The Meaning And Limitations Of Local Writing

Local writing constitutes an important tradition of Chinese modern literature. Locality in literature involves the thinking on the relationship between the literature and geography. The connection of locality in the sense of literature,the geography, political landscape and in the sense of nation state is a problem worth deep thinking. Han Shaogong’s “Maqiao dictionary” in the form of a dictionary wrote a biography for “Maqiao”, which has a special history and geographical sense of locality.“Maqiao dictionary” is a classic of modern literature. It is also a very valuable dictionary to investigate the relationship between literature and local literature geography.From the perspective of literature history, the meaning of " Locality " and "literature geography" is constantly changing. In the early days, the relationship between literature and locality reflected in the formation of literary style. Different regions have different literary styles. At the same time, the Chinese literature of the different regions represented different geographical scenery, customs, anecdotes, which forms the links of literature and locality. Afterwards, the relationship between literature and geography reflected in the literary genre, and Chinese literature genre began to appear in the song dynasty. Literature geography as a style, subject matter and genre hasn’t taken locality as a subject to deal with.Only in modern times, locality has its own concept different from country, and become a persistent theme of modern literature writing. This sense of locality or literature geography is not only a specific theme into the literature, but also as a literary writing theme of writers’ core. It is a phenomenon with the formation of nation in the modern literature. In the modern literary history, on one hand, the meaning of locality is a imaginary expression of nation state, on the other hand it is also a resistance to the national unification ideology. This makes the modern literature geography entangled in the cracks of the country – locality. Besides, it also made national narrative turned into local narrative since the 20 th century. Literature try to resist the mainstream of ethnography and build local ethnographical way of thinking. But literature is still under the control of the writing of politics, history, the independence of the literature itself. The space of literature, the alienation between literature geography and political geography still have not realized.Within this scope, when we study the connection between literature and geography in Maqiao Dictionary, we can find the enthusiasm of local custom, local history and personal memory, the literature sensibility to trifles which are covered by grand narrative, the imagination and fiction of those history figures, and the effort was made to build Maqiao as a tolerant literature world. All of these show the ambition of being beyond local narrative. Meanwhile, Maqiao Dictionary reflects the paradox between literature and politics. We can say the local writing in Maqiao Dictionary has broken through the mainstream restriction, and try to find more literature space. The creation of literature space is not free, but is a kind of writing in a mood of fight against politics and mainstream history. the writing contains strong political demand, which means to use local experience to rethink mainstream experience, use local history, mini history, personalization to fight against the mainstream history. but this resistance reflects that literature is still a tool which writers use to show their political concern. the mini history is still political. So being unlike Macondo in One Hundred Years of Solitude, Maqiao doesn’t become an independent literature world. the political concern in Maqiao Dictionary kidnaps literature, and it belongs to a greater concern. about local writing, we have to rethink the relationship between literature and geography, country and locality.