"The Human Realm" in Turmoil 

— Where Does the Heart Find Distance?

— Reading the Novel The Human Realm

By the Master of Peach Blossom Cottage Published in: Gazing at the Dome Mountain Studio, November 10, 2024

The Human Realm (Liu Jiming, Writer's Publishing House, June 2016) occupies a place outside the "mainstream" of the literary world as it has existed since the era of Reform and Opening-Up. It is not the kind of "scar literature" that negates the Communist revolution and the first thirty years of the People's Republic; not the kind of "reform literature" that slanders public ownership and sings the praises of private ownership; not the kind of "capital literature" that slobbers in adoration before "the power of capital"; and certainly not the kind of "pornographic literature" — such as White Deer Plain or Big Breasts and Wide Hips — that mingles the negation of revolution and the peddling of reactionary decadence with an exhibitionist obsession with the obscene. The author would suggest that The Human Realm might aptly be called "human-realm literature" — literature whose content encompasses the ordinary and the good, diligence and troubled reflection, hesitation and resistance, failure and steadfast perseverance.

One of the novel's most striking features is its distinctive structure. It is divided into two parts: the first tells the story of Ma La, released from prison after completing his sentence, returning to his home village to attempt agricultural production; the second tells the story of university professor Murong Qiu within her academic institution, the scholarly world, and city life. These two parts are connected both externally and internally. The external connection is this: in Ma La's boyhood, Murong Qiu came as an educated youth to be "sent down" to his home village of Shenhuangzhou, where she was his "Sister Murong," and where she and Ma La's elder brother Ma Ke developed a deep and devoted love — all of which became part of the foundation of Ma La's life. The internal connection is this: both Ma La and Murong Qiu, having drifted along with the currents of the "Reform and Opening-Up new era," have nonetheless preserved in the depths of their hearts the core of truth, goodness, and beauty that belonged to that tumultuous, passion-filled revolutionary age before Reform and Opening-Up — and Ma Ke, who grew up in the Mao era, who put the public good before all personal considerations, and who gave his life to save collective property, is the spiritual bond that connects Ma La and Murong Qiu.

Reading this novel, the author is inevitably reminded of four lines by Tao Yuanming [note: Tao Yuanming, 365–427 CE, the great recluse-poet of the Eastern Jin dynasty, renowned for his retirement from officialdom to farm life]:

I built my thatched hut within the human realm, Yet hear no clatter of carriages and horses. You ask me how this can be so? When the heart is far, the place grows distant of itself.

It seems to the author that the characterization of the two protagonists, Ma La and Murong Qiu, has in certain respects drawn on the spirit of these four lines. The novel records Ma La's declaration, on deciding to settle in Shenhuangzhou, that "the fields will run to waste — how can I not return?" [note: a line from Tao Yuanming's famous poem "The Return"], and notes more than once that those around him laughingly call him "Tao Yuanming." Murong Qiu, meanwhile, in her surrounding environment of a university and city life shot through with a certain small-minded self-seeking, resolutely refuses to go along with the times — she has something of the quality of one who "conceals a great reclusion within the city itself." [note: a classical ideal contrasting the shallow hermit who retreats to mountain wilderness with the true hermit who remains uncontaminated amid the world's noise] Superficially, Ma La and Murong Qiu seem to share Tao Yuanming's temperament — and Ma La also bears a faint resemblance to Levin in Anna Karenina.

Essentially, however, Ma La and Murong Qiu are not Tao Yuanming — nor are they Levin. Ma La returns to Shenhuangzhou to grow fruit trees, to establish the "Tongxin Cooperative," to organize the villagers — a loose scattering of sand, ignored by the village power structure — to resist the flood, and to guide and rescue young people. Murong Qiu keeps her distance from the vulgar, self-serving, socially useless atmosphere of the university and academic world, and struggles against it; she insists on remaining untainted by the surrounding mud, and she sympathizes with and attempts to help the workers who are losing their factory in the name of "reform." Though both Ma La and Murong Qiu fail — their failures different in circumstance but identical at root, both defeated by the powerful force formed by the merging of comprador capital and political degeneration — after their defeats, Ma La still stands firm in Shenhuangzhou and continues to search for a new direction, while Murong Qiu is resolved to "return to that village where she once lived and labored" — to Shenhuangzhou — and to conduct "a genuine fieldwork investigation." They have not been defeated in spirit. They will not become recluses who have "seen through the vanity of the world."

The reason Ma La and Murong Qiu will not become recluses in the manner of Tao Yuanming lies in the spiritual foundation laid for them by the first thirty years of the People's Republic. The novel returns again and again to that era as a backdrop. For instance:

In his written memoir-reflections, Ma La speaks of Murong Qiu as she was during her years of "sending down": "Sister Murong… brought youth and beauty to all of Shenhuangzhou. This beauty did not belong to any one person — it belonged to everyone, and to that era."

Murong Qiu, returned to Shenhuangzhou and standing before Ma Ke's grave, speaks quietly to herself: "Your personal qualities and all the elements of that era made you what you were. The era we lived through is gone and will never return — including you, Kezi, who have been forgotten by people, and regarded by more and more of them as an incomprehensible fool. Only in my heart are you forever so full of spirit and vigor, selfless, rich in ideals…"

Two months after Ma Ke was killed saving others from the fire, Chairman Mao died; and not long after, the educated youth began leaving Shenhuangzhou one by one to return to the cities. The young Ma La "felt the village hollow and empty, and felt his own heart hollow and empty too. An era had ended."

Indeed, that era ended and passed. But in the hearts of countless people like Ma La and Murong Qiu it planted seeds — seeds that, after the assault of turbid and polluted waters, would at last put forth new and beautiful shoots.

Ma La and Murong Qiu have "built their thatched huts" within the social currents of the post-Reform era. Facing those currents, they do not bend or conform — their hearts are "far away." But where is it that their hearts have gone in their distance? To the era of their youth. They do not seek simply to return to that past era; rather, they seek, on the basis of inheriting and developing that era's finest spiritual core, to search out and practice — in new circumstances — a path leading toward the goal of a fair, just, and flourishing human society.

In this lies the hope of human society.