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The Sun Shines Over the Sanggan River, written in 1948 and based on the author's personal experiences, reflects the life of peasants and the class struggle at the time of the implementation of land reform in north China. Under the author's pen, the characters in the novel -- Communist Party members, poor peasants, petty bourgeois intellectuals, rich peasants and landlords -- achieve individuality. They are all based on people the author met and knew in the village.
576 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1948
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About the author
Ding Ling
59 books30 followersDing Ling (Chinese: 丁玲; pinyin: Dīng Líng), formerly romanized as Ting Ling, was the pen name of Jiang Bingzhi (simplified Chinese: 蒋冰之; traditional Chinese: 蔣冰之; pinyin: Jiǎng Bīngzhī), also known as Bin Zhi (彬芷 Bīn Zhǐ), one of the most celebrated 20th-century Chinese authors. She was awarded the Soviet Union's Stalin second prize for Literature in 1951.
Active in the Communist revolutionary cause, she was placed under house arrest in Shanghai by the Guomindang for a three-year period from 1933 to 1936. She escaped, and made her way to the Communist base of Yan'an. There she became one of the most influential figures in Yan'an cultural circles, serving as director of the Chinese Literature and Arts Association and editing a newspaper literary supplement.
Ding Ling struggled with the idea that revolutionary needs, defined by the party, should come before art. She objected to the gender standards at work in Yan'an. In 1942 she wrote an article in a party newspaper questioning the party's commitment to change popular attitudes towards women. She satirized male double standards concerning women, saying they were ridiculed if they focused on household duties, but also became the target of gossip and rumors if they remained unmarried and worked in the public sphere. She also criticized male cadres use of divorce provisions to rid themselves of unwanted wives. Her article was condemned by Mao Zedong and the party leadership, and she was forced to retract her views and undergo a public self-confession.
Her main work in these years was the novel The Sun Shines Over Sanggan River, which she completed in 1948. It followed the complex results of land reform on a rural village. It was awarded the Stalin prize for Literature in 1951, and is considered one of the best examples of socialist-realist fiction. It did not, however, address gender issues.
Always a political activist, in 1957 she was denounced as a "rightist", purged from the party, and her fiction and essays were banned. She spent five years in jail during the Cultural Revolution and was sentenced to do manual labor on a farm for twelve years before being "rehabilitated" in 1978.
A few years before her death, she was allowed to travel to the United States where she was a guest at the University of Iowa's International Writing Program. She died in Beijing in 1986.
She authored more than three hundred works. After her "rehabilitation" many of her previously banned books such as her novel The Sun Shines Over The Sanggan River were republished and translated into numerous languages. Some of her short works, spanning a fifty-year period, are collected in I Myself Am A Woman: Selected Writings Of Ding Ling.
(from Wikipedia)
Active in the Communist revolutionary cause, she was placed under house arrest in Shanghai by the Guomindang for a three-year period from 1933 to 1936. She escaped, and made her way to the Communist base of Yan'an. There she became one of the most influential figures in Yan'an cultural circles, serving as director of the Chinese Literature and Arts Association and editing a newspaper literary supplement.
Ding Ling struggled with the idea that revolutionary needs, defined by the party, should come before art. She objected to the gender standards at work in Yan'an. In 1942 she wrote an article in a party newspaper questioning the party's commitment to change popular attitudes towards women. She satirized male double standards concerning women, saying they were ridiculed if they focused on household duties, but also became the target of gossip and rumors if they remained unmarried and worked in the public sphere. She also criticized male cadres use of divorce provisions to rid themselves of unwanted wives. Her article was condemned by Mao Zedong and the party leadership, and she was forced to retract her views and undergo a public self-confession.
Her main work in these years was the novel The Sun Shines Over Sanggan River, which she completed in 1948. It followed the complex results of land reform on a rural village. It was awarded the Stalin prize for Literature in 1951, and is considered one of the best examples of socialist-realist fiction. It did not, however, address gender issues.
Always a political activist, in 1957 she was denounced as a "rightist", purged from the party, and her fiction and essays were banned. She spent five years in jail during the Cultural Revolution and was sentenced to do manual labor on a farm for twelve years before being "rehabilitated" in 1978.
A few years before her death, she was allowed to travel to the United States where she was a guest at the University of Iowa's International Writing Program. She died in Beijing in 1986.
She authored more than three hundred works. After her "rehabilitation" many of her previously banned books such as her novel The Sun Shines Over The Sanggan River were republished and translated into numerous languages. Some of her short works, spanning a fifty-year period, are collected in I Myself Am A Woman: Selected Writings Of Ding Ling.
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
April 6, 2016
Bland and ideologically rigid. Some interesting depictions of natural life, though.
December 5, 2019
Ding Ling's novel, winner of the 1951 Stalin Prize, is a lively, educational, and comprehensive novelization of the land reform campaign that saw the mobilization of the peasantry against the landlord class in rural China during the revolution.
The novel's characters illustrates the class contradictions enveloping the countryside during this period of social upheaval. And while the lives of the individual characters are fleshed out in the course of the narrative, the story is not driven by formal conventions of personal character development in the vein of the traditional western novel. Portrayal of the protagonists here serves the purpose of illuminating the conflicting economic and ideological positions of different social classes as they played out in a concrete historical setting.
Some highlights of the novel include its training focus on the functioning of a Party work team sent to supervise the land reform campaign in Nuanshui. Also important is the novel's depiction of the dynamics between the local Party branch at the village level and the Party's district organization as they mobilize the masses to implement the Party center's land reform program. In this regard, Ding Ling does not shy from showing the Party cadres' shortcomings and contradictions with each other and with the people to serve lessons to the reader on what an ideal comrade should be. Indeed, Ding Ling is able to do this because of her concrete involvement in these struggles which shines through every page.
Ultimately, the novel is less about individual heroes but of the rural masses collectively standing up to generations of injustice. Which is why some of the most memorable scenes of the novel involves the part when poor peasants begin to confront their erstwhile landed exploiters. Especially poignant is the climax when the villagers as organized by the Party collectively bring out their bitterness against the local despot schemer Qian and put Maoist justice into action. Highly recommended.
The novel's characters illustrates the class contradictions enveloping the countryside during this period of social upheaval. And while the lives of the individual characters are fleshed out in the course of the narrative, the story is not driven by formal conventions of personal character development in the vein of the traditional western novel. Portrayal of the protagonists here serves the purpose of illuminating the conflicting economic and ideological positions of different social classes as they played out in a concrete historical setting.
Some highlights of the novel include its training focus on the functioning of a Party work team sent to supervise the land reform campaign in Nuanshui. Also important is the novel's depiction of the dynamics between the local Party branch at the village level and the Party's district organization as they mobilize the masses to implement the Party center's land reform program. In this regard, Ding Ling does not shy from showing the Party cadres' shortcomings and contradictions with each other and with the people to serve lessons to the reader on what an ideal comrade should be. Indeed, Ding Ling is able to do this because of her concrete involvement in these struggles which shines through every page.
Ultimately, the novel is less about individual heroes but of the rural masses collectively standing up to generations of injustice. Which is why some of the most memorable scenes of the novel involves the part when poor peasants begin to confront their erstwhile landed exploiters. Especially poignant is the climax when the villagers as organized by the Party collectively bring out their bitterness against the local despot schemer Qian and put Maoist justice into action. Highly recommended.
March 31, 2018
While Sanggan River is Ding Ling's largest work and one of her best known, the story is dry and the majority of the characters (SO! MANY!) are underdeveloped. Between dense boring scenes of villagers pointing fingers and arguing over generations-long grudges, the book is interspersed with beautiful descriptions of the Chinese countryside and village life during the era. Most of the story's value lies in its status as a window into the socialist realism literature of the Chinese Communist Party during the land reform era.
October 23, 2023
This book depicts the situation and condition when land reform is undergo.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews