UC Riverside

This project starts with dissatisfaction with the simplistic and moralistic interpretation of Decadence among writers and scholars in the Chinese context in the twentieth century. It first comes to an understanding of the original meaning of the European Decadence in the late nineteenth century and then uses it as a lens to examine Chinese literature in the twentieth century. With a combination of textual analysis and historical rendition, it discusses six writers' life and work in the 1920s, 1930s, 1980s and 1990s. The years between 1940s and 1970s are skipped because the leftist dominance and the Communist reign did not tolerate anything decadent.

Since the introduction of Decadence into China in the early 1920s, Chinese writers and scholars have understood Decadence with two interrelated connotations, namely, a pessimistic world view and indulgence in sensual pleasure. But the European Decadents in fact celebrated individual free will by revolting against the norms they believed in. It is a rebellion for rebellion's sake and performance of perversion.

In this sense, Yu Dafu and Shao Xunmei who have been labeled as hardcore Decadent due to explicit exploration of erotica in their stories and poems in the 1920s and 1930s were not Decadent because they were busy, hesitantly or triumphantly, overthrowing traditional social norms and embracing the new ones. Yu Hua and Su Tong who were associated with Decadence because of the obsession with death, violence and evil in the their fiction in the 1980s and 1990s were not Decadent, either, because they acknowledged the value of humanism and had no intention to revolt against it. In contrast, Wang Shuo and Wang Xiaobo in the 1980s and 1990s were closer to the European Decadents because their characters manage to assert their free will by rebelling against the norms they believe in.

The "real" Decadence emerged in the 1980s and 1990s in China because Chinese intellectuals regained their elitist status after the Cultural Revolution but also felt it threatened by the growing commercial culture. They engaged in Decadence to manifest their intellectual superiority. After all, Decadence is an elitist endeavor.