Shangri-la would preserve them and reveal them later to a receptive world exhausted by war. That was the real purpose of the lamasery; study, inner peace, and long life were a side benefit to living there. Conway is a veteran of the trench warfare of WWI, with the emotional state frequently cited after that war—a sense of emotional exhaustion or accelerated emotional aging. This harmonises with the existing residents of the lamasery and he is strongly attracted to life at Shangri-La. The origin of the eleven numbered chapters of the novel is explained in a prologue and epilogue, whose narrator is a neurologist. This neurologist and a novelist friend, Rutherford, are given dinner at Tempelhof, Berlin, by their old school-friend Wyland, a secretary at the British embassy. A chance remark by a passing airman brings up the topic of Hugh Conway, a British consul in Afghanistan, who disappeared under odd circumstances. Later in the evening, Rutherford reveals to the narrator that, after the disappearance, he discovered Conway in a French mission hospital in Chung-Kiang (probably Chongqing), China, suffering from amnesia. Conway recovered his memory and told Rutherford his story, then slipped away again. Rutherford wrote down Conway's story; he gives the manuscript to the neurologist, and that manuscript becomes the heart of the novel. In May 1931, during the British Raj in India, the 80 white residents of Baskul are being evacuated to (Peshawar), owing to a revolution. In the aeroplane of the Maharajah of Chandrapore are Conway, the British consul, age 37 Mallinson, his young vice-consul; an American, Barnard; and a British missionary, Miss Brinklow. The plane is hijacked and flown instead over the mountains to Tibet. After a crash landing, the pilot dies, but not before telling the four (in Chinese, which Conway knows) to seek shelter at the nearby lamasery of Shangri-La. The location is unclear, but Conway believes the plane has "progressed far beyond the western range of the Himalayas towards the less known heights of the Kuen-Lun". The four are taken there by a party directed by Chang, a postulant at the lamasery who speaks English. The lamasery has modern conveniences, like central heating bathtubs from Akron, Ohio; a large library; a grand piano; a harpsichord; and food from the fertile valley below. Towering above is Karakal, literally translated "Blue Moon," a mountain more than 28,000 feet high. Mallinson is keen to hire porters and leave, but Chang politely puts him off. The others eventually decide they are content to stay; Miss Brinklow, to teach the people a sense of sin; Barnard, because he is really Chalmers Bryant (wanted by the police for stock fraud), and because he is keen to develop the gold-mines in the valley; and Conway, because the contemplative scholarly life suits him. A seemingly young Manchu woman, Lo-Tsen, is another postulant at the lamasery. She does not speak English, but plays the harpsichord. Mallinson falls in love with her, as does Conway, though more languidly. Conway is given an audience with the High Lama, an unheard-of honor. He learns that the lamasery was constructed in its present form by a Catholic monk named Perrault from Luxembourg, in the early eighteenth century. The lamasery has since then been joined by others who have found their way into the valley. Once they have done so, their aging slows; if they then leave the valley, they age quickly and die. Conway guesses correctly that the High Lama is Perrault, now 300 years old. In a later audience, the High Lama reveals that he is finally dying, and that he wants Conway to lead the lamasery. Meanwhile, Mallinson has arranged to leave the valley with porters and Lo-Tsen. They are waiting for him 5 kilometers outside the valley, but he cannot traverse the dangerous route by himself, so he convinces Conway to go along. This ends Rutherford's manuscript. The last time Rutherford saw Conway, it appeared he was preparing to make his way back to Shangri-La. Rutherford completes his account by telling the neurologist that he attempted to track Conway and verify some of his claims of Shangri-La. He found the Chung-Kiang doctor who had treated Conway. The doctor said Conway had been brought in by a Chinese woman who was ill and died soon after. She was old, the doctor had told Rutherford, "Most old of anyone I have ever seen", implying that it was Lo-Tsen, aged drastically by her departure from Shangri-La.

Sekundärliteratur
Tomoko Masuzawa : Hilton's Shangri-La is an unmappable, secret location where the native Tibetan population figures very little except as the lowest and the most menially employed sector of the society. If Shangri-La is utopian and possesses a measure of perfection, it is as an ideal colonial regime, where a small number of Europeans and aging Chinese bureaucrats dominate, peaceably but incontrovertibly, and rule over the happily simple multitude of native inhabitants who die relatively young, knowing nothing about the world beyond their own idyllic valley.

Tietjens, Eunice. From China . Chinese poems in English rhyme by Ts'ai T'ing-kan : review [ID D32292].
Lovers of Chinese poetry will welcome this book, not because the translations are masterpieces, for they are hardly that, but because the book as a whole is so extraordinarily civilized, and suited to the content of the poems themselves. Partly the charm lies in the beautiful physical make-up, which gives on each page, above the English translation, the original Chinese text in satisfying black characters ; partly it lies in the sense of the personality of the translator in introduction and notes, the distinguished admiral and diplomat Ts'ai T'ing-Kan, whose background is a combination of the ancient Chinese classical education and a college curriculum in America. Even the delightfully sly Chinese humor is here, in a sober-seeming reprinting, 'less the Chinese periods of history may mean but little to the Western reader', of a list of the kings of England at the time of the T'ang dynasty. As the admiral points out, during the first two centuries of the T'ang there 'was no mention of the kings in England'.
The poems translated are all quatrains of the T'ang Dynasty from an anthology of the period. With a number of them I am familiar in other translations, but many are, I believe, new in English. The translations themselves, while few of them are magical, are exact and scholarly and quite capable of passing on to us pleasure in the originals. They are at their best, I think, in those poems which call for a certain sprightliness and humor. Altogether Admiral Ts'ai, the first Chinese who has attempted such a translation, has done a surprisingly good job.

The Times accepted Peter Fleming's proposal to go to China as a special correspondent of a roving commission.
Berlin – Moscow – Trans-Sibertia – by train : Manchukuo – Harbin – Changchun – Shenyang – Fushun – Beijing – Shanghai – Hangzhou – Nanjing – Yangzi – Kuling : Interview with Chiang Kai-shek – Nanfeng – Guangzhou – Hong Kong – Japan.
Kuling : Interview with Chiang Kai-shek
"He came into the room quickly and stood quite still, looking at us. He wore a dark blue gown and carried in one hand a scroll, evidently part of the agenda of his conference… His eyes were the most remarkable thing about him. They were large, handsome and very keen. His glances had a thrusting and compelling quality which is very rare in China… As a rule contact with the great brings out the worst in me… But before Chiang Kai-shek I retired abashed."

Jack London : Chinese commentaries
1933
[London, Jack]. Shen yuan xia de ren men. Jiake Lundun zhu ; Qiu Yunduo yi. [ID D33499].
Qiu Yunduo describes London as an inspiration to socialism : "Dear readers, if you do not shut the door and your eyes, you would know that the dark side and difficulties of life can be seen everywhere. Rotten metal and rubbish, abyss and hell, these are not unique to the East End of London, but are common to modern society. In the so-called best districts of Shanghai, I see with my own eyes the hell-like miseries depicted in this book ; to tell the truth, reality sometimes is much worse than in the book. The only remaining road is to challenge – and in this lies the meaning of this novel".

1935
[London, Jack]. Lao quan shi. Jiake Lundun zhu ; Zhang Menglin yi. [ID D34489].
Zhang compares London in his introduction to an American Gorky.

1935
[London, Jack]. Ye xing de hu huan. Jiake Lundun zhu ; Liu Dajie, Zhang Menglin yi. [ID D34489].
Liu concludes in the preface "The American people and progressive forces worldwide are fighting agains capitalist reactionaries and warmongers, and London's literary legacy has become the former's powerful weapon." Liu identifies in London a contradiction between his "deep, irreconcilable hate for the capitalist world and passion for class struggles".

1943
[London, Jack]. Mading Yideng. Zhou Xing yi. [ID D34490].
Zhou Xing argues that "London is more than a propagandist, he is an artist well versed in depicting characters too". Zhou pays particular attention to characterization of Martin Eden, asserting that his suicide represents a protest against decadent bourgeois society that envelops him He distinguishes London from Gorky by suggesting "There are those who accept collectivism and thus improve themselves, such as Gorky. There are thos who dither between rationalism and sentimentalism and eventually arrive at their own destruction. Jack London is a case in point".

1952
[London, Jack]. Qiang zhe de li liang. Jieke Lundun ; Xu Tianhong yi. [ID D34497].
According to Xu Tianhong, London's political consciousness remains limited by excessive individualism and avoidance of revolutionary struggle through escape into the pristine simplicities of nature. For Xu, while serious flaws remain even in London's most revolutionary works they expose and denounce international imperialism.

1953
[London, Jack]. Tie ti. Lundun zhu ; Wu Lao, Jin Lu yi. [ID D34500].
Wu Lao tells readers that when London published the novel in 1907 it was widely condemned "but the book is hugely popular among Soviet readers, especially the youth".
In the introduction to the 2003 edition Wu Lao and Jin Lu argue that with rapid changes in present-day social structures, the political base of Western communism is shrinking and disappearing. While many workers belong to the working-class in socio-economic terms, psychologically they identify with the middle class. In addition to this shift in the nature of the working class, change can emerge paeacefully in mature democracies. "Even in America, where two capitalist parties rule alternately, such severe class confrontation as depicted in The iron heel that forces revolutionaries to resort to armed uprisings against counter-revolutionary violence is unlikely to occur." Violent anti-government attack would be condemned as terrorism rather than liberation.

1955
[London, Jack]. Mading Yideng. Wu Lao yi. [ID D34496].
Introduction by Wu Lao of the 1981 edition :
For Wu Lao, London was a genuine political revolutionary who might have been at the head of an American proletarian movement were it not for his career as a fiction-writer. He reads Martin Eden as a novel of working class self-identity and as an attack on bourgeois individualism energized by London's intellectual epiphany from reading Marx's Communist Manifesto. Yet Wu criticizes London for his vacillation between Marxism and the subversive attractions of Nietzsche's anti-socialist radical individualism. Even though London was caught in this contradiction, according to Wu Lao, his writing remained firmly committed to the working class and was a source of revolutionary confrontation with American capitalism.

1978
[London, Jack]. Mading Yideng. Pan Shaozhong yi. [ID D34491].
In the preface Pan Shaozhong writes while the novel contributes "a penetrating revelation of the evil and ugliness of the bourgeoisie", its social significance remains limited by harmful individualism.

1981
[London, Jack]. Jieke Lundun duan pian xiao shuo xuan. Wan Zi, Yu Ning yi. [ID D34493].
Wan Zi and Yu Ning appreciated London's critique of capitalism and colonialism while pointing to his 'shortcomings' and 'erroneous attitude of white supremacism', they were the first translators in nearly a half-century to discuss his racism.

1985
[London, Jack]. Re ai sheng ming. Jieke Lundun zhu ; Wan Zi, Yu Ning yi. [ID D34498].
Wan Zi and Yu Ning : "Many of London's best works expost and criticize the darkness of capitalist society, decry the colonial exploitation of imperialism, and sing praise for the audacity of revolutionaries".

1988
Li, Shuyan. Jieke Lundun yan jiu. Li Shuyan xuan bian [ID D34600].
Li Shuyan dismisses London as 'no great thinker', one influenced by pseudo-science as well as science, narrow-minded patriotism as well as internationalism, and by white supremacy. "Quite a few ideas in his works would turn out to be wrong. Some were confused and simplistic even at his time".

1994
[London, Jack]. Jieke Lundun duan pian xiao shuo xuan. Jiang Jiansong yi. [ID D34494].
Jiang notes the racist themes of London's writing and attributes political contradictions to his 'eclectic reading'. Jiang distances himself from the selection contained in this collection of short stories with a caution that "We may not agree with ideologies reflected in certain works".

1995
[London, Jack]. Yi kuai niu pai : Jieke Lundon zhong duan pian xiao shuo jing xuan. Jieke Lundon zhu ; Yu Bin, Wen Hong bian. [ID D34502].
[Enthält] : London, Jack. A piece of steak.
The enthusiastic indtroduction of Yu Bin and Wen Hong suggests that the reading public and critics were re-evaluating London to appreciate him more for narrative aesthetics, less as a propagandist. They too respond to the internationalism of London's writing : "Jack London is called a Red writer and he would call himself a socialist on account of the fact that he supported social revolution and hoped that the class into which he was born could lead a better life. What is more praiseworthy is that London also wrote stories such as The Mexican that commended socialist revolution and supported weak nations seeking independence. Stories on such topics have had huge influence on the under-class in America's readers, on the working class, and on readers in other countries who either belong to the working class or sympathize with social revolutions."

1996
[London, Jack]. Jieke Lundun zhong duan pian xiao shuo jing xuan = Selected novelettes and short stories of Jack London. Jieke Lundun Zhu ; Lu Weimin yi [ID D34495].
Lu Weimin's afterword to a collection of stories argues "London's masterpiece Martin Eden and his political dystopian novel The iron heel both demonstrate certain proletarian characteristics. The former is penetrating in criticizing the decadence and emptiness of capitalist society, whereas the latter, besides denouncing the oligarchy of American capitalists, specifically opposes opportunism in workers' movements and is thus the first American literary work of proletarian character."

1996
[London, Jack]. Mading Yideng. Jieke Lundun zhu ; Zhang Xumei, Xi Qingming deng yi. [ID D34492].
Zhang and Xu states that the novel "directly challenges the values of the bourgeoisie and has exposed the hypocrisy and decadence of the upper class", forming a dramatic contrast with conemporary "smiling faces" novels. For such critics, London represents a political cutting edge that can renew a lacking spirit in recent fiction.

1997
[London, Jack]. Re ai sheng ming. Jieke Lundun zhu ; Hu Chunlan yi. [ID D34488].
Hu Chunlan suggests that contemporary Chinese readers can benefit from more balanced political appreciation of London : "During the McCarthy era when the Cold War mentality prevailed, views on Jack London's works once served as a benchmark dividing literary critics into leftists and rightists. Until this day America's mainstream critics still hold a lower evalutation of London than he deserves. But Chinese readers do not have to undervalue London's achievements on this account, nor do we have to ideologize overly Jack London and his works."

Alexander Bunge wird korrespondierendes Mitglied der Akademie der Wissenschaften und Professor für Botanik der Universität Kasan.(

Ernst-Günther Mohr ist Botschafter der Botschaft in Beijing. Er tritt 1935 der NSDAP bei.