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In most of the best-known classic Chinese novels, like "Journey to the West", "Water Margin" and "Dream of the Red Chamber", there is usually a character that f

In most of the best-known classic Chinese novels, like "Journey to the West", "Water Margin" and "Dream of the Red Chamber", there is usually a character that feels very important in the first few chapters, then nowhere to be found in the rest of the book. When people reading these novels, most of them wouldn't think of those runaway characters because there are many new characters and exciting plots. But it just strikes when people start to recall the plots sometimes after reading: one of the most important characters already foresee all of the conflicts, and they just run away and live their life rather than participating in the following conflicts. It turns out, most of the novels are written by frustrated scholar-officials. They got burnt out in reality so they wrote those novels. Many of them would become hermits and enjoyed their life happily after. It sounds escapist but there's some Zen in it in the context of Chinese literature. It feels like "The Shawshank Redemption" when it strikes me that the hammer was in the bible, and the most intensive scene was presented in a very calm way when people didn't know it.

TooKool4This 5y ago
That’s actually very interesting! I just got done reading the Three-Body problem which is translated from Chinese and there was a very strong escapist narrative which felt very strange for a westerner reading it. This actually adds a lot of context as I felt the book didn’t live up to the reviews but I felt all along that it was down to cultural differences and the translation to English.
whakim 5y ago
This is a really good insight - the trope of the "frustrated scholar-official" is extremely prominent in the Chinese literary tradition. That being said, the ideal of "becom[ing] hermits and enjoy[ing] their life happily after" was something of a literary conceit; in most of the actual literature written by people who tried to do this, there's an extremely strong tension between the idealized/romanticized apolitical world of the hermit, and the reality that farming was very hard labor and not something most literati particularly enjoyed. Probably the most famous example of this is the poetry of Tao Yuanming. (Note: I wrote my Master's thesis on depictions of eremitism in ancient/early medieval China.)

TooKool4This 5y ago

That’s actually very interesting! I just got done reading the Three-Body problem which is translated from Chinese and there was a very strong escapist narrative which felt very strange for a westerner reading it. This actually adds a lot of context as I felt the book didn’t live up to the reviews but I felt all along that it was down to cultural differences and the translation to English.

whakim 5y ago

This is a really good insight - the trope of the "frustrated scholar-official" is extremely prominent in the Chinese literary tradition. That being said, the ideal of "becom[ing] hermits and enjoy[ing] their life happily after" was something of a literary conceit; in most of the actual literature written by people who tried to do this, there's an extremely strong tension between the idealized/romanticized apolitical world of the hermit, and the reality that farming was very hard labor and not something most literati particularly enjoyed. Probably the most famous example of this is the poetry of Tao Yuanming. (Note: I wrote my Master's thesis on depictions of eremitism in ancient/early medieval China.)