Historical Overview |
The twentieth century was a period of rapid and drastic change in Chinese perceptions of love and marriage, and this change occurred against the backdrop of a both literary and political revolution.
At the turn of the century, two separate, but parallel, movements emerged against the old Chinese regime. The first, headed by Liang Qichao, sought to bring revival and reform to China through fiction writing. The sudden boom in fiction writing brought with it a variety of Western ideas that eventually culminated in what is now known as the May Fourth cultural movement. Aggressively anti-traditional and Western, this movement paved the way for a modern vernacular language in literature that regular people could understand and advocated for an upheaval of old Confucian values. |
"The term renewing the people does not mean that our people must give up entirely what is old in order to follow others. There are two meaning of renewing. One is to improve what is original in the people and so renew it; the other is to adopt what is originally lacking in the people and so make a new people. Without both of these, there will be no success."
|
The second movement was entirely political. In 1912, Sun Yatsen overthrew the Qing Dynasty that lasted for nearly 3 centuries and established China as a republic. Over the next few decades, China fell under the rule of several different powers—warlords, the Nationalist Party, and Japanese occupation—but finally came to rest in the cradle of Mao Zedong’s Communist Party in 1949.
Both movements challenged Chinese traditions of marriage. Under the old Confucian values, filial piety was the center of the household. The parents were responsible for choosing an appropriate spouse, and the husband-wife couple were expected to serve the needs of the husband’s parents above all else. Most of the time, the only love shared between spouses was familial love (qīnqíng). If the couple came to hold more romantic feelings for one another (àiqíng), they had to hide their affections from others, but more often, the husband would reserve such feelings of àiqíng or desire for his mistresses and concubines. Unraveling this old system of marriage held many advantages to the two movements. For the May Fourth intellectuals, such practices were associated with the old traditions they were against, and seeking to replace Chinese values in marriage with more Western values was a natural step in the progression of the movement. Furthermore, Liang Qichao also inspired many writers not associated with the movement to produce romantic fiction, inspired by Western stories, that began to influence ideas of marriage amongst the educated upper class. For the Nationalist and Communist Parties, freeing marriage from the oppression from the parents (and especially freeing women from an oppressive family structure) meant more than just the abandonment of old Confucian values and the happiness of individuals: It served as a way to strengthen the nation. By taking power away from the old family system, the government could consolidate its own power. |
The Classic of Filial Piety
|
In 1942, the literary and political movements, which up to that point had remained separate despite aligning on several issues over the past few decades, finally collided and merged at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art. During the forum, Mao Zedong, chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), gave several speeches pushing for art and literature to support the CCP’s revolutionary cause, claiming that “they operate as powerful weapons for uniting and educating the people and for attacking and destroying the enemy.” He urged artists and writers alike to embrace the Party’s spirit for the proletariat and, similar to the May Fourth reformists, called for a transformed body of literature accessible to the masses. These speeches were later published under the title “Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art.”
Under Mao’s instruction, there came a large production of revolutionary material promoting the CCP. Propaganda pieces ranged from literature, such as Zhao Shuli’s “The Marriage of Young Blacky,” to model operas, such as The White-Haired Girl, and were designed to appeal to the hearts and minds of the people and gain their support. Themes such as love, freedom, and triumph were central in many of these early works, and formed the base on which the CCP was able to build to victory over the Nationalist party in 1949. Throughout the early 1950s, the CCP would continue to push for marriage reform, beginning with the Marriage Law of 1950. The law banned bigamy, polygyny, child betrothals, bride-pieces and dowries, prostitution, and arranged marriages, and largely supported female rights, granting married women the right to work and to initiate a divorce. The party also encouraged people to marry for love and to choose a spouse based on both romantic appeal and patriotic spirit. These so-called “revolutionary couples" were supposed to become the backbone of the communist party, but the CCP soon dropped the marriage reform campaign against a backlash from traditional rural societies and a desire to monopolize the affections of the people. Thus, national zeal would supplant romantic affections for the next few decades, altering views of marriage and love for generations to come. On this site, we explore the similarities and differences between the expectations of love and marriage touted by communist propaganda and the reality of that era presented by true accounts of people who grew up under the communist regime. |