A Writer Who Changed His Profession: Mayor Li Jieren's Dilemma In Search Of His Identity In A New Society, 1950-1962

Li Jieren was a historical novel writer in the modern times of China and was quite a representative personage in the culture of modern times in Chengdu and Sichuan. From July of 1950 to his death in December 1962, he was holding the leadership position of the local government, namely of the vice-mayor of Chengdu in charge of the culture, education and urban building work. Working as a famous writer and a mayor at the same time was rare during that period, but the experience of incorporating into the new society still has certain representativeness among the writers and even intellectuals of his generation.This text aims at carrying on a comparatively overall research on Li's thoughts in that period. In the past the focal point was mainly his works, little had done about his personage and his thoughts. And general researches laid emphasis on Li before 1949, while his thoughts after 1949 were less dealt with. People only remember his odd pieces of words, while systematical and deep research was scanty. Therefore the comprehension for Li including the study on its works is far from adequacy. Generally speaking, those researches have two main characteristics. The first, the focal points of those research concentrated on Li's works mainly, so they were of the nature of literary criticism. People seldom found researches on his personage and thoughts from the point of view of intellectual history, culture history social history. Naturally this is due to the fact that Li Jieren was mainly a writer, and it reflects that present research still needs further deepening. A writer not merely lives in its work, but lives in its age mainly. Though the works of a writer havesurely certain art independent character, it is also a devious " respond" to the era and society an author lives in. Therefore, it is at least not comprehensive to confine the fields in literature and pay little attention to the observations of history. The Present Research of Li Jieren is no other than regard him as a person in a particular society. It participates in the building of Li as a historical image, and the research itself has the nature of historical data. In the next place, the present research concentrates on the Li before 1949 mainly, and probes into few of his thereafter activities. Apart from the difficulty in politically grasping of the subject, it has something to do with the transform of Li' s role in the following years. In more than ten years, the main status of Li Jieren is that of an administrator, in literature he did little except for the rewriting of "Huge Waves", Keeping in his mind the self-identity of instigate scholar Li might think the role of a mayor was more important than that of a writer.In fact , this is the collision between his self-identity and the social orientation of him. It might cause a limitation on the understanding of his works to overlook such collision.With a large amount of original file material, this article tries its best to probes into the inner world of Li Jieren after the liberation.This kind of exploration puts forth effort on the research of Li' s thoughts trying to disclose the contradicts facing an old-fashioned intellectual in new jobs in a new era, especially his awkward and difficult position while changing back and forth between the status of a writer and an official.This article consists of six chapters. Chapter one briefly depicts Li's life and thought before 1949. The other chapters chronologically probe Li's psychological course after liberation.In the early days of liberation, as a free intellectual, despite various kinds of doubts and worries, Li Jieren was persuaded by the CCP to take up the work as a mayor. And yet he soon wondered whether he was a mayor or a writer at all. This embarrassment is a main thread for understanding his final life route.In the fields of thought, life, etc. Li experienced the same fate as quite a fewcontemporary intellectuals did by and large. The first stage is from July 1950 to September 1954 when Li devoted his energy to his social post and his literature cre...