Black and White Research Anthology brings together a wide array of critiques, scholarly dialogues, and historical reflections surrounding Liu Jiming’s three-volume epic novel Black and White. Spanning nearly eight hundred pages, this collection serves not merely as an academic critique of a literary masterpiece, but as a living record and ideological testimony of contemporary China’s social transitions. Below is a comprehensive overview of the core sections and key debates compiled in this volume.

I. Preface: The Spiritual Trajectory of the Intellectual (Kong Qingdong)

In the opening essay, "Coming from the Smog," Professor Kong Qingdong frames Liu Jiming’s literary and ideological journey through the legacy of modern Chinese revolutionary literature. Kong draws a direct parallel to the historical transformations of classic intellectuals who parted ways with elite, bourgeois strongholds to align with the working masses. Rather than offering an ivory-tower assessment, the preface reflects on the complex evolution of Chinese thought over recent decades, exploring how genuine conscience and historical reality can steer writers away from detached, individualistic liberalism toward the stance of the proletariat. Kong extols Black and White as an unembellished "magic mirror" and milestone that decodes a century of societal shifts, laying bare the contradictions beneath the surface of modern progress.

II. Readers on Black and White: Grassroots Perspectives and Class Awakening

Comprising the largest volume of contributions, this section gathers essays and symposium records from workers, grassroots readers, and young independent scholars. Departing from formalist textual analysis, the discussions engage directly with lived reality across four primary dimensions:

1. Character Archetypes and Social Metaphors:

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3. Readers delve deeply into the novel's expansive character gallery. On one side stand steadfast figures like Wang Shengli, Luo Zheng, and the Old Principal, who embody collective solidarity, revolutionary integrity, and sacrifice. On the other are predators like Wu Bozhong and Dewey, who symbolize raw self-interest, primitive accumulation, and the human alienation driven by unregulated capital. Meanwhile, characters like Wang Sheng reflect the agonizing, gradual path of intellectual awakening—from youthful disorientation and mainstream elite aspiration back to the camp of the working class.

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5. Delineating the "Public" from the "People":

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7. Several essays address a foundational theoretical divide: contrasting the fragmented, atomized "consumer public" championed by contemporary market culture against the historically conscious "People". The discussions emphasize that Black and White refuses to portray the lower strata as passive victims or aestheticized tokens of misery; instead, it restores their stature as conscious, historical subjects capable of collective critique and resistance.

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9. Historical Veracity and Unvarnished Social Critique:

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11. Drawing on their own life experiences, readers examine the novel’s portrayal of state-owned enterprise (SOE) restructuring, rural-urban disparities, and the systemic costs borne by the working class. The work is widely commended as an "unembellished physical checkup report" of transitional society, validating literature's role as a fearless counter-narrative to commercialized amnesia.

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13. Female Destinies and Uncompromising Conscience:

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15. Commentaries explore the multifaceted portrayals of women within the novel. From the unyielding pursuit of justice in Li Hong and the intellectual fortitude of Gu Zheng, to the resilient endurance of Hongsun and the tragic purity of Tian Fang, readers analyze how these female characters resist darkness and safeguard moral dignity in an era of ethical upheaval.

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III. Scholars on Black and White: Literary Historiography and Ideological Critique

This section compiles symposia, tripartite panel discussions, and focused theoretical treatises by literary critics, sociologists, and historians. The scholarly analysis concentrates on macro-historical and aesthetic frameworks:

• The Reconstruction of "People's Realism": Scholars examine how the novel shatters the insular paradigms of late-twentieth-century "pure literature". By re-anchoring narrative art in the everyday struggles of working people, the trilogy reconnects with nineteenth-century critical realism and twentieth-century socialist literary traditions, advancing a vigorous aesthetic grounded in epochal witness.

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• Intellectual Narrative and Ideological Ruptures: Academics trace the historical arc of modern Chinese intellectuals across the novel's generational landscape. The analyses illuminate the structural tensions, co-optation, and moral compromises experienced by the educated elite in the face of power and capital, while charting the philosophical hurdles of forging a genuine worker-peasant alliance.

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• Allegory and Historical Philosophy in the "Post-Revolutionary Era": The novel is critically approached as an embodied history of modern Chinese thought. Scholars analyze the intergenerational conflicts—particularly the historical contest over The Biography of Zong Da—to explore the continuity, betrayal, and critical inheritance of revolutionary legacies across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

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• De-mythologizing the "Reformer": The anthology deconstructs conventional market triumphalism by demonstrating how the novel realistically portrays the frictions and class stratifications produced by rapid privatization, restoring the voices and material sacrifices of the industrial proletariat to the historical record.

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IV. The Author on Black and White: Creative Ethics and the Vocation of Literature (Liu Jiming)

Gathering Liu Jiming’s personal essays, detailed interviews, and reflective field notes, this section articulates the ethical imperative underpinning the work:

• Literature as "A Testimony of Time": Liu Jiming defines the serious novel as an indispensable historical witness tasked with penetrating mainstream illusions and recording the authentic struggles of ordinary lives.

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• Returning to the People: The author documents his decisive departure from detached institutional writing, detailing his conviction that genuine literary vitality demands standing unconditionally with laboring masses and speaking from their material reality.

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• The Pilgrimage to Shaoshan: Reflecting on visits to foundational revolutionary sites, Liu articulates how re-engaging with revolutionary roots provided the spiritual foundation needed to complete this sprawling work.

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• Unwavering Solidarity with the Oppressed: Formulated as the core premise of his literary outlook, Liu affirms that genuine art must maintain an uncompromising critical edge against structural injustice and alienation.

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V. Translators and International Perspectives on Black and White

The concluding section highlights international dialogues and cross-cultural receptions of the novel:

• Universal Resonance of Class Contradictions: Interviews with translator Chen Gang illustrate how the novel's historical-materialist framing engages with global questions of labor, social inequality, and economic polarization.

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• Global Critical Reflections: Observations from international scholars (including Russian critic Ilya Falikovski) explore the novel's sober reflections on historical regression and the global dilemmas of progressive politics, situating Black and White within a wider world-literary context.

Front Matter & Copyright Information

BLACK AND WHITE: A Research Anthology

Preface by Kong Qingdong

Edited by Vero Publishing

Florida

First published by Vero Publishing, Florida, 2026

Copyright © 2026 Vero Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the publisher.

Individual essays remain the copyright of their respective authors.

ISBN: 979-8-234-14979-4

Printed in the United States | 2026

-------------------------------------------------

Preface: Coming from the Smog

By Kong Qingdong

When invited to write a preface for Black and White: A Research Anthology, that famous preface Qu Qiubai penned for Lu Xun's collection of miscellaneous essays involuntarily welled up in my mind. The idea of borrowing that very preface to express my sentiments toward Liu Jiming has long lingered with me. The reason I hesitated to set pen to paper was the concern that Liu Jiming’s detractors might accuse me of lauding him excessively: Does Liu Jiming truly deserve comparison with Lu Xun? After all, how many eccentric and self-important public intellectuals have likened themselves to Lu Xun?

Let us turn back to Lu Xun’s own words. In The Tomb: Postscript, Lu Xun wrote plainly and unequivocally: "Because one emerges from the old stronghold, one sees the situation more clearly; striking back, it is easier to deal a fatal blow to a formidable enemy."

This inspired Qu Qiubai’s vivid metaphor:

"Lu Xun is Remus, nurtured by the milk of wild beasts; he is an unfilial son of the feudal patriarchal society, a renegade to the gentry class, and yet a candid friend to romantic revolutionaries! From his own path, he returned into the embrace of the wolves."

Setting aside whether this appraisal is overly lofty, looking at the metaphor itself, does it not closely mirror Liu Jiming’s transformation? In a past national college entrance examination, the essay prompt was "Turning Point." When future generations write on such a theme, will they perhaps cite "the renowned writer Liu Jiming" as an example?

Qu Qiubai further elaborated:

"From evolutionism to the theory of class struggle, from an unfilial son and renegade of the gentry class to a genuine friend—and ultimately a fighter—of the proletariat and the working masses, Lu Xun experienced a quarter-century of struggle, from the eve of the 1911 Revolution to the present. Through agonizing experiences and profound observation, he arrived at the new camp carrying precious revolutionary traditions. At last, he declared: 'Originally, I detested this familiar class of my own and felt no regret over its demise; later, taught by facts, I came to believe that only the emerging proletariat possesses a future.'"

Examining this passage alongside Liu Jiming’s life trajectory, has he not also undergone a quarter-century—perhaps even more—of struggle, arriving at the proletarian camp through agonizing experiences and profound observation?

In truth, Liu Jiming’s path is quite representative within China's intellectual circles over the past few decades. Many "left-wing" and "involuntarily left-wing" intellectuals were originally "right-wing" or "centrist." When they consciously or unconsciously resided in non-leftist camps, they were also motivated by the desire to save the nation and its people, believing that "democracy and freedom" could deliver China, and were even willing to suffer hardship and sacrifice for it—which is precisely why I hold respect for many right-wing intellectuals.

Yet over time, those on the right who possess genuine conscience and capability naturally experience a turn. Like "sunflowers turning toward the spring sun," they pivot toward the stance of the people, toward the stance of the proletariat—a fact attested to by a wealth of history and contemporary reality. For even if there are well-intentioned souls and noble dreams within the old stronghold, their fundamental position is out of step with time and space, ultimately misleading the country and its people. That stance dictates that the camp as a whole must inevitably rot away.

Just as the decay of the Kuomintang was not due to the personal failings of party leaders like Wang Jingwei or Chiang Kai-shek, but because the class they represented and the path along which they steered China inevitably turned the party into one that fleeced and oppressed the people. Early Communist leaders were once members of the Kuomintang; that they were ultimately able to defeat the Kuomintang was not only because they chose the correct stance, but also because they were all too familiar with that old stronghold.

Qu Qiubai analyzed the source of Lu Xun's combativeness as follows:

"From the late Qing scholar-officials, the 'old reformists,' and the likes of Chen Xiying... all the way to the recent cosmopolitan, scoundrel-like literary youth, he had personally dealt with them all. The darkness of executionism and zombie-ism; the vulgarity, self-deception, selfishness, and ignorance of petty proprietors; the fraudulent nihilism of drifting rogues; the shameless, hypocritical, and vicious actor-like gentlemen; and the masked revolutionaries—over these twenty-odd years, this 'abhorrent' high society made him profoundly sensible of the rot festering within the old forces. Precisely because he had personally burrowed into that old fortress and seen through the roots of all its ailments, his critique was exceptionally razor-sharp and precise."

Many people wonder why Liu Jiming, having not long joined the "left" and without having penned an excessive amount of theoretical tracts, possesses such formidable combative power. The secret was revealed by Mr. Qu Qiubai decades ago: he observed the myriad uglinesses of the old camp for far too long, and experienced them far too deeply.

Does this mean that any "right-wing writer" can simply give himself a shake, transform into a "left-wing writer," and instantly possess such combat effectiveness? Of course not. If one needs proof of Liu Jiming's uniqueness, proof of just how intimately familiar he is with that old bastion, then without a doubt, Black and White serves as the finest dissection theater and exhibition hall.

Open this magnificent three-part work, Black and White, and the tempestuous torrent of a century of modern Chinese history surges within its pages. Ba Jin once wrote the Revolution Trilogy and the Torrent Trilogy, yet his highest artistic achievement remained solely Family, while the other volumes lacked its fullness and resonance. The triumph of Family likewise stemmed from the fact that Ba Jin had walked out of an old world teeming with traditional patriarchal clans; he knew China's traditional households inside and out. Yet Ba Jin's personal home—what public-intellectual psychologists would term his "family of origin"—was not as dark and sinful as depicted in the novel; his personal domestic life was quite warm and gentle. Ba Jin stepped outside of purely personal feelings and, adopting the perspective of society as a whole, fiercely indicted the trauma inflicted upon youth by feudal clans. Even though Ba Jin himself was an anarchist, hundreds upon thousands of young readers, clutching a copy of Family to their chests, embarked on the road to Yan'an.

In our contemporary reality, there is neither a Yan'an nor a Mount Jinggang. Yet hundreds upon thousands of young readers, upon finishing the three volumes of Black and White, will truly discern the nature of China’s century-long history, and thereby recognize today’s contradictions and historical tasks. Just as Mr. Mao Dun’s Midnight illuminated the nature of Chinese society in the 1930s, Liu Jiming’s Black and White clarifies the societal evolutions and transformations across a full hundred years in China. For this reason, in my critique I hailed this masterpiece as a magic mirror reflecting reality and a monumental milestone—discerning subtle nuances while remaining unyielding and rich in substance. Its weight surpasses the sum of Liu Jiming’s prior literary output; to have authored such a magnum opus is enough to leave him without regrets in this lifetime.

Nearly half a century ago, in 1978, Zhang Jie published The Child from the Forest in Beijing Literature, which won the National Excellent Short Story Award and caused a nationwide sensation. Although the plot of the flute-playing youth auditioning for the conservatory conformed to the vogue of "scar literature," beneath the surface it carried an innate narrative logic: utilizing the pristine purity of nature to dissolve the murkiness and perils of actual life. Liu Jiming, though having moved within the camp of public intellectuals for years, seems never to have discarded his pure flute. This "child" who walked out of an unknown forest did not emerge to play a solitary tune of individualism; rather, he has sounded a symphonic poem named Black and White. There is a widely repeated dictum today: "The country is its people; the people are the country." Black and White vividly dramatizes a century of twisted reunions, partings, resentments, and affinities between the people and the realm.

In 1981, there was a film titled She Came from the Fog, which portrayed the story of a troubled young woman receiving societal support and redemption. Chinese society back then was still enthusiastically encouraging people to abandon evil, pursue good, and stride into the light. Consequently, the "rightists" of that era also exalted the benevolence of human nature, believing that so long as there was "Reform and Opening-up," life would be like the theme song of Sweet Life: "Our lives are bathed in sunshine." Liu Jiming’s Black and White, however, performs a rigorous spectral analysis on this blinding sunshine. He distinguishes not merely black from white, but dissects the full spectrum of red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, and violet that encodes contemporary Chinese society.

Liu Jiming is so sensitive to this light, so rational, precisely because he comes from the very camp where that sunlight gradually waned. Borrowing the title of that film, he comes from the fog—a dense mist laden with toxic smog. Bearing the scars and somber marks inflicted by the mist, rain, thunder, and lightning of a world ruled by Voldemort, he is not only able to feel genuine sunshine, but is equally adept at discerning "crimes beneath the sun." For the new camp is not devoid of wicked individuals and fools, nor is it free of fog and fallacies. Because this symphonic poem of black and white continues to play, this Black and White: A Research Anthology stands as a crystal along that unfolding path. This is far more than a sanctimonious "academic summary" of a writer and his novel; it should be regarded as an assembly bugle call, invoking those renowned verses Shu Ting wrote to Gu Cheng:

Because you believed in the fairy tale you penned,

You turned yourself into the faint blue flower within it.

By nothing more than a simple signal,

You rallied the ranks of stars, milkvetches, and crickets,

To set forth toward that uncontaminated distance.

Let us join Liu Jiming, who has walked out of the smog, alongside his diverse comrades-in-arms, and set forth once more toward that uncontaminated distance.

June 26, 2026, in Beijing

Section I: Readers on Black and White

1. Demarcating Black and White to Anchor the People’s Soul: On the Mission of the New People’s Literature and Art Borne by Black and White

By Li Peipei

Every literary work inherently takes a stance and carries an inescapable political nature. Black and White belongs to the people. It writes for the people, confronts the mainstream head-on, and serves as the voice of the populace. It adheres steadfastly to a class-based narrative, awakening the class consciousness of the working people. This is a monumental work bearing the historic mission of a New People’s Literature and Art, with Teacher Liu Jiming acting like a solitary eagle hovering tirelessly over the ideological frontlines of our era.

I. Grounding the Character in Black and White: Establishing the People as the Historical Subject

Black and white constitute the core contrasting imagery throughout the entire novel. The author utilizes "white" to symbolize justice, ideals, and a proletarian stance deeply rooted in the grassroots. Conversely, "black" serves as a metaphor for the greed and betrayal inherent in human nature, alongside the spiritual alienation spawned by the relentless logic of capital.

• The Embodiments of Pure "White":

  • Wang Shengli dedicated half his life to stationed service at the brick factory, unceasingly advocating for the rights and welfare of his fellow workers.

  • Luo Zheng spent an entire lifetime relentlessly seeking out the obscured historical truth of the grassroots.

  • The Old Principal and Tian Fang took deep root in rural soil, faithfully safeguarding ordinary working people.

  • These characters represent pure "white," standing as unwavering guardians aligned unconditionally with the laboring masses.

• The Embodiments of Pure "Black":

• Wu Bozhong and Dewey (Du Wei) are mired in the quagmire of insatiable desire.

  • They adhere fanatically to the law of the jungle where the weak fall prey to the strong, having become completely alienated by capitalist logic.

  • They serve as the textbook archetypes of "black" in the text.

• The Interwoven Middle State:

• A majority of the novel's characters inhabit an intermediate state woven of both black and white.

  • Wang Sheng, born into a working-class family, originally possesses a pure nature; however, swept along by the currents of marketization, he traverses a period of disorientation and hesitation, ultimately completing his spiritual awakening only after confronting the raw suffering of the bottom tiers of society.

  • Song Qiankun threw himself into the revolutionary storm in his youth and walked through hail of bullets, yet harbored opportunistic private motives deep down, resembling a real-world Fu Zhigao whose initial convictions frayed over time.

  • Hong Taihang set out in his youth brimming with hot blood, risking his life in distant borderlands, only to degenerate in his twilight years into the profit-seeking elite known as "Master Hong" (Hong Ye).

The author faithfully portrays the internal struggles and psychological complexities of human nature without ever blurring the fundamental boundary dividing good from evil, or rectitude from opportunism.

Contemporary popular literature and art often obsess over crafting self-serving individualist success stories in the mold of Wu Bozhong, deliberately concealing the collective survival struggles of grassroots laborers and steadily eroding their rightful place as historical subjects through skewed narrative framing.

Crucially, this black-and-white dichotomy is not a superficial moral critique; it represents an essential historical demarcation between two social groups:

1. Figures like Wu Bozhong and Dewey—subservient to capital and pursuing personal upward mobility—constitute the fragmented, individualized "public" within consumerist narratives. Their spiritual horizon is confined to private gain, rendering them incapable of shouldering the fundamental demand for collective liberation in this epoch.

2. The working masses represented by Wang Shengli depend upon collective survival and care for the shared destiny of the grassroots. They represent the concrete historical force propelling social development forward—embodying what Marxist discourse defines in its fullest sense as "the People."

Through this diverse spectrum of characters, this standard achieves a vital theoretical distinction between the "general public" and "the People," firmly anchoring the working masses at the core of narrative history as the true historical subject.

II. Returning from the Stray Path: Wang Sheng’s Metamorphosis and the Awakening of Class Consciousness

In his childhood, Wang Sheng was originally named Wang Sheng (王成). His father, Wang Shengli, chose this name after the revolutionary martyr in the film Heroic Sons and Daughters, investing in it an elder's deep aspirations: hoping his son would inherit the revolutionary color of the proletariat and grow into a successor loyal to the grassroots. As an adolescent, he did indeed live up to the ideals embedded in that naming, carrying a pure, unblemished faith in heroism.

However, upon entering university, this name—bearing the indelible imprint of a previous era—drew constant ridicule from his peers. He decisively changed his name to the homophone Wang Sheng (王晟), an act loaded with profound metaphor: the sacrifice, sublimity, and revolutionary ideals signified by the hero Wang Cheng were consciously dismantled and abandoned.

This coincided with the early 1980s, an era when foreign intellectual currents surged in and society indulged in a one-sided rethinking of past decades. For him, changing his name was a psychological act of "patricide"—actively severing the value system upheld by his father, erasing the spiritual marks belonging to an earlier phase of history, and fully embracing the mainstream narrative celebrating individual success in an effort to mold a "new self" detached from class origins.

To effect a thorough departure from his original stance, he actively aligned himself with the intellectual Lang Yongliang, venerating him as a spiritual father. Yet this intellectual idol was precisely the kind of fawning literary hanger-on described by Lu Xun who curried favor with authority.

A single "Three-Family Banquet" laid bare his true colors: elites from politics, academia, and private capital clinked glasses to trade mutual interests, consolidating their factional barriers through intermarriage and mutual flattery, turning past shared tribulations into political chips for elite elevation, thereby sealing off cross-generational privileges. At that time, Wang Sheng was consumed by the urge to squeeze into this interest network, positioning himself diametrically opposite his father’s class stance.

As the descendant of a revolutionary hero, his inner soul remained perpetually torn:

• On one side stood the tide of the times represented by Dewey, obsessed with speculative windfall and tempting him to enter the race of capital as an opportunistic trend-chaser.

• On the other side stood the grassroots stance upheld by his father Wang Shengli throughout his entire life—an indelible class foundation woven into his bloodline.

This internal fracture manifested in his vacillating choices: while fiercely critiquing Song Xiaofan's "scar literature," he simultaneously felt stranded and desolate during his banished posting at the Niangzi Normal School, eventually fleeing to join the Popular Art magazine led by Dewey, willingly turning himself into an essayist for capitalist narratives.

When the Zong Tianyi miscarriage of justice erupted, Wang Sheng's conscience drove him to step forward and speak out, yet at that juncture he was supported merely by simple, elementary moral indignation rather than conscious class awareness; he had not yet truly returned to the camp of the workers and peasants.

His authentic awakening commenced only after his imprisonment. Confined behind prison walls away from external clamor, he embarked upon a thorough, unsparing self-dissection. He listened to Guo Wencai’s story, endured the raw, unvarnished grassroots life of the penal farm, and read Gorky’s The Song of the Stormy Petrel in the prison library. The printed words pierced the gloom that had shrouded his heart for so long, and a ray of idealistic light re-illuminated his spiritual universe.

Through this inward-facing self-revolution, he broke free from confusion, transforming from an adrift, progressive youth into a nascent revolutionary. This spiritual shift carried a destiny-defining metaphor: shortly thereafter, Luo Zheng bequeathed his entire estate to Wang Sheng, signifying that the ideals, responsibilities, and revolutionary torch of the elder generation of fighters were formally passed into his hands.

Wang Sheng’s introspection did not cease there. The vast repository of books in prison led him back to his youthful heart, allowing him to rediscover the integrity and courage buried deep within his character—qualities that were not innate, but rather the spiritual gifts bestowed upon ordinary laborers by the preceding revolutionary era. He finally untangled his entire spiritual trajectory: from the Wang Cheng who carried revolutionary expectations, to the estranged, lost Wang Sheng, the shadow of a split identity had haunted him ceaselessly. If a person cannot trace their spiritual origins, they can neither comprehend their own tribulations nor summon the conviction to confront reality and march into the future.

These progressive layers of deep reflection in prison allowed him to shake off the seductions of market ideology completely, bringing about a full class awakening. Wang Sheng’s transformation demonstrates that only by recovering their spiritual roots rooted in the working classes can contemporary youth step outside the narrative traps woven by capital and stand firmly on the side of the people.

III. The Impasse of the Jungle: Piercing the Capital-Fabricated Illusion of Social Mobility

The wave of marketization fostered an individualistic striving narrative centered entirely on wealth accumulation and class jumping. It dressed up fawnings upon power and speculative pursuit of profit as the sole route for ordinary people to change their destiny, while camouflaging how this narrative warps and ultimately annihilates human nature at the grassroots level.

Du Fu, a secondary figure serving to link Dewey’s lineage, fully embodies the complete trajectory of a grassroots laborer attempting to climb the social ladder. His tragic life punctures the vanity of the social mobility dream early on, serving as a microcosm of the urban petty bourgeoisie’s destiny since modern times.

• Du Fu's Rise and Fall:

  • Originating as a suburban vegetable farmer, Du Fu became an apprentice in a photo studio through diligence and quick wit.

  • Cast out by the shopkeeper Zhan Datong, he fled to Beijing, subserviently working as an assistant to a foreign photographer.

  • After mastering the craft, he returned to set up his own studio right across from his old master's shop. He patiently flattered the Zhan family, married the widowed Zhan Rong, and took over the Dajiang Photo Studio, elevating himself from a common laborer to an urban petty bourgeois.

  • Weathering the Anti-Japanese War and the Liberation, the studio was nationalized, and he became the manager of the state-owned studio.

  • However, due to his past interactions with foreign nationals, he was branded a traitor during the Cultural Revolution.

  • Upon discovering that his supposed son Dewey was in reality fathered by Wu Bozhong, he drowned himself under the dual weight of spiritual devastation.

This character encapsulates several profound metaphors:

1. Physical Infertility as a Symbol of Spiritual Castration:

2. Du Fu, Zong Tianyi, and Nie Changhai all suffer from male infertility in their prime, in sharp contrast to Wu Bozhong's rampant carnal energy and extensive progeny. This carries deep meaning: Du Fu originally possessed raw vitality as a farmer, but after seeking a livelihood in Beijing, he prostrated himself, accepted the plaque of "Sino-Japanese Friendship Figure," surrendered his independent personality, and continuously depleted his spiritual vitality.

3. Grassroots strivers harbor an obsessive fixation on class jumping; yet beneath the fleeting glory of elevated status lies an ingrained, bone-deep class inferiority. He treated Zhan Rong like a servant attending a master; this love was, in essence, idolatry directed toward the upper classes. Forcing one's way into an alien class inevitably invites tragedy: Wu Bozhong and Dewey spent their lives maneuvering, only to be cast aside by the highest echelons; only Wang Sheng, by holding fast to his native working-class stance, attained authentic acceptance and validation from his own class.

4. The Contradictory Nature of Du Fu's Self-Respect:

5. When Zhan Datong publicly humiliated him, he felt mortified and harbored resentment, proving that grassroots figures preserve basic personal boundaries. Yet when facing the foreign national Hans Lee, who wielded institutional resources and power, he abandoned all dignity to kneel and polish his shoes in unctuous subservience. This self-respect was conditional: toward employers on equal craft footing, he could preserve a facade of dignity; but before raw hegemony, he proactively bowed his head to trade for survival space. This reflects the split survival personality of the lower strata, whose dignity collapses instantly before authority and capital.

6. The Inherent Limitations of the Urban Petty Bourgeoisie:

7. Drawing on the analytical framework of Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society, the petty bourgeoisie relies on meager craftsmanship or small-scale property to survive. Their economic status hangs suspended in the middle; they seek merely peaceful survival and lack both the courage and awareness to resist coercive power. Du Fu possessed private property in the photo studio, yet his meek and cowardly character left him incapable of resisting Wu Bozhong's violations or shielding himself amid political storms. His fragile economic footing and adrift social standing were laid bare; his ruin exemplifies the inescapable fate of the petty bourgeoisie trapped in upward-mobility fantasies while powerless against historical grinding wheels.

Du Fu's tragedy, spanning decades, foreshadows the inevitable trajectory of the post-Reform generation of Dewey and Ba Dong, demonstrating that as long as private ownership and hierarchical values persist, the myth of grassroots ascension will only continue to fabricate spiritual deformities and human ruin.

IV. Seeking Truth in History: The Biography of Zong Da Illuminates the Centennial Reality

The preceding three sections dissect how the "public" narrative under market conditions triggers human alienation and class amnesia across three dimensions: group stance, youth transformation, and capitalist illusions.

The three-generational fate of the Zong family, coupled with the decades-long confrontation between Song Qiankun and Luo Zheng over The Biography of Zong Da, traces the roots of all these spiritual dilemmas, linking contemporary social malaise to centennial historical sources and completing the temporal dimension of the black-and-white value framework.

• The Trauma of the Absent Spiritual Father:

• Wang Sheng’s "patricidal" spiritual rupture is rooted in the continuous trauma of an "absent father" across three generations of the Zong family.

  • Having studied overseas, Zong Da was long immersed in Western values; his dietary habit of preferring milk and bread serves as a concrete symbol of his detachment from indigenous worker-peasant stances and his ideological wavering.

  • Characters like Luo Zheng and Wang Shengli, firmly rooted in the grassroots, held fast to unadulterated revolutionary convictions, forming a sharp black-and-white contrast that exposes the intrinsic class fissure within modern intellectuals.

  • Abandoned by his biological father in childhood, Zong Da’s son, Zong Xiaotian, bore the stigma of having a "traitor" father. When Anna remarried Song Qiankun, Song never assumed the guiding responsibility of a spiritual father, passing an ethical void directly down to the grandson, Zong Tianyi.

Following the modern opening of China's gates, complete and reliable indigenous spiritual father-figures dissolved, leaving numbed figures like Ah Q and Hua Laoshuan as the baseline norm. Although worker-peasant heroes in revolutionary art (such as Li Yuhe and Xu Yunfeng) erected spiritual coordinates, they could easily burden subsequent generations with heavy psychological expectations, breeding a rebellious urge to sever ties with parental values. This historical fissure explains why Wang Sheng proactively cast off his working-class foundation in the 1980s to chase personal success.

• The Historical Narrative Contest between Song Qiankun and Luo Zheng:

• While Du Fu and Dewey’s descent into capital represents the contemporary tragedy of the petty bourgeoisie, the protracted struggle between Song Qiankun and Luo Zheng unmasks narrative opportunism seeded during the revolutionary era.

• Within the novel, The Biography of Zong Da long branded Zong Da as a traitor; however, multiple narrative foreshadowings confirm that this alleged treason was a conspiracy concocted by Kuomintang agents. Song Qiankun carried suspicions of opportunism throughout his life without judicial proof; his insistence on solidifying Zong Da’s "traitor" label was essentially a device to shroud his own selfish ambition beneath another's historical stain.

Luo Zheng represents the "white" force defending justice and historical truth, acting as a lifetime moral shackle upon Song Qiankun. As long as Luo Zheng drew breath, Song Qiankun dared not indulge his private lusts or enjoy unbridled privileges; only when Luo Zheng passed away, and Song visited the bookstore to confirm it with his own eyes, did Song himself expire shortly thereafter.

This ending metaphorically illustrates that once the righteous force safeguarding truth fades, opportunistic dark desires reach their curtain call, exposing historical memory itself as a black-and-white maze where reality and falsehood, loyalty and treason, are systematically inverted.

• The Divergence in Historical Documentation:

• The differing approaches of various writers toward Zong Da's historical records mirror the divide between an "elite-dependent public narrative" and a "worker-peasant-grounded people's narrative":

  • Lang Yongliang, a right-leaning intellectual subservient to Song Qiankun, organized Zong Da’s archival materials but aborted his research under the constraints of elite factional interests, repeatedly dissuading Wang Sheng from investigating history to help conceal fabricated historical records.

  • Conversely, Wang Sheng, having broken free from market narratives and achieved class consciousness, insisted on pursuing the truth. The novel entrusts the mission of restoring historical reality directly to him, validating that only by standing firmly with the workers and peasants can one break through narrative barricades and restore obscured historical truth.

The intergenerational spiritual rootlessness of the Zong family, coupled with Song Qiankun's historical manipulations, traces a centennial fissure: foreign culture eroding native value foundations, opportunists festering within revolutionary ranks, and marketization breeding alienated individuals chasing class ascension. This historical undercurrent corroborates the contemporary narrative, proving that departing from the worker-peasant stance inevitably snaps spiritual continuity and turns truth upside down. Reconstructing the collective spiritual coordinates shared by laborers and dispelling the mists of history distorted by private interest is precisely the core mission of the New People’s Literature and Art borne by Black and White.

2. Awakened Masses: Discerning the Authentic Image of the People from Black and White

By Lu Wei

In recent years, although the "New Mass Literature and Art" championed by mainstream cultural discourse has formally inaugurated an era of popular participation in creative production, it universally exhibits a conspicuous absence of critical instruments alongside a generalized blurring of class consciousness. To surmount this predicament, an elemental question must be clarified: What manner of the "image of the people" do we fundamentally require? The response articulated in Teacher Liu Jiming’s Black and White offers a vivid, penetrating exemplar—what it delineates is the authentic "People," rather than a "public" disciplined and domesticated by capital.

Consider first one of the archetypal images of the people in Black and White—Gu Zhezhen, father to the Dongjiang Steel worker Gu Xiaole, who crystallizes the quintessential persona of the great industrial working class forged during the Mao Zedong era. The narrative first foregrounds Elder Gu's social stature through a prominent steel commendation plaque observed by his granddaughter Gu Zheng: "Awarded to Comrade Gu Zhezhen: Provincial Model Worker of 1970. Dongjiang Provincial Federation of Trade Unions, May 1, 1973." Carefully encased beneath a protective glass cover, this medal denotes far more than an individual worker's pride; it encapsulates a historical epoch wherein the "working class stood as masters of their own house."

The focal point embodying Gu's proletarian integrity emerges during his address at the impromptu joint assembly organized amid the Dongjiang Steel workers' protest struggle. In this address, Elder Gu lays bare reality across three core dimensions:

• First, the material wealth painstakingly produced by the working class over decades has been brazenly embezzled by bureaucratic-capitalist interest cliques.

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• Second, the working class has suffered not merely a catastrophic plunge in socioeconomic stature, but a total stripping away of its political voice.

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• Third, corporate executives "confound right with wrong and evade underlying structural causes," deliberately stigmatizing the righteous grievances of the workers.

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Gu’s intervention functions not solely as a dramatic narrative climax, but as an explicit manifesto of the novel’s class orientation. Through the outcry of this veteran worker, proletarian indignation and active resistance achieve a resonant, deeply affecting gravitas. This constitutes precisely the "authentic image of the people" crafted in Black and White: he is neither an abstract cipher nor an object of passive pity, but an alert class fighter possessing historical memory and the audacity to shout out.

Beyond the veteran worker Gu Zhezhen, one must examine Luo Zheng, a contemporary revolutionary veteran. Luo Zheng is a revolutionary intellectual, an unyielding investigative reporter, and fundamentally a militant committed to continuing the revolution. Serving as an underground courier throughout the War of Liberation, an unbending cadre and journalist dedicated to historical truth during the Maoist era, he became a steadfast fighter resisting capitalist encroachment post-Reform. His relentless pursuit of redress through petitioning and his defense of the martyrs' cemetery on Phoenix Island exemplify this protracted struggle. In his twilight days, Luo Zheng’s parting exhortation to Wang Sheng remained steadfast: never surrender, and resist oppressive forces to the bitter end.

Wang Shengli was Luo Zheng’s comrade-in-arms. Luo Zheng appraised him thus: "Wang Shengli is an authentic revolutionary." During the battle to liberate Dajiang, Luo Zheng coordinated with the spearhead company led by Wang Shengli to launch a preemptive assault against the enemy city defense headquarters, obliterating the garrison and mounting the five-star red flag atop the building. Operating like an iron soldier, Wang Shengli emerged as a hero in the liberation of Dajiang. By the 1950s, he served as commune vice-director and armed forces department head. During the Cultural Revolution, serving as director of the newly established brickworks revolutionary committee, he pledged a firm military-style oath: "I guarantee that within five years, the poor and lower-middle peasants across all ten-plus production brigades of this commune shall live in houses of brick and tile." Following the Reform era, Wang Shengli continued his struggle, furiously confronting Ba Guangming—the capitalist who extracted surplus value while withholding workers' wages. He declared: "Chairman Mao taught us that the philosophy of the Communist Party is fundamentally a philosophy of struggle."

Luo Zheng commended Wang Shengli’s uncompromising spirit in a letter of grievance. Following Wang Shengli’s death from cancer, the veteran brickworks laborers mourned:

• "Old Director, you wore your heart out managing this plant. Now the brickworks lie in ruins while the corrupt walk free—Heaven is blind!"

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• "Old Director, throughout your life you sought welfare for us workers, fought against corrupt bureaucrats, and disregarded personal wealth and fame. Now that you depart, allow me to kowtow three times before you!"

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Alongside veteran revolutionaries like Luo Zheng and Wang Shengli, the offspring of workers like Gu Zhezhen inherited this proletarian fortitude. When Gu Xiaole matures into an activist confronting capital, he transcends the confines of an ordinary laborer—he awakens to the truth that every worker is a fortress, and that the surging torrent composed of countless fighters represents the ultimate locomotive driving historical progress.

Spanning the veteran worker Gu Zhezhen, the revolutionary intellectual Luo Zheng, the unyielding militant Wang Shengli, and the successor Gu Xiaole, Black and White consistently outlines figures of the people anchored in class integrity. While their temperaments vary, their revolutionary praxis remains genuine and inspiring. They serve as selfless proletarian archetypes who functioned as cultural heroes during the socialist construction era. Their characters demonstrate proletarian humanity, which stands in direct contrast to bourgeois individualism. They represent subjects who confront capital and articulate collective outrage. Rather than singing praises to hardship under oppressive destitution, they actively rise up to expose entrenched systemic darkness.

In contrast, observe the "image of the people" framed by contemporary "New Mass Literature": "Wang Jibing breaks free from the monolithic framing of traditional labor literature; his delivery drivers are not mere emblems of suffering, but encompass existential weight, grassroots benevolence, and aesthetic dimensions, forming multifaceted human beings devoid of forced elevation." This represents the prevailing accolade from the cultural establishment. Yet when proletarian literature is reinterpreted merely as an evasion of "monolithic labor framing," does this celebrated portrait truly represent the authentic People? The answer is negative.

While such depictions register empirical everyday reality, they lack political consciousness. Such an individualized public has not achieved awakened class clarity; it cannot dissect structural reality or map out authentic emancipation. Comparing these portraits against Luo Zheng or Wang Shengli serves to shatter illusions and awaken cultural critique. When the delivery-worker poet writes, "Life is a giant sieve, sifting everyone into displacement," he articulates genuine sorrow, yet he stops short of asking: "Who controls this sieve? Why are certain classes systematically sifted away?"

Conversely, Gu Zhezhen interrogates directly: "Who sold Dongjiang Steel out to foreign conglomerates? Who forced laid-off workers to trade decades of blood and sweat for a severance pittance of a few thousand yuan?"

Herein lies the essential divide separating the "People" from the "Public": the former constitutes an active combatant unmasking systemic causes, whereas the latter remains a passive lamenter resigned to the dictates of fate. Contrasting these paradigms illustrates that the characters celebrated by mainstream mass literature lack a grounded class stance and fail to penetrate structural reality. As Chairman Mao emphasized in his Talks at the Yan'an Forum on Literature and Art: "All dark forces endangering the masses of the people must be exposed, and all revolutionary struggles of the masses must be extolled; this constitutes the fundamental task of revolutionary writers and artists." The revelation of Black and White lies in its relentless interrogation: Shall our cultural work cultivate a domesticated mass subservient to capital, or forge an awakened People capable of historical struggle and creation?

3. What Does Master Wu's Virulent Reproductive Potency Metaphorize?

By Qin Hua

A recurring inquiry has emerged among readers of Black and White: Du Fu, Zong Tianyi, and Nie Changhai all suffer from male infertility during their prime, whereas Master Wu fathered children across numerous households. What structural metaphor resides within this contrast?

In narrative fiction, the divergent dispositions, philosophies, and actions of characters frequently mirror the dominant ideological currents or class consciousness of their respective epochs, while their individual trajectories encode the rise and fall of historical movements. Before decoding Master Wu’s pervasive fertility, one must first decipher what male infertility signifies across Du Fu, Zong Tianyi, and Nie Changhai. The author’s orchestration of this shared physiological pathology serves to diagnose the loss of spiritual vitality and internal "erectile dysfunction" that ensues when individuals betray their nation, their ethical bonds, or their revolutionary commitments.

Du Fu’s Infertility: National Betrayal and Enslavement

Du Fu’s infertility signifies those who surrender national dignity, act as colonial lackeys, and undergo spiritual castration. Du Fu begins as a diligent vegetable vendor in Republican-era Beijing. Aspiring to elevate his status, he fawns upon a German photographer, enduring humiliating subservience simply to master photographic techniques. Upon establishing his own studio, he marries Zhan Rong, the daughter of his former employer.

On his wedding day, he hosts elite figures including the commander of the Japanese military police. When Commander Nakajima publicly designates Du Fu's studio as an officially chartered shop for imperial forces, Du Fu is christened a "Sino-Japanese Friendship Figure"—in reality, an unadorned traitor. Metaphorically separated from true humanity, his physiological infertility sets in. Subsequently, Master Wu arrives, repeatedly violating Du Fu’s wife under the pretext of medical treatment and fathering Dewey. Decades later, upon discovering this reality, Du Fu drowns himself in a river.

Zong Tianyi’s Infertility: Betrayal of Love and Hedonistic Decay

Zong Tianyi’s infertility represents the betrayal of working-class devotion and descent into decadent materialism. Fleeing retribution after wounding a school official who had assaulted his mother, Zong settles in Red Stone Valley and unites with Hongsun, an honest rural woman. Together, they build a thriving small coal-mining enterprise.

Yet as his enterprise expands into real estate, his commitments dissolve. He abandons his devoted wife to marry Mengfei, a commercial singer. Simultaneously, he is afflicted with incurable infertility. Master Wu enters the void under the guise of administering fertility cures, sexually violating Mengfei and siring An'an. Years later, the revelation of this deception, compounded by chronic alcoholism, precipitates Zong's demise from liver cancer.

Nie Changhai’s Infertility: Abandonment of Revolution for Capitalist Greed

Nie Changhai’s condition mirrors the spiritual bankruptcy of those who abandon revolutionary ideals to serve private capital. Nurtured by the Old Principal as a communist successor, he was the sole worker-peasant-soldier university graduate from Phoenix Island. He initially spurned urban opportunities to build his village, becoming local party branch secretary.

However, with the dawn of the Reform era, he becomes obsessed with enrichment. He privatizes and contracts Mount Xiaolong to establish poultry farms, directly desecrating the burial grounds of over a hundred martyrs who fell during the War of Liberation. Disregarding the Old Principal's vehement objections, Nie prioritizes private wealth; immediately thereafter, his infertility manifests. Master Wu subsequently violates Nie’s wife Xiaoman under therapeutic pretenses, fathering a son. Once Nie uncovers the truth years later, he attempts to confront Wu Bozhong, only to be beaten away by private security guards; he eventually drowns in a village pond while intoxicated.

Collectively, these three figures initially possessed genuine vitality: Du Fu’s honest trade, Zong Tianyi’s youthful diligence, and Nie Changhai’s communal drive. Yet once they subordinated their humanity to private advancement and class climbing, they underwent self-castration:

• Du Fu severed his national dignity to become a foreign puppet.

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• Zong Tianyi severed moral solidarity to wallow in consumerist debauchery.

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• Nie Changhai severed revolutionary loyalty to serve as an agent of primitive accumulation.

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Having surrendered their ethical backbone, their physical infertility embodies their deeper spiritual impotence.

The Metaphor of Master Wu’s Reproductive Proliferation

In contrast, Master Wu (Wu Bozhong) represents the infectious tenacity of regressive, predatory ideologies running rampant throughout the market era. The three women—Zhan Rong, Mengfei, and Xiaoman—remain bound by feudal patriarchal imperatives concerning lineage, quietly enduring Wu's abuses without public resistance. Wu’s unchecked sexual predation exposes how feudal attitudes concerning female subjugation continue to poison society.

Wu Bozhong represents an unapologetic predator. Unlike the spiritually impotent men who retain residual traces of guilt, Wu has completely surrendered to predatory self-interest; he experiences no moral conflict, viewing exploitation as his personal prerogative. Consequently, his psychological hubris fuels relentless carnal proliferation.

Beginning as an itinerant quack in the Republican era, Wu concocted stimulants to facilitate sexual assault. Kept dormant under the dictatorship of the proletariat following 1949, his operations exploded with the advent of the Reform era. Opening a commercial clinic in Pizhou, he fabricated medical miracles, exploited vulnerable women, and fled only when a malpractice death threatened exposure.

He resurfaced during the national qigong craze, partnering with his biological son Dewey to establish the "Yuanji Method." Dewey secured municipal backing, Nie Changhai provided requisitioned communal land on Phoenix Island, and Zong Tianyi contributed private financing. Wu and Dewey subsequently expanded their enclave into luxury resorts and private villas, corrupting regional party cadres—including Lang Tao, Song Qiankun, and even Chen Yimeng—into an expansive web of bureaucratic-commercial collusion.

Wu Bozhong boasted to Zhan Rong: "A man's destiny shifts with the nation's fortune; I shall not remain an itinerant quack forever. The hexagrams reveal that my era and my son's era are inevitably arriving!" The subsequent historical unfolding validated his prophecy: the unchecked resurgence of predatory capital turned Phoenix Island, once consecrated by fallen martyrs, into an elite enclave mirroring Jeffrey Epstein’s private island.

Master Wu’s virulent fertility metaphorizes the unchecked vitality of predatory practices, the systemic exploitation of vulnerable women, and the resurgence of bourgeois and feudal corruption within the post-socialist transition. In an environment dominated by capital accumulation, individuals who lack ideological clarity are easily infected by regressive consciousness, degenerating into hollow beings who sacrifice communal solidarity for personal gain. Unless armed with revolutionary theory to discern the predatory nature behind such ideologies, society remains defenseless against the pervasive encroachments of figures like Wu Bozhong.