“Realism And Alliegory In The Ealy Fiction Of Mao Tun” in “Realism and Alliegory in the Ealy Fiction of Mao Tun”
Vacillation, part 2 of the trilogy Eclipse, is, according to Mao Tun, “a story set in a town in Hupei along the Upper Yangtze River Valley” in January-May of 1927.1 Its theme is the vacillation experienced by participants in the revolutionary activities when the revolutionary struggle was fierce.”2 In his 1928 defense of the trilogy, Mao Tun went on to say that there was no protagonist in the novel: Characters in it are “representatives” of phenomena that were prevalent at that time. And it was a very disturbing time, since “the period covered by Vacillation represents the most momentous stage in the history of the [Great] Revolution in China, the vacillation of revolutionary ideas and revolutionary policies from the leftist tendency to the emergence of infantile leftism, from coping with infantile leftism to the ascendancy of rightist thoughts, and finally the great reaction.”3
This volume too was written while the author was in hiding in Shanghai and was published almost immediately—January-March—in Short Story Monthly. Mao Tun, ever the intellectual activist, was well aware of Lenin’s castigation of infantile leftism as a fatal inability among the more extreme Communist party members to understand that diverse tactics were required to accomplish the historical mission of different phases of the Communist revolution, tactics that are not always explicable in straightforward ideological terms.4
To present the phenomenon of vacillation and the ensuing “infantile leftism” Mao Tun intended to use an objective, noninterpretive descriptive method to point up the most typical elements of the revolutionary situation described in the novel. The invisible framework enveloping the story is drawn tightly: neither the policy-making process in the central Party organization in Wuhan—which was not only the seat of the united-front government but the capital of Hupei Province—nor the final eruption of mass violence in the little country town moves above a reporting of the fictional bare facts. The former is embodied in the arrival of orders from Wuhan carried by two special commissars, Shih Chün (chapter 6) and Li K’e (chapter 11); the climactic eruption is a local riot (chapter 11).
The internal entanglements of the central Party apparatus that were at work behind the objectives of the “cause” are beyond the story’s scope; what is brought to life are characters and situations that do not carry their own rationale beyond the façade of conflicting personal interests. Yet the drama of the revolution, which the characters in Vacillation neither understand nor are able to direct, unfolds around the interplay of their interests and around their interpretations and attempted manipulations of the vacillating “revolutionary ideas and revolutionary policies” of town and central CCP organizations. The authority carried first by Shih Chün and then by Li K’e is cloaked in dispassionate objectivity; there is no overt comment on their correctness or usefulness. The local scenes of the Businessmen’s Union and the peasants’ and women’s movements are described in more detail, but again with no overt judgments of right or wrong.
The questions that arise from the drama—How are these events (and similar events elsewhere) affecting the CCP and the Great Revolution? How have they shaped the later course of the revolution?—are not answered in the story. In this sense, it provides only a case study of how vacillation in the ideas and policies coming out of Wuhan affected the daily lives of local people in a small town and the surrounding countryside—people the CCP through the “Great Revolution” intended to emancipate and lead.5
The twelve chapters in Vacillation are organized around two central episodes: a strike of store workers that leads to Shin Chün’s investigation with its prescribed-in-advance “Solution” (chapter 6); and, later, the riot that Li K’e’s arrival precipitates (chapter 11). The alliances of local interest groups in the two incidents, though sometimes overlapping, are different. The first set of issues concerns disputes between labor and petty bourgeoisie businessmen whose base is primarily in town; the second set, which concerns the women’s and peasants’ movements, involves people all the way out into the countryside.
In the labor-proprietor disputes of the first six chapters, the local interest groups are represented by Hu Kuo-kuang, a well-connected political opportunist and arriviste to the gentry, and Lu Mu-yu, the black-sheep son of a bold scholar-gentry family. In theory, Hu and Lu should have been prime targets of the revolution: both are veritable lieh-shen (evil gentry). But in fact their social and economic standing gives them the advantage in the revolutionary power game.
In the last half of the novel the interest groups are much more complex. Once land and women are brought into the picture, all the imbalance and inequity of this microcosmic Chinese “feudal” society become visible. Concubines, nuns, land ownership, husbands’ rights—all these are aspects of the intractable concept of property ownership that the revolution was coming to demolish. It was truly terrifying, as Mao Tun said in “On Reading Ni Huan-chih,” to see what cruelty the people in even that small a town were capable of once their ownership rights were threatened.
The drama (the impact of the revolution on the daily life of one small town) and the theme (the vacillating revolutionary ideas and policies that shaped the impact) are elaborately interwoven.
The Town (Chapters 1–6)
Hu Kuo-kuang’s devious climb to power occupies center stage in the beginning chapters of the novel. In chapters 1 and 2 we learn that Hu has one wife, one concubine, one delinquent son, and one bondsmaid—a typical “feudal” family awaiting emancipation. He frequents the Clear Wind Pavilion teahouse, where the dregs of the old world’s politics congregate, and he courts the friendship of Lu Mu-yu, who often visits local brothels. Normally one would not think of Hu Kuo-kuang’s way of life and daily activities as anything that could be called criminal. But January–May of 1927 is not a normal time; revolution has come to the county and its norms and values are undergoing violent changes. What was once the source of privilege and power to the upper class—for example, land and other forms of property—is now evidence of counterrevolutionary crimes members of that class have to answer for. Workers, peasants, and women, the community members who have never enjoyed equitable rights, are to benefit from the revolution and receive their overdue share of privileges.
Hu Kuo-kuang is expectedly threatened by the loss of his possessions—his concubine as well as his money. He quickly takes stock of his time-tested survival techniques and devises a way to weather this new wave of revolutionary upsurges, as he had done once before, when the Manchu Dynasty fell:
Two months ago, he was still blabbing in the Clear Wind Pavilion about General Wu [P’ei-su, one of the warlords], notwithstanding that the country office had already hoisted the flag of the Nationalist Government. He was a time-tested old fox. In the year hsin-hai [1911], when the New Army mutinied in the provincial capital and occupied the armory at Ch’u-wang’t’ai, scaring [the Manchu governor] Jui-chen away, he was among the first in the county to cut off his queue.6 At that time he was only thirty four years old. His father, a member of the board of trustees for the county orphanage, was still alive. He had not yet bought this concubine Golden Phoenix; and his son was barely three years old. With a silver-plated lapel pin of some political party or other, he began to pass himself off as a member of the gentry class in the county. Since then, personnel turnover in the provincial government had been once every two years on the average, and in the county government once every year and a half. But his position as a member of the gentry has never come under threat. He saw with absolute surety that as long as there is need for county chiefs, there would be need for gentry folk like himself. Without the gentry, there could be no government bureaucrats. His “iron rice bowl” [guaranteed usefulness as part of the gentry] would never crack. Hence when the county office changed its flag to that of the Nationalist Government, and quite a few posters appeared on the walls at the Temple of the Local God advocating “Down with the Local Ruffians and Evil Gentry,” he remained unperturbed and continued to air his views about General Wu and General Liu Yü in the special section of the Clear Wind Pavilion.7
To Hu Ku-kuang now the game is basically the same. Only the names have changed. Whereas formerly you hankered after the honorific address ta-ren-lao-yeh (Your Excellency My Lord) now you run for wei-yüan (committee member). Thus when Hu’s cousin Wang Jung-ch’ang, a local storekeeper, comes to see him about the new regulations, Hu quickly sees in Wang’s problem the exact opportunity he needs to get into the new game.
Wang Jung-ch’ang is a timid, law-abiding small businessman. Recently the county Party organization notified him that all businessmen must join the Businessman’s Union and make public the names of the store owners and managers, the year the store started to do business, and the amount of its capital. The last item is particularly frightening; Wang Jung-ch’ang sees in it nothing less than the beginning of “kung-ch’an,” communizing private property. Hence his pathetic plea to Hu Kuo-kuang:
Some say that it won’t come to communizing private property; that all they want is to have us join the Businessmen’s Union, to vote. By the end of this month there is going to be an election for Businessmen’s Union representatives. Cousin Chen-ch’ing, you know me, I understand only business, I’m no good at all at committees and elections. I’m deathly afraid of walking into meetings and associating with government officials.8
Hu Kuo-kuang quickly volunteers his services, telling his cousin that he will be glad to stand in for him as the owner of the store, join the union, and deal with those committees and elections on Wang’s behalf. Wang could not be more grateful. Thus begins Hu’s career as a revolutionary.
Hu joins the store owners’ union, and at once tries to get himself elected to its standing committee. To that end he forms an alliance with his drinking buddy Lu Mu-yu. The trade-off is that if Lu helps Hu get elected, Hu will help Lu in his amorous pursuit of the widowed store owner Ch’ien Su-chen. Lu Mu-yu’s father was a respected scholar in the community, many of whose former students now hold key positions in the county government and Party organization. Through the Lu family’s connections, therefore, Hu Ku-kuang becomes acquainted first with Chou Shih-ta, one of father Lu’s students and a member of the county Party’s standing committee, and then with Fang Lo-lan, head of the County Bureau of Commerce and the Party member in charge of labor affairs. The “Party” ostensibly refers to the KMT, because it was the only legal party at the time Vacillation was published and therefore the only party Mao Tun could openly mention. But he need not be talking about the KMT only. The allegory could very well cover his CCP comrades who at the time of the story were still working under cover in the KMT government and its party organization.
The Party man Fang Lo-lan, head of the Commerce Bureau and responsible for maintaining labor-business stability, has a very important role in the central drama of Vacillation. Like Hu Kuo-kuang, he will have a decisive impact on the two key public events. However, while Hu Kuokuang concentrates in himself all the murky local forces that will try to make the revolutionary movement a fiasco, Fang Lo-lan embodies the preposterous vacillating and conflicting policies and ideas that beset the movement internally.
Aside from members of the Lu family, who serve as the bridge between their two separate worlds, Hu and Fang share no other apparent common ties or acquaintances. They are brought together through conflicts in their respective positions concerning the mass movements. Fang first meets Hu during one of these moments of conflict, as Mao Tun begins in chapter 3 to introduce Fang Lo-lan and his world.
Fang Lo-lan, an intellectual turned revolutionary, is thirty-two years old. He has been happily married for four or five years, ever since he graduated from the university. Now he has a son of four or five, and a wife whom he still loves dearly though she has fallen somewhat behind the times. On the day Hu first comes to his house, to ask for his backing in the election, Fang Lo-lan happens to be upset by the alluring image of another woman, a certain Sun Wu-yang. This is the first time such a thing has happened since he married. Sun’s image is competing for his attention with Hu, who, loudly protesting his innocence, wants his name cleared of recent accusations of being “evil gentry,” which are about to cost him his otherwise assured position on the standing committee of the Business Men’s Union. Fang, knowing Hu’s background, has no patience with his plea of innocence, and refuses to help. After Hu leaves, Fang is still haunted by his breathtaking encounter with Sun Wu-yang. As he sits in his living room,
A vision, taking form in front of his glazed eyes, finally assumed concrete form: prominently facing him now was no longer the holly bush but a woman’s long dark-green coat, dotted all over with small red stars the size of red holly seeds. Suddenly they acquired life. The red stars set in dark green all began to explode; they raced and they hopped. Like sparks bursting out of fireworks, they vied to shoot upward, gathering in the end into a somewhat larger dot of crimson red at the collar of the woman’s dark-green coat. This crimson-red dot, too, presently broke open, revealing two rows of lovely pearls. Ah! This is a smile, the alluring smile of a woman. Above that smile, under crescent eyebrows, was a pair of dark, lash-sheltered eyes from which radiated a green-yellow light. . . .
“Wu-yang, you are my light of hope. I cannot help going with you.”
From that day on, Fang Lo-lan’s life becomes irrevocably entangled with that of the repulsive, opportunistic Hu Kuo-kuang, whose ambition to become a power in the revolutionary camp keeps him close to Fang, and with his Party coworker, the seductive, free-loving Sun Wu-yang.
Trouble with the store workers soon flares up. Encouraged by the organization of a Workers’ Union, a workers’ patrol, and other Party sponsored movements favoring the work force, the employees make three unprecedented demands on their bourgeois employers: (1) a pay raise of 20 to 50 percent; (2) no layoffs; (3) no lockouts for any reason.9 Lu Mu-yu, newly elected to the Businessmen’s Union Standing Committee, is preparing a speech, hoping to get in first on the pro-labor side before the Party takes a public position. Of course, Lu recruits Hu Kuokuang to draft the speech. The time is close to the end of the last month on the lunar calendar (still used in such agricultural communities). This means it is about the beginning of February 1927 on the solar calendar. The labor movement is gaining momentum; the atmosphere in the town is tense. The workers’ patrol is regularly seen in the streets and with them are teams of boys carrying clubs and wearing strips of red cloth around their necks.10 One day, when the Workers Union is holding a parade, a group of thugs suddenly dash out of the Clear Wind Pavilion to break it up; street fights ensue. The next day the union patrol begins to carry guns, and three hundred reinforcements are sent in by the neighboring peasant associations to help out. A showdown between the workers and the proprietors is imminent.
At that very moment Fang Lo-lan is caught in a two-front crisis. Ch’en Chung, a high-school classmate who is now a member of the Party’s standing committee, comes to his house with Chou Shih-ta to discuss the labor problem; and Fang’s wife, Lu Mei-li, has just quarreled with him over a handkerchief given to him by Sun Wu-yang, and is in tears. With the assistance of Ch’en Chung and Chou Shih-ta on the labor problem, and of two other family friends, Miss Liu and Miss Chang—one a former schoolmate of Mrs. Fang and the other a member of the county Women’s Association—with Mrs. Fang, both crises are temporarily resolved. On the political front, it is decided that tomorrow there will be a joint meeting of the various people’s organizations. Representatives from the Businessmen’s Union, the Workers’ Union and the Women’s Association will discuss and resolve the labor question. Mrs. Fang is somewhat pacified by Miss Chang and Miss Liu, who persuade her that Sun Wu-yang is a notorious flirt and that the handkerchief carries no more meaning than a passing whim. Fang Lo-lan, swearing innocence, presents Mrs. Fang with the very handkerchief that caused the domestic storm, and wins a reluctant smile from her.
The next chapter describes the joint meeting where alignments among people from both the Party and the local groups became well-defined as three proposals are put on the table. The scene is very factual, with the “lines” set out clearly and no attempt to show the emotions of any of the participants. The style is that of “minutes of the meeting.” Lu Mu-yu of the Businessmen’s Union, joined by the chairman of the Workers’ Union, Lin Pu-p’ing, proposes that all three of the Workers’ demands be approved and a special committee be set up to see that they are carried out. The proposal is seconded by another representative of the Businessmen’s Union. Lin Tzu-ch’ung of the Party organization then proposes that consideration of the three specific demands be suspended until the special commissar from the provincial capital, who is expected any day, arrives to resolve the whole matter. But in the meantime there should be an active purge of the “local ruffians and evil gentry” and “suppression” of conspiratorial, reactionary store owners. This proposal is seconded by Sun Wu-yang of the Women’s Association. Fang Lo-lan then makes a third proposal: (a) gradual, not precipitous pay raise; (b) layoffs to be permitted with the consent of the Workers’ Union; (c) requests to close a store to be considered by the county Party organization after investigation by a special committee of representatives from the people’s organizations; (d) street patrols by workers and youth to be called off to forestall general panic; and (e) no unauthorized arrests of store owners. The proposal is seconded by Ch’en Chung and Chou Shih-ta.
As the proposals are being argued, a report of street rioting is brought in. Wang Jung-ch’ang has been caught smuggling merchandise out of his store, and his cousin, Hu Kuo-kuang, has denounced him in an open speech in front of the store. He has suddenly become an exemplary “revolutionary” store owner. The incident not only sways the meeting to support Lin Tzu-ch’ung’s proposal for immediate purges and for leaving the workers’ demands to the Wuhan envoy, but, even more important for subsequent events, it also cements the “revolutionary” comradeship between Lin Tzu-ch’ung and Hu Kuo-kuang. Hu’s revolutionary zest seems to have found in Lin Tzu-ch’ung a backer on the level of Party policy; and Party policy as voiced by Lin seems in turn to have found in Hu Kuo-kuang a man of action on the grass-roots level.
Subsequently a telegram from the capital arrives. Forbidding rash action, it goes directly against the grain of the motion just passed, furthers the confusion, and puts Fang Lo-lan on the spot. Unable to act on these orders because the local conflicts are already in motion, he has no answers to the businessmen for whom he is responsible when they ask: After the wire arrives, why weren’t the patrol team and the youth groups ordered off the streets? Why weren’t the reinforcements from the peasants’ associations sent back? Is the Workers’ Union truly under the command of the Party? What attitude does Fang’s Bureau of Commerce take toward the current action against the business sector? The credibility of the Party in general and Fang’s own authority in particular are assaulted from both sides. Fang is totally frustrated, and his colleagues Ch’en Chung, Chou Shih-ta, and P’eng Kang share his frustration. They began to feel somewhat the way Mrs. Fang feels, behind the times and hopelessly lost in a rapidly changing world.
Then Shih Chün arrives, the special commissar from Wuhan. Shih Chün, we remember, was Chao Ch’ih-chu-s boyfriend in Disillusionment, the student who voiced loud objections to the triangular love affair between Wang Shih-t’ao, Tung-fang Ming, and Lung Fei. Now he appears in the troubled county as a special representative, authorized to handle the local labor dispute. Outspoken and forthright as before, he offers his characteristic direct solution with a resounding crack of the whip:
“What the people in the Provincial Capital have in mind for the store workers’ problems are (1) a pay raise; (2) no layoffs; (3) prohibit any disruption of business by storeowners’ lockouts. This is how it’s done in Hankow, and this is how it’s done in the outlying counties. The only difference is in the details, such as how much of a pay raise is a real pay raise.”11
Of course, the solution Shih Chün has brought corresponds straight down the line with the first proposal, made by Lu Mu-yu and Lin Pu-p’ing. Party authority as represented by Shih Chün has inadvertently played into the hands of people like Lu Mu-yu and Hu Kuo-kuang. Fang Lo-lan, Chou Shih-ta, and Ch’en Chung try to reason with Shih Chün, arguing for some degree of moderation in the treatment of the owners, but Shih Chün only becomes more determined. The peasants’ army isn’t needed in the labor struggle, he says flatly.
Tomorrow we’ll call a meeting to announce the policies of the Provincial Party organization and settle all measures of implementation on the spot. That should take care of it. If there are store owners who want to object, or local ruffians and evil gentry who want to make trouble, we will have them arrested and taken care of right away.12
Once the labor policy is spelled out and the method of execution is decided upon, all that is left for Shih Chün to do is to meet with representatives of the various factions in the peoples’ organizations. It is thought-provoking that the two he especially wants to talk with are the new revolutionary zealot Hu Kuo-kuang and the flirtatious Sun Wu-yang. Hu’s visible devotion to the revolution impresses Shih Chün tremendously, and right after their meeting he decides to recommend Hu for membership in the standing committee of the county Party organization. His talks with Sun Wu-yang are longer, and they are as much concerned with Sun Wu-yang herself as about the kind of revolutionary policies Shih has brought with him.
Shih Chün sees Sun Wu-yang three times after the settlement of the labor policy, and each time she is with a different man. The first encounter is at Shih Chün’s guest house, and Sun is with the Party leader Lin Tzu-ch’ung. In this scene, Lin and Sun flirt with each other as Sun sings the “Internationale” over and over. Neither Lin nor Sun seems to have much respect for another person who is present, a man by the name of Chu Min-sheng, although Sun seems to be on rather intimate terms with him. The meeting is cut short because all must attend a tea reception for Shih Chün at the Women’s Association, and there Sun is alone with Fang Lo-lan for a few minutes. During those brief moments Sun suddenly becomes a different person, all understanding and sympathy for the family trouble Fang has had because of her handkerchief. When Fang leaves, he is totally intrigued by this complex and multifaceted woman.
Shih Chün is supposed to meet Sun for a third time just before he leaves town, but he cannot find her. Looking around for her, he thinks he may have seen her in a yard with a flowerbed, just turning the corner of the house with some other person. But the train is leaving and he had no time to continue the search. Just as his train is pulling out of the station, Sun Wu-yang comes running up, followed by the mysterious Chu Minsheng. Her dress is rumpled, she is flushed and panting, and there are petals of crushed chrysanthemum in her hair.
The people on the platform to see Shih Chün off are talking about a new topic. The local labor problem seems settled for the moment; the pressing question now is the peasant movement and the rumor about “communization of wives and concubines.” What is the Party’s policy on the movement?
The County (Chapters 7–12)
The second half of Vacillation begins, like the first half, with a prelude of private dealings between Lu Mu-yu and Hu Kuo-kuang: This time it is Lu Mu-yu’s turn to expect Hu Kuo-kuang’s assistance in his affair with the widow Ch’ien Su-chen. Lu and Ch’ien have become lovers and Ch’ien needs the help of people on revolutionary committees to safeguard her business and her property from the greedy hands of her relatives. Hu Kuo-kuang, thanks to the patronage of Shih Chün, is now an elected member of the Executive Committee of the county Party organization. Both Lu and Hu are in place to capitalize on the next wave of révolutionary development in the county.
Spring is in the air and the peasant movement in the countryside is steadily on the rise.
Since the end of the last lunar year, Peasant Associations had been formed in the nearby countryside, Nan-hsiang. Peasants actually became organized and rumors accordingly followed. The first rumors were about the “communization” of property because at that time the peasant associations were investigating the distribution of land ownership among the peasants. But the rumors quickly turned into “men for draft and women for sharing.” Hence peasants at Nan-hsiang had been in a state of fright as they spent their pathetic lunar New Year Days. There were incidents of assaults on the peasant associations, which caused the county association to dispatch a special commissioner by the name of Wang Cho-fan to Nan-hsiang for an investigation.
What had happened was not difficult to bring to light. The ones who had been spreading the rumors were the local ruffians and evil gentry; and the ones misled were the peasants. However, if you tried to argue that there had been no “sharing” of wives, the peasants were not going to believe you. It was clear as daylight to all that there was a Communist Party. Thus it went without saying that all property was to be shared, and that since wives are a form of property, it would make absolutely no sense to the peasants to say that wives were to be exempt from sharing. That would be downright double-dealing.
Special Commissioner Wang was an able man. Therefore, within a week of his arrival at Nan-hsiang, peasants there had added another slogan, “Those with extra wives are to share their wives,” to the one they already knew by heart, “Land to the tillers.”13 In China there are always extra women and unattached women. For one man to have two wives makes one wife “extra,” of course, and widows not remarried and nuns without husbands are of course “unattached.” Now the peasants of Nan-hsiang were going to compensate for these deficiencies by sharing the extras and making full use of the unattached.
As it happened, on the same spring day that Lu Mu-yu consummates his love affair with the widow Ch’ien, a mass meeting of peasants raises the demand to “share” the concubines and bondsmaids in the households of “local ruffians,” and to “share” the nuns too. A group calling themselves the Association of Husbands Rights is outraged and armed with hoes, clubs, and spades, tries to break up the session. Violence ensues.
When reports of the incident come to the county Party organization, reaction is again threefold. The Lu Mu-yu and Hu Kuo-kuang alliance, fearing personal loss and lusting after personal gain, proposes an all-out women-sharing program in the name of unrelenting revolutionary struggle. According to them, “Why should there be a revolution if révolutionary policies are always meted out in half measures?” Miss Chang and Sun Wu-yang, representatives of the Women’s Association, see the institutions of concubinage, nunnery, and slave-bondsmaids as in principle inhumane and believe “emancipation” is in order. However, they want a simultaneous skills-training program so that, once freed, the women will be able to make a living instead of falling back into a second slavery. Fang Lo-lan and Ch’en Chung are opposed to the Hu-Lu proposal of abrupt all-out women’s “emancipation,” but they have no counterproposals.
But as the meeting goes on, the discussion shifts from whether there should be such an all-out movement to how it can best be carried out. Long, exhausting argument results in two resolutions. The first is that “all bondsmaids are to be emancipated without exception; concubines over forty are allowed to remain in their former masters’ homes; nuns are to be emancipated without exception but old nuns may choose to remain nuns; widows under thirty who have no children will be emancipated without exception, whereas the others may continue their widowhood.” The second resolution is that “the problem involving women-sharing at Nan-hsiang will be assigned to the Women’s Department of the county government and the Women’s Association of the Party organization for joint investigation; the investigation is to be completed within a week. A Women’s Care Center is to be established to take care of the women after they are emancipated.” Once the resolutions are passed, Hu and Lu immediately put their heads together and decide to get Widow Ch’ien on the staff of the Women’s Care Center, through Chu Min-sheng and Sun Wu-yang. The Women’s Care Center is soon set up, and, indeed, Ch’ien Su-chen serves under Miss Liu of the Women’s Association as the center’s general manager which greatly enhances her social and political status, thus putting a crimp in her relatives’ scheme to grab her property.
As dozens of nuns, widows, and bondsmaids begin to arrive at the Center, Fang Lo-lan is caught in another quarrel with his wife, this time a much more serious one. Recently Mrs. Fang seems to have been behaving strangely, and Fang feels that communication between them has somehow ground to a halt. For a short period after the handkerchief misunderstanding, their relationship as husband and wife swung back to normal, but as soon as the Women’s Care Center was established, it went sour again. Not only is Sun Wu-yang again implicated in their domestic trouble, but rumors are also circulating that Sun Wu-yang had a notorious and insatiable appetite for men, any man. However, as far as Fang Lo-lan is concerned:
It was true that he adored Sun Wu-yang more and more every day. He categorically refuted all talk and observations about her that came from a negative standpoint. He discovered a growing number of good qualities in her: her vivaciousness and innocence of guile was attractive, but what was even more winning were those taciturn moments in which she was unspeakably melancholy. Whenever he chatted with Sun Wu-yang, he felt his heart pounding. However, he could still keep himself under control because he was exceedingly conscious of his responsibility as a husband and would not allow himself to take another step closer to Sun Wu-yang. Hence he firmly believed that his wife’s remoteness had nothing to do with Sun Wu-yang. Nevertheless, he had become more and more inclined in recent times, unconsciously so too, to go to Sun Wu-yang for healing when he was vexed by the rebuffs of his wife. One might say that Sun Wu-yang had de facto become Fang Lo-lan’s solace, except that Fang was not conscious of that himself and was seeking it over and over again unknowingly.
May 1, Labor Day, is approaching, and Fang Lo-lan’s frequent visits to Sun’s room, which have drawn many well-intentioned warnings from Miss Chang, finally provoke Mrs. Fang to an explosive confrontation. Mrs. Fang wants Sun Wu-yang out of Fang Lo-lan’s life, or else she herself will leave. Further defense of Sun Wu-yang’s character only intensifies her anger and jealousy. The situation in the Fang household has reached an impasse. “There is no need to mention the past any more,” says Mrs. Fang, and
“there is no need to say who is right and who is wrong. You are the only one who knows whether you love Sun Wu-yang or not; I am not going to care any more. The relationship between you and me can no longer continue. Of course I am an old-fashioned person, having no belief in ‘isms’. The education I received was of course not modern, but it does teach me one thing: I do not wish to be fooled by others nor am I willing to be hoodwinked by others. It teaches me another thing also: Do not stand in other people’s way. In other words, ‘Do not harm others while reaping no benefit yourself.’ I see it even more clearly now, I have been in the position of harming others while reaping no benefit myself. Why should I bother? I might as well give everybody a simple, quick solution.”14
Mrs. Fang’s simple solution is obviously a demand for a divorce. Fang Lo-lan is flabbergasted. Never for a moment, not even with all his dissatisfaction, had the idea of replacing Mrs. Fang with Sun Wu-yang ever crossed his mind.
“Mei-li, we have been husband and wife many years now. Middled-aged and with a child of four, that the word ‘divorce’ should have been spoken and heard truly cuts me to the quick. Mei-li, if you still recall the happy days we used to have together, or even the happy days we had not so long ago, how can you bear to say that you want to divorce me?”15
But Mrs. Fang will not be dissuaded. She does not rely on her emotions and she did not come to the idea of divorce on impulse; hence the argument of past love cannot change her mind about something she has deeided upon after long, serious thought.
Mrs. Fang, however, after repeated pleading by Fang Lo-lan, finally consents to remain in the same house with him, though in separate rooms and only on a tentative basis. Fang thereupon is able to turn his attention again to official duties, and that forces him not only into the company of Hu Kuo-kuang, now the acclaimed veteran revolutionary in the county, but, what is worse, also that of Sun Wu-yang, now the confirmed source of his domestic troubles.
The month of May in China is replete with memorial days: May 1, May 4, May 7, and May 9.16 On each of these memorial days there is a mass rally; and during each of these Hu Kuo-kuang gets up on the platform and flaunts his revolutionary zest with fiery speeches. On one such occasion Fang Lo-lan and Sun Wu-yang manage to escape from the rally and speech to the nearby Chang-kung-ssu, to cool off in seclusion from the noonday sun. Their conversation quickly turns to the subject of Sun Wu-yang’s many men. Wu-yang is quite frank about herself. She denies having been in love with Chu Min-sheng; what happened, according to her, was that she had been seen with him a lot and people simply began to talk. As to Fang Lo-lan, her feeling is significantly different. She has heard about his argument with his wife and wants Fang Lo-lan to try for a reconciliation.
“Listen to me, you have to find a way to make her happy. Even for my sake, you have to find a way to make her happy. You two cannot divorce, I do not approve of your divorcing. You have the most respect for me and maybe you understand me the best. Of course I am grateful for that but I cannot love you. No, don’t feel bad. Listen to me. It is not that I love someone else. There are quite a few sticking to me, playing around. I am not afraid of playing around with them in return; I am made of flesh and blood, I have my instinctive drive. At times I cannot help myself. . . . But my sexual drive cannot bind me to anything. Therefore there has not been a single person for whom I have felt love; there were only those with whom I have had passing affairs. Lo-lan, do you think I am terrible? I am wicked? Maybe I am, maybe I am not. I don’t care either way. I am just having my fun. But I will not let others suffer for it, or hate me for it. I especially do not want to see another woman suffering on my account. I know the suffering of a woman who is deprived of love. Maybe there have been some men who suffered on my account. But I have no pity on those who had no respect for me and suffered on my account anyway. This is my philosophy of life, my philosophy of how to cope in this world.
“Lo-lan, I trust you a lot. To tell you the truth, I am used to my freedom, I cannot be anybody’s wife any more. Therefore, even if you love me passionately, I cannot return your love. You are too good. I do not want you to suffer because of your love for me, and on top of it, to have your wife suffer too. Now cancel your idea of divorce quickly. Come with Mei-li to see me, affectionately, the two of you. Or else I will not talk to you any more from now on. Lo-lan, I can tell that you have a fancy for my body. I am happy to offer you a few minutes of satisfaction.”
She embraced Fang Lo-lan, whose forehead was covered with cold sweat. With only a thin layer of silk covering them, her soft breasts pressed against Fang Lo-lan’s heart, which was throbbing violently. Her burning lips closed on the numb mouth of Fang Lo-lan. And then she let go and walked away with a light step. Fang Lo-lan stood there totally befuddled.
The next day Fang Lo-lan goes to see Sun Wu-yang again, ready to sacrifice everything for her. But Sun Wu-yang will not hear of it; she tells him to forget about sacrifices and go quickly to his business of making up with his wife. When Fang Lo-lan gets home, he finds a note from Ch’en Chung about the Peasant Association’s demands for waiving taxes and levies as a part of the reform movement. The county Party organization has called a meeting to discuss the matter. Fang, just rejected by Sun Wu-yang and now pressed by urgent calls of duty, cries out in agony and desperation to his wife, “Mei-li, Mei-li, please forgive me. Please let me have some peace of mind to serve the revolution.”17 Mrs. Fang’s resistance melts; harmony, for the time being, is restored to the Fang household.
The next day, Fang Lo-lan also learns from Ch’en Chung that new troubles have arisen from the worker-store-owner confrontation and from the Women’s Care Center. The store owners have been secretly withdrawing their investments and making off with the money. The Women’s Care Center, with Ch’ien Su-chen in the lead, is turning into a semiofficial brothel, with practically every woman in it taking on two or three lovers. Worse, Hu Kuo-kuang, the newly elected revolutionary committee member, is behind everything. In addition, rumors are spreading that the provincial government, incensed by what it has learned, has ordered the county Party organization, the Workers’ Union, and the Peasants’ Association disbanded, and is sending police to arrest the Executive Committee of the Peasants’ Association. Apparently the Party is disavowing all the radical reforms so recently introduced.
However, at the scheduled Party organization meeting, the demand for waiving taxes and levies on the peasants is passed as if nothing were happening outside. At the same time, the rumors of arrests have come true: the county police have come and arrested three members of the Executive Committee. Threats of force are made on both sides, and a major showdown between the Peasants’ Association and the county mayor is imminent. Hu Kuo-kuang, perceiving an opportunity to displace the mayor and seize the job for himself, comes out strongly on the side of the Peasants’ Association. He also sees that inciting a riot to protest the Party’s failure to obtain release of the prisoners will give him the leverage he needs to unseat Fang Lo-lan. Hu becomes even more active and vocal.
At a mass demonstration threats of violence develop into real violence. Fights break out between the police force from the county government and the Peasants’ Association army. Tension escalates and fear descends on the inhabitants. While the Peasants’ Association army is surrounding the police-guarded county office building and petitioning for the release of their imprisoned members, Hu Kuo-kuang is making a heroic speech to Fang Lo-lan at a Party meeting, demanding the prisoners’ release and the mayor’s resignation. There is a deadlock. Just at this juncture, a special commissar from the provincial capital appears among the petitioning Peasants’ Association members. It is Li K’e whom we met as the “rational man” in Disillusionment, the native of Miss Hui’s home town. He has come to take command of the crisis.
Li k’e moves quickly and efficiently. He obtains the prisoners’ release and the mayor remains in office. Li K’e has with him an order to arrest Hu Kuo-kuang as a revolutionary impostor and bona fide “evil gentry.” Ch’en Chung advises caution: such drastic action as arresting Hu might not yield the desired result. But Li K’e is contemptuous of caution. He insists that it is absolutely essential to know when force is necessary in a revolutionary situation. “The greatest mistake here in the past,” Li K’e tells Fang Lo-lan and Ch’en Chung,
“comes from a lack of clear understanding. When something happens, one hesitates and stands indecisive, not knowing whether to use force or to be lax. Sometimes one acts as if one were lax; in fact, it is simply a cover for not having understood things clearly and hence lacking the audacity to take action, because when one is lax, one is still acting. On the other hand, one sometimes acts as if one were strong; in fact, that is also a cover for not having understood things clearly, and hence one acts unthinkingly. The upshot is that one always ends up acting provisionally, with neither foresight nor advance planning. From now on, we all have to have a clear understanding of things. When we need to act, if the time is not ripe, it will do no harm to proceed as if we were slack, but we will be acting nonetheless, not forgetting to take action.”18
Hu Kuo-kuang, however, does not wait for Li K’e to work out his theories of clear understanding and acting with strength or with slackness. He sets the Businessmen’s Union up to challenge Li’s denunciation of him and has the provincial representative beaten up at a union meeting. The Peasants’ Association, too, is ready for action, and government troops are moving down the Yangtze River Valley in anticipation of a riot. Li K’e, Fang Lo-lan, and Ch’en Chung have another consultation at a Party meeting in the besieged county building.
Fang and Ch’en are gravely worried that the Party organization will not be able to handle the military showdown because it has no control over the government armies. But Li K’e, totally unperturbed, continues to issue his instructions from “above”:
The most crucial thing is that the Party has to be resolute. It has to take the initiative, putting down the reactionaries by force of the patrol groups and the peasant armies. Tomorrow at the meeting, the following things will have to be done: (1) immediately put under arrest the local bullies and evil gentry hidden in the town and all suspects; (2) get rid of all local vagabonds and hoodlums; (3) request the mayor to hand over his police guards to the Party organization—it is absolutely not right to have the police guards serve as the personal guards of the mayor himself.19
Fang and Ch’en are completely taken aback. Li K’e must be delirious. The proposals may be theoretically sensible, but how are they to be carried out?
Before the Party has time to finish its discussion of Li’s proposals, the riots break out, led by “local vagabonds and hoodlums.” The Women’s Association is the first to be attacked; almost all the emancipated women in the area are killed or brutalized. Then the mob turns to the Party organization building in the county town. As the workers’ patrol team and the county police come to dispel the mob, Fang Lo-lan suddenly has an epiphany:
The account since the first lunar month this year will have to be squared sooner or later. You have deprived people of their means of existence, stirred up hatred among men; now it is time for you to eat the bitter fruit. You forced people into a dead end with nowhere to turn, so they turned on you. Have you forgotten the old saying that cornered animals will not stop fighting? You have turned too many people into your enemy with your too simple words: “local bully, evil gentry.” You have chased away old-style local bullies and replaced them with new-style revolutionary flag-waving hoodlums. You ask for freedom and get despotism. You may call it rigorous suppression, but even when it works, it is nothing more than another form of despotism which you will not be able to control. Hear this! Be magnanimous, be moderate. Only with magnanimity and moderation will you be able to do away with vendettas. Now your guns have shot five or six persons. What purpose does that serve? It will serve only as a bridge to more terrible vendettas.”20
The epiphany comes too late. By now the town and much of the country are aflame. The violence and the approach of the “enemy army” force members of the Party organization to flee their homes.
Mrs. Fang and her husband escape to a deserted convent, where Sun also finds her way. The novel ends with a hallucinatory vision that Mrs. Fang has. She first sees a spider hanging on a thread in the air whose body soon turns into a suffering human face, which in turn, explodes into innumerable similarly suffering faces of those killed in the riots. The hall of worship in the nunnery itself is suddenly transformed into a tall, ancient building, cracking and falling and finally crashing into a ruined pile of fragmented tiles and broken beams. From the pile a streak of blue smoke begins to ascend to the sky. A band of little creatures emerge in the smoke and gradually their faces grow to look like those of Fang Lo-lan, Ch’en Chung, Miss Chang, and many other people Mrs. Fang has known. Then the pile suddenly rises from the ground and reassembles itself into one mass in the air. The mass pounces on those little creatures and send them running, escaping in all directions. Then a black heart appears in the midst of all, throbbing, expanding, eventually swallowing everything and destroying everything. Moaning, Mrs. Fang falls to the ground.
Realism as Allegory
Vacillation is more direct than Disillusionment. It shows the “vacillation or revolutionary ideas and revolutionary policies” within the revolutionary camp—the CCP—through concrete experiences in specific revolutionary activities. Several of the important episodes in the story, Mao Tun said, are based on news dispatches from the countryside that he could not publish in the Party press at that time.21 This realism should make interpretation of the novel rather straightforward. But nevertheless interpretations both of its theme and of its subject matter vary widely.
C. T. Hsia, whose insight into the psychology of characters in modern Chinese fiction is generally admirable, writes of Fang Lo-lan:
The local Kuomintang representative . . . A man of tortured conscience . . . further paralyzed by his wife’s silent reproach of and increasing alienation from him under the suspicion that he has formed a liaison with his coworker Sun Wu-yang. Obsessed with his marital crisis, Fang Lo-lan is utterly powerless to prevent the demagogues both within and outside the Kuomintang from turning the proposed reforms topsy-turvy.
And he sees Hu Kuo-kuang as “not merely a demagogue and voluptuary; he is the powerdriven man bent on self-aggrandizement. . . .”22
Ch’ien Hsing-ts’un criticized it for presenting a “wrong” picture of the political reality of the day. His reading of the same male characters yields a different picture. Ch’ien says of Fang Lo-lan:
In terms of characterization, the author failed. In places he uses the “profile” technique, thus making criticism impossible. Such a representational method frequently obstructs one’s perception of the merit of a character. In short, Fang’s actions and ideas show the ills and ineffectualness and the compromises [people make] with situations . . . there are too many like him—a follower of the so-called Golden Mean.
And about Hu Kuo-kuang:
An opportunist like Hu Kuo-kuang is puny and peripheral in the course of revolution. Mao Tun had seen opportunists tens or hundreds of times worse than Hu Kuo-kuang in the Hunan-Hupeh region. It is a pity he did not depict those. . . . the reality of those opportunists lies in their secret conspiring with the warlords and bureaucrats, buying off the fallen masses, using feudalistic ploys to expand their own power, agitating and controlling and laying snares for their rivals, buying influence at the top level, and going so far as to secretly hit it off with the imperialists. We get no inkling of all these prevalent phenomena in Vacillation. . . . There are no woman revolutionaries. Sun is decorative, romantic, new-woman type, an ornament for the revolution.23
After Hsia’s and Ch’ien’s comments, the author’s own statements about the characters in Vacillation come as rather a surprise. For one thing, he defends his “profile” technique (meaning not presenting a full view and in depth), saying it was the only way he could depict the situation. And about the characters, after saying that there is no protagonist in the novel, he writes:
There are many opportunists like Hu Kuo-kuang; they are more leftist than anybody. Many of the highly unpopular cases of infantile leftism were actually their work. I portrayed а Hu Kuo-kuang because this was also a phenomenon in vacillation. . . .
Fang Lo-lan is not a protagonist either. My original intention was to make him a representative figure in Vacillation. He differs from his wife. Mrs. Fang does not know how to deal with the disturbances in the current situation. . . . She cannot be said to be either vacillating or not.
Fang Lo-lan is the opposite. Although he and his wife are alike in not seeing clearly the nature of the era, he has assumed the role of an important figure in the Party organization; he has no choice but to spend his time confronting problems, so that his thoughts and actions are seen to vacillate a great deal. He not only vacillates in Party affairs and mass movements, he also vacillates in love . . . the love episode between him and Sun Wu-yang is probably not something adventitious.
Moreover, if one remembers that Vacillation is about “vacillation,” and Fang Lo-lan is its representative and Hu Kuo-kuang has no more significance than playing a supporting role in the phenomenon of vacillation, then it is probably not a technical flaw that Hu Kuo-kuang does not appear again at the end of this piece. . . .24
Ch’ien Hsing-ts’un and Mao Tun are seeing different novels. Ch’ien’s central complaint about Mao Tun’s incomplete presentation of the political reality of 1927 is that Mao Tun did not include in his depiction of the phenomenon of vacillation a full-scale presentation of its role in the overall picture of the revolution. Ch’ien would have liked to see in Vacillation what Mao Tun had deliberately excluded; the genesis of the Party’s internal entanglements which were at work behind the events of the story. Fang Lo-lan and Hu Kuo-kuang, instead of merely representing aspects of vacillation, should have been directly related to the original cause and hence held accountable for the success or failure of ideas and policies. In the novel the cause was entirely veiled in the objective authority of Li K’e and Shih Chün and unexamined in the fictional reality.
If we do not demand along with Ch’ien that Vacillation offer up the full-scale political reality of the revolution in 1927, but approach the novel as portraying “part of an organic structure,” as Mao Tun himself suggested, we see that the entire drama falls into the time period of the second half of Disillusionment, and that its vacillations reached their highest pitch exactly at the juncture when, in Disillusionment Ching decides to go to Wuhan to work for the revolution.25 The ascendency of Hu Kuokuang’s career and the sundry vacillations of Fang Lo-lan correspond in time to Ching’s increasing discouragement with the contradictions she sees in the revolutionary organizations and the insufferable “love frenzy” her coworkers are indulging in. Hui and her love philosophy also reappear at this juncture. Therefore, whether in the novelistic context of the trilogy or in the life context of the revolution, Vacillation is an illustration of how in reality rather than theory, the vacillating revolutionary ideas and policies coming out of Wuhan as a result of intra-and inter-Party struggles could push the revolution along a course of destruction.
Critics who want to read Vacillation realistically, as a slice or crosssection of the Great Revolution, are likely to arrive at a pessimistic conelusion about the future of the revolution. C. T. Hsia, who does read it this way, says
Mao Tun ably mirrors [Fang Lo-lan’s] futility in his marital crisis: Mei-li, bitterly unhappy in her inability to adjust to the present and step boldly into the unknown future, stands for tradition, while, like Hui, Sun Wu-yang is the modern nihilist who, having shed traditional manners and pieties, is merely carried into the vortex of the Revolution. In this symbolic scheme, the decrepit convent in which Fang Lo-lan and the two women finally seek refuge stands for an old and decayed China. At the very end of the novel Mei-li has a nightmarish vision of the fall of this structure, whose crash stamps out any sign of resurgent life underneath.26
But to the “Futurist” critics, if they exist, death and destruction of the past is but a resounding trumpet call for a bright and even better future. Mao Tun the “contradictionist” understood that also, as he showed us in the last two chapters of Disillusionment in his portrayal of the tender romance of Ch’iang Wei-li and Miss Ching. By setting the development of Vacillation in the context of as well as parallel to the second half of Disillusionment in time and its ending immediately before the romance of Wei-li and Ching, Mao Tun the novelist-artist has skillfully brought together in his plot design two different levels of fictional representation of the Great Revolution: the level of realistic depiction of the disheartening revolutionary present in the summer of 1927 and the level of poetry, Futurist style, of possible fulfillment in the revolutionary future ensuing. As to the question whether the Futuristic ending of Disillusionment is a more probable portrayal of what awaits the Communist revolution next, or is the symbolic prostration of Mei-li a more authentic projection, we will not have the answer till the appearance of Pursuit, the third and last part of his trilogy.
Meantime, in relating the subject matter and characterization of Vacillation to the national political drama of the time, the issues that concern us most in our understanding of this fictional representation are still those emphasized by Mao Tun himself. What does he mean when he says that Vacillation is about “vacillation,” that there is no protagonist in Vacillation and that he could depict the situation only by resorting to “profile” sketching?
First of all, “Vacillation is about vacillation” seems to mean that it would be wrong to equate the phenomenon of vacillation with the entire course of the revolution, as Ch’ien Hsing-ts’un and C. T. Hsia both do, and thus to try to see its representatives as symbols of revolution and revolutionary ideals for the whole of China. Unlike Disillusionment, in which revolution is a quest for ideals, Vacillation is intended mainly to dramatize the practical consequences of vacillation in one concrete and specific historical context. The portrait thus resulting is, as he says, only a profile, only one aspect of the revolution and its significance cannot be fully grasped except in the total structure of the trilogy. Therefore, when we move from the subject of revolution (allegorized in Disillusionment) to the subject of vacillation (dramatized in Vacillation), we cannot overlook the thematic and technical differences in the two works: an allegorical cross-section view of the whole is not the same thing as a profile view of the whole.
Here Mao Tun presents a small Hupeh county as if it were a self sufficient and closed world. His characters included not only representatives of the vacillating revolutionary policies (such as Fang Lo-lan and Lin Tzu-ch’ung) but also representatives of the opportunities vacillation affords for the seizure of power (by the likes of Lu Mu-yu and Hu Kuokuang). Without Fang Lo-lan and Lin Tzu-ch’ung and the conflict in their positions, Hu Kuo-kuang and Lu Mu-yu could not have taken advantage of the momentum created by the mass movements. This makes the significance of a character like Hu Kuo-kuang, though not the character itself, contingent on the vacillation between Fang and Lin. It should therefore come as no surprise that Mao Tun denied Hu Kuo-kuang the status of a protagonist in Vacillation. Moreover, since the characters themselves are also profiles—not even Fang is drawn full face, though he does have two aspects—the author saw no need to bring Hu or Lu back on the scene after they had done their work of inciting reaction.
Vacillation in the CCP policies on mass movements was not limited to the theoretical contentions portrayed, for example, in the triangles in Dissillusionment. In the first half of 1927, the vacillations of the leadership were felt all the way down the organizational line to the very ground level of isolated rural counties. This is what created the split between the Fang Lo-lan faction, which includes Ch’en Chung and Chou Shih-ta, and the Lin Tzu-ch’ung faction, supported by Sun Wu-yang; and it dramatically affected the form and direction of all three mass movements portrayed in Vacillation: first the labor movement (chapters 1-6), then the peasants’ and women’s movement (chapters 7-11). Mao Tun carefully built his characters and their influence circles in the chapters leading up to the confrontations, beginning with Lu Mu-yu and Hu Kuo-kuang (chapters 1–5) who will benefit from the vacillation of the Fang and Lin groups on the first labor issue. But in chapters 7-10 Mao Tun concentrates more on portraying the conflict between Sun Wu-yang and Fang Lo-lan, which builds up to an explosion not only in Fang’s household and within the Party organization at the county office building, but also outside, between the revolutionary peasant army and the women’s organization on the one hand, and the government army and the Husbands’ Rights Association on the other.
While conflicting policies on the mass movements—whether to further radicalize or curtail them—are being argued around the conference table, they are being reinterpreted in action by the actual masses themselves, among whom opportunists and dregs of the old county community predominate. With vacillation as the collective protagonist of the novel, and with its theoretical and practical levels organically integrated, there can be no individual protagonists. The love affair between Fang Lo-lan and Sun Wu-yang not only represents one facet of vacillation in the revolutionary policies each of the two expresses, but also intimates the inextricably interwoven relationship between the two opposing policies within the same revolutionary camp.
Sun Wu-yang, like Hui in Disillusionment, embraces a philosophy of revolution that is thoroughly political and strongly controlled and directed by the Comintern. The least subtle of many hints comes when she keeps singing the “Internationale” over and over when flirting with Lin. Sun’s position, articulated through Lin in the county Party organization, is what offers Hu Kuo-kuang the golden opportunity to make his way into the local power circle; hence twice in the novel Sun appears in Hu’s eye as “a pile of eye-dazzling silver.”27 On the other hand, to Fang, she is the “other woman,” not quite part of his domestic household and not quite at the center of the Party—she has to speak through Lin Tzu-ch’ung or through Miss Chang and Miss Liu of the Women’s Organization. But she is the source of his trouble both within his family and in his public domain of responsibility. Sun appears to Fang first as specks of red stars against a background of green (symbolic of the Party’s presence), then as a pair of glittering green-yellow eyes (green-yellow identifies the eyes of a foreign species) as he looks up from the stars to a point at the top of the vision.
In chapter 6, when Shih Chün arrives to take charge of the flaring labor dispute, Sun is shown as flirting with three men at once: she plays with Lin Tzu-ch’ung whose position on mass movements reflects her own; she infiltrates the consciousness of Fang Lo-lan, whose position on mass movements contradicts her own; and she rolls in the grass, so to speak, with Chu Min-shen, whose name suggests the “Min-sheng-chu-i” in the Three People’s Principles of Sun Yat-sen of the KMI (Sun being the first to conceptualize the land and peasant problems and incorporate them in his political theory and platform for action). Sun Wu-yang’s meddling with all factions in the government and in Party affairs, being part of and yet not really responsible for what takes place in the novel, admirably captures Mao Tun’s vexation with the ubiquitous presence of the Comintern in the internal affairs of the CCP.
Sun Wu-yang is also used to show the relationship between the rioting masses and the revolution as a whole. Whether the obtrusion of Sun Wu-yang into the domestic life of Fang Lo-lan is eventually going to prod Mrs. Fang to catch up with the times or not, we never know. What we do know is that Mrs. Fang will not be able to remain in her old serenity and refinement any more. Her home has been destroyed in the riot and the convent where she and her husband take refuge also collapses in her vision of the destiny of her old world. If she does not catch up with the times, her husband will probably disappear also, if not with the symbolic collapse of the old order, then with the irresponsible, alluring, and enigmatic Sun Wu-yang. What road will Fang Mei-li choose? The novel ends on this note of uncertainty and challenge.
Vacillation itself, like Mrs. Fang, stands at a crossroads in the revolution. A year after it was published, Mao Tun wrote in explanation or justification, “Mrs. Fang does not know how to deal with the disturbances in the current situation,
she is confused and lost, and she perceives that the turbulent new situation is pregnant with contradictions, so that she feels somewhat disillusioned and depressed. She has completely failed to enter into the new situation and the new era; she cannot be said to be either vacillating or not.
The old order with all its beauty and tranquility (Mrs. Fang) can be no more; its decadent life style (Lu Mu-yu) is gone too. But is Sun Wu-yang an acceptable replacement for Mrs. Fang in the future world of Fang Lo-lan? Mao Tun did not make this clear. But the two mounds of eyes in Fang Lo-lan’s hallucination after the riot (chapter 11) offer a powerful image of the disaster brought upon the entire Party by the green-yellow eyes of Sun Wu-yang. They are the eyes of those who died in the riots.
Wu-yang is not a name symbol suggestive of dependable partnership. There is a man by the name of Ch’in Wu-yang in the famous story of Ching K’o from Records of the Grand Historian.28 Ching K’o was waiting for a friend, who would assist him in assassinating the king of the State of Ch’in. When the friend did not arrive in time, he left with Ch’in Wu-yang as a substitute. Ch’in’s nerve failed at the crucial point and the attempt failed; both he and Ching K’o died in vain. The name Wu-yang suggests a parallel between that ill-fated partnership and the equally unproductive association between the CCP and the Comintern. Both involve the fate of a nation: the State of Yen in one case, and an independent socialist China in the other.
Ch’ien Hsing-ts’un, who was dissatisfied with almost everything Mao Tun did with his characters in Vacillation, also disliked Sun Wu-yang:
Sun Wu-yang has no philosophy of revolution. There are few women who work for revolution who know what revolution is all about. Sun Wu-yang has only a love philosophy. Her philosophy is one of retaliation against philanderers. Is she a revolutionary? We doubt it. We have no need of her kind of women Party members who indulge in lovemaking and are oblivious to revolution. . . . But this is again a prevalent phenomenon today: there is an abundance of women revolutionaries who specialize in love, but a paucity of women revolutionaries who devote themselves exclusively to revolution. Sun Wu-yang’s philosophy of life is one that builds itself on sex and love, there is no career in it.
On the novel as a whole, Ch’ien pronounced a more general judgment:
It has no healthy revolutionaries. The message of the book is unclear. If we compare the work with the happenings in 1927, we cannot arrive at a conclusion as to who is right and who is wrong. It has not paid sufficient attention to political reality. For example, the ones who were brutalized were not the opportunists or the reformists but the revolutionaries. The book presents just the opposite.29
Ch’ien Hsing-ts’un, a new arrival in the radical camp after the Wuhan retreat, would have liked to see some heroic portraiture of the Great Revolution. He had not had Mao Tun’s working experience with the revolution from its inception, and, without that, he naturally resorted to exhortation when the political reality of earlier days did not live up to revolutionary intention. But when Mao Tun went on in his next novel to paint what Ch’ien had demanded of Vacillation—a picture of the damaged and brutalized revolutionaries—Ch’ien’s shrill call rang out again. There are no “healthy revolutionaries” in Pursuit either. Mao Tun’s portrayal of the final phase of the Great Revolution is desperate—bereft of illusions and no longer even vacillating. But in Vacillation and in the interweaving structural relationship between Vacillation and chapters 9–11 of Disillusionment, Mao Tun managed to transmit a double-edged message about the sinister and destructive political reality of the revolutionary present for the CCP at Wuhan, and a tender, loving, spontaneous, and passionately committed revolutionary future for the forces leading out of the Nanch’ang Uprising southward.
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