Persistence In Beliefs With Anthropological Perspectives

Introduction: An overview of present studies on Chi Zijian, and a presentation of the significance and value of the present topic.Chi Zijian, a Chinese woman writer, is gaining steady popularity with her readers and receiving due attention from critics, either for her narrative of a distinctively indigenous flavor and of a peculiarly feminine perspective, or for her language arts of both poetic beauty and discursive elegance. Accordingly, the study of this contemporary author is increasingly getting multi-faceted and diversely oriented, so that each of her new publication will quickly be received by a multitude of readers as if an object of art is to be displayed in varied window frames. Cultural anthropology serves as a spacious gallery hall in which a loftier viewpoint and a wider perspective can be obtained to make sense of and give meaning to almost all literary works under its roof. It enables one to travel with a free mind among this self-autonomous world of literature, delving here and there into the profundity of its rich cultural strata, hoping to strike new mines of value or maiden territories of meaning, which might have been previously screened from our view by limitations of research area or obstructed by an accidental misreading. Cultural anthropology could provide a means to erase those boundaries or blockades in literary studies, so that relevant researches could all be integrated and represented. Apart from offering a new perspective, it also promises potential benefits of innovation, and, very probably, may set a mode of inquiry that is better suited to the study of Chi Zijian.The thesis consists of the following chapters, each discussing a specific aspect of the writer.Chapter One: A writer with the vision of a cultural anthropologist, from a hazy awareness to self-consciousness. Starting from an affectionate memory of her hometown places in the 1980's, Chi Zijian embarked on her career of literary creation. She experienced a variety of life encounters during the 1990's which she bore to the bottom of her heart. In the beginning of 21^st century, she began concerning herself with the life of Ewenke minorities living in the north of China. By now her literary talent has sprung like a fountain into the expression of consciousness from the haziness of a longtime subconscious preparation.Chapter Two: A tiny Beiji (Northpole) Village that belongs to the world. The rise of modern cultural anthropology has altered the status of some formerly marginalized indigenous cultures. Therefore, the tiny village known as the "Northpole" Village, is a peculiar makeup of cultural spaces. But I prefer to regard the village more generally as an Utopian town where stories in Chi's writing take place. It represents a kind of existence or mode of living that integrates life elements of primitive simplicity, poetic style and some sense of wilderness. The village may even further be generalized to include other places in her novel, like the town of Lizhen, Jinjing, Baiyinna, and so on. She is convinced and confident that the village will eventually turn out to be "a poetic dwelling place" for nourishing the body and mind of mankind, an approach to eternal harmony out of the problematized human reality.Chapter Three: Fascinated by an exotic culture, her On the Right Bank of the Argun Different from the common practice of an anthropologist, who is wont to look upon the life of primitive tribes from the viewpoint of modern civilization, Chi Zijian chooses to regard the "cultural other" with the eye of the present existential, the viewpoint of a writer who is not indulged in the remote past, but takes a broad and all-encompassing vision that glides from a spatio-temporally cultural structure of the globe to a cultural co-presence and heterogeneity that characterize the modern age.Chapter Four: An eternal theme of life questioning. Themes on life, existence and marriage are eternal inquiries for mankind. To these themes, Chi Zijian's already sympathetic nature to care life of human beings has turned into an attentiveness to all the life existence of the earth. She has torn herself away from the restricted ego interest and turned her view to mankind as a universal subject of existence. For this purpose, she kept on writing about the smiles and tears of lawfully-wed spouses, describing the life of ordinary men and wives that toiled together in farming and weaving and kept their matrimonial union long lasting. This is so strikingly corresponding to what anthropologists are focusing in matters of human feelings and marriages. She did not go in the wake of western feminists, as a few authors did in China, to embrace those "private discourses" of sex, but instead persisted in exploring the ancient theme of human concern: the expression of human feeling, or life in marriage.Chapter Five: an artifact of culture: Narrative style of empathy and melancholy.Her soul has been so warmly enveloped in the tenderness of her hometown rivers and hills, and by the affectionate care of the village folks, that an eternal warm-heartedness has never been found lacking in her even far away from home. On the other hand, a childhood of loneliness surrounded by an atmosphere of religion and legendary tales imbued her heart with anxiety and a bitter sadness that find expression in those melancholy words in her writings. In spite of that, a poetic beauty that arises from her discursive style produces an agreeable harmony between her compassionate language and narrative style.Conclusion: Limitations and expectancy. With an astonishing perseverance, Chi Zijian kept plowing with language on a page of wilderness for over 20 years, and finally cultivated a piece of home soil to shelter and nourish the human soul. However, the life in a future world is one of varied colors and should allow for better communication and mutual understanding. A writer with anthropological consciousness as she is, Chi Zijian might as well be more rational with a world of reality, for the wheel of history never stops rolling along, though blind to its own destination. Although Chi Zijian would find it hard to turn her attention away from themes in traditional culture, or to stop singing for a moment in praise of the innocent and simple character of rural villagers and their modes of existence, she is nevertheless perplexed by a question that demands an unambiguous answer: Is it really judicious or not to suppose that mankind would have no promise of a bright future for them, or life would lose all its poetic sense, once human society transformed itself from a civilization of secluded villages to one of modernity? This is not merely a question that puzzles Chi Zijian alone, but one that can be found in reading Jia Pingwa and Mo Yan as well. As readers, we certainly have only to wait, expecting them to produce works that will eventually answer their own questions.