Rainbow

Voices from Asia

by Mao Dun, Madeleine Zelin (Translator)

With this translation of the 1929 novel Rainbow (Hong), one of China's most influential works of fiction is at last available in English.

Rainbow chronicles the political and social disruptions in China during the early years of the twentieth century. Inspired by the iconoclasm of the "May Fourth Movement," the heroine, Mei, embarks on a journey that takes her from the limitations of the traditional family to a discovery of the new, "modern" values of individualism, sexual equality, and political responsibility. The novel moves with Mei from the conservative world of China's interior provinces down the Yangtze River to Shanghai, where she discovers the turbulent political environment of China's most modern city.

Mao Dun writes with the conviction of one who has lived through the events he is describing. Rainbow provides a moving introduction to the contradictions inherent in the simultaneous quest for personal freedom and national strengthening. Vividly evocative of the period in which it was written, it is equally relevant to the China of today.

Genres: China, Chinese Literature, Historical Fiction, Fiction

235 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Mao Dun (4 July 1896 – 27 March 1981) was the pen name of Shen Dehong (Shen Yanbing), a 20th-century Chinese novelist, cultural critic, and the Minister of Culture of People's Republic of China (1949–65). He is one of the most celebrated left-wing realist novelists of modern China. His most famous works are Ziye, a novel depicting life in cosmopolitan Shanghai, and Spring Silkworms. He also wrote many short stories.

He adopted "Mao Dun" (Chinese: 矛盾), meaning "contradiction", as his pen name to express the tension in the conflicting revolutionary ideology in China in the unstable 1920s. His friend Ye Shengtao changed the first character from 矛 to 茅, which literally means "thatch".

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the translator's introduction: "The heroine, Mei, like hundreds of thousands of Chinese youths in the early years of the century, undertakes to travel the road from the limitations of traditional family life to the discovery of new, "modern" values of individualism, sexual equality, and political responsibility. These values were articulated in innumerable articles and works of fiction by the proponents of the New Thought Tide that flooded China in the wake of the May Fourth Movement. For Mei, the journey ends in political activism, as it did for Mao Dun himself. Indeed, the events of the last chapter are drawn almost entirely from the author's own experiences in the demonstrations that followed the 1925 May Thirtieth incident.

Nevertheless, Rainbow is foremost a psychological novel, and Mei's travels are as much mental as physical. Through Mei's interactions with others and through frequent use of interior monologue, Mao Dun explores with impressive honesty the competing emotions and often selfish ambitions that motivate his heroine and the people she meets. It is with equal honesty that he unmasks the hypocrisy of a "new thought tide" that presents young people with the imperative to smash the old morality but gives them neither the tools to do so nor a safe haven when they are through. For Mei, as for many young people during this turbulent period in Chinese history, it is a quest for personal liberation, not a commitment to well articulated political goals, that leads to participation in the revolutionary movement of the 1920s."

[Michael Haase · Rating 3 out of 5]

My goodness this one was boring.

It's a meandering story about a moody woman who's angry at the world for not allowing her to choose her own life, but in reality, the problem is she's just very irresolute. And so the plot for half the book lazily drifts about, the protagonist alternatively loving and hating everything that happens to her and the reader can never tell whether something is bad or not because the story is told from her perspective and she's so damn moody.

For example, she's arranged to marry a guy named Liu Yuchun, and most of the time she hates him, but sometimes she likes him and even pities him and wishes him happiness. At the same time, she's in love with a guy named Wei Yu, but he won't marry her, because he's terminally ill and depressed all the time, so she hates him for that and considers him a weakling. And since the protagonist keeps flip flopping between loving and hating these people, we never know how to feel about them, which leads us to not really feel anything.

She's also very snobbish and looks down on everyone for one reason or another.

The book is sort of nihilistic, considering the main character is basically hot and cold about everything, is very unmotivated, and doesn't really do anything for most of the book. This left me feeling very nihilistic and unmotivated myself.

The book's writing is fine enough though, and there's plenty of interesting cultural artifacts to discover, as the book is set in early 20th century China, so I'm giving it 3 stars.

[Alexandra Ye]

national revolutions for personal reasons

[Aidan Darnell · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting look into a particular time and place. Sad that the apparently planned trilogy never materialized as I feel like the book was just coming into its own as a political-focused drama with an interesting (if annoyingly and at times confusingly characterized) protagonist. Would have loved to see Mei follow the exploits of the real-life woman who inspired her creation (Hu Lanqi) - into the turbulent Sino-European relations, and then the Japanese and civil wars.

[Rix · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was overall very good and very interesting. It was written as a series of interconnected short stories focused on the same character and because of this, some parts are better than others. The opening chapter is an absolute tour de force that the rest of the book can't quite live up to but it's very strong throughout. I was honestly shocked to find out that the author was male as it does such a good job as exploring the lived experience of women, though it's continually hilarious that he doesn't realise his heroine is a lesbian

[Noah · Rating 3 out of 5]

If it does what you think literature should do, it’s a masterpiece. Otherwise, the compelling depiction of psychological turmoil falls apart in the last few chapters as it ultimately succumbs to political ideology. I’m too much of a bourgeois modernist to love it, but I can appreciate it

[Erica · Rating 1 out of 5]

2.5 stars

While I loved the gorgeous lyrical writing, I found much of the plot to be very confusing and there was little forward movement. I wanted there to be more happening, given the nature of the book. Additionally, many of the characters names were so similar, two characters even had the same surname they were referred to as, that it became very confusing to keep the story straight. The characters really just blended together in my mind.

[Andrew]

Yet another one of those early 20th Century "what is to be done?" type novels emerging from the fringes of global capitalism, and a particularly good one. That being said, it's probably best to have a little backstory about liberal and left movements in late imperial and republican-era China before you start in, or else you're likely to get lost. Because the ideal reader for this is a qipao-donning liberated woman from an old Confucian family in 1930s China who knows her Ibsen, Tolstoy, and Flaubert, not a 21st Century fuckwit like myself.