Cultural Conflicts In Urban And Rural Areas - Jia Pingwa Creation Cases

Along the "Reform and opening up" policy that China implemented during the 80th of last century, new ideas and trends became the challenge and opportunity that China's modernization has to face once again, during which urban life style and urban dwellers became the symbol of modern life. At the same time, the urbinization of rural areas became the milestone of a changing social structure, such urbanization did not only impact the geo-demographic status but most important the cultural one.Many contemporary writers came from rural areas, after spending their childhood and adolescence acknowledging rural culture, their exposure to urban modernization made them recognize its superiority, since then the dilemma of representing either culture started, but such a choice would affect the theme, conception, characters and artistic skills of their creative work.JiaPingwa's identity and his literary creation have a very unique relation; such an identity not only affected the choice of his literary theme as well as his value orientation, but also shaped the changes in his literary trend in general. His literary creations show Chinese society's characteristics and tendency during the transition period, also represents the urban-rural opinions and how such an opinion led to urban-rural conflict.Looking at 30 years of literary creation, we can say that Jia Pingwa's writing was mainly focused on reflecting rural and urban areas. His early creations were narrowed to the countryside, in which Shangzhou became the main source of his creativity; but after "Feidu-Ruined Capital", he had to face a spiritual split from rural to urban, in which Xi'an became his sacred city; while after "Huainianlang", he glanced back again to the countryside.During more than 30 years of creation, Jia Pingwa's soul have been dashing between rural and urban life, once from rural to urban, then again from urban to rural, "rural-urban" these two concepts captured the writers heart. As one of them is where he spent the first 19 years of his life, where he felt pain, where he still have all his good memories; one is where he received modern civilization, learn about cultural achievements and became a famous writer, here is his success but also his suffering and frustration, thus these two captured his mind heart and soul.Such a conflict did not only affect Jia Pingwa but it played a major role in shaping the souls and minds of an entire generation, such a generation that carried out the tourch of contemparory Chinese literature.This dissertation have been divided into 5 main chapters, the first chapter discusses the "Reform and Opening up" policy and its influence not only on the political or social life but cultural one as well, which we can see clearly on the modern Chinese literature; while the second chapter show the local culture's effect not only on the writer personality but in his writings as well; the third chapter will take us through the childhood period and how it shapes the writers personality, through the fourth chapter we will divide Jia Pingwa's novels according to the time frame into 2 main frames the first is from 1978-1990 and the second frame from 1990th till now, and finally in the fifth chapter we will look at his novels from an urban-rural gender awareness point of view.