The development of literary newspapers and periodicals
The appearance of literature in the late Qing Dynasty, especially novels, is a by-product of newspapers and periodicals, and evolved from a series of social reactions that deepened the political crisis. 1894- 1895 The humiliation of China's defeat in the Sino-Japanese War finally awakened the intellectual elite and prompted them to take action. However, their demand for reform did not reach its peak until the unsuccessful political reform movement in 1898. After the disillusionment of top-down reform, the bachelor of arts who are interested in reform abandoned the incompetent country and became the radical spokesmen of China society. Their efforts focused on mobilizing "public opinion" to put pressure on the central government. They found that newspapers in treaty ports were an effective means to achieve this goal.
As early as the second half of the19th century, unofficial newspapers appeared, mainly funded by western missionaries. However, their rapid increase is the result of the advocacy of intellectuals determined to reform. Liang Qichao's "Strong Memories" and "Current Affairs" were published in 1895 and 1896 respectively, as the organ newspapers of Kang Youwei's reformists. After the failure of the 1898 political reform, Liang fled to Japan and founded two newspapers, Qingyi Daily (1898-) and Xinmin Cong Daily (190 1-), which continued his journalism and soon became an authoritative newspaper. Yan Fu followed Liang Qichao's example to help set up the National Newspaper (1897-), and Di Chu Qing set up The Times (1904-). Revolutionaries soon established their own newspapers and joined the ranks of the press, especially Zhang's Su Bao (1897-) and National Daily (1903-). By 1906, according to statistics, there were 66 newspapers published in Shanghai alone, and the total number of newspapers published during this period reached 239.
In order to promote their career, these newspapers usually publish sharp news, but they also include entertaining poems and articles, which were later published in special "supplements". Due to the increasing demand for this supplement, another independent magazine has been expanded. Thus literary newspapers and periodicals were born. The editors of these journals are a group of journalists-writers who know a little about western literature and foreign languages and have a solid foundation for China's traditional literature. The contents of these publications are all kinds of fake translations, poems, essays and serial novels. They claim to raise people's social and political awareness, but they are also for public entertainment. By the end of this period, there had been New Fiction founded by Liang Qichao (1902-), Xiu Xiang Fiction edited by Li (1903-) and Fiction Monthly edited by Wu Woyao and Zhou Guisheng (1906-).
At least 20 years before the "literary revolution" in 19 17, the semi-modern form of "popular literature" of urban literature newspapers and periodicals has created markets and readers for writers and artists of new literature. Editors and writers of these magazines are rushing to write to meet the scheduled time limit and write a lot to make money. Their hard work has created a new profession: the commercial success of their works proves that literature can become an independent and potentially profitable profession. However, it was not until the successors of the May 4th Movement that this new profession was endowed with high social prestige.
A noteworthy feature of literary newspapers and periodicals in the late Qing Dynasty is that "novel" occupies an overwhelming position in the naming of magazines and as a literary genre. The word "novel" still includes all kinds of literary forms except elegant prose and poetry, just like tradition. According to the understanding of late Qing writers, "novel" includes all kinds of popular narrative literature-classical stories, novels, tanci, and even drama. But among all these various forms, serial novels are undoubtedly the most important literary form in late Qing literature. This is especially due to the pioneering efforts of Liang Qichao and other literary elites, who injected the vitality and political significance of new ideas into this traditional "degenerate" literary genre.
"New Novel" Theory
Three important declarations express the important relationship between novels and society-the social and political functions of novels. In the first issue of Tianjin National Daily, Yan Fu and Xia Cengyou wrote an article entitled "The Origin of the Attached Library Department". In this article, they expounded the influence of this novel on the masses in the past to emphasize its potential educational function now. However, Yan Fu, with a typical condescending attitude of traditional literati, warned that China's traditional novels were also full of toxins. "People with shallow knowledge, if so ignorant, will be overwhelmed by their poison, and their benefits are hard to say." Therefore, we must re-educate the people of China with new novels that create miracles in the West and Japan.
Liang Qichao basically holds the same view in the article "Preface to Translating and Printing Political Novels" written in 1898. He agrees that Yan Fu's novels have potential educational functions, but he even despises traditional works. Liang Qichao accused China that most of his novels imitated Water Margin or A Dream of Red Mansions, and was condemned by scholars as "teaching prostitutes and thieves". The urgent task is to carry out a "novel revolution" and lead the public's interest to a "political novel" inspired by Japanese novels (this preface was written by Liang Qichao for translating Chai Shirang's Adventures in America). Liang Qichao naturally gave a powerful description of the origin and reputation of foreign novels:
At the beginning of reform in European countries, Confucian masters, scholars and people with lofty ideals often wrote their own experiences and political arguments in their hearts into novels. Therefore, sons who drop out of school talk with their hands in their spare time, while soldiers, not Philistines, but farmers, craftsmen and rickshaws, and women, children and children can't talk with their hands. Often every book is published, and national discussion is one of the changes. Political novels have made great contributions to the progress of political circles in the United States, Britain, Germany, France, Austria, Italy and Japan.
The viewpoint of political novels in the late Qing Dynasty, which is often quoted, can be seen in Liang Qichao's famous paper "On the Relationship between Novels and Group Governance" published in New Novels 1902. Citing foreign examples, he thinks that innovative novels are the key to innovative people in a country. Creating a new novel can have a decisive influence on all aspects of national life-morality, religion, habits, customs, knowledge and art, and even people's character. In addition to enumerating the extensive influence of novels on society, Liang Qichao also focuses on the four basic influence forces of novels in this paper, namely, "sucking", "soaking", "stabbing" and "lifting" the role of readers. He particularly emphasized the significance of "mentioning", that is, raising readers to the level of a novel master and learning from him. However, these heroes worthy of China's study should not be sought from the history of China, but from the history of the West. For China people, the perfect people with national virtues are many modern patriots, revolutionaries and politicians such as Washington, Napoleon, Ma Zhini and Garibo. Liang Qichao once wrote biographies for these characters.
Strictly speaking, neither Yan Fu nor Liang Qichao can be regarded as writers. In their view, literature, especially novels, should serve other purposes: awakening the people of China. Liang Qichao began to write several novels, but he didn't finish any. Their views on the function of literature can not be regarded as literary criticism, but only as documents of social history and cultural history.
Although both Yan Fu and Liang Qichao were deeply influenced by China's "grand tradition", they both opposed the decline of this tradition in modern times: Eight-part essay is a stylized and meaningless prose writing method prevailing in the middle and late Qing Dynasty, full of grandiose ways to govern the country and level the world, but on closer inspection, it is just a shallow cliche. Due to the rigid "elegant" cultural form, it is urgent to make the "low-level" popular genre have new vitality. However, Yan Fu's contribution in popularizing this field is not as good as Liang Qichao's. Yan Fu still translated the works of Spencer, Huckley and J.S. Mill with elegant and knowledgeable China classical prose. Although he advocates novels, he is unwilling to make any concessions to "people's appreciation". On the contrary, Liang Qichao can learn more vocabulary from folk and foreign countries. His article is written for a wide audience. Therefore, Liang Qichao's works play a bridge role between the reformist elites such as Kang Youwei, Tan Sitong and Yan Fu and the citizen class to a certain extent. Without Liang Qichao's pioneering achievements in mass communication, Yan Fu's thoughts on translation and reform and reform could not have such a wide influence.
Liang Qichao strongly advocated new novels, which also represented a major change in his political stance. After the failure of the Reform Movement of 1898, he almost completely turned his attention to China society; He tried to design a blueprint for a new social collective (group), thus forming a modern Chinese nation. Although Liang Qichao's famous concept of "new people" is inextricably linked with elitism, it is mass in nature and aims to transform the whole Chinese nation. According to this new guiding ideology, it is natural and inevitable for Liang Qichao to advocate the power of novels regardless of the knowledge of Meiji Restoration experience. Liang Qichao is different from Hu Shi later. He is not interested in the language itself, but cares about the influence on readers. The four characteristics of his novels have nothing to do with the author, nor with the characteristics of literature itself, but only with the readers.
Although Liang Qichao made contributions to making novels an important medium, it had little to do with the literariness of novels in the late Qing Dynasty. In this respect, the credit goes to those newspaper workers with low education but high education-the writers of Treaty Port.
The practice of new novels
Novels in the literary world in the late Qing Dynasty can easily be divided into two categories: social novels (or "condemnation novels" in Lu Xun's words) and love novels (that is, love novels), whose focus is human feelings.
According to Hu Shi, most social novels in the late Qing Dynasty are imitations of a pioneering work-/kloc-The Scholars, a novel of the 8th century. Due to the great influence of the social and political direction of the "new novel" advocated by Liang Qichao and Yan Fu, the creators will naturally regard The Scholars as a glorious precedent of social novels. However, the society of China at the end of 19 was full of more crises than the society of 18 century described in Wu's famous novels. Therefore, in addition to obvious similarities in form and content, the novels in the late Qing Dynasty also exude a more urgent and sharp tone and a darker disaster mood. This sense of urgency is often expressed in the form of heavy cartoons: Wu's mild satire goes to extremes. In Wu Woyao's novel Adventures Witnessed in Twenty Years, relaxed humor and the exposure of terrible and absurd things are intertwined, making the effect sentimental rather than just ridiculous. Li's Officialdom in the Sky is even more morbid. People can perceive that Li almost deliberately exaggerates the dark side of life (perhaps it is an unconscious manifestation that the author has tuberculosis). The banter and distortion in The Officialdom in Appearance seems to show that the author is extremely disgusted with everything that happens around him. The novels are full of villains-greedy and immoral careerists, full of ideas of promotion and wealth, and keen on bribery. Even reform plans and officials who are interested in reform can't escape the author's severe satire, which can be seen from his other novel A Brief History of Civilization. Professor Prusek's "pessimistic" outlook on life essentially reflects a personal resentment: in such a country full of ignorance and despair, it is difficult to see any hope.
In order to vividly express this almost desperate mood, Li and Wu often adopt attractive nicknames The author of "The Strange Situation Witnessed in Twenty Years" claimed to be "a narrow escape" and said that he "only met three things: first, snakes, insects, mice and ants; The second is jackals, tigers and leopards; The third is the enchanting shadow. " Ceng Pu, the author of the famous novel The Evil Flower of the Sea, used the pseudonym "Sick Man of East Asia". The pen names of the other two writers are "the saddest person in the world" and "the world-weary person in Han Dynasty". Perhaps Liu E (Tie Yun), the author of Lao Can's Travels, the best novel in the late Qing Dynasty, chose a pen name Lao Can with sad metaphor for himself and made a final struggle in a failed chess game. Novels such as History of Pain, Hate the Sea, Robbery of Ash and Bitter Society endowed the late Qing Dynasty with unprecedented feelings of grief and indignation. The anxiety they accumulated is deeper than that of quiet scholars.
Although social novels in the late Qing Dynasty benefited from a lot of research by scholars, we should not ignore their unique characteristics: foreign words and ideas are often combined with local scenes and characters. Rousseau's On Civil Contract and Montesquieu's The Meaning of Law are both mentioned in Officialdom. There are even foreigners in The Evil Flower of the Sea-John Flair, Thomas Wade, a Russian anarchist and a German general (Wadesi). Moreover, part of the plot took place in Europe. In many novels in the late Qing Dynasty, we also talked about "Westernization" and described the influx of foreign flavor. Although most writers are keen on absorbing foreign ideas, they obviously have no intention of learning western literary skills, despite the increasing number of translated western works. Their imitation of western literature is limited to the heroes and heroines in some novels. Sherlock Holmes written by Conan Doyle became a very popular figure, which inspired a series of Chinese detective heroes who imitated him. The prevalence of detective stories is not only an extension of the popularization of social novels, but also the result of western influence.
Political fantasy is another feature of novels in the late Qing Dynasty. This may be inspired by Liang Qichao's unfinished novel The Future of New China. The story of this novel begins 50 years after the establishment of a utopia in China. Another best-selling novel, The Idiot's Story, was written by a tourist student and ended in a dream. In the dream, there are no foreigners and foreign policemen in Shanghai, and there are no foreign signs and foreign debts on the buildings. People in China have built many railways and schools. Chen Tianhua's novel The Roar of Lions takes place on an island called Chushan. Adherents of the Ming Dynasty built this island into a political paradise. There is a "civil rights village" on the island, with an auditorium, a hospital, a post office, a park, a library and a gymnasium. There are also three factories, a shipping company and many modern schools, all of which are in good order, benefiting about 3000 families on the island. Obviously, these novels originated from the fantasy tradition in China traditional literature. However, their vision for the future and the content of modernization further show the hope of accelerating social reform. These utopias of new China provided the authors with a passionate political dream-their imaginary satisfaction with China's fate-and a romantic escape place for the realistic problems at that time.
Although all kinds of utopias about China's fate have pointed out the urgency of reform, the reform itself has become a cliche without spiritual content and political significance. As described by Li, Wu Woyao and others, the ideological trend of reform has become a platitudes of a group of "westernization experts". These westernization schools are the products of "self-improvement" efforts in various places. They are just a group of clever dandies who are loafing about in the comprador "Westernization" in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Tianjin and other trading ports. The novels of the late Qing Dynasty show a picture of such characters wandering in the world at home and abroad, mixed with greedy businessmen, upstarts seeking social status, and descendants of rural landlords who moved to cities for fun. Reading these satirical works-the brighter side of the dark picture-readers will feel the author's self-deprecating and contradictory psychology. As sad critics of the real society, journalists and writers can realize that they live by the people they satirize; In fact, they themselves can be regarded as indirect products of "westernization" and "reform". It is the fashionable reform trend they hate that makes their works popular. Therefore, although they live a parasitic life, few people are in favor of a complete revolution, because the revolution will destroy the world they are used to although they oppose it.
Although the theme of novels in the late Qing Dynasty is social satire, the criticism of society and politics is also intertwined with the author's conscious subjective personal feelings. Social and emotional factors often combine with each other to reach a certain emotional height to defend the seriousness of the author's goal. Wu Woyao, regarded as the author of Hate the Sea, declared in an article entitled "The Relationship between Society and Romance Novels" published in New Novels:
I once said that people's feelings are innate ... You should know what laymen say, only children can know. When I say that I was born with love, I mean that I was born in my heart and will grow up in the future. There is no place where I don't need this word of love ... it is loyalty to the monarch, filial piety to my parents, kindness to my children and righteousness to my friends. It can be seen that the festival of loyalty and filial piety was born from love stories. As for the love for children, it can only be called delusion. What's more, he doesn't need to be emotional, and he shouldn't be emotional, but he uses emotion. Can only be called magic ... Many love novels are not about love, but about magic. ...
In this lofty expression of Chen Yi, Wu Woyao hopes to endow subjective feelings with a broad social and ethical basis. This is exactly the same as the translator Lin Shu wants to defend feelings from an ethical point of view. However, the Confucian framework of this declaration did not determine the true content of romantic novels in the late Qing Dynasty. In fact, most of them describe the infatuation and obsession of men and women. As Lin Shu gradually realized, personal feelings, if truly expressed, may become a person-dominated outlook on life, regardless of whether it reflects recognized ethical norms. Especially when the author of popular romance novels found that describing feelings, especially in the form of "infatuation" or "magic", would be warmly welcomed by readers, the seriousness of this ethics was even more diluted. Therefore, this kind of romance novels have always been regarded as low-level novels in the late Qing Dynasty by Chinese literary historians. Although their role models are obviously "A Dream of Red Mansions", most of them are more like19th-century "Talented Persons and Beautiful Women" novels, such as Six Talented Persons and Flower Moon Mark. In fact, the most popular books are those with lust as the center of interest, among which the beauties obsessed by gifted scholars are all prostitutes without exception, and they are even called "brothel guides". Hu Shi singled out two of them, Dream of Flowers on the Sea and Tortoise with Nine Tails, for special condemnation, saying that they lacked rational insight and literary value. Therefore, it seems that the take-off works in "romance novels" only desecrate feelings-according to A Ying, a literary historian, they soon opened the door for the "Yuanyang Butterfly School".
Respondents: wnc 7 188- Main Protector 15 Level 5- 16 06:3 1.
Literature in the late Qing Dynasty,1895 ——191year.
Modern literature in China can be traced back to the late Qing Dynasty, especially from 1895 to 19 1 1 year. During this period, some "modern" features became more and more obvious. We first study this stage.
The development of literary newspapers and periodicals
The appearance of literature in the late Qing Dynasty, especially novels, is a by-product of newspapers and periodicals, and evolved from a series of social reactions that deepened the political crisis. 1894- 1895 The humiliation of China's defeat in the Sino-Japanese War finally awakened the intellectual elite and prompted them to take action. However, their demand for reform did not reach its peak until the unsuccessful political reform movement in 1898. After the disillusionment of top-down reform, the bachelor of arts who are interested in reform abandoned the incompetent country and became the radical spokesmen of China society. Their efforts focused on mobilizing "public opinion" to put pressure on the central government. They found that newspapers in treaty ports were an effective means to achieve this goal.
As early as the second half of the19th century, unofficial newspapers appeared, mainly funded by western missionaries. However, their rapid increase is the result of the advocacy of intellectuals determined to reform. Liang Qichao's "Strong Memories" and "Current Affairs" were published in 1895 and 1896 respectively, as the organ newspapers of Kang Youwei's reformists. After the failure of the 1898 political reform, Liang fled to Japan and founded two newspapers, Qingyi Daily (1898-) and Xinmin Cong Daily (190 1-), which continued his journalism and soon became an authoritative newspaper. Yan Fu followed Liang Qichao's example to help set up the National Newspaper (1897-), and Di Chu Qing set up The Times (1904-). Revolutionaries soon established their own newspapers and joined the ranks of the press, especially Zhang's Su Bao (1897-) and National Daily (1903-). By 1906, according to statistics, there were 66 newspapers published in Shanghai alone, and the total number of newspapers published during this period reached 239.
In order to promote their career, these newspapers usually publish sharp news, but they also include entertaining poems and articles, which were later published in special "supplements". Due to the increasing demand for this supplement, another independent magazine has been expanded. Thus literary newspapers and periodicals were born. The editors of these journals are a group of journalists-writers who know a little about western literature and foreign languages and have a solid foundation for China's traditional literature. The contents of these publications are all kinds of fake translations, poems, essays and serial novels. They claim to raise people's social and political awareness, but they are also for public entertainment. By the end of this period, there had been New Fiction founded by Liang Qichao (1902-), Xiu Xiang Fiction edited by Li (1903-) and Fiction Monthly edited by Wu Woyao and Zhou Guisheng (1906-).
At least 20 years before the "literary revolution" in 19 17, the semi-modern form of "popular literature" of urban literature newspapers and periodicals has created markets and readers for writers and artists of new literature. Editors and writers of these magazines are rushing to write to meet the scheduled time limit and write a lot to make money. Their hard work has created a new profession: the commercial success of their works proves that literature can become an independent and potentially profitable profession. However, it was not until the successors of the May 4th Movement that this new profession was endowed with high social prestige.
A noteworthy feature of literary newspapers and periodicals in the late Qing Dynasty is that "novel" occupies an overwhelming position in the naming of magazines and as a literary genre. The word "novel" still includes all kinds of literary forms except elegant prose and poetry, just like tradition. According to the understanding of late Qing writers, "novel" includes all kinds of popular narrative literature-classical stories, novels, tanci, and even drama. But among all these various forms, serial novels are undoubtedly the most important literary form in late Qing literature. This is especially due to the pioneering efforts of Liang Qichao and other literary elites, who injected the vitality and political significance of new ideas into this traditional "degenerate" literary genre.
"New Novel" Theory
Three important declarations express the important relationship between novels and society-the social and political functions of novels. In the first issue of Tianjin National Daily, Yan Fu and Xia Cengyou wrote an article entitled "The Origin of the Attached Library Department". In this article, they expounded the influence of this novel on the masses in the past to emphasize its potential educational function now. However, Yan Fu, with a typical condescending attitude of traditional literati, warned that China's traditional novels were also full of toxins. "People with shallow knowledge, if so ignorant, will be overwhelmed by their poison, and their benefits are hard to say." Therefore, we must re-educate the people of China with new novels that create miracles in the West and Japan.
Liang Qichao basically holds the same view in the article "Preface to Translating and Printing Political Novels" written in 1898. He agrees that Yan Fu's novels have potential educational functions, but he even despises traditional works. Liang Qichao accused China that most of his novels imitated Water Margin or A Dream of Red Mansions, and was condemned by scholars as "teaching prostitutes and thieves". The urgent task is to carry out a "novel revolution" and lead the public's interest to a "political novel" inspired by Japanese novels (this preface was written by Liang Qichao for translating Chai Shirang's Adventures in America). Liang Qichao naturally gave a powerful description of the origin and reputation of foreign novels:
At the beginning of reform in European countries, Confucian masters, scholars and people with lofty ideals often wrote their own experiences and political arguments in their hearts into novels. Therefore, sons who drop out of school talk with their hands in their spare time, while soldiers, not Philistines, but farmers, craftsmen and rickshaws, and women, children and children can't talk with their hands. Often every book is published, and national discussion is one of the changes. Political novels have made great contributions to the progress of political circles in the United States, Britain, Germany, France, Austria, Italy and Japan.
The viewpoint of political novels in the late Qing Dynasty, which is often quoted, can be seen in Liang Qichao's famous paper "On the Relationship between Novels and Group Governance" published in New Novels 1902. Citing foreign examples, he thinks that innovative novels are the key to innovative people in a country. Creating a new novel can have a decisive influence on all aspects of national life-morality, religion, habits, customs, knowledge and art, and even people's character. In addition to enumerating the extensive influence of novels on society, Liang Qichao also focuses on the four basic influence forces of novels in this paper, namely, "sucking", "soaking", "stabbing" and "lifting" the role of readers. He particularly emphasized the significance of "mentioning", that is, raising readers to the level of a novel master and learning from him. However, these heroes worthy of China's study should not be sought from the history of China, but from the history of the West. For China people, the perfect people with national virtues are many modern patriots, revolutionaries and politicians such as Washington, Napoleon, Ma Zhini and Garibo. Liang Qichao once wrote biographies for these characters.
Strictly speaking, neither Yan Fu nor Liang Qichao can be regarded as writers. In their view, literature, especially novels, should serve other purposes: awakening the people of China. Liang Qichao began to write several novels, but he didn't finish any. Their views on the function of literature can not be regarded as literary criticism, but only as documents of social history and cultural history.
Although both Yan Fu and Liang Qichao were deeply influenced by China's "grand tradition", they both opposed the decline of this tradition in modern times: Eight-part essay is a stylized and meaningless prose writing method prevailing in the middle and late Qing Dynasty, full of grandiose ways to govern the country and level the world, but on closer inspection, it is just a shallow cliche. Due to the rigid "elegant" cultural form, it is urgent to make the "low-level" popular genre have new vitality. However, Yan Fu's contribution in popularizing this field is not as good as Liang Qichao's. Yan Fu still translated the works of Spencer, Huckley and J.S. Mill with elegant and knowledgeable China classical prose. Although he advocates novels, he is unwilling to make any concessions to "people's appreciation". On the contrary, Liang Qichao can learn more vocabulary from folk and foreign countries. His article is written for a wide audience. Therefore, Liang Qichao's works play a bridge role between the reformist elites such as Kang Youwei, Tan Sitong and Yan Fu and the citizen class to a certain extent. Without Liang Qichao's pioneering achievements in mass communication, Yan Fu's thoughts on translation and reform and reform could not have such a wide influence.
Liang Qichao strongly advocated new novels, which also represented a major change in his political stance. After the failure of the Reform Movement of 1898, he almost completely turned his attention to China society; He tried to design a blueprint for a new social collective (group), thus forming a modern Chinese nation. Although Liang Qichao's famous concept of "new people" is inextricably linked with elitism, it is mass in nature and aims to transform the whole Chinese nation. According to this new guiding ideology, it is natural and inevitable for Liang Qichao to advocate the power of novels regardless of the knowledge of Meiji Restoration experience. Liang Qichao is different from Hu Shi later. He is not interested in the language itself, but cares about the influence on readers. The four characteristics of his novels have nothing to do with the author, nor with the characteristics of literature itself, but only with the readers.
Although Liang Qichao made contributions to making novels an important medium, it had little to do with the literariness of novels in the late Qing Dynasty. In this respect, the credit goes to those newspaper workers with low education but high education-the writers of Treaty Port.
The practice of new novels
Novels in the literary world in the late Qing Dynasty can easily be divided into two categories: social novels (or "condemnation novels" in Lu Xun's words) and love novels (that is, love novels), whose focus is human feelings.
According to Hu Shi, most social novels in the late Qing Dynasty are imitations of a pioneering work-/kloc-The Scholars, a novel of the 8th century. Due to the great influence of the social and political direction of the "new novel" advocated by Liang Qichao and Yan Fu, the creators will naturally regard The Scholars as a glorious precedent of social novels. However, the society of China at the end of 19 was full of more crises than the society of 18 century described in Wu's famous novels. Therefore, in addition to obvious similarities in form and content, the novels in the late Qing Dynasty also exude a more urgent and sharp tone and a darker disaster mood. This sense of urgency is often expressed in the form of heavy cartoons: Wu's mild satire goes to extremes. In Wu Woyao's novel Adventures Witnessed in Twenty Years, relaxed humor and the exposure of terrible and absurd things are intertwined, making the effect sentimental rather than just ridiculous. Li's Officialdom in the Sky is even more morbid. People can perceive that Li almost deliberately exaggerates the dark side of life (perhaps it is an unconscious manifestation that the author has tuberculosis). The banter and distortion in The Officialdom in Appearance seems to show that the author is extremely disgusted with everything that happens around him. The novels are full of villains-greedy and immoral careerists, full of ideas of promotion and wealth, and keen on bribery. Even reform plans and officials who are interested in reform can't escape the author's severe satire, which can be seen from his other novel A Brief History of Civilization. The "pessimistic" outlook on life of these writers mentioned by Professor Pruschek essentially reflects a kind of personal resentment: it is difficult to see any hope in such a country full of ignorance and despair.
In order to vividly express this near-despair, Li and Wu often adopt attractive nicknames The author of "The Strange Situation Witnessed in Twenty Years" claimed to be "a narrow escape" and said that he "only met three things: first, snakes, insects, mice and ants; The second is jackals, tigers and leopards; The third is the enchanting shadow. " Ceng Pu, the author of the famous novel The Evil Flower of the Sea, used the pseudonym "Sick Man of East Asia". Two other jobs.