Wang Zengqi:In And Out Of "Scholar-official"

Wang Zengqi is well known as "the last Scholar-official". It almost became the nature of Wang Zengqi, but few people think about where the title came from and question the rationality of the claim. This paper tries to communicate with some opinions, traces the expression "the last Scholar-official" to its source, goes back to the historical context and tries to find the complexity about this statement. The emergence of Wang Zengqi conformed to the intellectuals’ literary dream and also met the needs of their identity. Wang Zengqi is regarded as "the last Scholar-official" which recognizes his position in the history of Chinese modern and contemporary literature. It also meets the need of "let literature back to literature itself" of literary narration in the eighties and nineties of last century. But it narrows the understanding of Wang Zengqi. Although Wang Zengqi is well known by the public with the works which reflect the spirit of scholar-official, it does not mean that all of his novels can be incorporated into what the "scholar-official" refers to. Meanwhile, some features which can reflect the scholar-official style like sympathize the poor and care about the social have not been included in the expression "the last scholar-official". So this article takes "scholar-official" as the breakthrough point, and analyzes the aspects fitting and not fitting the "scholar-official" style through the method of close reading of Wang Zengqi’s novels. It aims at breaking the for a single impression and simplistic understanding of Wang Zengqi, and showing the richness of his works.