Scar literature refers generally to literature in the late 1970s and early 1980s that was focused on the negative impact of the Cultural Revolution and the movement to move urban youths to be “re-educated” in the countryside. It started when Mr. Lu Xinhua published the short story Scar in 1978 in Wenhui News (Wen Hui Bao). It was a story about the wounds the Cultural Revolution had inflicted on individual lives. Novels such as the Teacher-in-Charge (by Liu Xinwu), of Soul and Flesh (by Zhang Xianliang), Furong Town (by Gu Hua), Man Oh Man (by Dai Houying) were associated with this genre. I was reading quite a bit of such writing when I was growing up in the 80s.

For decades before 1978 and 1979, literature tended to flatten individuals into types, or members of political classes. There are characters who are perfect (“tall, big, perfect” as described in Chinese), and there are characters who are bad, or plain evil. Scar literature started to bring readers to the inner worlds of characters more as rounded characters, rather than members of a group. That was refreshing at that time.

Such literature also coincided with the start of China’s “Reform and Opening-up”. This was a time when politicians in Beijing pushed for a critical analysis of Mao and everything he did in preparation for the economic and other reforms.

I think it still is, in English, in French, etc. It still can appeal to readers out of China, as Cultural Revolution, Chairman Mao and re-education of Intellectuals are some familiar themes that international readers can recognize about China. Scar literature in its narrow sense (when the term was first coined in the late 1970s) is not as relevant in Mainland China as it is overseas. Part of the reason is that the majority of literature consumers are losing their connection with the time depicted in scar literature. You’ve got to be in your 50s or older to relate to the stories told in such literature. Those born in the 70s, 80s and 90s probably don't appreciate it as much.

Interestingly, it is still selling overseas, because international readers found such themes to be of great interest. My guess is that there are some ideological reasons behind such fascination. Scar literature happens to appeal to imagination of a strange, communist society that is described only briefly in history books.

I am actually rather frustrated with it. Scar literature at that time was a breakthrough, an innovation, and a revolt against a stifling tradition. Such legacy of daring innovativeness was diminishing, with the censoring and cowardice of the writers. Scar literature had a good start, but it didn’t grow up.

Writers who would continue the “scar literature” tradition turned a blind eye to the new wounds and new scars in the society, settling instead for the safer topics of past wounds.

The implication of “scar literature” today is that you ought to inherit the innovative spirit in which the genre was born, not that particular settings, characters and plots for writing, unless you can really produce great art using this kind of elements. There is nothing wrong choosing any historical setting for a story, but literature shouldn't just create mirror images of a time and a space.  The good ones raise haunting questions you wish you have asked.  Scar literature nowadays is generally dismissed, as it is often too crude in art as you mentioned. It scratches only the surface of the time and it keeps scratching, but it does not venture much further. It became more of the same type of writing that people eventually got tired of. It hasn’t led to anything like Dr. Zhivago.

Scar literature does not probe too deeply into human nature. I found that many writers suffer from a rather simplistic victimization mindset, thinking that they fell victims of Mao’s revolution, while forgetting that each and every one of us has the same potential to victimize. Aren’t these “victims” in scar literature part of the problem as well?   Who caused the Cultural Revolution to happen? Just Chairman Mao? What about the youths who enthusiastically turned away from families to pursue their ideals in the countryside? What led students to beat their teachers in these days of revolts? When the time and tides changed, they turned around and said they were victims of an abstract “time” or the “environment”. “Time” and the “Environment” caused them to do evil. “Time” and “Environment” caused them to suffer. That does not convince me. You cannot blame everything on external reasons to have a clear conscience so that you can do what you always do, and think what you always think. If we as a nation do not reflect on what is going on inside of us as individuals, on the bad wolf and good wolf struggling in our minds (in Cherokee folklore), things like Cultural Revolution can happen any time in the future, maybe in another form and under another leader.

I also take issue with the tone of crybabies in much of the scar literature.   Writers complained that their youths were “wasted” or "lost" in rural China. I happened to be from rural China. I love it. My upbringing in the countryside lies at the core of my being and is shown in my love of the good earth and a simplistic lifestyle. Although I felt sorry for the personal miseries of individuals who were forced to go to the countryside against their own will, I do not necessarily think that they contribute to any solutions of the problems that they felt they were hurled into.  I keep wondering about a number of questions that these intellectuals/writers fail to raise or answer: If the countryside is such a bad place to live in, what are the intellectuals in China doing to lift them out of their miseries? When confronted with social injustices, they choose flight instead of fight. Most scar literature writers end up going back to cities. What about the kindness shown from rural folks to the “exiles” from cities? What’s in it for them? What did they have to gain? They taught them to work, often against their will too.   Their lives were intruded into by these outsiders who seemed to impress others as the only ones suffering from the "time".   Years later, writers sat in their air-conditioned rooms and depicted them into new negative stereotypes, inflicting wounds on them again.  There was a lot of bitterness and less warmth in such writing. 

In China, the writing profession used to be rather sacred. People hope writers have “iron shoulders to carry justice into the world”, while all these scar literature writers did was to lament about their bad luck in being forced to go to these lousy places, thinking how their lives could have been so much better if they had always remained where they were born. Why not use their pens to write about ways to heal the new wounds, the tremendous disparity of opportunities between their homes and adopted homes when they were displaced in these years? Why not, for instance, do something for the places where their youths were supposedly “lost”? What James Yen did in his lifetime showed another possibility of how the educated classes in China can relate to a countryside that could use some help, instead of some whining.

Even Lu Xinhua (the one who started the genre) called scar literature “doomed to be short-lived”. He tried to distance himself from it as a way to disassociate his new book The Forbidden Woman from the label. Lu is a very interesting man. He later went to America to try his fortune.  I heard he once worked in the Casinos in Las Vegas. I found myself looking for him when I was in Las Vegas for a conference in July this year.  I would want to ask him what he thought of the cultural landscape now, if he cared to notice.

I don’t think they have much influence on Chinese writers today. Some such writing is not translated into Chinese at all. To influence China, it is better to write in Chinese directly. That’s one of the reasons that people still remember and love the poet Bei Dao, as he is very stubborn in writing in Chinese,  claiming that Chinese is his “only luggage” while he was an exile in foreign lands.

Recently I watched a great movie called Steel Piano, which seemed to excite many other watchers as it excited me. It is about a bunch of steel workers whose lives were messed up in the privatization of their factory. In their nostalgia for their time together, they came together to make a piano for one of the workers who cannot afford buying a piano for his daughter.

I haven’t been up to date with literature in China, but I would love to read equivalents in literature about such pains and wounds as China made its transition into a society as it is today. The miseries of laid-off workers, the frustration of recent college graduates, the hopelessness of folks in small towns, the lost childhoods in the countryside, would fascinate more readers in China today because these are the new realities most have to face. I hope that someone can write works based on these new themes. If anybody knows of any, I would really want to read it.

I grew up in China in a large family in Tongcheng, China and our family members are now spread out in all types of social strata in the countryside, in towns, in small cities and some in big cities. In the Qing Dynasty, the Fangs from Tongcheng has been rather influential in the Chinese cultural and literary scene, hence my interest in literature, though I do other jobs for a living. I graduated from Nanjing University where I studied American literature. There I started translation. The first book I was working on (with my Professor Haiping Liu and a few other colleagues) is a biography of Pearl Buck by Professor Peter Conn of University of Pennsylvania. Pearl Buck’s cross-cultural perspectives had great influence on me. She showed how being exposed to a different culture can make you more reflective of your own. I hope some of my translation can help readers along those lines.