Alongside the diverse forms of mass literature on the big screen and on television, a tendency toward critical self-portrayal and self-examination arose. A new generation of Chinese literary and media critics, both at home and abroad, began commenting on important new developments in the field of Chinese art. For the first time, these Chinese critics were defining their own position with merciless accuracy and an impressive awareness of global trends and developments.

The Limited Experiments of the 1980s

After three years of agonizing transition between 1976, the year of Mao’s death, and 1979, the 1980s were filled with the hopeful mood of a new beginning in literature such as China had not seen since the May Fourth movement of the 1920s. Post-Mao China embarked on a series of economic and political reforms, and literature became a playground for many impatient would-be actors wishing to pave the way, on a symbolic level, for the anticipated reforms . Most of the authors who now rushed to put pen to paper or finally found their way back to literary creation after years of repression had lost touch with tradition; they had to start from scratch. Yet the conventions of Maoist socialist realism and its Soviet Russian role models continued to have a—rarely noticed—subconscious impact on China’s “new era literature” (hsin shih-ch’i wen-hsüeh).