The discourse of “youth” figured prominently in Chinese literature since Liang Qichao published his “Ode to Young China” (“少年中國說”) in late Qing Dynasty. It has functioned as the avant-garde of history in rejuvenating and enlightening a young China. “Youth” has also been configured to be the motivation of making a fresh start of modernization in China, that perpetuates the national fable in writing of the Great Cultural Revolution in 1980s by the intellectuals....[ Read more ]

The discourse of “youth” figured prominently in Chinese literature since Liang Qichao published his “Ode to Young China” (“少年中國說”) in late Qing Dynasty. It has functioned as the avant-garde of history in rejuvenating and enlightening a young China. “Youth” has also been configured to be the motivation of making a fresh start of modernization in China, that perpetuates the national fable in writing of the Great Cultural Revolution in 1980s by the intellectuals.

In the 1990s, some fiction focused on writing trauma of the Cultural Revolution. Their historical description of the Cultural Revolution serves as a means to regaining the experience of youth, and sets free the “individual” from the restriction of politics and ideology of the time. It also sets free the “youth” as individuals with different minds and purposes from the national identity.

Three important writers will be discussed in this thesis by analyzing their works respectively, they are YU Hua (余華,《在細雨中呼喊》), WANG Shuo (王朔,《動物兇猛》), and SU Tong (蘇童，城北地帶》). The style of their traumatic writing, as the memorial of youth by connecting individual memories and collective ones in the Cultural Revolution, brings new thinking to the “youth” in the contemporary Chinese context.