Crossing The Gap

Adopting the title "Comparison of the Chinese Rural Novels across the Strait", the paper seeks to examine the similarities and differences between the rural novels of Taiwan and Mainland China, in an attempt to further explore various issues in relation to aesthetic appreciation, modernization, geographical issues and literary field, etc.If put into a larger context of Chinese Literature, the rural Chinese novels across the Strait are basically discrete, far from being integrated. Among this, we can find many truly intriguing issues worth discussing, e.g. the humane societies, economic conditions and the different modernization progress on both sides of the Strait. Even more significantly, between the emergences of the rural novels across the Strait, there exists a huge "ten-year gap", which leads to discrepancies as regard to the social culture, historical situation, historical orientation (including cultural connotation and the spirit of arts) on Mainland and Taiwan, making everything all so different, and thus has become a prerequisite for our discussion.It’s worth pointing out that the "appreciation of ugliness" has long since been a dominant tendency in contemporary Chinese literature in Mainland, which makes the Chinese literature stand out as a unique scene among the world literature. No matter how many reasons are there justifying that this phenomenon is understandable, acceptable or even inevitable, it obviously leads to the confusion and distortions of the standards of aesthetic appreciation, and the deterioration of "taste". Therefore, this paper aims to examine this complex syndrome, trace its origins, and even try to probe into the relationship between "taste" and "aesthetic appreciation", which has seldom been explored so far.Furthermore, in order to clarify the values and paradoxes of the appreciation of ugliness and their influences upon the rural writers across the Strait, the paper selects a few distinguished novelists among the most representatives of the Chinese rural writers, such as Jia Ping-Wa, Mo Yan, Wang Zheng-He, Yu Hua, Su Tong and Huang Chun-Ming, in an effort to compare and analyze their different styles of writings. The paper also singles out writers of different (even opposite) styles and pairs them up in an attempt to make them stand out as sharp contrast.Although just an initial discussion, the paper seeks to put things in perspective and sort out problems like geographic proximity, cultural affinity, literary field and institution across the Strait. Last but not least, after briefly introducing the "neo-rural" and post-rural" novels so far on both sides of the Strait, the paper offers some practical advices as references and suggestions to the future development of the Chinese rural novels, so as to tackle with the mutual or individual challenges of the rural novels across the Strait.In a nutshell, by means of examining the unique phenomenon "ugliness appreciation", the paper looks for ways to compare the rural novels on both sides of Taiwan Strait in multiple facets, making initial attempts to compare the novels on both sides in different ways, in the hope that the rural writers across the Strait can break certain stagnant rules, get rid of some outdated, fruitless practices and eventually re-create another "Brave New World" in the days to come.