2.

2 The Sea of Regret

Jiaqi Yao
1.20.2021

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Today
• Reminders
• The Prosperous Literary Sphere
• An Introduction of Wu Jianren
• Arranged marriage vs. free marriage
• A Spatialized Narrative
• Group Discussion: Does Dihua’s character change over the
course of the rest of the novel?

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Reminders
• The weekly individual reflective journal is an assignment for you
to reflect on the course materials and develop your critical
thinking about the literary texts we read. Ideally, you will
develop arguments for analytical essay and final project from
your weekly reflection.
• I will be quite strict about the evaluation.
• Start this week, all the assignments will be evaluated according
to the criteria and count toward final grade.
• Please finish the reading before class.

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The Prosperous Literary Sphere
• Between the Hundred Days Reform (1898) and the fall of the
Qing empire(1911):
• an estimated 2,000 or more works of fiction were written and
circulated in various forms
• more than 170 presses
• A potential audience of two to four million readers
• By the time Yan Fu and Liang Qichao proposed reforms along
the lines of Japanese and Western novels (in 1897 and 1898,
respectively), Chinese fictional convention had shown every
sign of disintegrating and reinventing itself.
Source: Wang, Der-wei. Fin-de-Siècle Splendor: Repressed Modernities of Late Qing Fiction, 1849-1911. Stanford, CA:
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Stanford University Press, 1997.
Wu Jianren (1866-1910)
• Prolific novelist between 1902 and 1910
• Writing novels, poetry, anecdotes, fiction criticism, and joke
collections
• “Social novel” 社會小說
• Around 1897-1902, he wrote for and managed a succession of
Shanghai newspapers, including 消閒報 (Entertainment News), 采風
報 (Folksong-collector News), 奇新報 (Astounding News), and 寓言
報 (Fabulous News).
• The New Story of the Stone 新石頭記 (1905)
• Strange Events Eyewitnessed in the Past Twenty Years 二十年目睹
之怪現狀 (1906)

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Arranged marriage vs. free marriage
• Arranged marriage vs. free marriage
• Theme of lechery
• 西厢记 The West Chamber and 红楼梦 The Story of the Stone/ The
Story of the Red Chamber
• Translated novels: 迦茵小傳 Joan Haste (1903) and 巴黎茶花女遺事 La
dame aux camélias (1896)

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 A Spatialized Narrative - The Escape Route

Two Couples:
• 張棣華 Zhang Dihua
and 陳伯和 Chen Bohe
• 王娟娟 Wang Juanjuan
and 陳仲藹 Chen
Zhongai

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Dihua’s Adventure

• The Grand Canal (from Beijing to Hangzhou)

• “From Jinghai to Duli ought to have been no more
than a day‘s journey, but this time it took them over a
month” (p.155).
• On reaching Jining they paid, off the boatmen and
went ashore to look for an inn. . . . From this time on
Dihua and her mother remained in Jining, where we
Qingjiangpu
shall leave them for the present (pp.158-59).
• “After several days‘ travel they docked at Qingjiangpu
and, after crossing the Yangzi to Zhenjiang, took a
steamer to Shanghai (p.181)”.

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 Dagu
Bamboo
Grave

”A picture of an ambush at Tianjin city using land mines, and the great victory of Commander-in-
chief Dong over the Western forces. The first month of autumn in the Gengzi year of the Guangxu
reign [1900].”
2021-01-20 Chinese nianhua
UBC woodblock
ASIA 351- Jiaqi Yao print, 1900 9
Source： https://visualizingcultures.mit.edu/boxer_uprising_02/bx2_essay01.html
Bohe’s Adventure
• Warehouse
• The Herblist’s
• Dagu-Yantai-Shanghai

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Dihua – Does she change?
• Facilitator: in charge of making sure the group discussion goes
smoothly.
• Transcriber: in charge of taking notes during group discussion.
In charge of transcribing the conclusions reached by the group
and posting it to the Canvas discussion board.
• Researcher: in charge of looking up definitions, information,
etc. during discussion. In charge of asking questions of
clarification to the organizers.
• Speaker: in charge of explaining the conclusions of the group
to everyone at the end of the session.
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Dihua – Does she change?
• A trifling remark, perhaps, but one that made Dihua blush all the way to her
earlobes. Falling back a step or two, she collapsed into a chair. If we were
husband and wife, she thought, it wouldn‘t matter what I did, but I’m in this
terrible bind in which there are so many things I have to guard against,
more than I can stand. We should have gone our separate ways as
refugees. We‘d have missed each other, of course, but that’s all. As things
are, we are together all the time. I long to take care of him, but I can‘t, and
I’m at my wits‘ end! At this thought she felt a pang of grief and began to cry
(p.115).
• These were all men who did odd jobs and ran errands for Heting‘s shop.
They knew that Bohe and Dihua were engaged but not yet married, and
when they saw how she was behaving, they inevitably began whispering
among themselves. Their opinions varied, some praising her as a
remarkable woman, others condemning her as a shameless slut (p.197).
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Reference
• Wang, Der-wei. Fin-de-Siècle Splendor: Repressed Modernities
of Late Qing Fiction, 1849-1911. Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 1997.
• “MIT Visualizing Cultures.” Accessed January 19, 2021.
https://visualizingcultures.mit.edu/boxer_uprising_02/bx2_essay
01.html.

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