ABSTRACT
Two literary trends, Literature of Trauma (shanghen wenxue) and Literature of Reflection (fansi wenxue), came to popularity during the late 1970s and early 1980s, a period marked by unprecedented intellectual ferment in the history of the PRC. They gained wide popularity because of their open criticism of China’s political and social shortcomings and in-depth reflections on the cultural elements behind these problems, often going far beyond the immediate historical circumstances of the time. Fiction, especially in the form of short stories and novellas, is the predominant genre in both trends. Coming almost immediately after the Cultural Revolution which by the official reckoning ended in late 1976, these two trends thrived in what is optimistically called “new period of socialist revolution and construction,” 1 a term that made its first appearance in the Eleventh National Congress held in August 1977. Then in October 1979, Zhou Yang, a prominent official in charge of cultural affairs, referred to the post-Cultural Revolution literature as “New Era Literature” in his report delivered at the Fourth National Congress of Literary Representatives Conference. Since then, the term assumed a broader reference to include literature from the late 1970s to the late 1980s, and was hailed as ushering in an intellectual movement in the history of 20th-century China, comparable to the May Fourth New Culture movement.
