March 23, 2010
Foreign Devils, Lucky Words:
The Structure, Discourse, Historical Context, and Major Themes of Mao Dun’s Spring Silkworms
Mao Dun’s Spring Silkworms is a story which may appear at first glance to be a straightforward tale of the struggles and misfortunes of a peasant family in the first half of twentieth century China. However upon further inspection it becomes clear that the story is a complex social and political commentary with multiple motifs underlying it’s several historical references and seemingly uncomplicated literary techniques. The following short essay will attempt to briefly describe the structure of Spring Silkworms, interpret the discourse of the characters and events portrayed therein, evaluate Mao Dun’s attitudes about them and about the period of which he writes, and finally come to some conclusion regarding the major themes and possible meanings of the work.
The fate of Old Tong Bao and his family is related in three main movements. The story opens in a small rural village (where the entirety of the story takes place) immediately prior to the silkworm season, proceeds linearly through the business of hatching and caring for the silkworms, and concludes with the result of the family’s efforts. While the narrative unfolds in an uncomplicated way, there are elements of its structure worth examining. At the start of the first movement, Old Tong Bao is watching local men towing a junk, “pulling, pulling, pulling, great beads of sweat dripping from their brows.” Their physical exertion contrasts sharply with the symbolic image a moment later of the, “foreign devils’ contraption [of] a small oil-burning riverboat,” disturbing a peasant in its wake and filling, “the peaceful green countryside [with] the chugging of the boat engine and the stink of its exhaust.” These few sentences relate a condensed version of a central theme of the story.
Another element is Mao Dun’s use of an absent and omniscient third person narration in the story, lending reliability to the narrator through their distance from the narrated events.1 Despite the narrator’s absence and subsequent objectivity, there is a strong association between narrator and one particular character, Old Tong Bao. The narrator seems to have more insight into Old Tong Bao’s thoughts and feelings than those of any other character. For example, near the beginning of the story we are told directly that Old Tong Bao considers his grandson’s chanting to be a good omen. With no other character is there as direct a link between narration and the interior of the character’s mind.
There is an implication then, that the tone of the narrator reflects the opinions and emotions of Old Tong Bao himself.2
Besides Old Tong Bao, there are several other characters of note in Spring Silkworms. Old Master Chen was a member of the gentry who employed Old Tong Bao’s grandfather and allowed Old Tong Bao’s family enough work to eventually own some of their own land. This is possible, we are told, because of these patriarchs having escaped from imprisonment by rebel soldiers during the Taiping Rebellion of 1850-1864 during which Old Master Chen and Old Tong Bao’s grandfather stole an unspecified amount of gold. This makes the point that the Taiping rebels never enjoyed much popular support from either peasants or gentry3, and is echoed by the civil war that had already begun between the Chinese Nationalist Party and the Communist Party of China at the time the story occurs and was written, as well as the looming threat of Japanese invasion.
Young Master Chen, and the decline of his own family’s fortune because of his opium smoking is another important historical reference. The Opium War (1840-1842) waged between Britain and China was a result of Britain’s needing something to trade in exchange for valuable Chinese products such as tea, silk, and porcelain. A manufactured market of addicted consumers provided exactly that, evidenced by the more than quadrupling of opium imports to China in the first half of the 19th century despite bans on both domestic production and importation in 1800, and outright bans on smoking opium in 1813. As well as the social problems this inevitably caused, opium use also had drastic economic consequences for China, its purchase causing a large drain of silver from Chinese coffers into foreign hands.4
These two historical references are important for establishing two of the major topics addressed in Spring Silkworms; the failure of government and the resulting civil wars contribution to the woes of Chinese peasants in the later 19th and early 20th century, and the inequitable trade policy imposed on China by imperialist Western powers in the same period.
These topics are perhaps most obvious when we are told about the Guomindang speechmakers and their Western dress, Old Tong Bao going as far as believing, “they were secretly in league with the foreign devils.”
A less political, but no less important topic in the story is that of the social relationships of rural family and village life. Within Old Tong Bao’s family are his two sons A Duo and A Si, as well as A Si’s unnamed wife and their son Little Bao. Old Tong Bao’s father and grandfather are also mentioned, though not present in the story. All these characters are important, representing the multi-generational aspect of Old Tong Bao’s family. The success of past generations, the strengths and weaknesses of the current generation, and the prospects of future generations are all touched upon. Old Tong Bao’s father was, “hard working and honest.” A Si and his wife are described as, “industrious and frugal,” and have no doubt pleased Old Tong Bao by continuing the family line through their son.
There is tension between Old Tong Bao and his eldest son and daughter-in-law, however. The conflict they have about what variety of silkworm to raise, local or foreign, is highly symbolic. The foreign variety yields a higher price, symbolic of foreign economic pressure, and the quarrel between parent and children itself is symbolic of the change of attitudes from one generation to the next. Despite the previous season’s decision to raise only the local variety of silkworms, Old Tong Bao stubbornly refuses to raise more than one fifth of the foreign breed in the upcoming season. Even this small compromise severely damages his pride, being, “enough to take all the joy out of life!”
In contrast to A Si, A Duo is, “a little flighty,” and is the repeated target of Old Tong Bao’s anger, incurred mostly for his dalliances with two other young women of the village, Sixth Treasure and Lotus. He does not let his father’s superstitions prevent him from speaking his mind or acting at times with some degree of impropriety. The subject of superstition recurs throughout the story, and the most serious breach of conduct in this regard also involves A Duo. When Lotus (an, “evil spirit [who] will bring ruin on our house!” In Old Tong Bao’s eyes) sneaks into the silkworm shed to steal a handful of the, “little darlings,” and is caught by A Duo, his own superstitions are revealed.
He assumes her sabotage is a jealous attempt to, “put a curse on the lot.” Although Lotus does not do any real damage to the crop, the damage done to the relationship between A Duo and his father when Lotus’ rival, Sixth Treasure, reports the unlucky act is real enough.
This, and several other mentions of omens, rituals, and spirits in Spring Silkworms serve to illustrate what a large role superstition plays in the lives of the peasants of East Village, and are presumably meant to typify peasant attitudes of the time and place of the story more generally. While this portrayal might be perceived as a criticism from the western educated Mao Dun, the tone of the story does not seem to suggest this. If there is critical commentary in the story, it is more obviously directed towards imperialist and capitalist exploitation of workers, culminating in Old Tong Bao’s family deepening their debt and losing the last bit of land they own. A poignant example of the importance of owning property in traditional China can be found in an essay by the official Zhang Ying (1638-1708), where he writes, “A house that has stood for a long time will decay; clothes worn for a long time will become shabby. […] Only land remains new through hundreds and thousands of years.”5
Mao Dun’s part in the May 4th movement of 1919 and his eventual role as Minister of Culture in the People’s Republic of China do not seem to have unduly influenced the telling of this story, in one direction or another. Emerging adoption of concepts like Western science and technology on the social spheres, and democracy on the political spheres of Chinese peasant life are neither praised nor rebuked anywhere within.
Rather, the story serves as a fictional but realistic portrait of a time in Chinese history that saw the greatest breaking with the status quo in centuries, if not millennia. Its themes of government (both local and foreign) corruption and inadequacy, working class struggles, and the sociology of family and community relationships are pervasive, and extend more generally beyond the specific time and place of the text. For these reasons, as well as the author’s breaking with tradition in employing vernacular language and subject matter, Mao Dun’s Spring Silkworms has had and will likely continue to have an unusually high readership and degree of popularity well into the unforeseen future.
Works Cited
Ebrey, Patricia Buckley, ed. The Cambridge Illustrated History of China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Lau, Joseph S.M. & Howard Goldblatt, eds. The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature. 2nd ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.
Prince, Gerald. Narratology: The Form and Functioning of Narrative. Berlin: Mouton Publishers, 1982.
White, Hayden. “The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality.” On Narrative. Ed. W.J.T Mitchell. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981. 1-23.
Zhang Ying. “Permanent Property.” Chinese Civilization: A Sourcebook. Ed. Patricia Buckley Ebrey. New York: The Free Press, 1981. 287-291
Timothy Case 