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One Day in China: May 21, 1936. Edited, translated, and with an introduction by Sherman Cochran and Andrew C. K. Hsieh, with Janis Cochran, New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1983. xxvi, 290pp.
“In the spring of 1936, newspapers and magazines in all parts of China began to carry advertisements calling for contributions to a record of a single, specific day Thursday, May 21, 1936. The advertisements were signed by two groups: the Literary Society, known for its distinguished journal, Literature, and the editorial board of “One Day in China”, whose members included some of the most famous intellectuals of the time, led by the editor-in-chief of the project, Mao Dun (1896-1981), a novelist acclaimed as China's leading writer of realistic fiction and one of the most important writers in modern Chinese literature.” Thus begins the Introduction to this selection of items translated into English. The project was inspired by Maxim Gorky (Russian novelist), who suggested “One Day in the World" as a way of harnessing ‘collective writing'. Mao Dun and his editorial board, however, aimed at giving the vast picture of the face of China on a specific day, as presenting “a cross-section of today's China.”
China was at war, besieged from within and without. The Nationalists were fighting the Communists, both were fighting the Japanese. Here was an attempt to slice through this vast land in chaos with the fourth dimension of time, as if to cut into the ruthlessness of suffering with the ruthlessness of precision. There is something magically clean and clear about a specific point in time. That one day, 21 May, 1936, was chosen at random, but once chosen becomes a centre around which the amorphous begins to gather and to take shape. The infinite variations of life in China on that one day cohere within that continuum of time.
The entries are, with few exceptions, short. It is the cumulative effect of the entries together, rather than individually, which impresses upon the reader that life goes on, because it must, even against all odds. The facts are there, the emotions are expressed, despair is registered, but there is great economy of style in all of the pieces. The urgency is such that one does not stop to discuss, to analyze. The absence of any frenzy in all these voices makes for a
331
One Day in China: May 21, 1936. Edited, translated, and with an introduction by Sherman Cochran and Andrew C. K. Hsieh, with Janis Cochran, New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1983. xxvi, 290pp.
“In the spring of 1936, newspapers and magazines in all parts of China began to carry advertisements calling for contributions to a record of a single, specific day Thursday, May 21, 1936. The advertisements were signed by two groups: the Literary Society, known for its distinguished journal, Literature, and the editorial board of “One Day in China”, whose members included some of the most famous intellectuals of the time, led by the editor-in-chief of the project, Mao Dun (1896-1981), a novelist acclaimed as China's leading writer of realistic fiction and one of the most im- portant writers in modern Chinese literature." Thus begins the Introduction to this selection of items translated into English. The project was inspired by Maxim Gorky (Russian novelist), who suggested “One Day in the World" as a way of harnessing ‘collec- tive writing'. Mao Dun and his editorial board, however, aimed at giving the vast picture of the face of China on a specific day, as presenting “a cross-section of today's China."
China was at war, beseiged from within and without. The Na- tionalists were fighting the Communists, both were fighting the Japanese. Here was an attempt to slice through this vast land in chaos with the fourth dimension of time, as if to cut into the ruthlessness of suffering with the ruthlessness of precision. There is something magically clean and clear about a specific point in time. That one day, 21 May, 1936, was chosen at random, but once chosen becomes a centre around which the amorphous be- gins to gather and to take shape. The infinite variations of life in China on that one day cohere within that continuum of time.
The entries are, with few exceptions, short. It is the cumulative effect of the entries together, rather than individually, which im- presses upon the reader that life goes on, because it must, even against all odds. The facts are there, the emotions are expressed, despair is registered, but there is great economy of style in all of the pieces. The urgency is such that one does not stop to discuss, to analyze. The absence of any frenzy in all these voices makes for a
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