Teaching Yang Jiang

This is part of a continuing set of readings about Yang Jiang, a Chinese writer who forms the subject of my dissertation (below, second from left, at age 16). As I've mentioned before, her autobiographical writings are so well-established that some of them are actually taught in Chinese schools. Here is a some evidence that Yang Jiang is part of the established curriculum for schools in Hong Kong.

Yang Jiang in the 6th Grade



The Education Bureau of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China. Zhong liu Zhongguo wenxue: mingzhu xuandu jianjie 中六中國文學——名著選讀簡介 (Form 6 Chinese Literature: Selections and Introductions to Classic Works).

The Chinese Canon

Using Google, I found this on the webpage of the HK Education Bureau. The list of 48 works covered ranges from the Tang dynasty to literature of the 1980s, with a fairly equal distribution between modern and pre-modern works. The preface (this link goes to a .pdf file) to this listing dates it to September 2003 and says it is meant to accompany a 2002 publication entitled Guide to Chinese Literature Curriculum (Form 6) 中國文學課程指引（中六）. Apparently this is supplied to teachers to help them select works for their classes, and to give them guidelines for teaching these works. In the terms of my field, I think this institutional authority over works would be called a form of canon formation. Thus, the listing is a kind of canon. Yang Jiang's memoir of the Cultural Revolution may be the only representative work describing this period of Chinese history -- or if it isn't it is clearly one of very few such works -- and so the listing helps me show that her memoir of the Cultural Revolution is a major part of the 'official history' of that period. "Official" here refers very simply to the historical narrative promulgated in educational institutions sponsored through the Chinese government. The mere list of officially designated works no doubt provides some great insights into how Chinese teach and understand their own history, but before I study the list as a whole more carefully, I have focused on the entry for Yang Jiang's memoir of the Cultural Revolution, Six Chapters of a Cadre School.

Yang Jiang the Teacher: The Official Yang Jiang

The listing described above links to a three-page account (again, a .pdf file) of Six Chapters of a Cadre School, including a brief introduction to the author, summary of the contents of the work, and list of teaching suggestions. I sort of half-expected this to be boring reading, but it wasn't, mostly because it was full of surprises. The brief little biography of Yang Jiang was quite different than other such snippets because it emphasized her role as a teacher and leader in education so much more firmly. Where Yang Jiang and her other biographers have minimized or entirely elided her teaching career during and after the war in Shanghai and Beijing, the biography here poudly calls her a "professor of foreign languages" at Zhendan Women's University in Shanghai and a "professor of Western languages" at Qinghua University in Beijing. It makes sense that the "official" Yang Jiang would stress these credentials as a teacher.

Yang Jiang the Political Critic: The Chinese Verdict on the Cultural Revolution

Given that the summary of the book's contents is a government-produced publication intended for middle school teachers to use in their classes, I was frankly surprised at what a sophisticated elaboration on the style of the work and the form of its critique appears here. Six Chapters is praised for inheriting key elements of the style of its 18th-century predecessor, Shen Fu's Six Chapters of a Floating Life, especially the celebration of love within marriage, and the meticulously-drawn portrait of home life, and also domestic concerns that follows a synechdocal pattern characteristic of Chinese poetics, allowing the reader to see from the part expressed the whole of the historical situation. "What is of interest here," explains the curricular guide, "is how the few stitches reflect the entire tapestry, how whimsical asides can effectively tell the whole tale." The Cultural Revolution is castigated as one of the worst moments in Chinese history, but Yang Jiang's writing is particularly praised for foregoing "complaint and accusation" (kongsu qianze 控訴譴責) in favor of maintaining in a calm, placating tone (pinghe de yudiao 平和的語調) a lightly-sketched (diandiandandan 點點淡淡) form of satire (fengci 諷刺). The summary emphasizes that the satirical content of the work is framed in a mild, because fundamentally stoic (wunaihe wanzhuan 無奈和婉轉) form that has to be 'tasted at length' (zixi jujue 仔細咀嚼) in order to appreciate the 'sharpness' (xinla 辛辣) of the critique. Here and in the chapter-by-chapter reading guidelines that follow, the education bureau officially endorses reading strategies that are closely aligned with the best available strategies that I have been able to discover, offering Yang Jiang a far greater stake in actual political critique than Kong Qingmao did in his biography (cf. my comments on this biography).

Wounds Without Complaint (yuan er bu nu 怨而不怒): Officially Historicizing the Cultural Revolution

In a brief but densely-packaged exposition on the artistry of Six Chapters with teaching suggestions, the prescribed curriculum defines the central issue in a clear and simple opening sentence: "This work manifests the "Wounds Without Complaint" (yuan er bu nu 怨而不怒) element of traditional Chinese literature." The slogan "wounds without complaint" serves, predictably, to distinguish Yang Jiang's work from the aggressiveness of 'scar literature.' Rather, Yang Jiang's memoir focuses on the sources and manifestations of true human relationships. Yang Jiang's love for her husband is brought up again, alongside the mutual love and respect that grows between her and the little dog Xiao qu 小趨. The latter example is crucially important for the bitter irony of finding the seeds of a new, genuine humanism in a dog rather than the surrounding humanity. The curriculum guide does not suggest that readers can use this point to stage their own political critique, but it does not deny this possibility either.

Finally, an illuminating set of study questions concludes the curriculum guide. Readers are asked to contrast Yang Jiang's 'casual, placating' (xisong pingchang 稀鬆平常) style with the preface supplied by her husband, which is imagined to be written as a 'stinging insult' (tongma 痛罵) to all those ignored the voice of their consciences, allowing the torment of their fellow man to go unopposed. Clearly, the writers of this curriculum guide put special value in the unaggressive writing style exhibited in Yang Jiang. A second question names three elements of Yang Jiang's artistic style and asks students to search the text for examples of each: "Wounds without womplaint" (yuan er bu nu 怨而不怒), "Hidden meanings in the text" (yan wai zhi yin 言外之音), and "Writing warm love of life" (xie qing xi ni 寫情細膩). This is the first time I have encountered two out of the three terms listed here, which shows how much I have to learn about the rhetorical framework that Chinese readers use to understand Yang Jiang's writing as part of a long tradition of poetical-satirical memory writing. [To be continued...]