The Modern China Written By Spence In The Gate Of Heavenly Peace

Jonathan D. Spence is a world famous American scholar. He has been working on China Studies for more than half a century and published14books,12of them have been translated and published in China mainland. The Gate of Heavenly Peace is the first book he wrote about modern China. It shows a sign of his study interests transferring from Ming Qing Dynasty to modern China. From a literary point of view it not only represents a typical style of his literary writing, but also shows the complex and close relationship between history and literature. As soon as the book published in the mainland, it attracted many readers and stirred up great controversy. There is some academic research about Spence which is from history to literary, from macro to micro, from Ts’ao Yin and the K’ang-Hsi Emperor to Return to Dragon Mountain, but merely about this book.Spence studies Chinese history, but he is well known for the literary style in his books which got praise as much as criticism. The Gate of Heavenly Peace is written about Chinese modern history, but the main characters and events are all related to literary. Reading it in the literary way would be more suitable than a purely historical analysis.In this paper researching the literary writing will be the central task. This article attempts to analyze three factors in the book which are character, narrative and the title, and tries to find the literary methods Spence used in the history writing. As a result, his hidden views on modern China and the relationship between history and literature would be revealed. This paper consists of three chapters. Chapter one mainly analyzes the controversial concept of intellectuals. It compares the character selections to find the writing intention, writer’s problem awareness and principles about historical materials using. Chapter two focus on narrative. According to the narrative research, it is the time range of the historical writing and the narrative clues that provides the way for us to know how dose Spence review Chinese revolution, country developing, individual fate and marriage change. Chapter three analyzes the multiple meanings of the title The Gate of Heavenly Peace on three levels which are history building, public sphere and specific symbols.