Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies

The Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies school (鴛鴦蝴蝶派) was a popular genre of Chinese fiction in the first half of the 20th century, especially in the 1910s and 1920s.

Mandarin ducks (which are frequently seen in pairs) and butterflies (from Butterfly Lovers) are traditional symbols of romantic love, but the genre encompassed more than romance stories: scandals and "high crimes" were also favorite subjects. Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies stories were disparaged by progressive writers of the May Fourth school and the New Culture Movement for their escapist content and promotion of conservative values. The genre gradually fell out of favor following Japanese invasions in the 1930s.

History

The Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies school of fiction, also called Butterflies fiction, has its roots in 17th-century romance stories of the scholar-beauty (才子佳人) genre. This genre featured forbidden loves, male scholars, and virtuous women, and often expressed Confucian themes. In the 1910s, after the fall of the Qing dynasty, Butterflies fiction developed as a category of romantic tragedy and crime drama fiction reflecting traditional values. A key early example of Butterflies fiction was the 1912 novel Jade Pearl Spirit (玉梨魂) by Xu Zhenya, which tells the story of a widow carrying out a affair with her son's tutor. Due to social taboo around widows remarrying, the affair is kept a secret and the couple never marry. The story ends with the widow dying so that the tutor may pursue a more socially acceptable marriage, but he soon dies of grief. The story reflects themes of Confucian propriety and traditional moral values, with the protagonists choosing to die rather than break taboo. Jade Pearl Spirit sold 20,000 copies in the first two years after publication, and became one of the most printed books of Republican Chinese history.[1]

Zhang Henshui's 1930 novel Fate in Tears and Laughter is a representative work of this school. Su Manshu's The Lone Swan captures the melancholic tones characteristic of the genre.[2] In a 1931 essay criticizing Shanghai commercial culture, Lu Xun criticized the Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies school of writing and named the literary magazine Eyebrow Talk as one of its first examples, writing "Although Eyebrow Talk was later banned, the power [of this style] did not wane at all."[3]: 79 

Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies fiction was widely consumed by urban readers and became especially prominent in Shanghai, which had a booming publishing industry during this time.[4] Stories were frequently serialized in popular newspapers and magazines, contributing to the rise of mass-market fiction.[5][6]

Conflict with the New Culture Movement

Progressive thinkers of the New Culture Movement grew disillusioned with traditional Chinese literature, perceiving it to be an obstacle to cultural modernization and scientific thinking. Chen Duxiu, who later co-founded the Chinese Communist Party, was a prominent critic of the values promoted by Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies literature, writing that "Loyalty, filial piety, chastity, and righteousness are a slavish morality" in his 1915 essay "Call to Youth".[1]

Modernists of the May Fourth Movement considered Butterflies fiction to be an obstacle to the modernization of Chinese culture, and mockingly coined the term "Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies" in reference to traditional symbols of love.[5] They disparaged the genre as escapist, arguing that it failed to engage with social issues and lacked the reformative zeal that modern Chinese literature should embody.[5] They saw it as a hindrance to the development of a more socially responsible literary tradition.[6] As a result of these critiques and changing socio-political climates, the popularity of Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies fiction waned, particularly after the Japanese invasion in the 1930s.[2]

Following the collapse in popularity of Butterflies literature, some writers ended their careers. Xu Zhenya, the writer of Jade Pearl Spirit, became an opium addict and died in obscurity in 1937. The magazine Fiction Monthly (小说月报) began as a Butterflies fiction publication but shifted its focus to European literature and realism after being taken over by Mao Dun, who later became the first Minister of Culture of the People's Republic of China.[1] Despite its initial popularity, Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies literature was largely marginalized in later literary histories, but it has since attracted renewed academic interest for its role in reflecting the cultural anxieties and desires of early 20th-century urban Chinese society.[5][6]

References

  1. ^ a b c "Rediscover the Forgotten Romantic Chinese School of Mandarin Duck and Butterfly Literature". The World of Chinese. Archived from the original on 2025-09-28. Retrieved 2025-11-03.
  2. ^ a b Chow, Rey (1985). "Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies: Female Melancholy as Fiction and Commodity". Selected Papers in Asian Studies: Western Conference of the Association for Asian Studies (21).
  3. ^ Hockx, Michel. "Raising Eyebrows: The Journal Eyebrow Talk and the Regulation of 'Harmful Fiction' in Modern China".
  4. ^ Chow, Rey (1986). Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies: Toward a Rewriting of Modern Chinese Literary History (Ph.D. thesis). Stanford University.
  5. ^ a b c d Doleželová-Velingerová, Milena (1984). "Review of Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies: Popular Fiction in Early Twentieth Century Chinese Cities". Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies. 44 (2): 578–586. doi:10.2307/2719043. ISSN 0073-0548. JSTOR 2719043.
  6. ^ a b c Chow, Rey (1986). "Rereading Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies: A Response to the "Postmodern" Condition". Cultural Critique (5): 69–93. doi:10.2307/1354357. ISSN 0882-4371. JSTOR 1354357. Archived from the original on 2023-11-16. Retrieved 2024-10-18.

Further reading

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