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Return to the Soul’s Garden of Eden by the Path of Love: Shi Tiesheng’s Writing and Christian Culture

  • The Journal of Study on Language and Culture of Korea and China
  • Abbr : JSLCKC
  • 2013, (31), pp.435-455
  • DOI : 10.16874/jslckc.2013..31.018
  • Publisher : Korean Society of Study on Chinese Languge and Culture
  • Research Area : Humanities > Chinese Language and Literature
  • Published : February 28, 2013

Wang Jingjing 1

1上海师范大学

Accredited

ABSTRACT

In his first several short stories depicting his early life in the countryside as sent-down educated youth, we may see that Shi Tiesheng was ready for pondering the Christian spirits later. Among these stories many thematic concerns were repeatedly adopted later, such as suffering, love, Original Sin and so on. The early life experience and writings became the base for his thinking of divinity and his belief in Christianity in his later days. If the experience of being sent down to a village as an educated youth and his writing about this period of life experience and how he cherished it established his faith in love that made his ideas perfectly fit the Christian spirit. Meanwhile, “disease” or “disability”, which represents human beings’ everlasting weakness and imperfection, became his motivation to admire and approach God. He started thinking of the meaning of sufferings because of his “disease” and “disability” and issues related to “love;” whereas his “sent-down” experiences not only made him profoundly go through suffering but also understand the everlasting power of love and its warmth. Shi Tiesheng’s early works already touched upon issues like Christianity, God, and church, but his works, which really reflected his thinking of the spirit of Christianity and approaching closely the divinity, are Random Writings during Sick Time, (1998) and My Trip to Dingyi (2005). The author’s approaching God and belief in Love are reflected through his thinking focusing on four questions: “disability”, “love”, “original sin- repentance- redemption”, and its “process.” Some of Shi Tiesheng’s novels tended to be “meta-fiction, ” in which some distinctive elements of “meta-fiction” are discernible such as mocking imitation of the literary tradition and the use of parodies. His novel My Trip to Dingyi is the best example, which foundation is Bible. In sum, Shi Tiesheng’s fiction is not “pure” Christian literature, but as Karl Josef Kuschel (contemporary theologist) said, it is “fiction with the spirit of Christianity.”

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