Thought Current Review: "Bottom-Layer Narrative" and Its Discussion

Liu Jiming, June 9, 2025---  How Do We Narrate the Bottom Layer

In recent years, "bottom layer" has become a topic of considerable attention. From intellectual circles to literary circles, from media to the general public, we can hear this once almost forgotten term. However, beyond the specific narrative subjects that "bottom layer" encompasses—such as disadvantaged groups, farmers, and laid-off workers—different cultural groups seem to have obvious differences in their cognitive perspectives when facing this concept. For example, the bottom layer in the eyes of sociologists and economists is generally closely linked with poverty, rural issues, state-owned enterprise reform, and social stratification, carrying clear ideological anxieties. Meanwhile, the bottom layer in the eyes of humanities scholars, critics, and artists is often accompanied by appeals for a series of historical aesthetic problems such as social justice, democracy, equality, suffering, and humanitarianism. Therefore, it can be said without exaggeration that the emergence of bottom-layer issues today actually reflects the complex forms and intellectual circumstances of current Chinese social structure. As a cultural proposition, it is by no means groundless, but rather another logical theoretical exercise and further focus following the debates over humanistic spirit, liberalism, and the "New Left" in the 1990s.

However, acknowledging that bottom-layer issues have activated intellectual enthusiasm for social conditions cannot conceal certain epistemological misconceptions and ambiguities within them. As some have pointed out, "bottom layer" originally comes from Gramsci's "Prison Notebooks," where "it first exists as a revolutionary force." Under the classic socialist narrative framework, it has always been intimately connected with the proletariat, workers and peasants, class struggle, and communist revolution, rooted in humanity's impulse to subvert and resist unequal social hierarchical systems, standing in sharp opposition to capitalist value systems. However, in current narratives, many people consciously or unconsciously ignore and shelve this historical context, emptying and simplifying "bottom layer" into a kind of classical humanitarianism or universalist rhetoric, thus making the bottom layer an abstract, passive signifier—an other external to ourselves. The saying "while the bottom layer takes the stage, class exits" is a precise annotation of this rhetoric.

Thus, the bottom layer—originally a subjective concept full of will and historical agency—has retreated into a speechless dark box, being re-concealed. This is certainly related to people being deeply trapped in the so-called liberal cognitive framework of the end of history and globalization, losing enthusiasm for exploring the diversity and possibilities of human existence. However, any realistic necessity cannot replace historical contingency. If people's interest in describing and "legitimizing" the world completely replaces efforts to continuously unveil and discover existence, then any kind of intellectual behavior will inevitably degenerate into a discourse game, or merely intellectuals' rhetoric for satisfying moral superiority and spiritual self-indulgence detached from reality.

Regrettably, such situations are becoming an unnoticed fact. Many people discuss the bottom layer not by focusing on searching for and salvaging forgotten intellectual faces from relevant historical gaps and endowing them with realistic referential functions. Even when describing history, they only stay at moral and political accusations or comic parody of it, but the complex entanglement and adhesion between cultural, social, historical, and even political people and specific historical and realistic contexts has been severed at its roots.

This may be one of the reasons why Mr. Li Tuo proposed several years ago to re-examine the "pure literature" concept formed since the 1980s. As a representative figure who earliest advocated "modernism" in China's new period, Li Tuo's change of heart in calling for literature to shift its gaze from the narrow writing room of "pure literature" back to the mottled and complex realistic scenes and social processes is itself thought-provoking. Of course, some scholars have questioned this view and defended pure literature, but the defenders understand Li Tuo's call for literature to re-engage with reality merely as a struggle for discourse power over "focusing on the bottom layer and problems emerging from reform—these are the social problems that 'New Left' or 'New Right' groups care about," worrying that literature might "become something else: sociological investigation reports, documentary film commentary, direct expression of feelings, or internet complaint posts..." thus damaging "literary quality." (Chen Xiaoming: "Gazing at Pure Literature from the Bottom Layer") Such reminders may be well-intentioned and necessary, but they obviously contain certain misreadings. In my understanding, so-called literary participation or intervention in reality cannot be understood merely as taking the bottom layer and realistic themes as narrative subjects, but should also reflect the creative subject's ideological projection and discovery in the narrative process. However, in fact, in the writings of many contemporary writers, "people" are described as destined and lonely sufferers under the torment of desire and daily survival, and purely biological codes. When "suffering" and "bottom layer" acquire independent, universal so-called literary qualities and become highly abstracted and contextualized, they can indeed produce seductive charm that subverts established ethical order and human nature, as well as constant artistic value. But how much significance does this modernist aesthetic preference have for our exploration of the complex entanglement between people and today's realistic world and its possibilities?

In this regard, relevant articles and dialogues by Cai Xiang, Xue Yi, and others about the bottom layer and "pure literature" have provided specific analysis of the implicit semantic ambiguity phenomena. Cai Xiang frankly admits that in many narratives, including his own, the bottom layer may be mixed with the intellectuals' deep-seated cultural elitism and populism intertwined complex. That is to say, what we face now is only a "bottom layer" narrated by intellectuals; the real bottom layer still remains in an anonymous state. Precisely because of this, narratives about the bottom layer appear wavering and evasive. In literary research and creation, so-called literariness is often interpreted as a kind of closure, a fixed pattern that avoids flowing and colliding with other social discourses.

In a context where elite discourse dominates, the bottom layer in a disadvantaged position may find it difficult to produce its own spokesperson; "being narrated" is destined to be an inescapable fate. So where is the real bottom layer? If intellectual elites cannot change their sense of superiority in occupying the discourse center and being high above, intoxicated in the discourse genealogy woven by middle-class culture and lingering there, unable to place so-called "concern for the soul" and "concern for the world" in the same field of vision, we may not only be unable to effectively approach the bottom layer but instead be increasingly estranged from it intellectually and emotionally.

Nevertheless, Cai Xiang's description in an essay titled "Bottom Layer" published in 1995 still helps deepen our understanding of this concept:

"For me, the bottom layer is not a concept but a swaying landscape of life, my origin, where all my life began. I often wake up at midnight, silently listening to my teenage years quietly walking past outside the window." "However, one day, revolution began to fulfill its promise, and we moved into a huge new village. I saw countless high-rise buildings, brand-new schools, brand-new shops, and we chased frantically on brand-new roads. At that moment, in my teenage years, we sincerely sang: Socialism is good!" "My teenage years passed in such myths. Although we were poor, we had no complaints or regrets. Many years have passed, revolution seems to have become a distant memory, the bottom layer still struggles in poverty, and equality and justice remain unfulfilled promises. The old life order is disintegrating, while the new economic order rapidly creates its upper-class society. The fact of class differentiation is being reenacted today. Power boldly intervenes in competition; yesterday's privileged sons have become today's tycoons and big shots, relying on various power backgrounds to frantically plunder social wealth. Power and money shamefully combine. The concept of 'poor people' emerges once again..."

Rereading such experiential and emotionally colored narratives nearly 10 years later can still produce a heart-stirring feeling. This is perhaps the reason why some people propose to re-examine the "socialist legacy." In the past 20th century, the socialist trend that swept the globe, while bringing many disasters to humanity, also created a new moral evaluation system and posed unprecedented challenges to capitalist values regarded as universal principles. As a political practice of rapid advance, it may have failed, but it provided us with inspiration and shock in seeking new survival foundations outside the barriers of inequality as the natural ethical order. This cannot be easily dismissed merely through humanitarian indignation and so-called complete negation and settlement. Because the Chinese bottom-layer classes, long narrated by privileged classes in a condescending manner, first walked onto the historical stage through socialist practice, transforming from supporting actors to protagonists, from being narrated to becoming narrative subjects. They no longer appeared merely as "enlightened ones" but began to participate as masters in creating mainstream history. This was indeed a crude, thoroughly "destructive" and completely heretical revolution against the existing social order.

This revolution, characterized mainly by heresy and radicalism, would inevitably bring corresponding aesthetic forms. In the literary and artistic sphere, they were called proletarian revolutionary literature, left-wing literature, socialist realism, or the creative method combining revolutionary realism with revolutionary romanticism, etc. Compared with traditional aesthetic forms, these new "revolutionary literatures" might be somewhat naive, crude, and simple artistically, not so refined and "advanced," even rejecting "diversity," but in terms of language, narrative stance, and cultural taste, they were undoubtedly fresh, simple, and vivid, directly bursting forth from the bottom layer and human nature. They represented a collective aesthetic debut of a long-oppressed and ignored class and a decisive breakthrough of traditional artistic patterns. Therefore, the characters in these works were both specific individuals and not merely isolated persons, always bearing distinct "class marks." In Soviet Russia, from Gorky's "The Mother" and "The Lower Depths" to Sholokhov's "And Quiet Flows the Don" and "Virgin Soil Upturned"; in China, from Rou Shi's "The Slave's Mother," Jiang Guangci's "The Young Wanderer," and Xiao Jun's "Village in August" in the 1930s to Ai Qing's "Dayanhe—My Nanny," from Zhao Shuli's "The Marriage of Xiao Erhei" and "Sanliwan," Li Ji's "Wang Gui and Li Xiangxiang," and Ding Ling's "The Sun Shines over the Sanggan River" in the 1940s to Liu Qing's "The Builders," Zhou Libo's "Great Changes in a Mountain Village," and Hao Ran's "Sunny Days" after the founding of New China—all can be seen as a continuous process of constantly strengthening and expanding this "bottom-layer narrative" with distinct class characteristics, gradually constructing a new "aesthetic principle." This aesthetic principle existed independently outside the deeply rooted discourse genealogy of bourgeois culture and constituted a powerful offense against the literary hierarchical concepts monopolized by academies and intellectuals for a considerable period.

If we only focus on the historical context of revolutionary literary writing's dependence on specific or even rigid political concepts while ignoring the aesthetic qualities of independent cultural forms gradually created in the practice process, it would obviously be difficult to completely and objectively assess their literary historical and even social historical value. Zhang Wei's recent article "The Background of Spirit" published in "Shanghai Literature" and causing controversy attempts to re-evaluate literature from the 1950s and 1960s. Actually, such efforts also appear in the writings of other young scholars, but for mainstream intellectual circles, such voices still seem weak and remain in a marginal state. Because as is well known, literary theory and creative practice since the new period have operated precisely along a path of subverting and negating the entire revolutionary literature. This subversion and negation was gradually completed in the 1980s through discussions of literary subjectivity and modernism, continuing through postmodernist trends in the 1990s, achieving a complete transformation of contemporary Chinese literature from form to content. Compared to before "revolutionary literature," this turn or rupture appears more thorough and systematic, becoming sacred and inviolable, worthy of being called a massive "aesthetic uprising." In a poetic essay that once had widespread influence, it was also called a "new aesthetic principle." After the rise of new aesthetic principles, the "bottom layer" as a narrative subject dimly abdicated, and its once clear face became blurred again. Or rather, it returned to that vague position of "being narrated." In the firmly established contemporary literary pattern, it became insignificant again, even becoming an object of deprecation and ridicule.

Indeed, under the trend of world economic integration, literature and culture will inevitably merge into this chorus-like discourse carnival, which has almost become the universal consensus of most people today. Under the impact of this mainstream of the times, any heterogeneous, alternative, or skeptical voices seem insignificant. More than half a century ago, Zweig issued stern warnings for claiming legitimate rights for those holding different religious and cultural beliefs in "The Right to Heresy." But being vigilant and recognizing political autocracy may be easy; the hidden discourse hegemony or cultural colonialism that suppresses and excludes heretical thoughts is not always obvious. Compared to the former, it may more easily make people fall asleep in endless, soft drink-like tasting, even gradually abandoning the right to defend dissent.

In the current context, intellectuals are increasingly becoming part of middle-class ideology. According to the description in "Dreams and Reality—A Handbook of China's Middle Class," Chinese society has rapidly become a society of privileged capital, with a group of ambitious, exceptionally capable Chinese elites fully emerging. They are the young "Chinese elites" with business acumen and global consciousness who have emerged in large numbers in prosperous cities like Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou in recent years. They increasingly focus on their personal lives and interests. They are completely different from their generation of the 1950s, who were too concerned with national affairs and world affairs while neglecting their own lives. Obviously, middle-class culture has become a mainstream ideology, and the interest sharing and cultural dominance it represents almost naturally makes them reject challenges truly coming from discourse-disadvantaged situations. They have extraordinary ability to eliminate, dissolve, and rewrite all heretical voices, and can always quietly and skillfully incorporate them into the discourse system they control.

Narratives about the bottom layer are no exception. The emergence of bottom-layer issues initially came from certain "marginal people" wandering outside mainstream culture, such as Zhang Chengzhi. According to Cai Xiang's view, Zhang Chengzhi was the first to "revive the concepts of 'poor' and 'rich'" in "History of the Soul," but this obviously cannot fully estimate the true connotation of this work.

Years later, "History of the Soul" may be passed down as a great book. Because in my view, Zhang Chengzhi made us re-approach and penetrate some concepts that had long been shelved and forgotten, such as ethnic faith, popular sovereignty, class conflict, revolution and human nature, etc. All this appeared in the early 1990s when daily narratives showed an increasingly universal trend, undoubtedly seeming so sharp, harsh, and discordant. Of course, "History of the Soul" also received affirmation and appreciation from a few cultural elites, but this was premised on removing certain sensitive and glaring value orientations, deliberately selecting and choosing, treating it as a fable and legendary work emptied of historical sense for abstract and folk processing.

The so-called "folk" is a rather fashionable and effective interpretative method recognized by many Chinese modern and contemporary literature researchers since the 1990s. In this narrative, folk exists relative to official, mainstream, "grand narratives," and elite culture. Its characteristics are sensual, turbid, ignorant, original, low-level, uncertain, with strong grassroots flavor. In a certain sense, it can also be replaced by "bottom layer." The implication is that the elite culture opposing it is rational, conscious, high-level, with clear value extension and subjective construction ability. The proposal of the folk concept opened a unique window for literary discourse to break free from dogmatic and rigid ideological control and gradually establish and reproduce its own aesthetic qualities. Its positive significance may be undeniable, but it should also be acknowledged that this effort to re-plan cultural hierarchical order reveals intellectuals' strong preference for maintaining and constructing their own cultural superiority and enlightener identity, treating folk (or bottom layer) as an other unrelated to themselves for cultural imagination. Therefore, rather than saying folk is a sociological concept, it might be better to say it's a somewhat ambiguous aesthetic concept. Perhaps due to this influence, some current discussions about the bottom layer often unconsciously confuse the bottom layer with folk, which is precisely the mystery of why we always find it difficult to approach the complete sense of the bottom layer.

Of course, it's not only Zhang Chengzhi-style bottom-layer narratives that undergo cultural co-optation and rewriting. Works like Zhang Guangtian's "Che Guevara" and "Red Star Beauty," which give pop-art expression to some disappeared proletarian or "left-wing" aesthetic symbols, also encountered treatment similar to "History of the Soul." On one hand, as soon as they were performed, they won applause from a batch of salon art groups who regarded avant-garde as fashion with avant-garde packaging and generated considerable market returns. On the other hand, Zhang Guangtian also received strong criticism and rejection from elite cultural circles, being viewed as a clumsy séance for dead ideological ghosts and low-level market pandering performance. Some accusations even came from certain avant-garde critics; the avant-garde art that had achieved success joined hands with intellectual culture to block those harsh voices overflowing beyond the already fully systematized high-level art production line. In some novels describing laid-off workers and rural themes (such as Bi Shumin's "Female Worker"), authors simply configured the difficult situations of bottom-layer laborers according to popular market elements and mainstream ideological advocacy, creating consumer cultural products that conform to popular tastes. Here, elite culture, mainstream ideological culture, and popular market culture wonderfully converged, jointly connecting into a powerful force that excludes and dissolves weak and heterogeneous cultures.

Zhang Guangtian's drama is obviously not a direct statement about the bottom layer; it may even have nothing to do with the bottom layer, but its significance cannot be underestimated. At least, after years of silence, he was the first to bring the revolutionary memories long forgotten by people back to the public as an alternative artistic feast, presenting them to an increasingly weary public palate. This made it no longer feel too abrupt when we saw someone describing bottom-layer living conditions from a "left-wing" stance in some newly emerging narrative literary works years later.

I'm referring to novels like "There" that appeared recently. Compared to other works that also describe the survival difficulties of state-owned enterprise reform workers, "There" obviously not only focuses on narratives of bottom-layer laborers' lonely endurance and silent suffering in hardship but places workers' historical memory as a liberated class within the life difficulties they face, directly expressing their doubts, anger, and resistance to unreasonable reality, as well as the deepening estrangement and even hostility with intellectual elites. From this, we seem to see again the classic scenes that Gorky described in "The Mother" and Mao Dun described in "Midnight." The "bottom layer" and "suffering" presented by "There" are not abstract, empty, or lacking historical context but have clear realistic referential intentions. Those struggling and enduring in the bottom layer are not like characters in some novels with blurred faces, one-dimensional or allegorical, but display strong subjective colors. They have both embarrassment and panic brought by material scarcity and anxiety, resentment, and outcry caused by spiritual and social status decline. "People" here receive complete and powerful expression, which is obviously very different from modern or postmodern bottom-layer narratives. Therefore, it can also be said that it provides us with a new approach different from most current narrative perspectives for effectively approaching the bottom layer. Particularly noteworthy is that after this novel was published, except for being reprinted by some selection journals, it did not attract the attention of professional or authoritative critics, or could even be said to be ignored. Instead, some graduate students in Chinese departments paid enthusiastic attention and started discussions on websites. One article even connected "There" with the long-lost revolutionary literary discourse, believing that the appearance of this work marks the revival of left-wing literary tradition and has certain special enlightening significance for the current middle-class taste in literature.

Of course, such challenging bottom-layer narratives did not begin with novels like "There." Actually, in non-fiction works like "China Along the Yellow River" and "Investigation of Chinese Farmers," narratives about rural and farmers' issues have already shown noteworthy signs. Another example is the recently published sociological work "Yuecun Investigation." The author, following the route that Mao Zedong took when writing "Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan," through field sample investigations in Xiangxiang, Hengyang, and other places in Hunan, provided a large amount of detailed information and materials about the changes and current status of China's rural political structure during the transition period. It writes that in many places, the methods and strategies adopted by farmers when forced to defend their rights under seriously unreasonable agricultural policies and the greedy plunder of grassroots regimes and officials increasingly have the significant characteristics of the peasant movement organized by the Communist Party more than half a century ago. For example, they no longer engage in single-handed, self-destructive petitioning but gradually form their own organizations and even "peasant leaders," etc. All this allows us to truly touch the strong restlessness and unease hidden in the bottom layer. The author of this book, Yu Jianrong, is a young scholar with long grassroots life experience, which seems to further indicate that relative to mainstream and authoritative intellectual groups occupying the discourse center, those voices and narratives from subcultures and sub-professional communities in their ascending period, due to their unique experiential, personal, and unadorned nature, make their narrated bottom layer more trustworthy in terms of authentic character and strength.

But such narratives often easily suffer neglect and oversight. The arrogance and conceit of cultural elitists make them accustomed to creating illusions while refusing to dialogue with the real world and any cultural dissenters. They always think their inner images are the complete truth of the world and take pleasure in this, feeling smug about it. I once heard a critic talking about certain works describing bottom-layer life use a arbitrary and mocking tone: "Don't always make it miserable whenever you write about poor people. Actually, so-called suffering is just romantic imagination that we writers impose on poor people. How do you know that people living in poverty must be full of sorrow in their hearts? They have their own happiness and comfort. You are not a fish, how do you know the joy of fish?" And the famous Mr. Huang Yongyu, interviewed in his mansion in Hong Kong, said: "I also know that many people still live lives of uncertainty and lack of security, but Chairman Mao with such great ambitions didn't solve this problem well either. It's useless for me to be sad with them, why bother with such idle concerns!"

Such selfishness and indifference shown by closing one's eyes and indulging in personal cultural tastes and lifestyles is common in literary circles and intellectual circles and has almost become a fashionable trend worth flaunting.

This is undoubtedly the real crisis lurking in contemporary intellectual elite groups.

This reminds me of 19th-century Russia. After the revolution led mainly by intellectuals failed, not only did the Communist Party split into two opposing camps—Bolsheviks and Mensheviks—but intellectuals also turned against their former cause, flocking to the authoritarian political group re-established by the Tsar, completely betraying the values they had once so sincerely stood for from the bottom-layer position, willing to sacrifice for democracy, freedom, and equality, as well as the long-standing tradition of Russian intellectuals as social conscience. They turned to champion the Tsar's new economic policies that intensified exploitation and plunder of the people, becoming beneficiaries of the vested interest community. Later, in the minds of the broad Russian masses, except for the rare respect Tolstoy received, the entire intellectual group almost degenerated into a profit-seeking, despicable image.

Is this somewhat similar to the situation faced by China's intellectual elite groups today?

A few days ago, I saw such a scene on a CCTV program: After a song was performed, several dark-faced children specially invited from impoverished mountain areas in Guizhou and their volunteer teacher appeared on stage. The host, as usual, used that sweet, sensational expression and tone to introduce the children's study and living conditions in unimaginably poor environments and their naive dream of hoping to see "the bungalows there" in Beijing one day. The host excitedly announced that this time they invited the children to Beijing to help them "realize their dreams" and let them see that Beijing not only has bungalows but also unimaginably tall buildings! Then the host invited a popular female singer, who gave each child a schoolbag, and then the singer sang a song called "Grateful Heart" with these children and students from a Beijing migrant workers' elementary school. The star sang very hard, and the song was very moving, sounding like a church hymn. Many people in the audience were moved to tears, constantly wiping their eyes with handkerchiefs. Most of them were National People's Congress representatives and CPPCC members attending the "Two Sessions"...

From the children's bewildered expressions and stiff movements, you could see that they had no idea why they should be "grateful," to whom, and for what. Was it for CCTV's favor in finally giving them the opportunity to see "Beijing's bungalows" with their own eyes, or for the new, empty, beautiful schoolbag heavily pressed on their thin shoulders?

They were just a group of small props manipulated at will, perhaps not even understanding the meaning of the lyrics.

This is also a kind of bottom-layer narrative, but undoubtedly a clumsy bottom-layer show. After watching it, I felt not the slightest bit moved but rather nauseated. Honestly, if so-called "concern for the bottom layer" becomes flavored as moral cosmetics that mainstream ideology, elite culture, and mass media apply to their faces and seasoning for wantonly spilling cheap sympathy, I would rather let bottom-layer issues return to that forgotten and abandoned historical corner. This way, at least the bottom layer can avoid the fate of being painted and whitewashed like puppets without dignity in the process of being narrated.

Of course, this is just an emotional statement. Everyone has their own understanding of the bottom layer; it's just that they choose different cognitive paths. Perhaps there will never be an absolutely real "bottom layer" that reveals itself to us. Due to various constraining factors, as long as the bottom layer is still unable to speak as an independent stratum with its own clear rational voice, it can only always be a silent underground world.

But this still cannot constitute a reason for us "narrators" to excuse ourselves.

An article published in "Tianya's" recent "Letters from Readers" is quite thought-provoking: "All bottom layers in suffering, their discourse and emotions should be channeled, expressed, forming the bottom layer's own authentic, simple discourse space... But facing their completely voiceless world, our experience is blank. Such a large social blind spot, such deep social barriers, yet we live so comfortably, with peace of mind, turning a blind eye—how dangerous this is!" This author, who truly lives in the bottom layer, uses a not insignificantly painful tone to say, "Current events are still like solid ice. Although they will melt, they can never find an entrance."

This seems to touch us more than many intellectuals' narratives.

Yes, tolerating or facing those dissenting, harsh narratives from the margins does not mean encouraging or promoting the breeding of certain extreme social emotions and "revolutionary behaviors." Because for both the dissenters and resisters themselves and the vested interest classes, this means paying greater or even heavy costs and causing society to fall again into the cyclical turbulence that has repeatedly appeared in history. The so-called "where there is oppression, there is resistance"—at any time, revolution is a choice forced in desperate situations and always maintains an almost kinship-like ethical connection with the bottom layer. In this regard, "revolution" should reject demonizing narratives, just as it should be wary of the past kind of absolutely sacred narratives.

The same applies to discussions about the bottom layer. What's important is how to provide an equal, democratic, and rational dialogue space for various interest subjects and conflicting discourses. This is not merchant-style mathematical calculation of bargaining but a value interaction mechanism that modern society must possess, and also a necessary path for us to seek fairness, justice, and an ideal society in the increasingly harsh context of global capitalization.

(Published in "Left-wing Literary Review" 2025 Issue 1, originally published in "Tianya" 2005 Issue 5)