What Is "The People," 

and How Should We Write About the People?

Liu Jiming, 2025

I began my literary career in the mid-1980s and have now been writing for forty years. During this time, I have experienced the dizzying evolution of literary trends since the New Period [注: 新时期, referring to the period after 1978 in Chinese literature]—from scar literature, reform literature, reflection literature, root-seeking literature, avant-garde literature to new realism, new state (new generation) literature, as well as new left-wing literature and grassroots literature. From my early stumbling attempts at following these trends, I gradually developed my own writing personality and style by the mid-1990s, marked by what I called "cultural concern fiction." During that period, I was generally a writer with rightist leanings who advocated liberal values. This has been specifically analyzed in Main Currents of New Period Literature edited by Ding Fan and On Liu Jiming by Ge Hongbing.

At the beginning of the new century, marked by the rise of new left-wing literature and grassroots literature trends, my writing began to show "a turn from avant-garde to grassroots." Critics widely regarded the works published during this period as important practices of new left-wing and grassroots literary trends. By the time I wrote Human, and especially Black and White, I had completely freed myself from the influence of "pure literature" and become a writer who, despite holding an institutional professional writer status, writes from a "non-mainstream"—that is, left-wing literary—position.

For many people, "left-wing literature" may be an unfamiliar concept, existing only in library archives, university Chinese department textbooks, and scholars' papers and research projects. However, as a literary trend and artistic movement, from its inception, it has possessed strong realistic power and a fighting spirit, maintaining a natural kinship with the grassroots, the poor, and the laboring masses. Therefore, it is often referred to by another name—proletarian literature. Since then, left-wing literature, like the broad proletariat, has undergone baptism and tempering by blood and fire. It has had glorious moments when it broke through bourgeois barriers, moved from margin to mainstream, and created vigorous, fresh, and simple socialist literature. It has also experienced the disappointment and confusion of falling from mainstream back to the margins. The kinship between left-wing literature and socialist literature determines that its revival at the beginning of the new century was the result of both historical and contemporary catalysts.

Black and White is no exception. Rather than saying it is an individual writer's personal creation, it would be more accurate to say that a century of Chinese history and reality, through my hands, gained an opportunity for self-expression.

Professor Kong Qingdong once believed that "Black and White is not only a major achievement of contemporary Chinese literature—sooner or later, it will also be included in the family of world literary masterpieces. Because its excavation of history and examination of human nature far surpass most Nobel Prize-winning works." Such high praise makes me dare not accept it, and it would certainly make many in today's literary world uncomfortable. But for me, Black and White is indeed an important and special work. This importance and uniqueness lies not only in its significance of self-salvation for the author but also in witnessing my phoenix-like rebirth process of returning from "individual" to "people." This process began with Human境 but was truly completed through Black and White.

What I want to say is that among the millions of words I have published and written, most will be forgotten while I'm still alive. After I leave this world, if there are one or two works that people might remember, they would probably be Black and White and Human境.

In June 2016, Human境 was published by Writers Publishing House. In December of the same year, the Institute of Marxist Literary Theory at the China Academy of Arts held a symposium on Human境. After publication, Human境 was praised by critics as "a pioneering work of new socialist literature." Seven years later, I completed the Black and White trilogy. This novel was first serialized online (volumes one and two), and after the complete work was published by China Culture Communication Publishing House, it was praised by some critics as "visual intellectual history," "a demon-revealing mirror of a century of history," and "a cutting-edge work of people's realism." Many ordinary readers also published reviews, with numbers and enthusiasm far exceeding those for Human境 and beyond my expectations.

Those familiar with contemporary Chinese literature know that "the people" is a complex concept. Since Liu Zaifu's famous essay "On the Subjectivity of Literature," the past forty years of Chinese literary and social transformation have been filled with tense conflicts between various ideological trends, including "person" versus "people." With the changes of the times, the faces of person and people have not become clearer but more complex and difficult to distinguish, so that few can answer the seemingly simple yet complex question of "what are the people."

A critic once pointed out: "Black and White not only seeks to give form to the people whose faces are unclear but also to forge souls for the people." Obviously, "the people" in Black and White is not an abstract concept but one with clear historical and contemporary implications. It primarily refers to those with the vast majority of laboring people as the main body—the class that Lu Xun called "the insulted and injured." I remember one netizen saying: "If Jack Ma and Xu Jiayin [注: 许家印, a Chinese real estate tycoon] are the people, then I am not!" Although we live in an era that avoids or even fears discussing class, writers with conscience still need to make their own choices, just as many outstanding writers in Chinese and world literary history have chosen.

Annie Ernaux, the French woman writer who won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature, said in her acceptance speech: "I was proud and naive to believe that writing, becoming a writer, was for the proletarian workers, factory workers, and the lowest class among shopkeepers, for those who are despised for their behavior, accents, and lack of education, to correct the social injustice related to people's social class at birth. I write to avenge my people. It echoes Rimbaud's cry: I will always belong to the inferior race!"

When I first read Annie Ernaux's words, I felt as if I had met a kindred spirit, with a heart-stirring sensation. In the contemporary Chinese context, if the author's identity and name were covered, many might think the author was an "ultra-leftist." For those Chinese writers obsessed with pure literature and the Nobel Prize, this is obviously nothing short of ironic.

Annie Ernaux's words inspire us: realism is not just a creative method but a question of whether and how to face reality directly, how to understand and write about the people, and how to practice the concept of "people-centered"—ultimately, it returns to the question Chairman Mao raised long ago in his talks at the Yan'an Forum on Literature and Art: "for whom."

Black and White is precisely my answer to the above questions.