two brothers, separated from each other when their village was destroyed and they were
each sold into different families. Big Lin, the more fortunate boy was brought up by a
wealthy family, and became corrupt, suppressing the suffering poor, but died later by
drowning; little Lin became a train driver, led an uprising against his unsympathetic
employer and even joined the Chinese Revolution. Zhang Tianyi himself was a leftist
living in the times of the feudal warlords when the peasantry suffered under their
corruption. However, Zhang was recognised as a successful children’s writer.
Children’s Literature from 1949The founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 changed the course of Chinese
children’s literature. The central feature of the new literature was its accordance with a
set of theoretical principles laid down by Mao Zedong and Marxist ideology. All literature
and the arts were for the people and therefore had to reflect the lives of the workers,
peasants and soldiers, as well as revolutionary struggles. These principles of literary
creation undermined the works of children’s writers. Children’s literature, like all
literary works for adults, had to depict reality and had to take as its goal the raising of
the socialist consciousness of the people.
After 1949, many veteran writers of children’s literature of the 1920s and 1930s were
discredited and heavily criticised, and as a result, stopped writing. Zhang Tianyi and Ye
Shengtao were among the few who continued to write. Zhang, in particular, wrote mostly
tales, short stories and plays for juvenile readers as he was encouraged by the
Communist leaders. His children’s fiction was stereotyped and full of communist
clichés, and he even revised and changed many of the endings in his children’s stories in
line with Mao’s ideology, and in order to be accepted for publication by government-
owned publishers.
Younger professional writers nurtured by the communist regime began to churn out
children’s stories in the 1950s and 1960s. Among them were Jin Jin, Qin Zhaoyang, He
Yi, Bao Lei and Ge Cuilin. With their writing, Chinese children’s literature became truly
proletarian. With works of traditional and universal themes no longer available, those
with highly propagandist themes and poor quality writing flooded the market. From the
1950s to the 1970s earlier children’s literature was criticised because ‘the sky is overcast
with ancient people and animals, while the workers, peasants and soldiers are pitifully
lonely (Hong Xuntao 1986:306). As a result, works of both Chinese and foreign writers
were banned, and creativity in Chinese writing in both adult and children’s fiction was
suppressed.
The death of Mao Zedong and the fall from grace of the Gang of Four in 1976 brought
about great changes in politics and in children’s literature. Many writers discredited
during the Cultural Revolution were rehabilitated. Literary works, especially those of the
1920s and 1930s became readily available. The publication of the General Anthology of
Modern Children’s Literature of China (1990) shows that new variations in contents,
techniques and themes are now allowed. This fifteenvolume anthology contains
children’s tales, short stories, essays, poetry, drama, novels and studies of children’s
literature since the 1920s. The concept of the superiority of politics over pure aesthetics
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