"When I was in Xia Village" (Simplified Chinese: 我在霞村的时候; Pinyin: wǒ zài xiá cūn de shí hòu) is a short story written in 1941 by Ding Ling, a Chinese writer. The story was originally published in June 1941 in China's Culture (中国文化, zhōng guó wén huà), a Yan'an journal, which tells the story of a young woman named Zhen Zhen, who was abducted and forced into sexual servitude by the invading Japanese.Edwards, Louise. "Women Sex-Spies: Chastity, National Dignity, Legitimate Government and Ding Ling's 'When I Was in Xia Village.'" The China Quarterly, vol. 212, 2012, pp. 1062 She later worked as a spy for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as a Japanese army prostitute to collect wartime information. Zhen Zhen was treated differently with honor, pity, and disdain by her fellow villagers, as well as by Party members upon her return to Xia village.
Written during the Second Sino-Japanese War, the story is generally read as both a national defense narrative and a revelation of the dark side of communist revolutionary experience.Mostow, Joshua S, ed. "Feminism and Revolution: The Work and Life of Ding Ling" in The Columbia Companion to Modern East Asian Literature. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. pp. 398Ding, Ling, Tani E Barlow, and Gary J Bjorge. "When I was in Xia Village," in I Myself Am a Woman: Selected Writings of Ding Ling. Boston: Beacon Press, 1989. pp. 34. Ding Ling subtly criticized the societal pressures placed on women in a 1940s revolutionary context.Johnson, Kay Ann. 1985. "The Yan'an Experience and the Final Civil War, 1936-49" in Women, the Family, and Peasant Revolution in China (version Pbk. ed.), pp. 73. Furthermore, the story speaks to the inconsistencies between the Party's official rhetoric of women's liberation and its exploitation of women's sexuality in the name of revolution.Wang, Xiaojue. 2013. "Over Her Dead Body: Ding Ling's Politicization after the Socialist Revolution" in Modernity with a Cold War Face : Reimagining the Nation in Chinese Literature Across the 1949 Divide. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Asia Center. pp. 135, 139.
During the anti-rightist campaign in the late 1950s, the story was attacked for discrediting the Party and "glorifying" prostitution.Goldman, Merle, Social Science Research Council (U.S.), and Harvard University. "The Changing Relationship between Literature and Life: Aspects of the Writer's Role in Ding Ling" in Modern Chinese Literature in the May Fourth Era. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. pp. 299-300. It was further criticized as a blatant example of Ding Ling's own ideological problems and sexual immorality, and she was finally expelled from the Party before being "rehabilitated" in 1978.Feuerwerker, Yi-tsi, and Ting Ling. 1976. "Ting Ling's "When I Was in Sha Chuan (Cloud Village)"." Signs 2 (1): 255–79. pp. 278.
Historical context
As a prominent member of the May Fourth generation of writers, Ding Ling's early writing primarily deals with personal liberation and contains elements of Western-style feminism.Ding, Ling, Tani E Barlow, and Gary J Bjorge. "When I was in Xia Village," in I Myself Am a Woman: Selected Writings of Ding Ling. Boston: Beacon Press, 1989. pp. 6-7. With the Chinese society in full crisis, many writers and intellectuals chose to step beyond realistic representation in favor of political statements. Ding Ling was no exception. In 1931, she took over as the editor of the communist front journal "Great Dipper" for the League of Left Wing Writers, and secretly joined the CCP in 1932.Ding, Ling, Tani E Barlow, and Gary J Bjorge. "When I was in Xia Village," in I Myself Am a Woman: Selected Writings of Ding Ling. Boston: Beacon Press, 1989. pp. 29.
The early 1930s marked a shift in Ding Ling's writing and her perception of herself. Her narrative transformed from individual self-expression as she was converted to left-wing ideologies and became a forerunner in revolutionary fiction.Goldman, Merle, Social Science Research Council (U.S.), and Harvard University. "The Changing Relationship between Literature and Life: Aspects of the Writer's Role in Ding Ling" in Modern Chinese Literature in the May Fourth Era. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. pp. 292. Ding Ling began to identify herself as a specific type of writer, and recognized the importance of literature in responding to political crises. Love, sexuality, and self-consciousness, themes that were prevalent in her earlier works such as Miss Sophia's Diary, began to subside in her later work, replaced in favor of nationalistic and revolutionary concerns.Goldman, Merle, Social Science Research Council (U.S.), and Harvard University. "The Changing Relationship between Literature and Life: Aspects of the Writer's Role in Ding Ling" in Modern Chinese Literature in the May Fourth Era. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. pp. 298.
Although many saw her changing narratives as betraying feminism, Ding Ling did not give up advocating for gender justice and change.Mostow, Joshua S, ed. "Feminism and Revolution: The Work and Life of Ding Ling" in The Columbia Companion to Modern East Asian Literature. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. pp. 395. In 1936, Ding Ling escaped from her imprisonment by the Kuomintang (KMT) and arrived in Yan'an, the revolutionary base of the Communist Party. She began teaching Chinese literature at the Red Army Academy and was given responsibilities for political training. While emphasizing that women in Yan'an were far better off than women in other parts of China, Ding Ling did not remain silent about the many inequalities and unfortunate phenomena that existed in the communist "new society."Wang, Xiaoping. 2019. "From Feminist to Party's Intellectual?" in Contending for the "Chinese Modern," 1937-1949. Ideas, History, and Modern China, Volume 20. Leiden: Brill. pp. 544. "When I Was in Xia Village" was a significant piece of writing, representing Ding Ling's Yan'an work before 1942. The story simultaneously reflects the author's transformation from self-liberation to expressing revolutionary concerns, and highlights the gaps that existed between her and the Party's ideologies. By drawing on the dark side of Yan'an reality, it questions the various kinds of oppression women had to confront even in the revolutionary community.Wang, Xiaojue. 2013. "Over Her Dead Body: Ding Ling's Politicization after the Socialist Revolution" in Modernity with a Cold War Face: Reimagining the Nation in Chinese Literature Across the 1949 Divide. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Asia Center. pp. 117.
Publication history When I was in Xia Village was published in Yan'an in June 1941. It was reprinted in the 1944 July Literary Series and included in the 1946 anthology Collection of Short Stories in the Liberated Areas.
In 1950, Ding revised the story to soften several politically sensitive points.
Characters Narrator Zhen Zhen Xia Dabao A Gui Liu Erma
Summary
"When I was in Xia Village" is told through the first-person perspective of the narrator, a cultural cadre of the CCP who was visiting Xia village. Here she meets with the young woman Zhen Zhen, whose name literally means "chastity."Wang, Xiaojue. 2013. "Over Her Dead Body: Ding Ling's Politicization after the Socialist Revolution" in Modernity with a Cold War Face : Reimagining the Nation in Chinese Literature Across the 1949 Divide. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Asia Center. pp. 139. Abducted and raped by the Japanese during a raid on the village, Zhen Zhen was forced into sexual servitude. After escaping, she was convinced by the Communist Party and was sent back among the enemy as a secret agent to gather military information for the revolutionary army. She returns to Xia village (which is newly liberated by the CCP) a year later to undergo medical treatment for venereal disease.
Zhen Zhen's return from the frontier generated commotion. While some youths, along with her former lover, appreciate her courage and sacrifice, many villagers of the older generation, including her parents and even a female party member, resent her experience as a shame for women for violating the chastity code.Wang, Xiaoping. 2019. "From Feminist to Party's Intellectual?" in Contending for the "Chinese Modern," 1937-1949. Ideas, History, and Modern China, Volume 20. Leiden: Brill. pp. 546-547. Zhen Zhen is disdained and regarded as somewhat "subhuman." However, Zhen Zhen resists any "reasonable" solutions.Yan, Haiping. 2006. "Rhythms of the Unread (II)" in Chinese Women Writers and the Feminist Imagination, 1905-1948. London: Routledge. pp. 222. With a strong sense of self-reflection, she refuses to comply with her family's wishes to marry her former lover. Rather, she copes with her condition and precarious psychological state with self-strength and forward planning.
The story concludes with Zhen Zhen deciding to leave the village in search of study and recovery in, allegedly, Yan'an. With the implication of a positive ending and a certain anticipatory attitude, Zhen Zhen explains to the narrator, who had developed a friendship with her: "I'm doing this for myself, but I'm also doing it for the others. I don't feel that I owe anyone an apology. Neither do I feel especially happy. What I do feel is that after I go to [Yan'an], I'll be in a new situation. I will be able to start life fresh."
Interpretations and analyses "When I was in Xia Village" has sparked various interpretations. One partial reading of the story highlights the motif of intellectual learning from the masses, something that the CCP upholds and was later systematically enforced in Talks at the Yan'an Forum on Literature and Arts by Mao Zedong.Feng, Jin. 2004. "Ding Ling in Yan'an: A New Woman within the Party Structure?" in The New Woman in Early Twentieth-Century Chinese Fiction. Comparative Cultural Studies. West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press. pp. 192-193. This is shown in the story through the narrator, who admires and is inspired by Zhen Zhen, a peasant girl. She overcomes difficult obstacles to build a new, fulfilling life. This conveys the message that intellectuals should be re-educated by the people.
To some critics, the story is also a reflection of Ding Ling's May Fourth attitude and her feminist message against China's "feudalist" consciousness. The villagers' treatment of Zhen Zhen signifies the conflict between modern and conventional concepts of "chastity." The idea of modern versus older feudalist traditions, as one of the major themes of May Fourth Literature, is epitomized through the vastly different responses Zhen Zhen receives from the youths and the older villagers. Such an emphasis on the villagers' backwardness also hints at Ding Ling's vision of Yan'an as a new society. As pointed out by Feng, Ding Ling chose to publish the story after the Party released confirmation of her political allegiance investigation, and two months after she became the editor of the CCP's official newspaper, Liberation Daily. Zhen Zhen's life experience symbolized Ding Ling's own vision and understanding of national liberation and socialist revolution; while the process is slow and painful, the otherwise marginalized and silenced, in this case, Chinese women, are empowered, and their plight is acknowledged and resolved. The Party itself was the alternative for Zhen Zhen, whose life is otherwise wretched, to start afresh. While the villagers' prejudices about unchaste women meant that there would be no hope in staying, Yan'an, as a "new situation," was the only place that could offer Zhen Zhen new possibilities for a hopeful future.