Construction And Revolution In Imagination

Industrial novels were regarded as an important part of literature production in China during the 1950s. However, since 1960, all text books on Chinese contemporary literature history have regarded those industrial novels as unsuccessful. The thesis tries to explain this phenomenon by analyzing Cao Ming's industrial novels. On one hand, Cao Ming was a party member who had strong belief in Mao Zedong's doctrine; on the other hand, she was a writer who had been persistently representing industrialization and urbanization as the content of her imagination of modernization. Her three industrial novels, written successively in 1948, 1950, 1959, show the complicated interplay of the discourse of industrialization and the discourse of communism at different times.Chapter one shows how Cao Ming grew into a Mao Zedong follower. Her childhood experience made she consider urbanization as the way to modernization, which sets her apart from many Mao Zedong followers and even the leader himself. The following three chapters analyze Cao Ming's three industrial novels. Yuan Dong Li, written before the end of the Civil War, is the first industrial novel written by Chinese writers. Using the discourse of nation-state, Cao Ming told the story of restoring production as a story of workers getting liberated by participating the Chinese Revolution. In this way, she successfully combined the theme of construction and that of revolution. Huo Che Tou, written and revised during"the First Five-Year Plan", represents the development of industry in peacetime. Cao Ming unconsciously revealed the rise of economic ration and the marginalization of the discourse of revolution. Cheng Feng Po Lang, retold the story about the development of industry in peacetime, endeavoring to represent revolution as impetus to industrialization. Cao Ming's belief in urbanization, which contradicts relative judgments of Mao Zedong, resulted in the split of the novel's theme. Cao Ming's success and failure in representing an industrialized communist country reveal the predicament of modernity and the failure of utopian solution.