EACS-2016. Book of Abstracts

Section 4 21st Biennial Conference of the European Association for Chinese Studies 59 Since the movement for new culture and the literary revolution in 1910–1920s the national character of Chinese people became an important topic in Chinese literature and stayed as such throughout the 20th century. Along with Lu Xun, Lin Yutang, Shen Congwen and many other prominent writers, Lao She made a considerable contribution to the exploration of this issue. His novels “The Two Mas” (1929) , “Divorce” (1933), “Camel Xiangzi” (1936), “Four Generations under One Roof” (1944–1948), “Under the Red Banner” (1962) can be regarded as guidebooks to lifestyle and psychology of Chinese people. In my view, the national character was a deliberate object of portrayal during all stages of Lao She’s literary career. The paper analyses historical, social, literary and biographical factors, which influenced Lao She’s treat- ment of this topic. It also characterizes the four stages of Lao She’s exploration of the national character of Chinese people, which are chronologically attributed to 1925–1932, 1933–1937, 1937–1949 and 1949–1966. Following the general trends in the development of modern Chinese literature and its treatment of the above-mentioned issue, Lao She still possessed such unique traits as being more loyal to traditional culture than most of May fourth writers, using comparison between Chinese and foreigners, applying humorist approach, paying special attention to Pekinese culture and such specific phenomena of Chinese psychology as “human feelings”, “face”, etc. Shulunova Olga (Baikal State University) The Conceptosphere of Han Dong’s Urban Lyrics Key words: Chinese literature, modern poetry, urban lyric, conceptosphere, concept The article covers the concepts in urban lyrics of Han Dong ( 韩东 born in 1961), one of the leading artistic personalities of contemporary China. The analysis is run on the slice of cultural linguistics and lit- erary criticism and includes proper Han Dong’s poem’s translation. There is also distinguished few terms, represent-words and poetic devices (metaphor, comparison, and epithet) which help to explicit the concepts. Han Dong’s urban lyric includes such different but interdepended concepts as city, time and space, woman, friendship, darkness, loneliness etc. All the concepts are correlated to each other and have a special structure of 3 layers: traditional understanding (which is always included into the concept), additional value (which connect the social understanding and the author’s view) and directly author's interpretation (author’s indi- vidual point of view). The article covers the ways of interpenetration and interconnection of few concepts which Han Dong’s urban lyric is explicated by. The author concludes that poet’s creative viewwas influenced by customizing the creativity and synthesis of traditional Chinese poetic aspects and trends of western literature. Sidorenko Andrei (Saint Petersburg State University) The Re-evaluation of Revolutionary History in Contemporary Chinese Fiction Key words: 1990s, 1990s, historical fiction, subjectivity, epic novel, socialist realism The so-called revolutionary history 革命歷史 spans from the 1920-s till 1940s. This period of his- tory is very important for the official Chinese historiography and ideology, since its subject matter is the process of the communists' coming to power in China. Due to its importance, this historical period or certain events which are included in it are broadly featured in Chinese socialist fiction of the 1950s. Such novels as ‘The sun over the Sanggan river‘ by Ding Ling, ‘Fortunes of the Li Estate’ by Zhao Shuli can be taken as characteristic examples of the socialist interpretations of the revolutionary history. Its main element, as it appears in these fictions, is the opposition between the ‘old society’ and the ‘new society’, which basically equals ‘good’ vs. ‘bad’ and the history is presented as the progression from the former towards the latter. The late 1980s early 1990s saw the emergence of the so-called New Historical Fiction 新历史小说 . The ‘revolutionary history’ is prominently featured in a number of these fictions (e. g. ‘Ancient Ship’ by Zhang Wei, ‘Life and death are wearing me out’ by Mo Yan, ‘The family of opium poppy’ bu Su Tong, ‘To Live’ by Yu Hua). The history in these novels is not at all altered, rather, it is perceived from another,