ABSTRACT
Most of the scholarship on artistic life during the Cultural Revolution emphasizes its one-dimensionality, often leaving the impression that ordinary people were exposed to nothing but the monotonous models of revolutionary art. Perry Link, professor of East Asian languages and cultures at Princeton, argues that the state’s monopoly on literature was not as complete as it may seem. His study of hand-copied, underground entertainment fiction shows that during the Cultural Revolution there was a lively audience among urban youth for detective stories, spy thrillers, romances, knight errant fiction, triangular love stories, and pornography. Virtually all these genres surfaced after the Cultural Revolution and enjoyed considerable aboveground popularity. The values conveyed in most of these works were hardly revolutionary; on the contrary, in stylistic and thematic terms they had much in common with the popular fiction produced in Qing and early Republican times. The popularity of these works shows that the range of popular thought far exceeded what was acknowledged in official sources. Still, this fiction should not be regarded as dissident literature; in general it was apolitical, accepted traditional notions of hierarchy, relegated women to an inferior status, and regarded the outside world with suspicion.
