"Water Writing" In The Ecological Literature Of Both Sides Of The Taiwan Strait

The research object of this paper is the works with "water" as the main object of writing in the ecological literature on both sides of the Taiwan Strait."Water" has been a favorable topic that men of letters prefer to write about since ancient times.In recent years,the writing of "water" in the works of ecological literature has become prosperous.The world of water is vast and huge,and in different poses and with different expressions."Water",in the form of the oceans,seas,rivers,lakes,springs,streams,ponds and wells,emerges as the hero in ecological literature,and becomes the most important writing object,which is the difference between this kind of ecological literature works and traditional landscape and pastoral literature works.In the traditional literature,"water" often appears as the natural background,or to express the emotion of the writer,foil the atmosphere,or as an important narrative clue;however,the writing of "water" in the ecological literature takes the great rivers and oceans as the object of writing,regards "water" as an important member of the earth's "life community",gives it ecologically ethical concern,and scrutinizes the life state and existence value of rivers,lakes and oceans from the perspective of ecological philosophy and ecological aesthetics of man and nature.Therefore,the writing of "water" in ecological literature is a totally new style,quite different from the traditional literary works.As in "as good as water",water is the foundation of all life and the milk our mother earth uses to nurture the human kind.There exists in the traditional Chinese culture the idea of "the original Holy One produces water".The importance of water to the entire ecosystem,to the earth's "community of life",and to the survival and development of human beings is beyond argument.However,there is a serious ecological crisis in the world.Everything in the nature,including grass,trees,soil,sand,and stones,from forests to prairies,from lands to oceans,has been unprededentedly polluted and water,of course,can not escape.The writing of"water" in ecological literature is just the reflection of ecological problems in literature.Therefore this paper takes it as the research object,hoping to draw the outline of the general appearance of the "water world" in the cross-strait ecological literature through systematic carding,and thus to draw a multiangle,all-round,three-dimensional and multi-faceted literary portrait for the rivers,lakes and oceans that have nurtured and have been nurturing the Chinese nation.Taking "water" as the main line to observe and comb the study of cross-strait ecological literature,we may find that although the study of ecological literature in mainland China and Taiwan has made outstanding achievements,the systematic exposition and specialized writings on "water writing" in ecological literature have not yet been seen.Although some scholars in the mainland have made a special study on the natural elements such as forest,grassland,land and so on,and some scholars have analyzed some "river writing" texts,a systematic and comprehensive study on the writing of "water" in ecological literature is still a blank,not to mention to carry out a comparative study of ecological literature in both the mainland and Taiwan with the "water writing" as the main line,which is still a strange field.The concern and thinking about "water" of the ecological literature on both sides of the Taiwan Strait has created many excellent literary texts,togather with many writers who are famous for their "river writing" and "ocean writing",which provides a wealth of ecological literature resources for this study.As to the time limit of the research objecu,in view of the fact that both sides of the Strait have relatively been conscious of the creation of ecological literature since 1980s,this study will determine the scope of the study after this time point.In addition to the introduction and conclusion,the thesis is divided into four chapters and the following is the full text of the overall framework:The introduction part presented the research background,theoretical foundations and research approach.The worldwide water resource crisis has attributed the reality cause for this research,and eco-literatures related to water resource from both Chinese mainland and Taiwan have laid a solid text foundation.Based on a comprehensive perspective covering eco-philosophy,eco-aesthetics and eco-ethics,this research also adopted sociological,ecological critique and literature analysis to integrate and compare the water oriented literatures.The first chapter analyzed the evolution and connotation of ecological ideology,thus concluded the water-oriented ecological thought.Abundant ecological thoughts can be found from both Chinese and western traditional culture,and this chapter focused on ancient Chinese cultures to provoke thoughts on the human-nature,human-water relationship under a contemporary background.There are two opposing thoughts in the western culture,the arkadia model which emphasizes coexisting between human and nature,and the empire model which emphasizes the human law governing the nature.While in ancient Chinese culture,the relationship between human and nature is relatively harmonious,and the union of human and nature contributed to the core ecological thought in China.As far as water is concerned,ancient Chinese strongly promoted the divine water thought,which provided us important implications on how to treat water friendly and build up a harmonious relationship between water and human,as well as how to construct a poetical habitat based on the reunion of human and water thought.The second chapter depicted a brief profile about water literature based on the overall framework of eco-literature from both mainland China and Taiwan.First,the general condition of eco-literature from both region is introduced and classical works focused on water eco-literature are analyzed in details.The mainland eco-literature has experienced a shift from the "Shallow Green" to "Deep Green".While on the Taiwan side,a shift from a passionate "Calling" to a rational"Observation" has happened.After a comparative study,it was found that mainland Chinese eco-literature has largely focused on the big rivers and lakes while the Taiwan eco-literature has mainly focused on the ocean theme.Thus,a clear homeland complex can be concluded from the mainland eco-literature.However,the ocean surrounding of Taiwan has contributed to its active writings on the seawater,which highly promote the idea of living toward the ocean,and facing the survival and challenge problem brought by the sea.The third chapter depicted the river water oriented eco-literature.The river is considered as the blood of the land.The mainland writers have comparatively more achievement than the Taiwanese,some classical works have been produced such as"The Right Side of River Erguna","The River Cannot Flow Forever" and "The Bibliography of Yangzi River".In the same time,some stylish writers like Xu Gang and Zhe Fu who focused on river theme have also appeared.This research has taken these two writers' works as main study samples to analyze the river image in eco-literature,and then provoked thoughts on the river related ethics from a general ecological system.The image of river in these writings has experienced shift from a breeder to a victim.The perpetrator image of rivers has blurred with time going by,and the river is disappearing as well.Does the river has a life?How to respect and protect the survival right of rivers?The human built water project can ever take the river's ecological safety as a primary concern?Answering all of these questions demands philosophical thoughts on the ecological system as well as the relationship between human and nature.Rivers have been closely related to homeland and to protect the river means to protect the homeland from an ecological perspective,the location complex and homeland complex can be obviously observed from relevant literatures.Besides river water,lake water has also been written by writers like Yang Zhijun in his "Break of Circle Lake",which provoked philosophical and aesthetic thinking on questions such as the combination of ecology and literature,fight between the wildness and the human law.The fourth chapter depicted the sea water oriented eco-literature.By a comparative study,it is found that more ocean themed writings have been prroduced in Tainwan.Searching for an ecological ideology in ocean themed writings is not only a result of combination of eco-literature and ocean literature,but also an integrative and line-crossing act of writing,which has been addressed by critics as the blue critique.Taiwan writers Liao Hongji and Xiaman Lanboan have produced many excellent works with a deep ecological ideology.These two writers are considered as icon writers who can delicately combine the literature skill with the ecological philosophy so well that they are also taken as line-crossing star writers.However,styles of these writers are totally different.The ocean in Liao's writing is both the homeland and war field for human survivors who usually presented distinct tradition and culture of the Han people.As an Aboriginal writer,Xiaman presented the ocean as the Dawu people's water,so a different culture and tradition belonging Dawu group can be found in his writing.They have created different literature imagination of the ocean but both gave top priority to the ecological concern in their writing and presented a ocean themed ecology thought in their works.Particularly the idea of Dawu people promoted a restrained usage of ocearn resource is of great importance to today's ocean ecology.The conclusion part presented revelation we can achieve from analysis of both the victim and pollution depiction in eco-literature from China.Indeed,how can human being live safely when the water which is once considered as source of life is in the middle of ecological crisis?This is an important social issue we face in today's world.We human being have to adopted a systematic ecological thought,give ethical concern to the water life from a fate-sharing perspective,as well as highly respecting the river's rights,then a harmonious relationship can be found between human and water,a real poetical habitat with union of human and nature can be realized.