Reportage and its Contemporary Variations: An Introduction

Document Type

Article

Journal/Book Title/Conference

Modern Chinese Literature and Culture

Volume

31

Issue

2

Publisher

Edinburgh University Press Ltd.

Publication Date

12-15-2019

First Page

5

Last Page

16

Abstract

When a genre thrives, its name tends to be applied broadly to a range of texts, but when it declines because of changing literary or political trends, people avoid the name, even when it could be useful. This process makes things difficult for literary historians when they try to sort out the evolution of the genre. Take “reportage literature” (baogao wenxue) for example. The term won legitimacy in China from 1930 on. As a new form of writing, it allowed Chinese writers to participate in a proletarian literary movement that was happening simultaneously in the Soviet Union, Weimar Germany, Japan, and other places through the creation of short, socially impactful nonfiction texts (Laughlin 2002: 115). Although baogao wenxue did not mobilize factory workers as cultural producers, it did provide a way to proletarianize writers of new literature who wanted their literary intervention to matter socially, politically, and historically. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) embraced baogao wenxue as a useful and exciting new literary form and a mode of training and indoctrinating aspiring young revolutionary writers. Even when the first wave of revolution in the cities encountered setbacks, reportage literature gained enormous space to grow and new scope for its application, thanks to the War of Resistance against Japan, the CCP’s shift to a rural focus, and the establishment of revolutionary base areas in remote mountain regions. In this historical context, baogao wenxue had become the catchword for any kind of progressive-leaning nonfiction literary text.

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