ABSTRACT
The autobiography begins with Shen Congwen’s birthplace, a small mountain town whose scenic beauty is world-renowned. But Shen writes of its origins and history in despotism and bloodshed: the town was founded to suppress rebellions of the border Miao. The West Hunanese characters of Shen – his farmers, soldiers, boatmen, prostitutes – as judged by these broad cultural categories and literary narrative modes, are for the most part in a position to be enlightened. Shen’s literature encapsulates the cosmos, all of heaven and earth, and humankind lives between them. Most literature since the dawn of modernity has only been about this world of humans living among themselves – living as the sum of their social relations. Among the many criticisms of Border Town, Shen seems only to have given a nod of approval to Liu Xiwei, who says: “Although all of the writer’s characters are completely good, they bear an element of tragedy within them.
