Writer and His Vanished Rural Homeland

Compiled by the Publicity Department of the CPC Beilun District Committee, “Selected Works of Wang Luyan” has recently been published by People’s Literature Press. The five-volume publication includes most of the writer’s creative works. The publication is considered the first relatively complete works by the writer since he passed away more than 60 years ago. Wang Luyan is now considered a very preeminent writer with a focus on rural issues in the history of modern literature.

Wang Luyan (1902-1944), a prolific writer, leaves us an impressively large body of creative writing: eleven collections of short stories, a novella, three novels (one unfinished) and four collections of essays. He also translated 11 foreign literary works from Esperanto.

Wang Luyan vividly portrays the rural life in eastern Zhejiang of the early 20th century, featuring social frustrations and expressing his sympathy with the people shaken by social tumult. His outstanding writing of rural people, events and issues of his times won the warm recognition of Lu Xun (1881-1936), Mao Dun (1896-1981) and other literary big names that emerged out of the New Literature Movement from May Fourth Movement onward. Lu Xun regarded Wang Luyan as a writer of rural literature. Mao Dun published an influential analysis on the writer.

Recently a symposium was held in his hometown, jointly sponsored and organized by provincial and local government offices and literary organizations. Wang Luyan’s descendents attended the symposium.

Three months ago I happened to pass Daqi, the hometown of Wang Luyan, under the jurisdiction of Ningbo, a port city in eastern Zhejiang Province. I decided to pay a brief visit. The town now shows all the signs of prosperity: the main street featuring rows of fancy shops and hustle and bustle being everywhere. In sharp contrast is the town’s cultural center. It displays a national architectural style and seems to keep a modest distance from the trendy shops around it.

The cultural center was built with a donation from a native who had moved overseas and made it. The center houses a Wang Luyan memorial room where his books and photos on display relate stories about the son of the town. Next to the memorial room is a reading room where a bookshelf displays his books and a brand new small statue of the writer.

Old Yu, a worker at the center, is my host. He points out things around the cultural center and then takes me to visit the primary school where Wang studied as a boy. The structure now houses a village management committee. It stands as it did decades ago and it looks dilapidated, hemmed in by new buildings on four sides. Old Yu tells me that the primary school was built with donations from local rich families.

Old Yu and I walk to the village of Yangjiaqiao (literarily the bridge of the Yang family) where Wang Luyan was born. It is impossible to tell whether the village still stays rural or is already urbanized. There are shops everywhere in the village. The village is now crowded. After various turns and twists, we come to an old-styled bridge. The narrow river is almost no more. On the left bank is a row of old residences punctuated by some new houses.

Wang Luyan was born in 1902 there. He was born as Wang Xicheng. After his former residence was burned down in a fire in 1928, the family moved to another part of the village.

On the site now stands a three-storied house. We learn that it has nothing to do with the Wang family. Fortunately, a nephew of Wang Luyan lives nearby. Wang Mingyu met his uncle only once. He was still a kid when the uncle, who studied in Beijing University, came home for a visit. Wang Mingyue does not know his uncle’s brief sojourn inspired his trilogy: “Wild Fire”, “Spring Grass” and “Fast Wind”, the last two taking shape in the heat of the Chinese Resistance War against Japanese Aggression. The first seven chapters of “Spring Grass” were serialized in Guangxi Daily.

Wang Luyan traveled all the way from Daqi to Shanghai in 1917 when he was only 15 years old. Though no history records the route he took for his travel to Shanghai, it would not be difficult to imagine. He must have traveled by boat through inland rivers and then across Hangzhou Bay before he reached Shanghai, the booming metropolis which made so many people’s dreams come true or come to nothing.

Wang Luyan might have become a businessperson in Shanghai, but he gave the career up and left for Beijing and joined a group of self-made students who worked and helped themselves to classes and lectures in Beijing University. The work-study days were grueling to Wang Luyan. He worked in laundry shops and restaurants to make ends meet. After attending the lectures by Lu Xun, he changed his name to Wang Luyan. He later used the name for his stories. Lu Xun appreciated the young man and called him his younger brother. After his first collection of short stories got published, Mao Dun, a Zhejiang native and a great novelist of the first five decades of the 20th-century China, critiqued them, pointing out that the petty bourgeoisie under Wang’s pen were the most successful characters. Mao Dun’s encouraging analysis pointed a way for Lu Yan. He wrote more stories about rural people. Moreover, he portrayed clashes between the rural and the urban. Behind the stories are the confrontation between industrial civilization and agricultural civilization, the irrevocable decline of the rural innocence in the midst of poverty and struggle.

Wang Luyan published a lot during the 1920s and the 1930s. He moved frequently, as affected by the chaos China was experiencing during the time. He moved to Xiamen in the autumn of 1930, working as a literary editor for a local newspaper while teaching Chinese literature in Xiamen University. In 1931, he went to Quanzhou, a city in Fujian Province, where he taught in a middle school and joined the association of Esperanto headed by Ba Jin, a celebrated writer.

In 1932, Wang Luyan went to Shanghai. Wang and his family stayed in Daqi for two months on their way to Shanghai. His father died during their stay. After the funeral, Wang Luyan left for Shanghai, bringing his mother. He first taught in a school, but soon resigned as the meager salary couldn’t support the family. He devoted himself to writing and publishing in literary magazines. During that time, his health deteriorated fast.

Wang Luyan had close associations with Lu Xun during his stay in Shanghai. Wang was one of the eight pallbearers at Lu Xun’s funeral.

After the Chinese Resistance War against Japanese Aggression started, Wang and his family moved inland, as most scholars and writers and students did. For a while he worked as a literary editor for a newspaper in Changsha, the capital city of central China’s Hunan Province. In 1942, he started a literary magazine in Guilin, the capital city of Guangxi Autonomous Region in southwestern China and turned it into one of the most influential literary publications during that time. Tuberculosis finally broke him. On August 20, 1944 he passed away in a hospital in Guilin.

At that time, the Japanese army was approaching Guilin and most writers living in Guilin had left. After learning about Wang Luyan’s death, they risked their lives by coming back to the city. They published an obituary, raised money for the funeral and his family. Toward the end of August a funeral was held in Guilin, attended by more than two hundred fellow writers. The Guilin Association of Culture bought a burial place at Seven Star Rock and had Wang Luyan buried there.

Zhou Enlai, a key leader of the Communist Party, made arrangements for Wang’s family to get financial support and move to Chongqing, the war capital of China, with the assistance of the people tasked to help writers to move to Chongqing.

Wang Luyan is still remembered by many Chinese. For years, all Chinese primary school pupils studied an abbreviated essay on mulberry in their textbook, adapted from Wang Luyan’s namesake essay on the juicy fruit of his hometown. His vivid description of his joyful childhood in his rural hometown are considered among the best rural and nature writings.