Popularization of traditional culture in postsocialist China : a study of the Yu Qiuyu Phenomenon

This essay investigates the ‘Yu Qiuyu’ Phenomenon that attracted literary and critical attention in the 1990s. By examining the historical conditions under which it arose and the prose as a literary genre, I argue that Yu Qiuyu's ‘cultural prose’ writing exemplifies a paradoxical cultural logic deeply symptomatic of postsocialist China: traditional culture, with all its cultural elitism, strategically responds to the sweeping commercialization and re-identifies itself in the social transformation.