8
They laid blame for the industry’s volatile environment on the new value system emerging in the
publishing industry and society at large. No longer does content govern literary work, but the values
of the new economy in which consumption (sales) and materialism have become the criteria by
which works are valued (Chen, 2002, p. 9).
Until the early 1980s, modern Chinese literature maintained its strong ideological grounding.
Literature was one of the tools of propaganda used by the Government to portray appropriate
versions of political events, revolutionary zeal, or project portraits of revolutionary characters that
characterized the Government’s ideal version of society and people’s lives. However, as the rapid
social changes, driven by commercial and consumer values, began to dominate modern life,
contemporary writers no longer felt obligated to embrace these ideological symbols. Instead, many
writers turned inward to their own life experiences to find the seeds of literary expression. What has
emerged from the maelstrom of social change is a body of writing that focuses the literary lens on
consumer products like fashion, advertisements, television and music. These aspects are reinforced in
the growing popularity of canto-pop and MTV-style television programming, which reflects the
tastes of the young, hip Chinese looking to meld a range of necessary individualistic values with their
collectivist heritage.
The new breed of youth writer both understands and revolts against the new value system
operating in China. Writers now focus on commercialism – bound up in money, body image, fashion
and success – to simultaneously admire and deride a society driven by consumerism. They promote
the seductiveness and necessity of these new values and disclose the absurdity this new lifestyle
brings to modern China and its youth. As a result, young writers and social commentators are now
enjoying resurgence in a sense of social mission through a raft of what Huot (2000) describes as ‘new
and old referents’.
The ways in which Chinese cultural producers deal with representation (self, national, others)
are not exclusively "Chinese" ... how they position themselves in various ways: from inside
and outside, with new and old referents, and with references from other cultures, which are
already part of today's Chinese culture (Huot, 2000, pp. 5-6).
A group of 54 youth writers and social commentators raised the consciousness of modern
literary self-expression expression and representation when they condemned both official and the
non-official culture (Baume, 2000). Other young Chinese writers gradually emerged within the
Convention