A consideration of the growth of the female of Hong Ying’s “daughter of the river”

Name: Guokun He
Student No: 5904913
Paper: Chin 343
Lecturer: Dr Haixin Jiang

Brief outline:
This essay takes <Daughter of the river> for an example to analyze the growth of the female in the early 1960s. <Daughter of the river> is written by Hong Ying and published in 1997. With raw intensity and fearless honesty, Daughter of the River follows China's trajectory through one woman's life, from the Great Famine through the Cultural Revolution to Tiananmen Square. From the perspective of content, the novel adopts autobiographical components based on the author's own life experiences, involving in the physical and psychological crisis of the protagonist. This essay will take different examples discuss the growth of female in the modern Chinese literature.

outline: 1. Introduction
Daughter of the River is a memoir of China concerning the growth of the female in the early 1960s written by Hong Ying. Born during the Great Famine of the early 1960s and raised in the slums of Chongqing, Hong Ying was constantly aware of hunger and the sacrifices required to survive. As she neared her eighteenth birthday, she became determined to unravel the secrets that left her an outsider in her own family. At the same time, a history teacher at her school began to awaken her sense of justice and her emerging womanhood. Hong Ying's wrenching coming-of-age would teach her the price of taking a stand and show her the toll of totalitarianism, poverty, and estrangement on her family. With raw intensity and fearless honesty, Daughter of the River follows China's trajectory through one woman's life, from the Great Famine through the Cultural Revolution to Tiananmen Square.

Hong Ying was born in Chongqing in 1962, towards the end of the Great Leap Forward. She began to write at eighteen, leaving home shortly afterwards to spend the next ten years moving around China, exploring her voice as a writer via poems and short stories. After brief periods of study at the Lu Xun Academy in Beijing and Shanghai’s Fudan University, Hong Ying moved to London in 1991 where she was writer. She returned to Beijing in 2000.
Best known in English for the novels K: the Art of Love, Summer of Betrayal, Peacock Cries, and her autobiography Daughter of the River, Hong Ying has been published in twenty- nineteen languages and has appeared on the bestseller lists of numerous countries, she won the Prize of Rome for K: the Art of Love in 2005 and many of her books have been or are now in the process of being turned into television series and films. Hong Ying has long been interested in the stories of homosexuals living in China, a theme explored here and in her short story collection, A Lipstick Called Red Pepper: Fiction About Gay and Lesbian Love in China 1993-1998. In her work, she likes to focus on human stories, hardship and history. Her responsibility as a writer, she believes, is in part to explore the lives of marginalized groups struggling for visibility – and for compassion – in contemporary China

2. Tortuous mother-daughter relationship
Most girls will be particularly rebellious between the age of fourteen to ten years old , and the relationship with mothers will be particularly intense. Coincidentally, LiuLiu is at this stage. In the eyes of LiuLiu, her mother is vulgar, ugly and uneducated. Lack the considerate attend from her mother, LiuLiu was alone in the stage of her growth. Her mother has to compete and grapple in the society with her thin body in the long term, which led to abandoning the mother's tenderness. However, LiuLiu needs her mother’s tenderness , caressing and attention. Therefore, LiuLiu will never forget her mother’s unintentional injuries. Years later, even LiuLiu had forgiven his mother, her forgiveness cannot be reflected in languages and actions after all, because she has lost this ability.

In the novel of female growth, because mother is the most important comparing with father in the growing of female, the desire for maternal love is always a common feature. In this paper, LiuLiu always is very unhappy for the lack of maternal love, so even after growing up , she is still "looking for motherly love " subconsciously. Because in the plight of growing LiuLiu was so eager to enjoy maternal love, but this has not been realized, thus creating a huge empty in her heart. Although always in conflict with her mother when they are together, LiuLiu still admires her mother, and takes her mother as growing templates. Precisely because LiuLiu see the pain and sadness in the life of her mother , she was reluctant to repeat the same mistakes. Therefore, she frantically excludes her mother as well as her mother's life, struggling in the course of misery. LiuLiu need another way to make up for the loss and grief from her mother, so she turned to love.

3. The love and hate with history teacher
In the years of growth, LiuLiu who is half-crazy and half-desperate puts her hope of life in the hands of the history teacher. As a wise and enlightened teacher, he helps LiuLiu widen the horizon of the world. However, ultimately, LiuLiu, thinking that love can resolve all, is wrong again. Tragically, the history teacher takes her as the tool of his last indulgence. This is LiuLiu’s failure but unforgettable first love, and it is not romantic, leaving her increasingly despair and helplessness. LiuLiu herself has said, "I was just looking for the missing father in my life." LiuLiu is not clear what she wants to get from the history teacher on earth--- love or affection, maybe neither. In the confusion of youth, no one really cares about the sensitive and passionate girl living near Yangtze River, and no one really came into her heart. The history teacher who is defined as her first love, is just a passer-by in the life of LiuLiu.

Although in the process of growing, LiuLiu formed an eccentric character due to the family, she can also manage to get along with family. But when her true identity was exposed, especially the suicide of history teacher, LiuLiu ultimately makes determination about running away from home. Due to having sex with history teacher, which makes LiuLiu unwanted pregnancies, LiuLiu nearly have the same destiny with her mother. It is this both same and different life with mother that makes LiuLiu to think more problems about life. Eventually, tough character renders LiuLiu make decisions to confront their own identity and face unspeakable love and affection calmly and confidently. Besides, the environment and social life make her get the really return.

4. The struggle with the environment she lives
The poor is a very unique group in the society, they are pride and feel inferior, self-esteem and self-abased. In order to get rid of the inherent poor, they spare no effort to climb the ladder in a variety of ways. LiuLiu is growing in such an environment, and inevitably she became one of the broad masses of the poor. In addition, her character retains the traits of character of this group, but his rebellious and obstinate character forced herself to be different. She is eager to live in a very different life with her mother and sister, she is also eager to vivid her life.

The poor have their own emotions-happiness and sadness. Although this place did not give LiuLiu happiness, this is her hometown without any doubt. When she drifting away from home later, she will miss this place, and miss her hometown. If there is no the misery life in the slum , there is no real painfulness in the growth of LiuLiu. And it is to re-examine the growth environment of the LiuLiu, the authors found that the poor have a special spirit - tenacity in the fate of the anxiety, which is an inherent and fine quality in the traditional Chinese. Thanks to the tough character, LiuLiu can get through the unimaginable hardships in the period of growth and be able to endure the kind of non-human misery, then she can fight with the injustice of fate . However, LiuLiu’s tenacity is also a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it can protect herself against from outside infringement. On the other hand, it will also hurt herself. LiuLiu and mother’s conflicts in the future come from this patience and silence. For the true portrayal of the poor in the society, the author has a profound consideration of lives about the poor and an impressive perception of this group. The authors hope to restore the abnormal social according to the growth of LiuLiu. The book reviews the process of women’s growth from the perspective of poor. In the elaboration of the poor, the author focuses on the return of life, and she also showed her appreciation to the growth of women when they are facing difficulty.

By the search of motherly love, the farewell to love and the endurance in difficult environment, LiuLiu have been pondering and looking herself.

5. The search for the story of her life
The core of this book is: "Who am I", which is the identity issue in the study of feminist and is also the key to the growth of women. This novel has depicted three aspects: tortuous mother-daughter relationship, the love and hate with history teacher, and the struggle with the environment she lives. The self-doubt of LiuLiu of her life is a significant focus of this book, she kept looking for the answer of "Who Am I", and this is the process of her growing up.

This novel uses the way of flashbacks. The world of LiuLiu is extremely bewildering in that year, and many things disputes together. The process of decryption is very complex, and her sister is the key. But when her sister finished her life story, she stopped and she did not talk about the story about LiuLiu. So we cannot help to think: In the case of the tragic death concerning hunger of their loved family, How were LiuLiu born? The voice of "Who am I” sounds desperate and paranoid, which makes the protagonist into frenzy . As LiuLiu grows older, this is also a growing sense of self-identity, and she was eager to have a clear identity. If it cannot be found, she will think that their entire growth is illusory. It is abnormal pain when she was looking for answers, but it is more painful when she knew the answer. The truth is that LiuLiu was an illegitimate daughter. In the process of LiuLiu accepting her identity of illegitimate daughter, she gradually understands who I am. LiuLiu’s search for her own identity, in fact, is the process of self- consciousness of the hero in the novel and the mentality of growth. Due to the special nature of the growth process of women comparing with men, women may face more difficulties in reality. The significance of female consciousness requires not only women independent on the economic and ideological, but also requires women to liberate from the constraints about lives. The novel about the growth of female concerned about women's self- identity, as well as making looking for "Who am I " as the narrative core. This book’s hero LiuLiu is just like the above, she shows her unique revolt personality.

6. Conclusions
In my opinion, this book is a history of the growth of women. It is not so much a woman's autobiography, as it is one of the times autobiography. The author uses her own painful experience s to answer the growing problems of women in their era. The author tells us, as women, we should be aware that what kind of person we want be. In the eyes of author, we see the underlying desire of women to break the poverty and recognition of personal identity. We also see that women are eager to get rid of gender inequality and their objectives in women's growth: independence, freedom, equality.

Bibliography:
Hong Ying. Daughter of the River. Translated by Howard Goldblatt. Grove Press,1997.
This book strongly supports the topic “Female growth”. It shows a great number of issues of heroine’s growth. This will help us understand female’s growth in 1960 to 1980 during the Cultural Revolution.

Chen Peng-hsiang, Whitney Crothers Dilley. Feminism/Femininity in Chinese Literature. Published by Rodopi Bv Editions, 2002
This book provide a composite and broad perspective of feminism and the treatment of the female in chinese literature. In particular, the development of women’s writing in the new period is examined in depth.

徐成淼. 女性主义和女性文学. 贵阳贵州社会科学出版社, 1998.
This book indicates that how Feminism and feminist literature play important roles in the society which has a close relationship with the topic of our essay.

Margery Wolf, Roxane Witke, Emily Martin. Women in Chinese Society.Stanford University Press, 1975.
This article discusses the emotional dimension of identity development among Chinese women: their emergent needs for attention, validation, and support from their spouses.

Zhang Hui, the suffering consciousness in Daughter of the River ,2008
This paper analyzes the book from the background of this novel and the emotion of the leading character in the novel, which is strongly related to the topic.

陈碧月. 大陆当代女性小说研究. 台湾秀威咨询出版社，2011.
This book is a study of contemporary female novels, not only from a stance of female but also combine the view of culture and gender. The book reveals the development of Chinese contemporary female novels and the change of female’s status.

Tamara Jacka, Sally Sargeson. Women, Gender and Rural Development in China. Edward Elgar publishing limited, 2011.
This essay explores that how gender politics inform and are reproduced or reconfigured in the languages, knowledge, processes and practices of development in rural China. It provides evidences to support female suffer from discrimination and inequality in their growth.

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[ 2 ]. Hong Ying. Daughter of the River. Translated by Howard Goldblatt. Grove Press,1997.
[ 3 ]. Margery Wolf, Roxane Witke, Emily Martin. Women in Chinese Society.Stanford University Press, 1975.
[ 4 ]. Chen Peng-hsiang, Whitney Crothers Dilley. Feminism/Femininity in Chinese Literature. Published by Rodopi Bv Editions, 2002
[ 5 ]. Zhang Hui, the suffering consciousness in Daughter of the River ,2008