Allegorical Writing in the Post-Revolutionary Era

Tang Liqun, 2025

 Liu Jiming wrote in the "Afterword" of "Black & White" that the novel was begun in September 2019 and completed in June 2022; it was finalized in April 2023, taking three and a half years in total. The writing of this three-volume, nine-part, 1.2 million-word masterpiece almost coincided entirely with the pandemic that swept the capitalist world, highlighting the author's painstaking efforts and the work's significance of resistance in what seems like a coincidental juxtaposition. Such was the temporal context of the larger environment. For Liu Jiming personally, the writing of "Black & White" only began after the 2018 incident, although the "conception" occurred two years before he began writing, but that was merely like "a seed buried in the soil." 2018 was like a watershed, bringing Liu Jiming into a different state. In his own words, it meant "leaving a camp that didn't belong to me" and "returning" to that "fallen class," as prophesied in his earlier poetry: "I am destined to fall behind in the journey / and soon be forgotten by my companions / while the scenery on both banks / and the nameless people / will take me in." ("Flowing Water Sonnet," 1997)

From the liberal-leaning creation of the 1980s and 1990s, to the turn toward grassroots literature in the new century, and then to being called a representative writer of New Left literature, he has indeed moved increasingly away from the literary mainstream. However, at the same time, he maintained a considerable status and position within the system... until 2018, when there was a complete and public break with the system—whether he was "forced to rebel," made an active choice, or both—this was of great significance for Liu Jiming. From the subsequent writing of "Black & White," he seems to have gained greater freedom, more unrestrained thought, and a more comprehensive and strategic approach... all of which are forged into the novel's holistic thinking about Chinese society.

I. Epic and Allegory

Just as Lu Xun, after resigning from his teaching position in 1927, achieved the peak of his essay writing, and Zhang Chengzhi, after resigning from public office in 1989, completed the spiritual exploration and literary liberation of "Soul History," Liu Jiming after 2018 wrote this outstanding masterpiece "Black & White."

"Black & White" is undoubtedly an epic work, including its massive narrative scale spanning enormous temporal and spatial dimensions, the narrative network woven from multiple storylines, the broad panorama of historical and social changes reflected through the ups and downs of several generations, and the grand theme of using the novel as testimony to the era. But its meaning and value go far beyond this. The epic quality may be a common ambition and pursuit of many modern Chinese novelists, and the turbulent, ever-changing Chinese society of the 20th century also provided repeated material for novelists to write about. Whether it's the leftist masterpieces from the revolutionary era ("the short 20th century") like "Midnight," "The Sun Shines on the Sanggan River," "The Hurricane," "Red Flag Spectrum," "The Builders," "Song of Youth," "Golden Road," or the dazzling array of novels from the post-revolutionary era (after the 1980s) such as "Big Breasts and Wide Hips," "White Deer Plain," "Ordinary World," "To Live," "Hometown Noodles and Flowers," "Jiangnan Trilogy"... all demonstrate writers' various impulses to reproduce, rewrite, and revise history using the novel form that can accommodate vast social content.

The famous Marxist theorist and critic Fredric Jameson once characterized Chinese modern literary texts represented by Lu Xun's "Diary of a Madman" as "Third World national allegories," believing that "the texts of the Third World classics always project the writer's political aspirations in the form of national allegories: stories about individual fate contain referential implications about the popular life and the impact on the entire society of the Third World" (Jameson: "Third World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism"). The "impact" here can be understood as the consequences brought by modern capitalist hegemony. The absurd spectacle that appeared in the post-revolutionary era is: those writers and works occupying mainstream positions in the literary world often use "reverse" allegorical writing to attribute all the pain and disasters of popular life and the entire society's suffering to the Chinese revolution, as if all problems in Chinese society were brought by the revolution. Only by placing the birth of "Black & White" in this context can we understand its extremely significant meaning: after nearly 40 years of "reverse" allegorical writing, such a novel capable of competing with it finally appeared; it is both an epic and a positive allegory, containing high-intensity politics in the various individual destiny stories, providing indelible testimony for the betrayed people and cause.

"The temporal span of this work covers the history of reform and opening up of nearly 40 years from the 1980s onwards, as well as extending to the hundred-year history of Chinese revolution from the beginning of the last century" ("Black & White Afterword"). So what kind of strong narrative drive could propel the development of this hundred-year Chinese revolutionary history and forty-year reform and opening up history? In the author's words, "it is an opportunity for the hundred-year Chinese history and reality to achieve self-expression through my hands." History and reality can speak for themselves, which actually means that the creator's thinking and experience have accumulated to the point of eruption. The author also said that "Black & White" has "at least four or five main narrative threads, each thread like a screen panel, and opening each panel is like opening a world." The novel's "screen-style" narrative structure allows the panorama of history and reality to continuously open and converge, then fade out and reorganize, both complex and simple, free and flexible. What seems like a "masterfully achieved" narrative method is actually determined by the author's conceptual structure, which is to pursue and answer the question "Why did the revolution fail?" This becomes the novel's most internal consciousness, most core allegory, and provides the novel with its most powerful narrative drive.

Why did the revolution fail? Or rather, why did the socialist revolution fail? In the novel, this transforms into a highly allegorical journey of truth-seeking about "Who are the traitors?" It runs throughout the novel, mysterious and dramatic, becoming the novel's most intriguing setup. Different from the revolutionary historical novel "Red Crag's" investigation and identification of traitors, where the revolutionary camp would ultimately settle accounts with impure elements; also different from the avant-garde novel "Fancy Style," where whether one is a martyr or traitor has nothing to do with the individual subject, and individuals cannot penetrate the fog of history. In "Black & White," the traitor problem is structural, first structuring two eras, becoming the bridge connecting revolutionary history and reform history, while forming mutual reference between the two historical periods. Is Zong Da a traitor? Did Song Qiankun betray? This is not only a mystery left from the revolutionary era but also extends to the situation in the post-revolutionary era, indicating the source of why the reform history presents such a face.

Zong Da in the novel, as an early leader of the Chinese Communist Party, was characterized as a "traitor" for being arrested and writing "My Confession." However, as the text unfolds, through narrations, reviews, and investigations by different narrators, Zong Da's betrayal increasingly appears to be a conspiracy and deception manufactured by the Kuomintang intelligence service. Similarly, Song Qiankun, who joined the revolution very early and served as Zong Da's guard and staff officer, was investigated due to Zong Da's disappearance case, suspected for being arrested and released, and once imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution due to continuous reports but quickly returned... As the narrative deepens step by step, this "old revolutionary" increasingly seems like a traitor, yet there is still no conclusive evidence for complete identification. The novel highlights the complexity of the traitor problem, revealing that situations where truth and falsehood are hard to distinguish and black and white are confused often occur, but it is not lamenting that history has no truth, but rather pointing to another level of truth: even if one cannot confirm the title of traitor, the departure of revolution participants from revolutionary goals and even betrayal of revolution was already showing signs early on.

The 20th-century revolution led by the Chinese Communist Party was a proletarian revolution, a socialist revolution. Its fundamental difference from all dynastic changes, regime changes, and bourgeois revolutions in history, in Marx's words, was to achieve two breaks: complete break with private ownership, and complete break with traditional ideological systems and bourgeois ideology. However, how difficult is social transformation that includes individual transformation! Just as in the heated discussions sparked by the publication of "Black & White," one focus of attention was Song Qiankun's opportunism. He was a landlord's son, yet killed his own crime-ridden father and joined the revolution. However, behind this seemingly righteous act of destroying relatives for justice was hidden an unspeakable purpose: competing with his father for a woman. Therefore, "many revolutionaries joined the revolution with various private motives" (Kong Qingdong: "The Unbetrayed Fu Zhigao is More Terrifying"), and they did not complete self-transformation during the revolutionary process. "They bet on the revolutionary side, wanting to seek benefits for themselves after the revolution succeeded" (Zuolun: "Turncoats and Revolutionaries"). These speculators were "as numerous as carps crossing the river," causing great harm to the revolution. As for Zong Da, besides being a Party leader, he was also a famous left-wing cultural figure. Although he did not cause substantial harm to the Party's cause after being arrested, the novel writes about his years of silence and quiet death, which implicitly suggests a state of separation, alienation, and detachment from the revolution. If we "delve deeper, it actually involves the profound and complex relationship between intellectuals and revolution and the masses, and at a deeper level, the question of how intellectuals can break out of traditional ways of thinking" (Lao Tian: "From Society's 'Qualitative Change,' Zong Da's 'Confession,' and Qu Qiubai's 'Superfluous Words'"). Whether Zong Da or Song Qiankun, they both needed to betray their identities as landlord class and petty bourgeoisie in order to devote themselves to the proletarian revolutionary movement, but how far they could go on this path was unknown. Revolution cleansed the old society's filth and turbidity, and could even destroy the old economic foundation, but there were still those difficult-to-transform parts that could become the roots of restoration at any time, ultimately manifesting as the old world's comeback in the post-revolutionary era.

II. "Their Era" and "Our Era"

"The revolution succeeded!" "The revolution has already failed." The narrative starting point of the novel is not "the day after the revolution," but the university campus of the late 1980s, ten years after the last revolutionary movement of the 20th century. The spaces where cultural figures gathered were permeated everywhere with the "de-revolutionization" flavor of "new enlightenment," whether it was the gentle humming of avant-garde poetry, the rise and fall of scar literature and educated youth literature, or the temporary popularity of Heidegger's philosophy... all indicated the arrival of an era pursuing novelty and releasing individuality.

Starting the novel from the university is actually deeply meaningful. The author is well-versed in the daily life of intellectuals, using this as an entry point makes it easy to convey the characteristics of that era; the university campus also provided space for the appearances of protagonists like Gu Zheng, Li Hong, Wang Sheng, and developed many future narrative threads. But none of this is most important. Most important is: this space presented how power in the cultural field was transferred. Just like Lang Tao, who returned from studying abroad and was unrivaled at Dongjiang University, talked enthusiastically about Heidegger's existentialism but turned a blind eye to Wang Sheng's questioning about Heidegger's connection to fascism. Literary star Song Xiaofan's novel "Xiangchun Street" describing the persecution of educated youth was highly praised, while Wang Sheng's criticism questioning its fabrication of bizarre plots and poverty of thought was drowned out. Even Wang Sheng himself, regarding the naming "Wang Cheng" from the revolutionary era's "Heroic Sons and Daughters," changed his name because he couldn't bear others' mockery... The situation shown by the novel is that the standards for evaluating history and reality in the post-revolutionary era had quietly changed, the production mechanisms of knowledge and culture had become entirely different, and the era's discourse power was gradually being mastered by elites.

And this was just the beginning. As the novel's plot unfolds, from the 1980s to the 1990s to the new century's reform history, "Black & White" presents a process where elites gradually achieved joint rule. As one review keenly captured a typical scene in the novel: the "Three Families Banquet"—Dongjiang University President He Shouwu, Dongjiang Provincial Committee leader Song Qiankun, and expert scholar Lang Yongliang's three families, these power holders from political and academic circles, completed mutual interest exchanges while toasting and drinking. This small "Three Families Banquet" was "merely a microcosm of multiple 'family banquets,' the prototype of the later giant 'Yanshan Meeting.' Based on interest connections, they carefully planned and proceeded step by step, ultimately beginning to devour land, factories, media, and other resources that originally belonged to the masses, and using power, judiciary, and media, attempted to permanently consolidate their positions." (Yi Ran Ni Ni: "The Elites United, but the Masses Remain Scattered: Speaking from the 'Three Families Banquet'")

In the process of various forces' generation, competition, differentiation, and reorganization, the shadow of capital was indispensable. From Ba Guangming in the small town of Pi contracting the brick and tile factory, treating collective property as his own private property, arbitrarily firing workers, embezzling and corrupting, enriching himself, to Dongjiang Steel Works, the pillar industry of Dajiang City, continuously encountering enterprise restructuring, foreign acquisitions, worker layoffs, and management self-enrichment, and then to the "Red Second Generation" Hong Taihang in Beijing, using his identity and resources to manipulate multiple state-owned enterprise acquisitions behind the scenes, collaborating with foreign capital forces for huge profits... After three to four decades of expansion from top to bottom, capital had grown so large and strong that even the "healthy forces" represented by Chen Yimeng could not shake it.

Moreover, they were deeply entrenched, multifaceted, and often crossed boundaries. For example, university professor Lang Tao later became provincial propaganda minister, and Hong Taihang had extensive connections spanning politics and business. Because they grew savagely and inversely from the body of socialism that originally pursued equality, the paths to become elites often broke through conventions and bottom lines, shocking people. The most representative were Wu Bozhong and his son Du Wei. Wu Bozhong was originally a country doctor who walked the rivers and lakes through deception. His method of treating infertility was actually to produce a bunch of illegitimate children, yet he deceived smoothly and was revered as a "master" by various elites, occupying Phoenix Island and becoming a local "emperor." His son Du Wei, lacking education and skill, only inherited some family photography, but excelled at forming cliques and colluding with powerful people. He not only climbed to the position of editor-in-chief of "Popular Art" but also became chairman of a listed media company and chairman of the provincial literary federation, encompassing official, academic, and commercial spheres. As Wu Bozhong firmly believed, after reform and opening up, "my era and my son's era will all come!" This was indeed "their era," widely seizing power in various fields.

This era was so new, yet so old. The novel designed a detail where Wu Bozhong talks extensively about "restoration," conveying the essence of this era: "Use the plow of capitalist primitive accumulation to ruthlessly till the fertile land of the socialist economy, turning it completely upside down!" "Then there will be open bribery, drunken debauchery, rampant desires, prostitutes everywhere, thieves appearing, even leading to division and separatism. But the Spring and Autumn period was the freest, the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms was the freest, all periods of warlord chaos were the freest, all most capable of producing free people and free culture. In this sense, old China was actually the best China." This era seemed to break free from all constraints, but what broke free was merely personal desire; it seemed free and pluralistic, but actually only achieved the rule of capital; it seemed like a new era, but was merely old China.

For them it was the best of times, but what about "us"? The workers and farmers who had once been condensed into a powerful "us" during the revolutionary era and had existed as masters of the state and society, what did they experience in this era? Literary works depicting reform and opening up are numerous, some praising and glorifying, others criticizing and exposing, but few works like "Black & White" write about the fall of the laboring masses as an entire class, occurring simultaneously with the elites' rapid rise during the reform process. This is not the ups and downs and accidents experienced in some individual's life; the novel touches on the transformation of the entire political-economic structure.

The "people's realism" of "Black & White" is to make visible the social production relations and class relations connected to the characters, which is key to what has been gradually forgotten or deliberately obscured by mainstream literature in the post-revolutionary era. Wang Sheng, the most important protagonist in the novel, was born in a small town in the sixties and attended the best university in the provincial capital in the eighties. According to mainstream narrative logic, what should follow is his various individual struggles after entering the city. But "Black & White" insists on writing about his origins, his childhood experience helping at the collective brick and tile factory, his father Wang Shengli's life devoted to the public, and the process of the brick and tile factory being tortured to exhaustion and reduced to ruins after being privately contracted. The brief life of rural private teacher Tian Fang connects to the multiple meanings of the space of Phoenix Island where she lived. When Tian Fang was young, there was a fishing brigade on the island, the brigade had nurseries and kindergartens with conditions no less than those in the city, and life in the socialist-era fishing village was prosperous. Later, when the commune was dissolved and collective land and fishing production materials were distributed to individuals, many people left the small island to work in the south. The island's population decreased, and despite Tian Fang and the old principal's persistence and perseverance, they could not change the fate of the school's disappearance and the fishing village's decline. Not only that, the entire island was later devoured by private interests and gradually became Wu Bozhong's independent kingdom for power-money-sex transactions.

Another important protagonist, Gu Zheng, connects social relations that, besides the paternal line leading to Zong Da, also includes the maternal line related to Dongjiang Steel Works, Dajiang City's most important state-owned enterprise. Gu Zheng's maternal grandfather, grandmother, and uncle were all engineers or workers in the factory, witnessing the steel factory's ups and downs in different eras. The steel factory's space also became the place most capable of reflecting the transformation of production methods and full of struggle.

Readers will continuously encounter words that have become strange and distant today—"commune," "production team," "Red Guards," "revolutionary committee"... Rather than evoking memories of the revolutionary era, this serves to restore the prehistory of those migrant workers and laid-off urban workers, their positions during the great socialist construction era, and then contrast the collapse of inherent production relations and social relations that brought about the defeat of the entire class.

The novel clearly shows us how a group called the leading class lost leadership and became the bottom of China's urban and rural society. This is a class-against-class struggle, and also a large-scale betrayal. The novel's persistent pursuit and interrogation of "who is the traitor" appears particularly vivid in the narrative structure where revolutionary history and reform history are interwoven, with main and subplot lines intersecting. It is not a local plot point, but an overall allegory.

III. "Left then Right" and "Right then Left"

People can easily become traitors. Including ourselves. During revolutionary high tide, everyone is a leftist, but after times change and several waves rise and fall, how many remain true to their original intentions without following the crowd? "Black & White" places its characters in constantly changing dynamic circumstances for examination and writing, thereby constructing a rich character genealogy, making the characters' personalities and images not resemble the "complex human nature" that mainstream literary criticism loves to discuss, but closer to what Marx called "the totality of all social relations."

Part Three of "Black & White" has a small section titled "Situation and Ability," writing about Lang Tao's assessment and consideration of his own "talent" and external "leveraging of situation." These are two very vivid yet highly generalizable terms. If we expand "situation" to understand the trends continuously growing in the entire society, and expand "ability" to understand a person's subjective initiative, then we find that the characters in "Black & White" are undoubtedly all placed in such a tension structure.

There is a type of character in "Black & White" who, rather than being called idealized images, should be called pure people, possessing particularly moving power, such as Wang Shengli, Luo Zheng, the old principal... They also experienced the rise and fall of revolutionary tides. Initially, it seemed the revolutionary wave caught them: because of blood feuds with the old world, or because of progressive pursuit of the new world, individual destiny coincided with revolutionary momentum, and from this they began devoting their lives to the cause of liberation for the laboring masses. "Liberation" for them was far from just the victorious moment of 1949, but always placing people's interests above all else. Wang Shengli was a soldier in uniform and a leader of commune masses out of uniform; Luo Zheng persisted in investigating and reporting traitors who caused the "Phoenix Island Massacre" after liberation, his long confrontation with Song Qiankun and others most strongly interpreting what "loyalty" and "betrayal" meant; the old principal believed for life from the moment he received a copy of the "Communist Manifesto" left by Luo Zheng, transforming ideals and beliefs into protection for Phoenix Island's land and children... When the situation reversed and revolution was no more, these "people who lost power" still maintained their persistence through nine deaths without regret, opposing the rolling tide of capitalization. The "fighting spirit" of these characters "doesn't seem to come from the new period, but from the 'first thirty years'" (Zhu Yafang: "Three-Person Discussion: Giving Form to the People, Bearing Witness to the Era—Thematic Analysis of 'Black & White'"), except that they were heroes in the "first thirty years" and tragic heroes in the post-revolutionary era.

Forming a staggered correspondence with this series of characters is another type like Wu Bozhong and his son Du Wei, Ba Guangming and his son Ba Dong. They also have great persistence, which is placing personal interests above all else. When the revolutionary tide swept away everything, they hibernated in inconspicuous corners, and when individualism tore open the crack of the era, they invested all their shrewdness, scheming, calculation... into unlimited expansion of self-interest. They went with the flow, constantly expanding. "Du Wei embodies an individualism or desire-ism aesthetic developed to the extreme" (Liu Jiming: "Testimony of Time—'Black & White' and Others"), and Wu Bozhong's final suicide to protect his son precisely reflects his rock-solid determination to maintain personal interests. Even his extraordinary sexual capacity and the endless stream of illegitimate children in the plot design also allegorize the powerful vitality of individualism that is difficult to eradicate.

But these civilian capitalists, in the Chinese context, could not have flourished to such an extent without receiving top-down "momentum." This involves another type of "left then right" characters represented by Song Qiankun, Hong Taihang, Lu Shengping... Some were veteran cadres and old revolutionaries, some were descendants of revolutionaries, and others were war heroes... They all had glorious revolutionary records, including Hong Taihang's eight years in the Beidahuang Corps and his paralyzed legs from frostbite while performing duties. These people might have been activists or appeared to be activists during the revolutionary era, but these were ultimately just symbolic capital they accumulated, which would be converted into actual benefits when the time was right. When they dominated the direction of reform, China's rightward trend became inevitable.

However, history's dialectic often manifests as one trend producing its opposite. The post-revolutionary era was far from revolution, which also constituted the main growth environment for characters like Wang Sheng, Li Hong, Gu Zheng, Gu Xiaole, Tian Qingqing, Zong Xiaoxiao... Most of them were initially in a state of "political unconsciousness," but encountered various social contradictions and struggles at different stages of their lives, with Wang Sheng and Gu Zheng being most typical. Wang Sheng had Wang Shengli's education, Luo Zheng's influence, and Tian Fang and the old principal's inspiration on his "left" side, while on his "right" side were Lang Yongliang's guidance, Du Wei's recruitment, and the surrounding of various mediocre people. It was only when he chose to publish online a report exposing Wu Bozhong and others' scandals and was retaliated against and imprisoned that Wang Sheng gradually became aware of whom he should stand with. Gu Zheng initially was a sensitive woman with "literary youth" qualities, often avoiding the filth of the real world. It was only when she chose to break with the corrupt legal circle, defending Wang Sheng and her uncle Gu Xiaole's resistance to factory mergers, that she began brave competition and struggle with dark forces. The "right then left" transformation trajectory of these characters carries the color of subjects' difficult exploration, seeking to find their own path. As for the younger Qingqing and Xiaoxiao, during their university years, they were already re-exploring Marxism and connecting with real worker-peasant issues.

This series of character creation in "Black & White" has multiple meanings. For example, its connection to the "new person" image in 20th-century socialist literature and proletarian literature and art, that kind of completely new person who wanted to break free from and transcend old production relations and social relations. Although still "unfinished" by the novel's end, compared to the character images provided by mainstream literary circles, they already belong to "another world's" "new sprouts."

It also touches on the issue of "successors" to some extent. The section about Wang Sheng's birth in the first part of the novel is titled "Successor." People born and raised in socialist countries should all be cultivated as successors to communism, but social changes differentiated and alienated them. Those "left then right" characters make this term particularly ironic, while these "right then left" characters, although far from the era that produced true warriors and revolutionaries like Wang Shengli and Luo Zheng, also continue their predecessors' spiritual bloodline in the post-revolutionary era.

More importantly, this series of character creation shows the ebb and flow of "situation" and "ability" in this society. During Wang Sheng and Gu Zheng's university years in the 1980s, there might only be "left then right" people, not "right then left" people, but by the time Qingqing and Xiaoxiao attended university in the new century, the situation had become completely different. Capital's rapid expansion created the largest proletarian team. The state-owned enterprise workers and migrant workers in "Black & White" had begun to resist. Although spontaneous resistance was still far from becoming conscious, "revolution" is not something you can bid farewell to just because you want to. This also constitutes the reality that was pushed backstage in the post-revolutionary era but still appeared on the front stage from time to time. Therefore, by the latter half of the novel, it had already transitioned from the question "Why did the revolution fail?" to another question: "Is continuing revolution possible?"

Can the proletarian cause start anew? Wang Sheng, Gu Zheng, Xiaoxiao, and Qingqing in "Black & White" are all intellectuals, and the path from intellectuals to the proletariat still has a long distance; how can intellectuals combine with the masses? The problem of integrating with the masses implied in the left-wing cultural celebrity Zong Da nearly a century ago will reappear. However, history will not appear a second time in exactly the same form, because living people in reality will actively invest in the growth and flow of new trends.

This article was published in "Left-wing Literary Review" 2024 Issue 2