Study On The Evolution Of Li Yongping’s National Consciousness

Chinese novelist Li Yong-ping (1947-) has sojourned in Taiwan of China for 42 years, he has strong China affection all the time, and in his works we can detect his China complex easily. In this ever-changing time, however, this sentiment has also experienced a series of changes as the author got to be more and more mature in his writing. This thesis is going to probe into the evolution of Li Yong-ping’s national consciousness according to the content of his works of different phases.Chapter One analyzes the formation of Li Yong-ping’s national consciousness. We can see racial conflict of Borneo in the 1950s or 1960s from the author’s early works, which was shown extremely by means of three dimensions such as bloodline, different cultures and politics. For most Chinese people who lived in Borneo, such situation that Li Yong-ping faced in his teenage years, implied that Chinese characters inheritance is the most effective method of keeping China identification sense in continuity. Besides, one point should not be overlooked is that the cause of Chinese characters inheritance is rooted in the long-time British colonial indoctrination of Borneo, but at the same time this inheritance had developed gradually into an irresistible force which went against the colonial rule strongly. Obviously Li’s purpose of writing in Chinese was to against colonial education, which was an important catalyst that generated the author’s national consciousness. The history of Borneo in the 1950s or 1960s also reflected the uneasy fate of a generation of Chinese in Southeast Asia.Chapter two discusses the first transformation of Li Yong-ping’s national consciousness. Li Yong-ping has come from Borneo to Taiwan in 1968, whose works have gone from the description of the island of Borneo to describe Taiwan. In Li Yong-ping’s opinion, Taiwan is the miniature of China, and Taipei is the dwelling of his national emotion. He declared his Chinese nationalism complex frankly inTaiwan without considering the violent change of the ideology of Taiwan society, only in order to get close to his native land immeasurably, and the way of his expression was the purification and totem of Chinese characters, and Haidongqing was written in such rarely-used Chinese characters that it just looked like hieroglyphics to readers.Actually Li has missed the best time to declare his China affection, and his writing style is only a misplacement of history. He had attracted a lot of criticism which led to the crisis of his national feelings, and forced him to the road of the spirit of self-exile.Chapter three analyzes the second transformation of Li Yong-ping’s national consciousness. In two later works Yuxuefeifei and Dahejintou, Li Yong-ping rewrites the theme of Borneo. For Li Yong-ping of the late sixties, this change was not only an active choice of old age consciousness, but also a passive response to be adapted to the Taiwan society. National sentiment, however, is his mental backbone all the time. He explains his past performance in Yuxuefeifei and this work has been regarded as a written confession about the national emotional after Haidongqing. Chinese characters are always foundation of Li Yong-ping’s national consciousness. In the Dahejintou, the author has extended Chinese characters into the rain forest of Borneo, and has built up his own imagined community. In addition, Li Yong-ping’s later works include his whole life and the lament of self-feeling about not sure fate.