The Travels of Lao Can and Exposure of the World of Officials

Both Liu E’s The Travels of Lao Can ( Lao Can youji ) and Li Baojia’s Exposure of the World of Officials ( Guanchang xianxing ji ) are generally considered the great novels of indictment ( qianze xiaoshuo ) of the late Qing. Written in an age of transition, these two novels reflect both the values of traditional Chinese culture and the influences of Western civilization. This chapter examines how they convey an anxiety about the country’s fate; how they fashion a mode of satiric realism, through which they ponder the problem of social justice and national survival; and how they demonstrate their innovative accomplishments in the techniques of narrative. With regard to the narrative format and thematic structure, both of the novels respond to the mid-eighteenth-century masterpiece The Scholars in their own distinctive ways. Whereas the vigorous cynicism present in The Travels of Lao Can partakes of an autobiographical sensibility and lyric meditation, Exposure of the World of Officials develops a grotesque symbolic language that contests the old moralities of reading and writing by refracting, as well as exposing, reality.