Novel
藍袍先生
Not translated into English
Chen Zhongshi · 1986
Synopsis
A former pupil sees his old teacher, Xu Shenxing, come back to his home several times, wanting to speak to him about a plan for his last years; then the teacher speaks and tells his life. Born into a family that has taught in the village for generations, docile, he lets his father arrange his life, even to the point of stifling a budding desire, and takes over after him the family's private school. Having become a schoolteacher in the new China, he is thrown into political turmoil by an imprudent remark, according to The Paper; Chaoxing makes the anti-rightist campaign the turning point of his life.
Context
Chen Zhongshi himself dates to this text, according to The Paper, the wish to write the great novel that was to follow: it was at the moment when the father stifles the hero's budding desire that his own came to him. Chinawriter dates it to 1985 and sees in it the period when the writer began to reflect on the fate of the Chinese people and the force of desire; another article on the same site presents it as a novella of eighty thousand characters that questions the national soul over the ruins of patriarchal culture. According to an online course on Chaoxing, the story rests on two voices, that of a former pupil, whom this course identifies with the author, and that of the master himself. A Huangmei opera was drawn from it, performed in Shanghai in 2021.
Who it is for
A novella with no French or English translation; the novel it announces exists in French under the title Au pays du cerf blanc.
Prizes and reception
According to Chinawriter, it was while finishing it that the writer resolved to write a great book on the fate of the nation.
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