EACS-2016. Book of Abstracts

Section 4 21st Biennial Conference of the European Association for Chinese Studies 53 Whether he is writing about the growing pains of an adolescent boy, the mysteries of sexual desire, or the organs on display in an anatomy class, Feng Tang’s trilogy is marked by a fascination with the body, especially the male body. Feng's descriptions focus on physiological mechanisms, highly graphic and far from idealized. They are flawed, absurd and apparently uncontrollable. This paper delves into Feng’s exploration of the body, and considers its implications for Feng's transgressive intentions, his response to postsocialist modernity, and his configuration of masculinity. Drawing on the Bakhtinian concept of grotesque realism, I will argue that his unruly male bodies stand to serve two, occasionally conflicting, purposes: firstly to illustrate the messy, awkward and seemingly unsatiable desires that have appeared in post-reform China; and secondly, as a means of resisting main- stream authoritarian values, especially state control. I will then consider the effect of Feng’s insistence on contrasting unruly male bodies with the highly controlled female bodies they encounter: the transgression that Feng celebrates is ultimately reserved only for men. As well as providing one of the first detailed discussion of Feng Tang’s ‘audacious’ project, this paper contributes to studies of postsocialist masculinities. It highlights also the need to consider how bodies, writing and power hierarchies continue to intertwine in Chinese cultural production. Keung Hiu Man (The University of Edinburgh) ‘Nora’Missing Home: A Re-examination on the Ethical Restraints in Bai Wei’s Drama Key words: Bai Wei (1894–1987), Ibsen in China, Women Emancipation, Modern Chinese Women Playwright, Single Women Nora, the female protagonist in Henrik Ibsen’s ADoll’s House, was well known as an awakening image in modern China and her resolute act of leaving home were repeatedly adapted in May Fourth Literature. Xiao Yuelin 蕭月林 in Bai Wei’s 白薇 (1894–1987) Dachu youlingta 打出幽靈塔 (Breaking out of the Ghost Tower) has long been regarded as a significant heroine, as she sacrificed her life to cast off shackles of the family. Readers and critics to date are convinced that her tragedy was solely prompted by the feudal culture, and overlooked the fact that Xiao had deliberately given up chances of self-redemption. To leave or not to leave, was generally being regarded as an indubitable question. Investigations on why Bai Wei depicted hesitations on this issue and its implications are still found wanting. Bai Wei was a pioneer in women emancipation, as she fled to Japan to fight for her freedom of love in 1918. Being a liberated ‘Nora’, she developed new insights for women’s independence. In the first part of this paper, I will uncover and analyze the agonizing struggles for revolting against traditional ethics embedded in Breaking out of the Ghost Tower and her other plays. By mapping against her life experiences, I argue that despite advocating individualism, she criticized the prevailing way of pursuing freedom and denied personal interests should override one’s duties towards her parents, siblings and children. In the second part, I will examine how the dramatic form prompted Bai to conduct ethical interrogations over family ties, as these are not found in other genres of her writings. By reviewing how Bai missed home and created characters eventually missed out opportunities to preserve their treasured home, this paper will not only excite fresh interpretations on Bai’s playwriting practices, enhance our understanding on modern women’s straddle between traditional values and new culture, but also establishes a new perspective to evaluate the Nora phenomenon in Republican China. Khuziiatova Nadezhda (Far Eastern Federal University) Writings of Xu Xiaobin: in Search of the Lost Syncretism Key words: contemporary Chinese literature, intertextuality, myth, syncretism, Xu Xiaobin Paradoxically and mysteriousness are characteristics of works of contemporary Chinese writer Xu Xia- obin (1953) which bring the readers out from a framework of habitual perceptions of finite logical texts of “traditional” literature (including vanguard, surrealism, and postmodernism). This research allowed revealing the following features of her writings.