| Abstract |
Yan Lianke (閻連科) (1958-) used to describe the sufferings of the lower class of the Chinese local society. From late in the 1990s, he adds a carnivalesque hue into his suffering writing and writes farces interlaced with crying and laughing by way of “revolution and love”.In Hard Like Water (《堅硬如水》) (2001), Yan re-tells the history of the Cultural Revolution. Revolutionary ideas and sexual passion stir each other in the novel. His detailed descriptions of disorders, sexual passion and sexual abuse are usually regarded as “abnormal psychology”. Besides, the novels are full of slogans and songs of the Cultural Revolution. By grafting, copying and repeating Mao Zedong’s writings and quotations, Yan creates carnivalesque of sex and politics.In Hard Like Water, Yan practices repeatedly the relationship between revolution and sex.Does it inherit and distort the “revolution and love” novels from the 1920s? What is the interaction between ‘body and body’ and ‘body and space’? What situation of the Cultural Revolution does Yan intend to express by way of the carnivalesque language? Does the carnivalesque narrative display regeneration from damage? All of these are the topics I will discuss in the article.
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