The Marriage of Young Blacky
샤오얼헤이의 결혼
A short story written by Zhao Shuli in 1943. In an anti-Japanese base area the village youngsters Xiao Erhei and Xiaoqin overcome their superstitious parents and thuggish village cadres to marry by their own choice. It was hailed as a model of liberated-area literature and repeatedly adapted for film and opera.
In depth
What is the story?
Xiao Erhei and Xiaoqin are in love, and the whole village stands in the way. The thuggish brothers Jinwang and Xingwang, who covet Xiaoqin, hold the village posts. Xiao Erhei's father, Er Zhuge, clings to divination and forces a child bride on his son. Xiaoqin's mother, San Xiangu, a would-be sorceress who likes young men around her, finds her daughter in the way and plans to marry her off as second wife to an officer.
One day the lovers are caught talking over their future, tied up by Jinwang's gang as adulterers and hauled to the district office. But the head of the anti-Japanese democratic government sees through the plot and takes their side. Er Zhuge and San Xiangu are lectured on free marriage, the villagers denounce the brothers, who are punished, and the story ends in a comic wedding.
How did the real case end?
The story turns a tragedy into a comedy. In 1943 Zhao Shuli, a propaganda worker for the party's Northern Bureau, was investigating in Liao county (now Zuoquan, Shanxi) when he learned of a young man, Yue Dongzhi, persecuted to death by village cadres for choosing his own partner. What struck him was that nobody in the village, his parents included, sympathised: killing him went too far, but he needed a lesson for disobeying his parents. Zhao concluded that the struggle against the old order could not succeed without awakening the peasants, and wrote the story from this case.
Why did it matter so much?
Peasants could actually read it and listen to it. Zhao used their speech and the devices of traditional storytellers, having tried May Fourth "new fiction" and found that villagers preferred the old forms. Zhou Yang called his writing in 1946 a victory for Mao's thought on art in creative practice, and in 1947 a "Zhao Shuli direction" was proclaimed for others to follow. He himself said he wanted to be not a literary-world writer but a "literary-stall" writer, sold on the fair stalls.
Even so, it was not welcomed at first. The Xinhua bookshop blocked publication, and the book came out in September only after Peng Dehuai wrote that an easy story drawn from research among the masses was rare. The praise that followed was great, and Zhou Yang called it a representative work of the liberated areas. It was filmed in 1950 and 1964 and became a national opera in 1952.
What became of the author?
In 1959 Zhao sent Red Flag a long essay warning against exaggeration during the Great Leap Forward and was attacked as a right-leaner, then briefly cleared in 1962. In the Cultural Revolution he was denounced across Shanxi, and in January 1967 the Liberation Army Daily attacked this very story for the first time. Struggle sessions broke his ribs and his hip; he collapsed at one on 18 September 1970 and died on the 23rd. He was rehabilitated in 1978.