Writing Melodrama in a Manichean World : Rethinking Huang Ya as a Middlebrow Writer: 乱世言情 : 黄崖流行小说和香港马来亚的文化联系

As the longest serving editor of the literary magazine Chao Foon, Malaysian Chinese writer Huang Ya is deemed one of the key figures who sowed the seeds of Mahua modernism during the 1960s. Current scholarship has largely focussed on his editorial stint and discussed his writings about the Malayanisation of modern Mahua literature within a Cold War context. Comparatively, less attention has been paid to his fiction that is arguably shaped more by middlebrow melodramatic elements than the modernist aesthetics that he had promoted as an editor. This paper argues for the transnational significance of Huang Ya as a popular fiction writer through an investigation of his best-selling romance Wisteria (Ziteng hua, 1961). First serialised in Malaya, the novel was subsequently published by Hong Kong’s Highland Press and sold more than 20,000 copies. While Wisteria has gained scholarly attention as his first “Malayanised” novel, this paper is interested in the work beyond a national literary framework. Specifically, it draws on Peter Brooks’ concept of melodramatic imagination and the moral occult to examine Wisteria and to discuss the relevance of melodrama as a quintessential aesthetic and a form of sentimental education for readers navigating a Manichean Cold War milieu. It proposes that this melodramatic imagination needs to be understood not only in relation to Huang Ya’s earlier works that were published in Hong Kong during the 1950s, but also Hong Kong’s publishing industry that was negotiating political, aesthetic, and commercial considerations. More broadly, this paper will contribute to our understanding of post-war Hong Kong-Malaya popular culture connections and literary lineages.

作为《蕉风》文学杂志任职时间最长的编辑，马华作家黄崖 (1932-1992) 被视为 60 年代马华现代主义的主要推手之一。有关研究迄今多是聚焦黄崖的编辑理念，并从文化冷战的角度讨论其“马来亚化”的文学主张与“现代”创作。但不可忽略的是，黄崖小说中所展示的中额 (middlebrow) 通俗元素，似乎与他所提倡的现代主义美学有所矛盾。本文将通过分析黄崖的畅销言情小说《紫藤花》(1961)，论证黄崖作为“流行小说家”的跨国意义与重要性。《紫藤花》原先在马来亚报纸上连载，后由香港作家徐速创办的高原出版社发行单行本，销量达两万册。作为黄崖的第一部“马来亚化”小说，《紫藤花》自然受到学者的关注，但论述仍无法摆脱国族文学的框架，更忽视了战后香港与马来亚之间的跨国流行文化联系与文学脉络。本文将藉由布鲁克 (Peter Brooks) 提出的“通俗剧式想像” (melodramatic imagination) 与“深层道德观” (moral occult) 的概念，分析小说中的通俗叙事如何为冷战氛围下的读者提供一种情感教育。本文亦指出，小说中的的通俗剧式想像不仅与黄崖五十年代于香港出版的早期小说相关，同时也反映了当时香港出版界对政治、美学与商业等方面的考量。