A Study Of Xiao Qian In The Multi - Cultural

As one of the most outstanding representatives of Mongolian writers creating works with modern Chinese, Xiao Qian is not only a successful writer, translator, world-famous reporter, envoy of cultural exchanges between China and foreign world, but one of the most important pioneers who introduced and popularized modern Chinese literature to western readers. Xiao Qian was born in the late Qing Dynasty, grew up in the early Republic of China, experienced the World War Ⅱ and witnessed the development of People’s Republic of China, so he was called a Century Man. Born with poverty, young alone, from a descendant of a poor Mongolian banner people down into a work-study orphan in the church school, Xiao Qian tasted the sweets and bitters of life and read various circumstances of life. Just as a mussel changes into pearl from disease at cross purposes, the misfortune gave him access to literature. Nurtured in the traditional Chinese culture, and edified by multi-culture such as the religious culture, the European & American culture and new literature & art thoughts in China, his life full of colorful legend and various sceneries, his creations conceived many genres and broad perspective at home and abroad. His creations such as unique literature works, wonderful report on the World War Ⅱ, and exquisite translation works of British & American literature, are full of aesthetic values and rich ideas, and bear strong humanistic spirit and more social responsibilities.Taking the formation of Xiao Qian’s personality as the starting point, as the clue the influence of different cultures on his creation at levels when blending with and penetrating into Xiao Qian’s life, the paper analyzes the cultural connotation of unity in diversity in Xiao Qian’s creation. The analysis pays attention to both the influence of environment on the writer and the function of the writer’s feelings and cultural position on the works, thus the complex relationship between the writer and cultures are shown at every aspect, especially among which Xiao Qian’s national psychology seldom dealt with before is discussed. The paper is divided into four parts:The first part mainly discusses the forming of Xiao Qian’s keynote in creating. There are two significant features for Xiao Qian’s literature creation at the first stage, namely, childhood perspective and biographical writing,which surely leads us back to his life to seek the motive power. Analysis finds that the grief from losing sponsor, the inferior feeling from dependence and the confusion of national identity during the childhood are the most important emotional experience, for which he created literature to seek catharsis and compensation.However, different from ordinary people, authors are able to translate individual losses into people’s losses, individual needs into people’s needs, so they converse the catharsis of sense of no family and the desire for identity into care for the masses, fulfillment of social responsibilities and concern for the national fate, to make the feelings of home & country a keynote for their creation.Thus moral principles predominated by benevolence and piety, and responsibility consciousness of home, country and the world make up Xiao Qian’s cultural awareness and cultural basis.The second part discusses Xiao Qian’s effort in deepening the thought of literature, which is mainly manifested in his Christian-theme novels. Xiao Qian grew up in a family with religious tradition, spent his boyhood in Christian circumstances by chance. He rejected Christianity, however, cultural aesthetic consciousness in connection with Christianity and special religious expression were important in his culturalpersonality. This is a period at a turning point, during which Xiao Qian became independent both in life and thought, and during which he started to struggle under the guidance of communist revolutionary ideas and new literature & art thoughts in China. From that time on, his creation tended to go beyond his personal life, which was embodied in the transition in content and then the deepening in thought. From 1935 on, revealing the colonization of western Christian in China became the basic theme of his novels,which showed that Xiao Qian started to criticize religion, and that he has been able to make literature creations in a brand-new perspective.At this stage, He represented the hypocrisy in his mind of Christianity through his own experience, and wrote it in his fiction. Christian culture became an important part in his cultural personality.The third part mainly discusses Xiao Qian’s contribution in cultural exchanges between China and western countries, including newspaper editing, literary criticizing, literary creating and translating. This is the longest working period in his life, almost throughout his whole life. Along with the reading of western literature during the primary & secondary school and the translation of that after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, the 7-year stay in the UK is a crucial period. During that period, he resorted to fluent English to deliver lectures, create works and make communications, representing brand-new Chinese intellectuals, to inform the western with the current modernization of ancient Chinese culture,to research the western classical literature with a reference and tolerant attitude and absorb its excellence into his own creations. Thanks to this, Xiao Qian’s creation entered a totally new stage, genre becoming more diverse, style more free and easy, vision much more wider. This mature and solid creative work brought him a career peak, brightly colorful life so as to establish a unique status in the history of literature for him.The last part is an overall review of Xiao Qian’s cultural personality. As a receptor of culture and master of creation, Xiao Qian was influenced, but not limited, and he selected what he needed, which makes his works cultural diverse and not easily interpreted. This chapter focuses on Xiao Qian’s cultural personality from the viewpoint of psychology to reveal its essence of unity in diversity. In addition, it outlines the cultural psychology of caring for the young & weak and identifying the nationality, taking Xiao Qian’s cultural personality as an example.It can be found from the above analysis that research with culture as a breakthrough point on writers with rich life and creation experience is very helpful to present the unity of their works, discover their creation rules and intrinsic quality, and find great pioneer writers’ cultural choices and arduous efforts in the course of the modernization of Chinese literature during the 20th century.