Forty Years of Literature and Art: Nothing but "Scar Literature"!
By Ji Lidong · October 31, 2026 · Source: Ji Lidong WeChat Official Account
This revolutionary literature and art is the negation of Scar Literature, its dialectical opposite, and the true cultural weapon to eliminate it!
Recently, an article titled "Why Couldn’t Lu Xinhua Write Scar Literature Once He Arrived in America?" circulated on Toutiao. In essence, it argued that once the originator of "Scar Literature" moved to the United States, he ceased writing pieces criticizing the Cultural Revolution. Instead, he turned his pen toward the nature of wealth, publishing Wealth Is Like Water—which the article described as "a gentle, transparent, and innocuous essay collection on the circulation of wealth."
The author of that article explained:
When Lu took up the pen again, he wrote Wealth Is Like Water. Broad and abstract in perspective, it explored a philosophy of wealth that balances heavenly principles with human desire, meditating on how casino chips flow like water. It accuses no one, blames no institution, and seeks no "rehabilitation." It represents merely a personal reflection on money by a man who weathered life's ups and downs. This shows that when the political narrative and circulation machinery underpinning Scar Literature vanished, Lu Xinhua’s authentic state as a writer emerged: gentle, contemplative, even detached. The label of "Scar" was draped over him by the era, not grown from within.
The author then raised a critical reflection:
Shouldn't those who enshrined Scar Literature reflect deeply on this? A writer lauded in China for "daring to expose scars" chose gentleness and detachment when confronted with an American social order that generates open scars daily. Were America's scars not deep enough, or was the critical edge of Scar Literature always directional, bounded, and selective?
While that author critiqued Scar Literature, they failed to grasp its root causes. By assessing Lu’s shift merely through his literary output rather than the underlying material reality, their criticism inadvertently shielded him, attributing his trajectory entirely to the era rather than his personal class stance:
That author wrote: At casino tables, chips flow daily; people win, lose, laugh, and weep. Lu observed this for seven years. He distilled it into Wealth Is Like Water rather than Casino Scars. That choice was the quietest, most absolute farewell to Scar Literature.
That author believed Lu bid farewell to Scar Literature. My answer is an absolute no!
Such an analysis remains superficial. Lu’s reflections on wealth in America never escaped the structural confines of Scar Literature. He merely donned a different mask.
Consider a pebble on smooth ground: it imagines itself proud, solitary, and unique, feeling wronged when stepped on. Yet when tossed into a roaring cement mixer, churned among gravel and sand, its sense of distinction evaporates. Subservience becomes comfortable.
Scar Literature is petty-bourgeois literature. Written by a stratum that had just secured elevated status, it looked down upon workers and peasants while claiming moral superiority. Yet before genuine monopoly capital, the petty bourgeoisie acts as a compliant servant. How could it resist? Denouncing the Cultural Revolution at home and philosophizing about wealth abroad are merely two sides of the same coin.
Lu Xun once observed Sun Hao, the last emperor of Eastern Wu: an arbitrary tyrant before surrendering to the Jin Dynasty, who subsequently wrote fawning verses to Sima Yan:
Once neighboring your land,
Now serving at your command.
I raise a cup of wine,
To wish your reign divine.
Lu Xun noted that those adept at acting as masters are equally adept at acting as servants; those arrogant toward the weak become thoroughly submissive and shameless before the strong.
Before and after going to America, Lu remained identical.
The author also outlined his material conditions in America:
Lu could not produce Scar Literature in the U.S. for a mundane reason: survival. He pedaled a pedicab for two years, delivered food, lost $10,000 in finance, was defrauded of over $10,000 in futures, and watched a $7,000 stock investment drop to 25 cents a share. He then trained for three months to become a licensed casino dealer, a job he held for seven years. It paid decently, supported his family, settled debts, and offered a foothold. Daily survival pressures, breadwinning duties, and the pursuit of tips dominated his mind.
Do these so-called "realistic considerations" not reveal the father of Scar Literature fully submerged in monetization, reduced to an acolyte of capitalism—his cherished spiritual homeland? In short, he found his true place.
Moreover, he commutes between both worlds, serving periodically as a visiting professor in China. He plays the opportunist far more shrewdly than naive popularizers of history.
His stature as the founder of Scar Literature provided sufficient cultural capital to secure patronages abroad. Reports claim he authored other novels and won prestigious prizes; only the bourgeoisie's patronage prize carries material weight here.
Returning to China as an Americanized visiting professor allows him to monetize his status further, compounding his domestic reputation with Western credentials. This dual mobility benefits both foreign ideological backers and the co-opted intellectual who wields influence across borders.
That author excused Lu's turn toward wealth by citing difficult living conditions and a lack of domestic editorial guidance. Yet did Balzac, impoverished and indebted, not produce masterworks critiquing capitalist political economy?
Poverty and isolation are no excuses. Lu never departed from Scar Literature; as a faithful acolyte of bourgeois self-interest, he was structurally incapable of critiquing American capitalism. Had he authored novels analyzing financial crises or capitalism's structural contradictions, that would have marked a true rupture with Scar Literature. He did not.
This applies not just to Lu. Scar Literature has retained its core essence for forty years.
Beyond the obvious 1980s works, productions like Looking for the Lost World, Juvenile Delinquents, Yearning, the 1986 Dream of the Red Chamber, and Romance of the Three Kingdoms carry this melancholy tone. The tragic ends of Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei, Zhuge Liang dying before victory, and the Sima clan seizing power infuse Three Kingdoms with grief. The sorrow of "The surging Yangtze rolls on east, its waves washing away heroes" aligns directly with Scar Literature's depressive baseline. Foreign Babes (Wailaimei) followed the same pattern.
Contemporary works continue this tradition. The Three-Body Problem hinges on Ye Wenjie suffering trauma during the Cultural Revolution, leading her to ally with extraterrestrials to betray Earth. The television adaptation openly turned the base's political commissar into an outright villain.
Recent television dramas, such as Bai Jingting's First Frost (Nan Hong), feature female protagonists—often journalists, the archetypal Scar protagonist—who endure degradation only to repay injury with virtue.
For decades, domestic television and film have relied on affected, self-righteous female intellectuals who demand aristocratic privilege. Actresses across various genres, including historical remakes like Armed Working Team Behind Enemy Lines, routinely adopted delicate, nasal vocal delivery.
Delicate beauty provides a convenient canvas for victimhood, which Scar narratives require. Crude figures like Li Kui or Lu Zhishen—whose childhoods were undeniably scarred—are never made protagonists. Rural peasants, coal miners, steelworkers, and builders are excluded; only educated youth receive the spotlight.
Beyond The Three-Body Problem, Ma Boyong's Mystery of Antiques shares this DNA: protagonist Xu Yuan's father was killed during the Cultural Revolution. Recent period dramas center on educated, elite figures who suffer historical misfortune only to return to cities as powerful figures.
Crime procedurals represent another branch of Scar Literature. They feature vulnerable youth suffering harm, resolved not through collective agency, but through state violence, police, and institutional power. While Scar Literature began by protesting power and violence, it ultimately seeks refuge in their embrace.
Compare this to classic revolutionary cinema like Little Soldier Zhang Ga. After Japanese forces kill his grandmother, Ga joins the guerrillas to destroy the enemy and avenge her. Resistance is revolutionary—it transforms the objective environment rather than submitting to it. Modern Republican detective dramas, by contrast, rely on bourgeois institutions, detectives, and lawyers, foreclosing revolutionary social transformation. They produce literature of subservience rather than revolution.
Revolutionary model operas (Yangbanxi) also featured vengeance, but through structural revolution that reshaped society. Their women were resolute, independent, and unyielding, rather than fragile and dependent.
Relying on external authority highlights individual helplessness. Historical revenge dramas like Story of Yanxi Palace or Nirvana in Fire operate on this logic: protagonists leverage established oppressive mechanisms to exact revenge rather than abolishing the conditions that injured them. Dramas focused on traumatized prodigies who achieve success, like Surgeons, celebrate meritocratic college exams and intellectuals, yet leave the underlying social structure unchallenged.
The petty bourgeoisie instinctively resists radical change. Yet Scar Literature evolved alongside its host class as it gained wealth and security.
Its upgraded variants appear unrelated to the original genre. Wuxia novels by Jin Yong and Liang Yusheng, with their idiosyncratic individualist heroes, celebrated petty-bourgeois freedom. The decline of Wuxia mirrors the economic displacement of that class.
Comedies like I Love My Family, The Northeast Family, and Home with Kids similarly focus on urban petty-bourgeois stability. Commercial family sagas like The Grand Mansion Gate, Going West, Qiao's Grand Courtyard, 闯关东 (Chuang Guandong), and The Industry of Great Qing take this further: having accumulated wealth, the class celebrates its bourgeois identity.
Court and historical dramas like Prime Minister Liu Luo Guo, The Eloquent Ji Xiaolan, Yongzheng Dynasty, Kangxi Dynasty, Joy of Life, and Sword Snow Stride glorify institutional authority and reject revolution. Having transformed into masters, they dispense suffering to others rather than enduring it—as seen in the treatment of works like The Piano in a Factory.
This tradition required the marginalization of a generation of women; laid-off female workers forced into sex work were excluded from Scar narratives, treated as necessary collateral.
In the micro-drama era, screens are saturated with billionaires commanding hundreds of billions, mirroring recent corporate hyper-valuations. Animated works like Nezha: Birth of the Demon Child and the 1979 Nezha Conquers the Dragon King carry similar underlying metaphors of grievance.
Compared to global monopoly capital, domestic capital retains petty-bourgeois insecurity, reflected in effeminate aesthetics and thematic anxiety over self-determination.
Exceptions over the past forty years exist, such as the Decisive Engagement film trilogy, The Emperor Han Wu, and The Qin Empire series. Yet sweeping revolutionary works remain rare in an era dominated by middle-class consumerism. While depicting sacrifice, they avoid Scar Literature's suffocating despair because their core is revolutionary: dismantling the old world to construct a new one.
This revolutionary culture represents the true antithesis to Scar Literature.
Scar Literature flourished when the proletariat lacked cultural hegemony. As material conditions shift and digital production tools proliferate, the monopoly of capital and traditional intellectual elites over literary representation is drawing to an end.