Does anyone know the novel Canyuelou by Li Qunying, a Canadian Chinese woman writer?

I am exhausted.

This is all I found.

Canyuelou is the only non-autobiographical novel in the text involved in this paper. But we can see the "trace" of the theme of the book from the self-report of SKY Lee (appearing as Sharon Li) in Women. First of all, all the female characters in this book have the same fate: having children. Li's greatest sympathy for her mother is that after she came to see her husband in Aberdeen Port, British Columbia, she "gave birth to one child after another, but she was in poor health" (9 1). Family disputes in Canyuelou are mainly due to the fact that family members turn racial or gender discrimination into mutual pressure. Li's family disputes are not so extreme. Their families are closely related and support each other. On the other hand, every family member (except Li himself) has problems caused by racial discrimination or poverty. For example, when her father was frustrated at work, he "didn't see clearly who oppressed him, but went home to oppress his family and destroy himself" (94).

Although the theme of Canyuelou is related to Li's personal experience, she is not limited by her personal history when dealing with ethnic history: she not only deals with the history of Vancouver Chinatown from a broader perspective, but also gives history two forms of self-reference. First of all, Canyuelou deals with the history of the same period (Canyuelou-1892 to1986; Xiao-19 13 turn 1987) is also related to Vancouver Chinatown, but the angles of the two are very different. The focus of Little Aunt's Child is a working family in Chinatown. Canyue Building has a wider scope. The emphasis is on the Wang family of the merchant class, but the Wang family is related to bachelors in Chinatown, other working-class people (such as waitresses) and even aborigines. In the way of presenting history, My Aunt's Children is a biography loyal to historical facts. "Canyue Lou" will describe the contradictions and historical facts between the fictional Wang family (especially the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law) (1924 Jenny? Smith's murder shows the interactive relationship between public history and family private history. "Double Happiness" rewrites the real story of immigrant families and growth with comedy, while the history of China in "Canyuelou" belongs to the male family history (male family legend; Cf Chao 344) was rewritten as a female family sitcom. It centers on women and their styles (family pop dramas) and takes the "real" history belonging to men as the background; It exposes the privacy of the former, but retains the mystery of the latter (who killed Jenny? )。 In addition, Canyuelou shows the subjective construction of history: although it covers unofficial history, official history and spans four generations of families, the female narrator/author in the text shows that everything was built by her. While reconstructing the family past, she also marked the fiction of history by commenting on the past and her own language. On the one hand, she "objectively" calls people from the past to talk to her, on the other hand, she implies the subjectivity of this book through dialogue-"It is not a story of generations, but a story of collective thinking by one person" (189).

In other words, compared with the subjective presentation of the story of growing up and leaving home in Double Happiness, the dialogue in Canyuelou caused subjective and objective dialectics. From the formal point of view, the formal framework of the text is on the one hand a family popular drama with the background of popular history, and on the other hand a "growth story of female artists" (K? Nstlerinroman). These two forms explain each other as a framework. Therefore, the "present" of this book is that the protagonist "writer" Kay tried to understand the mysteries and disputes of the past through writing after the production was completed, and her own exploration and growth also became the answer and ending of the past. In other words, the author of this book grew up by writing the past into a popular novel. However, Canyuelou itself is not a popular novel: under the framework of the artist's growth story, the form of popular novel is interpreted, recognized and criticized, and finally replaced. Coincidentally, biographer Zhong Deni once criticized this book as "a popular drama selling cleverness" ... and tended to over-express "(chong 199023). On the one hand, Zhong's comments show that the two authors have different styles; On the other hand, it can be seen that many readers, including Zhong Deni, did not notice that the text was not selling cleverness, but expressed its political issues through "popular" content, comments and formal interaction with "anti-vulgar" authors.

The first level of "anti-vulgarity" is Kay's criticism and parody of his style. After telling the tragic ending of Ting An and Mei Feng, she immediately criticized her writing as "glib"184. Later, she pointed out that on the one hand, writers have the right to fantasize, on the other hand, writers' shortcomings are "emotional expansion and contraction between others and themselves, stories and themselves" ("emotional contraction and expansion between people and these stories"). Therefore, in the choice of story form, she can make the story "the air fluctuates and bends, the heat is amazing, or it is full of fantasy", or she can make a game-style opinion survey to decide "various ways to destroy love" (185). Here, Kay criticized, analyzed and joked her vulgar language. For another example, she changed from self-mockery to seriousness. First, she named her book "The House Cursed by Sorrow", and then imagined that the novel was adapted into a film called "The Temple of the King" (208-9). The titles of these popular romantic dramas were denounced as indecent by Kai's nanny Qi, but when Kai decided that "[herself] was the end of the story" (Resolution), Qi thought she was too serious. Kay immediately retorted, "when do you need to give meaning to the life-and-death struggle of three generations?" (2 10) If the author's comments he refers to highlight the boundaries of popular drama forms, here Kay expresses the author's purpose of using popular drama forms-giving meaning to family conflicts.

How to give meaning? The second level of "anti-vulgarity" in the text is to explain these conflicts so that they are no longer "exotic" or "alien". Kay (or Li) uses the form of popular novels, not playing formal games; Instead, it uses form to accept and standardize content. In a more realistic genre, women's excessive emotional expression in a difficult environment is likely to be belittled or marginalized. However, the characteristics of popular drama are excessive: "too many reasons, too common meaning ... and too many motives" ("excessive results exceed causes, foreign ordinal numbers ... meaning exceeds motives" by Steve Neil Cote in Geraghty 187). Therefore, within this boundary, the extreme and hysterical reaction of women is acceptable. However, different from traditional popular novels, Kai/Li broke the peace treaty of "strangeness is truth", not only parodied the language form of "excess", but also explained the reasons for the emergence of "excess" content. After describing the violent conflict between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, Kay began to question why they were so hysterical. Her girlfriend Hermia explained that hysteria is a way for "lost children" to express their needs. According to He's explanation, women are all "lost children": "We are forced to be separated from our mothers prematurely and to rely on the male world as much as possible by any means-and the world refuses to accept us" (138). With the help of Hermia, Kay learned about the double displacement of women in Chinatown-leaving their families (mothers) and living with "zhina men" who were rejected by whites. Knowing the historical reasons of their violent behavior, she would rather "romanticize them into the bloodline of women with passion and fierceness in their veins" (145) than marginalize them like realistic novels and accept the fate of silence, passivity, madness or death.

Within the framework of popular novels, what Kay pursues and reconstructs is the conflict between the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law of the Wang family, as well as the privacy of illegitimate children and close relatives. Like Winnie, Zhong Deni's mother, Kay's mother Beatrice needs silence to avoid the pain and guilt brought to her by the past. For Kay, this "Great Wall of Silence and Invisibility" (180) is a characteristic of Chinese Canadians, and she wants to break it. But like Winnie, Kay's understanding of the past is not overnight: Kay's pursuit began in 1967, and she approached her uncle Morgan and learned about the past that Morgan had excavated. After Morgan's alcoholism collapsed, Kay discovered the past from Qi and learned about it with He's help. During the long search, my mother was silent. It was not until 1986 that Kay's son was born that he proved that he was not affected by intermarriage. Therefore, the fragmented and staggered form of this book not only breaks the time sequence of traditional historical coherence, but also highlights that the reconstruction of history is from the past (1924 and 1962 family conflicts) to the present (1967- Kay and Morgan, 1968- Kay and Qi). The purpose of dialogue is to avoid narrow perspectives and provide opportunities for women to speak. Therefore, Kay must reject Morgan's male history in order to talk to women; She questioned and criticized the role of her ancestors (such as great-grandmother Mulan), but also questioned her own criticism motivation and angle (31-32); Finally, she called four generations of women together to talk and find a way out of the conflict between women.

In addition to Kay's criticism, affirmation, listening and construction of the past, the author Li also explained and recognized the "excessive" behavior of women, and took Kay's growth as the conclusion of this history. One way to explain it is to put it in the historical background. In order to highlight the influence of the Chinese Exclusion Act (1923), the conflict between Li Mulan and Mei Feng began at1924-the same year as the murder of Jenny Smith in history. The two incidents influenced each other, both of which were related to discrimination against immigrants from China. As mentioned in the introduction of this article, the significance of the Chinese Exclusion Act is to legally recognize the long-standing discrimination against Chinese, and its most important influence is to force Chinatown to be more closed and continue its form of married bachelors. In Kay's words, "Since 1923, the harm of the Chinese Exclusion Act has been highlighted. The rapid decline, retreat and self-restraint of Chinese ethnic groups is the best opportunity for inbreeding "(147). With the exclusion and isolation of men in China, Mulan and Mei Feng, women who depend on men, are more lonely and have no autonomy. First of all, their only legal identity is "wife"; Mulan had to rely on her husband to prove her status as a "businesswoman", a daughter-in-law bought by the Wang family from the mainland at a large price. Secondly, in a group of silent men, both of them are lonely and miss their sister Tao in their hometown. Although they are both victims, under the control of the patriarchal society, the two women did not support each other. Mulan became "demanding and noisy" in order to change her disadvantage of being alone in Chinatown. Moreover, she vented her hatred of her female identity on her daughter-in-law who was regarded as a "nameless production container" (26-3 1).

In addition to simultaneity, this paper also links the dispute between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law with Smith case on several levels. First of all, like the Chinese Exclusion Act, the "history" of the murder case has once again become the reason for the fiction of the story: it is precisely because Hua Mulan's husband, Gui Zhang, is the head of the local Chinese community and is busy handling this case that the two women are forgotten and fight against the law alone. Secondly, both incidents are related to the feminization of racial discrimination in China: the murder case highlights the symbolic "castration" of China men in society; The ultimate cause of family conflicts is Mulan's son's actual incompetence. Smith, a prostitute, was suspected to have been killed by Feng Xing, a footman, which led the mainstream society to be more suspicious of Chinatown society, and the enactment of laws further restricted the job opportunities of Chinese. On the one hand, this law prevents them from approaching white women, on the other hand, it also relegates them to the traditional "female" status and does not allow them to enter and leave the public sphere. The murder case is still unsolved, but the "secret" discovered by Kay's narrative is not who is the murderer, but the disparity between white women and China men. "The woman in white will remind Feng Xin of his loneliness, and her proximity shows that he is fighting a trapped beast" (222). Similarly, Gui Zhang finally discovered that the secret revealed in this case was that the first generation of China men became "eternal cowards" under the oppression of the system. In Chinatown, where there are more men than women, these men are relegated to the status of "women" and become each other's "substitute wives" (226).

The most direct representative of this "castration" social status is that Mulan's son Cai Fu is actually infertile; The most far-reaching influence is the fragmentation and disorder of kinship among Chinese groups. The incompetence of long hair is not only in fertility. He also bullies the weak and fears the hard, and has no principle: in the dispute between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, he chooses to listen to the strong mother; In the face of bullying by street hooligans, he can only resist the smallest; Then go to the waitress Song Anjia to vent their anger. The most important problem is that the secret of this person's incompetence is only known by An Song on the edge; The two women struggling in the center of the king's power are incompetent without knowing the source of their power-the male-dominated society in Chinatown and even their long hair. Therefore, they did retain their responsibility in the patriarchal society-to carry on the family line and use it as a bargaining chip for power. When it was impossible to have a son at home, she went out for help-Mulan turned to the waitress An Sok for help, so An Sok had to have a son with her friend Wu Heli; Mei Feng turned to the orphan court for help. Ironically, the "excessive" maintenance of the royal family's lifeline has brought about the division of family relations (conflict and "illegal" children), and then the excessive closeness of family relations (inbreeding). Ting 'an, the main reason for the excessive kinship, is the victim of the initial split kinship between Guangxi and Zhang (his husband-wife relationship with Clara Kerola, an aborigine, and his father-son relationship with Ting 'an). The result of excessive kinship is a complete break of kinship (the baby born of consanguineous marriage died, and its protagonist Morgan and the Wangs became feuds).

The excessive separation and combination of kinship and the distortion of blood lineage are the common themes of popular dramas. And the exposure of this plot began with Morgan looking for a popular drama (unsolved murder) in the official history; This passage, which Bi thought broke the silence, was also dubbed by Kay as "Datong Folk Drama" ... Life is the TV screen in the afternoon (22). However, unlike soap operas, the author Li discovered the historical context of this story: the dispute between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law is not only based on the Chinese Exclusion Act, but also the murder of Smith, and even the choice of splitting or combining other characters is related to the historical environment-poverty in hometown or the closure of Chinatown. For example, Gui Zhang abandoned Clara because he couldn't stand the famine in aboriginal areas and hometown. An Ting's love for Mei Feng was exploited because he was an "orphan" who grew up in a bachelor society and knew nothing about women. The feud between the first generation and the second generation will continue until the third generation is persecuted because of the small Chinatown group, which makes its members-Kidman and Bikis-love each other more, thus exposing the secret that they are illegitimate children. The marriage between Lian Po and Morgan also has historical inevitability. As Kay said, "The sharp decrease of China population and the retreat of self-control are the best time for inbreeding" (147). The meeting between Sue and Morgan, who are half-brothers, seems destined to be in the closed Chinatown. For Lai Su, it seems that "[they] each found the lost fragments of their lives" (173).

Different from Aunt Tai's children, the purpose of reconstructing history through Kay is not only to understand the inevitable excessive combination and division of closed groups in the past. Moreover, the possibility of breaking apartheid was found in the past, and the possibility of women uniting to change the system was put forward now. The mistake of the past, in a word, is that Chinatown is closed and divided. Li pioneered the closure of family popular dramas in Preface and Conclusion, which can be traced back to the relationship with Clara 1892 and 1939. Did the Chinese workers at that time really marry the aborigines? I don't know, but the first recorded immigrants from China (1788) did-and they were helped by the aborigines described in the preface (Lee 17). Gui Zhang regretted leaving Clara all his life. This article ends with Gui Zhang's dying fantasy of meeting Clara again. Although this is a fable, it also presents the hope of the text: racial discrimination and apartheid are historical facts, but they are not inevitable.

In addition, the hostility between female characters in the past is made up by Kay's Now. Kay/Mei Feng, a writer who corrected and ended the mistakes of popular drama through the growth story of "female artist", pointed out her past mistakes: she attached to male authority and hated her female body. It can be seen that the most serious influence of patriarchal control and racial discrimination on women's roles is the mutual hostility of women between generations and different classes/races. In contrast, in Kay's life, we have seen the solidarity of women across generations and classes. In the past, childbirth was the main reason why mother-in-law and daughter-in-law turned against each other; Now, after giving birth, Kay relies on her mother to give her "peace" and establish a "female order" (127). In addition, childbirth is an opportunity for her to question patriarchal control and start writing. In the past, Song An was discriminated against and used because of her race (Hakka), class (waitress) and no husband: Mei Feng hated her dirty clothes and hair, and Mulan used her as a tool for bearing children. But in Kay's narrative, An Sok also has her dignity, and she can even have her feet washed. In Kay's own story, the unity of women transcends the boundaries of class and family. In addition to her mother, Kay is also deeply influenced by two other women, both of whom are marginal members of the family tree. First, the housekeeper and nanny, pray. Qi was born in Malaya, China, adopted by Indians, and moved to Canada under political persecution. Although she is a housekeeper, she is also the one who protects Bibisi and her dreams. For Kay, she is actually another mother. Her practical wisdom and ability are the pillars of Kay ("As long as I pray, I believe I will be supported when I fall" 127), and she is one of the main sources of past stories.

What is the second marginal person? Hermia is an orphan: her father is a powerful and ruthless gangster in Hong Kong, sowing seeds everywhere, so Hermia has to make an appointment to see her father first. As a good friend of Kay, he encouraged Kay to be an artist as early as 197 1. But at that time, Kay paid attention to "legality, tradition and conventionality" (4 1), just wondering if he was the illegitimate daughter of a gangster. It was not until 1986 that Kay wrote about the illegality of his family history (including himself) that he accepted He's suggestion, rejected tradition (studying economics, making money and getting married) and made up his mind to be a full-time writer. Hermione's most important influence on Kay was that she helped Kay finally escape from the patriarchal society/heterosexual marriage and went to Hong Kong to join her in the world. Therefore, Li/Kay regards Kay's cross-class and cross-family female alliance as the final result and solution of the struggle and division of several generations of women in the family.

In Hermia's words, Kay decided to "live a novel life" instead of just writing novels. In the process of her growing up as an artist, she first rejected Morgan's male history, and then wrote a "family popular romance drama" for women and understood its inevitability. However, to understand the "excessive" history of women is not to repeat the same mistakes. When Kay learned that Sue died of pneumonia rather than suicide, the ending of the popular drama began to be rewritten. The ending is no longer a "great tragedy of family ethics", but Kay walked out of this popular drama and the social barriers that caused it, and lived another novel focusing on women's unity. Here, this paper uses Kay to realize Su's unfinished wish: first, not to let her "baby/work" be destroyed by external forces; One is to respond to Sue's crying: "All these constraints that we voluntarily impose on ourselves! Untie them! Let me go! Don't tie it! 」( 189)

It can be seen that Canyue Building is a functional integration between mainstream culture and national background. It reconstructs ethnic history to subvert the mysterious and sinful impression of mainstream prints in Chinatown; It uses the mutual definition of popular drama and "the story of female artists' growth" to question the imprisonment of women from disadvantaged ethnic groups in white/patriarchal society and open the possibility of unity among women, outside the family and between races. At the end of the article, although Kay left Canada for Hong Kong, the text itself (and SKY Lee himself) actively joined the Canadian society and tried to change its racial and gender structure.

Intravenously injected

After The Broken Moon Building and The Children of Thai menstruation, Wei Sen Tsai's Jade Peony (1995) once again focuses on revealing the secrets of Vancouver Chinatown. For Cui, "the Chinese community in Vancouver is full of buried news" (Bemrose 64). Interestingly, one of them may be the mystery of his own identity. In a radio interview with Cui, a listener insisted that Cui's late mother was not real, but what he saw in the street was real.

Indeed, under the influence of the history of Chinese exclusion, privacy and identity are closely related. The privacy of family/conflict is the common point of the four texts selected in this paper. The motives for protecting privacy may be different: avoiding immigration investigation with forged documents (Linda's mother, sister-in-law and her "document" daughter), getting rid of guilt and healing (Winnie and Bi) or keeping the family decent and happy (double happiness). But the same result is that concealment and repression will inevitably lead to the incompleteness, conflict or crisis of identity. Therefore, the daughter in this article must speak, reveal her privacy, and coordinate between the national history and the mainstream culture of her country now.

In other words, this choice is a reinterpretation of the hyphen in one's identity. Linda Lee denies her hyphenation and Chinese identity, but paradoxically, her love life is still influenced by her Chinese identity because of her sympathy and incomprehension for her mother. Double Happiness at the Gate describes how children in China make the transition from "flower" to "home" in conjunctions. In order to prove the necessity of running away from home, the film portrays China's parents as rigid, simple and inflexible. On the other hand, the wife and aunt and the children in Canyuelou kept hyphens, which blended their cultures to varying degrees. The children of my wife and aunt shows the mistakes made by the characters in the book with sympathy and loyalty, and affirms that they are strong survivors in a difficult environment. Canyuelou presents the past from a broader perspective, explaining personal mistakes through the unfairness of historical and social structure, but at the same time, it also gives characters more opportunities to reflect on themselves and express their desires with imagination. The children of my wife and aunt put the solution to life difficulties on the fact of immigration. Therefore, after the reunion of Chinese and Canadian families showed the pros and cons of fate, all the tragic crimes of Canadian families ended. On the contrary, Canyuelou put the solution on letting Kay reject the existing inequality and imprisonment, so she criticized the mainstream society more.

Another significance of integrating the past is to reorganize groups (members). "Aunt Tai's Children" shows that after immigration, it is impossible for two families to reunite into one; On the other hand, this book shows that family division will never be complete. In a strange and exclusive society, not only divided family members will still support each other, but also there is affection and friendship between the United States and Britain and her documentary daughter. This proves that immigration also means redefining family relationships. In this respect, Canyuelou further expands the definition of "family group": blood relationship and even legitimacy are no longer important; What is important is the unity and mutual assistance of the disadvantaged groups (women, the lower class and the disadvantaged groups).

Finally, I don't want to criticize the personal choice of acculturation, but I want to discuss the dialogue between the text and the mainstream in different identity positions. Li Linda's words show that in today's society, even if the disadvantaged groups think they are completely assimilated, the environment is not allowed. However, her assimilation stance has no criticism or influence on mainstream culture. The other three texts have their own characteristics in dealing with ethnic history. "Double Happiness" makes it comic, while "Little Aunt's Child" tells the sad past directly and avoids promiscuity. Canyue Building is just the opposite of the first two. It is highly technical: it presents strong feelings, tortuous plots and complicated forms. All three works have won awards, which proves that they have attracted the attention of mainstream Canadian society. But in my opinion, on the theme of race/gender relationship, "Double Happiness" presents nothing more than comedy racial color and the stereotype of the first generation of Chinese; My wife and aunt's children explain the abnormal past of Chinatown to the mainstream society. Canyuelou criticizes racial and gender inequality through too many forms and contents. Even though I think the Canyue Building is the most critical, Rita Wong claims that her experience in reading this book is "an uncomfortable swing between subversion and stereotype" (12 1). Why is this happening? This may be another duality of Chinese literature: when dealing with past privacy, they both subvert and support the foreign image of Chinatown constructed by mainstream culture. Privacy will eventually be revealed, but in today's Chinese-Canadian society, is it Mrs. Li and Mrs. Xiao who are abusive, or the mother-in-law who is fighting to carry on the family line, or Ayu who is constantly dating? I look forward to seeing more Kay who lives or writes Chinese and Canadian culture without privacy and guilt.