Bloomsburied in China

A divide exists between Chinese literature and movies written, produced, read or viewed in the West, and those written and produced in mainlaind China. Witness the controversy surrounding the publication of Ha Jin's Waiting and the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Gao Xingjian (author of Soul Mountain and One Man's Bible)--works produced by Chinese expatriates living in America and France. Or note the Chinese objection to the banning of Zhang Yimou's films in China and their popularity in America. Mainland Chinese critics and readers often accuse expatriate artists of pandering to Western values and politics or "orientalizing" images of China.

This divide with a new twist is revealed again in a sensational libel case against Hong Ying's new novel, K: The Art of Love, which has played itself out in mainland Chinese courts over the past year. Hong Ying, an expatriate author now living in England, fled China after the Tiananmen violence of 1989, a turning point in Chinese political and cultural life. She is just the kind of writer America and England love to love and China loves to hate. She has had what the Chinese call "the curse" of an interesting life, beginning with her early years of poverty in Chongquing, a depressing river town as revealed in her moving autobiography, Daughter of the River.

Hong Ying appeared in the Changchun, Manchuria, court (where the periodical Writer is published) last fall to face allegations that her novel K slandered the reputation of Ling Shuhua (1900-90) and Chen Yuan, well-known intellectuals and writers in the Republican period. Chen Xiaoying, the daughter of the couple, also living in London, objected to fictionalized pornographic descriptions of her mother engaged in Daoist sex rituals with Julian Bell. In listserv discussions, Hong Ying has denied the charge, asserting that Lin (thus fictionalizing Ling) is a composite character. She contends that all she wanted to express in the novel is that "Woman is not by nature passive in sex."

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