Like many women, reflecting the new egalitarianism of her background, she was a true soldier, caring for the sick, hauling supplies, and providing vital services to the Red Army.
Xianren undertook her mission with a clear sense of ideological motivation, but for many other women, their choice was less conscious. While it was true that the famine was epidemic in China at the time, given the gradual shift to commercialized agriculture that deprived so many peasants of their livelihood, there is little doubt that it was far more difficult for girls. Women such as Ma Yixiang led far bleaker lives. Yixiang came from abject poverty and was blamed for the death of her siblings by her superstitious mother. She was forced to work off her father's debt as a child (Young 83). Yixiang was 'sold' for a year and a half to another family and mistreated so badly she ran away home and begged to stay.
When the Red Army moved through her town and she was impressed by the soldier's kindness -- despite having no uniforms, they offered to pay her family for the firewood they used -- she begged to join (Young 92). She was refused several times because she looked so weak and malnourished, but eventually found work doing laundry, cleaning, and tending to the wounded. At first she was terrified of the sickness and death she encountered, but having little to turn back to, she persevered. "I just walked with the Red Army, simple-mindedly. We were revolutionaries. To be a revolutionary is to go and look for a good place" (Young 106)....
Female Agency in Short Stories There are numerous points of similarity between Eileen Chang's "Shame, Amah!" and Wang Anyi's "Granny". Both stories depict the lives of Chinese domestic workers. Moreover, each tale is set during the same time period -- the years surrounding the Second World War. Furthermore, both of the authors are Chinese and display a marked affinity for the intimate details surrounding Chinese culture, which factors prominently in each
culture of humankind and its history, for as the saying goes, "the more we are different, the more we are the same." The Tang Dynasty in China occurred hundreds of years ago, yet some of the issues from that time remain as pertinent today as they did in the past. The poets of this period truly exemplify this continuation through time. When reading the works of the most well-known
Poetry and Politics in 1079: The Crow Terrace Poetry Case of SU Shih Charles Hartman in his article on the political fallout of the poetry of SU Shih acknowledges that all societies practice censorship in some degree and in some form. Western society has a history of confiscating, banning, destroying, controlling the distribution and punishing authors and individuals for the creation and possession of written texts that are deemed morally or
In the course of the Cultural Revolution, the communist leader Mao Zedong proclaimed particular cultural requirements for both art and writings in China. This was a period that was filled with violence and harsh realisms for the people within the society. Authors such as Bei Dao, Gu Cheng and Yu Hua can be considered to be misty poets, whose works endeavored to shift from an inactive response to active formation.
Chinese Cultural Revolution in Literature There are a number of stark images found in the works of literature reviewed by Dao, Cheng, and Hua in this assignment. Specifically, this paper details the imagery evinced in Bei Dao's "Resume," Gu Cheng's "Curriculum Vitae," and Yu Hua's "On the Road at Eighteen." That imagery and those works in general are thinly veiled allusions to the Chinese Cultural Revolution, which took places in the
Indeed, the trajectory of the narrative involves exacting revenge on those who prevented her marriage from taking place. Although the Bride's marital aspirations might suggest that she holds a conservative sensibility, this is far from the case and she is ultimately more aggressive than Jen. While Jen also exhibits physical prowess, her sacrificial gesture at the film's conclusion signifies how she maintains a strong reverence for the Confucian moral code,
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