Zhang Henshui

Zhang Henshui a prolific Chinese novelist of the Republican era (1895-1967), one of the most widely read authors of his time and a master of the serialised popular fiction that flourished in the newspapers and magazines of the 1920s and 1930s. He wrote dozens of novels, and his best-known work, Fate in Tears and Laughter, became a classic of urban popular literature.

Origins and Forays into Journalism

Zhang Henshui was born on 18 May 1895 in Nanchang, Jiangxi province, but his family was of Anhui origin and moved frequently because of his father's official postings. He received a classical education as a boy and showed an early talent for composition. His father's death left the family in reduced circumstances and forced him to make his own way in the world at a young age.

He turned to journalism, working for newspapers in Wuhu, Beijing and elsewhere as a reporter, editor and columnist. This career immersed him in the daily life of the cities and gave him an unrivaled knowledge of their streets, their customs and their talk. It also taught him the discipline of writing to deadline for a large and demanding readership.

He began publishing fiction in serial form in the 1920s, and the form suited him perfectly. He could respond to reader interest week by week, and his stories of love, ambition and disappointment ran in the newspapers across the country. By the end of the 1920s he was one of the most popular and best-paid writers in China.

Fate in Tears and Laughter and Popular Success

Zhang Henshui's most famous novel is Fate in Tears and Laughter, serialised from 1929 and published as a book in 1930. It tells the story of Fan Jiasu, a young man from the south who comes to Beijing and falls in love with a succession of women, and of He Li, the woman whose fortunes are tragically bound up with his weakness and indecision. The novel blends romance with a vivid panorama of the old capital.

The book was an enormous success, read by millions and adapted repeatedly for stage, film and later television. Its picture of Beijing life, its march of memorable characters and its mixture of sentiment and social observation made it a defining work of Chinese popular fiction. It is often described as the most widely read Chinese novel of the Republican period.

Zhang Henshui wrote many other successful novels, including Those Happy Times, an autobiographical novel, and a great number of romances, mysteries and social chronicles. He produced at a pace that seems almost incredible, sometimes working on several serialisations at once. His total output ran to more than a hundred books, and he was said to have written with a pen in each hand.

The Mandarin Duck and Butterfly School

Zhang Henshui is the leading representative of the so-called Mandarin Duck and Butterfly school, the name given by critics to the popular urban fiction of the Republican period. This label, originally disparaging, marked such writing as commercial and sentimental in contrast to the serious and politically engaged literature championed by May Fourth intellectuals. For decades his work was dismissed by the literary establishment as trivial.

In fact his novels are rich in social documentation. They depict the customs of Beijing and the provinces, the world of the theatre and the teahouse, the lives of courtesans and servants and clerks, and the drudgery of poverty. He wrote about arranged marriage, the position of women, the lure of city life and the grief of displacement, and he did so with an eye for detail that gives his fiction lasting value as a portrait of a vanished society.

His prose is clear and supple, with a taste for classical allusion that distinguishes it from the plainer styles of the new literature. He was a consummate entertainer, but he was also a careful craftsman, and the best of his work achieves an emotional force that survives its melodramatic plots.

Later Career and Changing Times

Zhang Henshui continued to write through the upheavals of war and revolution. During the war with Japan he moved westward with the government to Chongqing and continued his literary work. His themes shifted somewhat with the times, and he wrote novels that reflected the political and social changes of the 1930s and 1940s, including work with patriotic and reformist themes.

After 1949 he remained in the mainland and adapted to the new order. He revised some of his earlier works and turned to historical fiction and to the writing of traditional-style popular novels acceptable in the new climate. He held positions in literary and cultural organisations and was honoured for his long service to popular letters.

He died in 1967 in Beijing during the Cultural Revolution, after a lifetime of extraordinary productivity. The political environment of his last years limited what he could publish, and much of his enormous output has received less critical attention than its influence warrants.

Influence and Reassessment

For a long time Zhang Henshui stood outside the canon of modern Chinese literature, regarded as a commercial writer of romance. From the 1980s onward scholars began to reassess the popular fiction of the Republican era, and his reputation has risen considerably. His novels are now studied both as literature and as social history, and their readership has been renewed by new editions and adaptations.

His influence on Chinese popular culture has been immense. Generations of readers encountered his stories before they encountered more demanding authors, and his portrayal of Beijing and of urban courtship shaped popular assumptions about love and city life. Filmmakers and television producers have repeatedly returned to his plots.

His vast output, his command of serial form and his unmatched popularity make him a central figure in the history of Chinese commercial fiction. He is remembered as the greatest of the Mandarin Duck and Butterfly novelists, and as a writer whose best work deserves its place among the enduring books of his era.

See also

• Mandarin Duck and Butterfly school
• Fate in Tears and Laughter
• Popular fiction of the Republican era
• Serialised fiction