College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Iowa State University

Reflecting Chinese life

Foreign languages' Aili Mu thinks Chinese short-short stories are a window into contemporary China.
When the People's Republic of China began its transformation into a market economy, it drastically changed the fabric of culture, society and everyday life in that country.

Aili Mu, assistant professor of foreign languages and literatures, says those changes however have not always been noticed in Europe and the United States.

"The lack of critical attention in the West to the burgeoning studies of popular culture (in China) not only helps to sustain an outdated Cold War mentality, but also results in misunderstanding about the nature and direction of social and political change in China," she said.

One way that China's cultural changes can be observed is in a newly popular form of writing. Mu says Chinese short-short stories offer a unique look at Chinese culture.

"Contemporary Chinese short-short stories are a new literary genre that is sensitive to China's market economy," she said. "They reflect what is happening in China at the most fundamental level in the daily experiences of its people.

"This genre is a literary phenomenon in China and I think it can be explored to look not only at the country's social and economic systems, but popular culture as well."

Chinese short-short stories are a subgenre of Chinese fiction about 1500-3000 (Chinese) characters in length. That's around 500 to 600 words with stories developed in sub-genres of fiction, reportage, memoir, hearsay and sketch.

This new literary form began in the early 1980s in the People's Republic of China and also gained popularity around the same time in Hong Kong and Taiwan. There are literally thousands of journals, magazines, newspapers and web sites in these regions with circulations in the millions that publish the literary works.

Mu estimates that there are over 1000 professional short-short storywriters in China.

"Its conciseness of length, crispness of pace and wide, flexible range of sub-genres make it a welcome addition to the features section of best-selling newspapers, entertainment and 'infotainment' magazines, as well as serious literary publications," she said.

Mu and two colleagues (Howard Goldblath of Notre Dame University and Julie Chiu of Lingnam University in Hong Kong) have been awarded a $75,000 National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant to compile an anthology of Chinese short-short stories.

An Anthology of Contemporary Chinese Short-short Stories will include 100 representative short-short stories from the three Chinese regions. The short-short stories will be translated into English and will also be included in their original Chinese form. Selected authors will be interviewed for introductory narratives and the short-short stories will be edited.

The anthology will also give readers a different view of the cultural transformation that the People’s Republic of China has undergone.

"In these short-short stories, the writers unveil the multiple layers of life-worlds, articulate emerging public voices and construct different experiences," Mu said. "In so doing, they address the complexity and the dynamics of a China in transition."

One such story that Mu and her colleagues have selected for the anthology is "Wet the Bed." In the short-short story, the narrator remembers his younger brother being rewarded when he didn't wet the bed. Wanting that same reward, the narrator changes his behavior and starts wetting the bed, then quits and gets rewarding for not wetting the bed – just like his brother.

Just a few sentences later, the narrator makes the comparison between that experience and one he had in the workforce. He is rarely rewarded for his work performance although he is his office’s best worker. Inspired by his bed wetting experience as a child, he starts "wetting the bed" on the job and "the outcome was surprisingly similar to what I had experienced in my childhood" he says.

In the introduction to the anthology, Mu plans to include research into the genre, looking at the depth of insights in such short-short stories as "Wet the Bed."