The Bamboo Groves of Academe: Li Er’s Brother Yingwu and the Academic Novel in China

When writing about the academic novel or campus novel genre, some scholars of English literature refer to it as small-scale or marginal. Nonetheless, they also admit that fiction about university and scholars has gradually gained significant momentum, struggled out of tight boundaries, and even joined the literary mainstream. These processes are yet to begin in the Chinese literary space. The genre’s history in China is significantly shorter, and the methodology of genre studies is often regarded as superficial and outdated. However, I argue that given recent developments in the field, the fact that the academic novel genre exists and flourishes in China is evident. Its most notable example is Li Er’s (李洱) latest work Brother Yingwu (应物兄), which won a prestigious Mao Dun literary prize while being hailed by some scholars as a modern successor of the 18th-century masterpiece The Unofficial History of Confucians. My approach is twofold: undertake a comparative study of Brother Yingwu and western academic novels while tracing how it draws on the classical Chinese literature works about literati. The novel’s position as a connecting link between tradition and modernity highlights the unique prerequisites of the genre in China. Drawing on the case of Brother Yingwu, I will discuss how the fictional account of academia reflects specific issues in Chinese higher education and intellectual life, followed by an overview of salient features and perspectives of the academic novel in China.