Popular Reading Materials
To mount an effective campaign against the Japanese, the government and the public at large had to join hands and work side by side, that much was clear. Yet in the eyes of many resistance intellectuals, the government was not doing enough. The ACRAWA, for instance, was founded largely on the initiative of individual writers, with little assistance from the government. The mere fact that the organization was chronically short of funds was an indication of the government's luke-warm support. The tentative plan to publish one hundred different kinds of popular literary works never materialized, largely because there was never enough money; even coming up with the rent for the organization's headquarters in Hankou was a constant headache for Lao She and other association officers. Its meager income from the membership fee (which ranged from one to five yuan per person annually) hardly sufficed; as a result, the association had to rely heavily on the generous though intermittent donations of such prominent figures as Feng Yuxiang and Shao Lizi.[93]
To be sure, the war did open the eyes of some government officials, inducing them to play a role in the popular culture effort. The publication and dissemination of certain popular reading materials was one task they took on. Notable examples include the pamphlet series "Air Battles" ("Kongjun dazhan"), issued by the Central Propaganda Department, and "Donating Money to save Our Nation" ("Shucai jiuguo"), put out by the Department of Education.[94] The Logistics Section of the Military Council also published a "Resistance and Reconstruction Popular Series" ("Kangjian tongsu wenku"); using a variety of popular culture forms, this series contained a plethora of titles, including "The Monks on Mt. Wutai Participate in the Resistance" ("Wutaishan heshang kangzhan"), a drum song, and Counterespionage (Fanjian ji), a spoken drama, to name but two. As the products of a government agency, these items—such as the drum song booklet Generalissimo Jiang's Address to the Army and the People on the Second Anniversary of the War (Jiang weiyuanzhang kangzhan liangzhounian gao junmin) —predictably voiced support for the GMD.[95] Another organization, the Disabled Soldiers Vocational training Center (Rongyu junren zhiye xunliansuo), also published a series of patriotic songbooks. One of them was entitled Little Japan (Daxiao Riben). In four sections and in simple language, this booklet be-
gins with a familiar admonition, but it goes on to offer a specific way to disseminate patriotic ideas in the neighborhood:
This is a little songbook.
Despite its plain language and colloquial expressions,
Every word in it is true and sincere.
I hope you fellow readers will read it with great care,
So that the exact nature of the Sino-Japanese War becomes crystal
clear.
With evil intention, the Japanese want to conquer China.
We can no longer endure any more provocation;
We will become a subjugated people unless we stand up and fight.
It is easy to sing using a songbook,
But to save a nation is far more difficult.
Unless we Chinese join hands together
Our nation will never be strong.
If you can gather all your neighbors together,
Be they young or old.
Sing this song to them
And follow with explanation.
This will be a great contribution [to your nation].[96]
The language in this songbook series was neither difficult nor exquisitely crafted; there were no artistic turns of phrase or rhymes. It was specifically designed for people at a very low level of education and, like the folk songs "Thirteen Months" and "Seeing My Loved One Off," was meant to be sung in a group and in public, so that emotions could be shared and hearts touched.
The government's effort was unsystematic, however. Apparently the Guomindang had no overall plan to publish and distribute popular reading materials, and little coordination among different government agencies can be detected. Given the popularity and effectiveness of these materials, the lack of official support is perplexing. Was the government short of funds, or unable to find qualified authors? Did government officials hold an elitist view and place popular reading materials low on their agenda? Or did the inaction reflect the GMD's continued suspicion of the popular movement in general as Communist-inspired, a point raised earlier by journalists Fan Changjiang and Xiao Fang?
There is no question that the Nationalists considered the mobilization of all human and material resources for the war effort as their top priority. But their conservatism and distrust of the masses contradicted and ultimately undermined their policies and original objectives. A
case in point is the National Spiritual Mobilization Movement, a campaign initiated on 12 March 1939 to rally people behind the government. The movement, as Lloyd Eastman puts it, "encouraged people to swear to a 'Citizens Pact,' all twelve articles of which were negatives—'Not to act contrary to the Three People's Principles,' … 'Not to participate in traitorous organizations,' etc."[97] Instead of issuing positive instructions to gain public support, the entire campaign seemed more like a warning to the people about the series consequences of wrongful political affiliations. Like the earlier New Life Movement (1934), it soon ended in failure.
The conservative nature of the government's activities was particularly evident in the realm of higher education. Under the direction of Chen Lifu (1899-), China's wartime minister of education, the government continued to streses the importance of what Chen called "character education" in an attempt to reintroduce Confucian values of filial piety and loyalty into university curricula.[98] Such a program, however, was incongruous with the harsh realities of the war and met strong opposition from students.[99]
As the war progressed, the GMD leaders' suspicions regarding the political loyalties of artists and dramatists grew, particularly those involved in the drama propaganda traveling troupes. The belief that many propaganda troupes were heavily infiltrated by the Communists led to curtailment of funds to these groups and ultimately forced them to shut down—as occurred with the Cartoon Propaganda Corps in late 1940, for example. This concerted nonsupport further alienated independent-minded artists like Ye Qianyu, who viewed it as oppressive.[100] The removal of Guo Moruo as the head of the Third Section of the Political Department in the fall of 1940 was undoubtedly meant to curtail the Communists' influence in the propaganda arena. But the man who replaced him, Huang Shaogu (1901-), a GMD loyalist, lacked the vision and charisma to lead a forceful campaign. More important, the Guomindang's culture policy in general remained, as the literary historian Liu Xinhuang (1915-) put it, "perfunctory and passive."[101] The Party's preoccupation with military and administrative affairs left its entire cultural propaganda program in a state of neglect.
In sharp contrast to the Nationalists, the Communists were serious about launching and coordinating different kinds of popular movements, including directing a well-orchestrated popular literature campaign in the border regions. The results of the two groups' efforts, in the end, were very different from each other, even though populariza-
tion and politicization of popular culture occurred in both Guomindang and Communist areas during the war. As will be discussed in the next chapter, the differences in outcome were not just a matter of the Communists succeeding and the Guomindang failing in their efforts. Rather, at issue was the fact that the Guomindang helped to start the campaign but then failed to capitalize on it.
Also in contrast to the government was the private sector, which actively published popular reading materials in the form of pamphlets, an effective format that the novelist Bao Taxi called "the culture shock troops" against the Japanese military.[102] Two key presses were the Three Households Publishing House (Sanhu tushu yinshuashe) and the Popular Reading Publishing House (Tongsu duwu biankanshe). Founded by Feng Yuxiang in Hankou in early 1938, the Three Households Publishing House drew its name from a famous episode in Records of the Grand Historian (Shi ji, first century B.C. ) in which the Master Nan of Chu said, "Be there but three houses [sanhu ] left in the state of Chu, still Chu will finally destroy Qin" (Chapter 7). The name had a distinctly modern ring when it was revived during the war. The pamphlets published by the Three Households Publishing House, including Feng's own The Great Masses in the War of Resistance (Kang-Ri de weida minzhong), were inexpensive, ranging between 8 to 45 fen apiece.[103]
The history of the Popular Reading Publishing House went back even further, having been established by Gu Jiegang in Beijing right after the Manchurian Incident in September 1931. It was quite successful, publishing, as the name implied, a wide variety of booklets and magazines for the general reader. Each booklet cost between 2 and 4 fen and averaged eight pages in length (a reflection in part of the limited paper supply). With over four hundred titles published, this press "penetrated deep into the countryside of north China," as one source put it.[104] When Beijing fell into the hands of the Japanese, the Popular Reading Publishing House moved southwest to Taiyuan, on to Xi'an, and then to Wuhan. Despite the shaky circumstances, it continued to turn out popular drum song pamphlets such as Five Hundred Soldiers Die Martyrs' Deaths at Xifengkou (Wubai dadaodui zhansi Xifengkou), glorifying the heroism of common foot soldiers, and Commander Hao Mengling Dies a Hero's Death (Hao Mengling kangdi xunguo) about how Commander Hao gave his life to defend the city of Taiyuan against the Japanese in October 1937.[105] As in wartime cartoons, collaboration with the enemy was another dominant theme; an example is Capturing Bai Jianwu Alive (Huozhuo Bai Jianwu), which
describes the arrest and execution of a notorious collaborator in Hebei. Most of these pamphlets could be sung "either in drum singing or Henan zhuizi style." Many were also designed to be read aloud to the public.
The Three Households Publishing House and the Popular Reading Publishing House were two of many privately funded organizations that disseminated simple, inexpensive pamphlets to the populace. Life Bookstore (Shenghuo shudian) also published a series of popular readings, and the National Association for the Advancement of Mass Education, headed by James Yen, likewise issued a famous series of booklets entitled "Peasant Resistance" ("Nongmin kangzhan congshu"). Both these series, like those of the Popular Reading Publishing House, skillfully employed traditional popular literature styles. For instance, Eight Hundred Heroic Men Defend Zhabei to the End (Babai haohan sishou Zhabei), by Zhao Jingshen, was written as a traditional drum song, and War Songs (Zhan'ge), by Yang Cunbin, was a spoken drama. And once gain, patriotism permeated the writings. Xi Zhengyong's eighteen-page Ban Chao Pacifies the Western Region (Ban Chao ding Xiyu), for example, tells the famous story of the Eastern Han general Ban Chao's (32–102) successful campaign against the nomadic Xiongnu people, with which he brought about a long peace on China's western flank. ban Chao is described in the booklet as a patriot who, realizing the country is being threatened, decides to abandon his study for a military career. He is a man of commitment who firmly believes in the old saying "Every man has a share of responsibility for the fate of his country" (guojia xingwang, pifu youze). The book concludes with an admonition on the current crisis: "Now the enemy warplanes are hovering above us, and their artillery moves ever closer. To avoid destruction we must march to the front. It is time for old scores to be settled and foreign aggression repelled. Let's abandon our studies and join the army, and let's learn from the courageous Ban Chao who stamped his name on a foreign land."[106]
Although James Yen's mass education campaign in Hebei was abruptly interrupted by the Japanese attack, he continued to be active in the resistance movement after he moved NAAME to Changsha in 1937. While fighting hard to keep the association's education activities afloat in the interior, Yen also turned NAAME into a propaganda agency, producing, under the supervision of the dramatists Xiong Foxi and Yang Cunbin, a series of popular patriotic plays, among other things.[107]
Resistance intellectuals' communication with the populace did not,
of course, rely only on booklets. Cao Bohan, an expert on propaganda, suggested a host of different kinds of activity. In his 1938 book A Reader for Propaganda Techniques (Xuanchuan jishu duben), Cao discussed an array of methods for reaching the populace: woodcuts, cartoons, wall pictures, postcards, parades, regional dramas, and dialect plays, to name just a few.[108] Collectively, these media contributed to what Liu Qun called "artistic propaganda." Most of them were simple in form, requiring no elaborate planning or technical expertise to produce.[109] Old-style Spring Festival couplets (chunlian), for example, because of their visibility and popularity at the New Year festival, could be easily reshaped into an anti-Japanese tool, the editors of National Salvation Daily reminded their readers.[110] Wall newspapers (bibao) could also be used to great effect despite their less than elegant appearance, Cao Baohan observed. They were easy to produce and could be pasted on the wall with relative ease; since they were handwritten, the complication of printing could be avoided; their articles were generally brief and timely; and their authors were local residents who were in close touch with their immediate surroundings. They were thus ideal vehicles for spreading military knowledge and teaching patriotic songs.[111]
The mass production of a great variety of popular literature was an important development in wartime China, to be sure. But through what channels were they passed along to the general public? Who actually read them? To what extent were these publications influential? Realizing the difficulty of spreading information, Lao Xiang and He Rong suggested that perhaps old country bookstores could be used to help distribute materials in the rural areas;[112] the unreliability of the network and the scarcity of country bookstores were limitations to this scheme, but they might be surmountable. Maybe the government could play a more active role, they suggested. In any event, to reach the widest possible readership, Lao Xiang argued, traditional, orthodox methods of communication no longer sufficed. Every possible means should be used and new channels explored. Books and pamphlets could be displayed at public places like temple fairs, village offices, and teahouses, and "book vendors, soldiers, students, and folk artists could also help to promote them."[113] Yet despite numerous ingenious proposals, the distribution issue was never satisfactorily resolved, owing to the government's lack of supervision and coordination and the uncertainty of the times.
But had popular literature actually gone down "to the country," as Lao She and many others had so passionately urged? Chen Yiyuan's answer was an emphatic no: "Not only has literature not reached the
countryside; it has not even reached the country level. It remains in a few large cities."[114] The root cause, He Rong insisted, lay in the intellectuals' stubborn urban mentality. They never could fully identify with country folk. Their city-oriented attitude and effete life-style produced disappointing results when they attempted to bring popular literature to the masses. "You certainly would be an eyesore to the villagers if you went down to the countryside dressed in Western-style clothing and leather shoes," he wrote critically.[115] Such a lack of understanding led to shoddy products and empty slogans, agreed Xiang Linbing, a literary critic who wrote extensively on this subject.[116] To Xiang, the vocabulary of this wartime popular literature was limited, literary, and embellished, never truly becoming "the language of folk."[117]
Such admonishments notwithstanding, a large amount of wartime propaganda literature was in fact produced, suggesting that some activists viewed it as an ideal tool to motivate the general public. And as a whole, these works did exert considerable influence at the grass-roots level, forging an emotional, if not intellectual, bond between intelligentsia resisters and the illiterate.[118] Through small, relatively inexpensive wartime pamphlets, a communication channel was built that allowed interacting, persuading, and learning experiences to take place: intellectuals swayed the attitudes and beliefs of the mass audience, and in turn the commoners exerted an influence on the educated—teaching them, among other things, how to speak in a language comprehensible to the masses.
True, much of the popular literature from the war years was superficial and dull. Most of these writings, after all, were propaganda items, pure and simple. Every piece, be it folk song or comic dialogue, seemed the same, clinging to a nationalistic formula that no one dared abandon. This is not to say, however, that they were entirely devoid of artistic value. Many of Lao Xiang's pieces, such as "Collecting Winter Clothing" and "A small Swallow," were respectable literary achievements, and Lao She's "Wang Xiao Drives a Donkey" was excellent. For Lao She and Lao Xiang, not only did propaganda literature draw huge audiences, but it also could yield fine products if approached with care and a sincere heart. In the end, though, the actual attempt by intellectuals to reach our to the public was just as important as what they produced.
Despite the resistance intellectuals' attempt to make the popular literature movement a collective effort, most of the works were individual undertakings, connected, perhaps, by the common sense of
shared patriotism. Questions of subject matter, technique, audience, and purpose continued to divide creative individuals into separate camps. As mentioned earlier, A Ying derided writers for producing what he described as "feudalistic" popular literature to poison the people. And the leftist writer Liu Shi boldly declared that the popular culture movement was "an anti-imperialist, antitraitor movement."[119] To the leftists, the War of resistance was not just a struggle against Japanese militarism: it was a battle between two social systems—socialism versus capitalist imperialism. In the GMD-controlled territories, where feuding factions and inconsistent, uncoordinated policies wreaked havoc on solidarity movements, the ultimate purpose of popular literature was at times far from clear. In the Communist areas, by contrast, a coherent political philosophy and unified approach to popular literature gradually developed. Nevertheless, this policy, directed as it was from above and not by the artists themselves, dictated content and methods of expression that aroused a bitter sense of anxiety among intellectuals. The result was an atmosphere unconducive to creativity.