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Introduction: Bai Hua's Oh! Ancient Channels
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16631 |
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BOOK WORLD
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10 / 1989 |
354 Words |
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Dissident Bai Hua is one of China's most famous writers. Publicly criticized under Deng Xiaoping in 1981 for his film Bitter Love, Bai Hua quickly became a household name in China.
Bai Hua's provocative novella Oh! Ancient Channels, published for the first time in English in THE WORLD & I, explores the history of China from the 1930s through the 1970s by recounting the experience of a small peasant village. Bai Hua uses this span of history to suggest that the communist government is essentially an imperial government. Appearing in 1980, Oh! Ancient Channels was chosen by People's Press, the largest government publishing house in China, as one of the ten most influential stories of the year.
"Save the People's Children" by Jerry Dennerline comments on the gap between the idealism of young people and peasant resistance to the government described in Oh! Ancient Channels. He asks whether this gap can be bridged by the Tiananmen Square massacre and the events flowing from it.
"The River Runs in Circles" by Jeffrey C. Kinkley places Bai Hua within the art world in China. Bai Hua is one of a handful of writers in communist China who, after the Cultural Revolution, produced serious creative writing that was honored by readers as "literature that calls forth reflection."
"In Trouble Again" by Michael S. Duke chronicles Bai Hua's recurring difficulties with the government. In May, Bai Hua marched proudly down the streets of Shanghai in a huge protest demonstration in support of the student democracy movement. He walked in front of a contingent of
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