Du Wanxiang: The New Socialist Woman

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Despite its Communist trappings, Ding Ling’s 1978 “Du Wanxiang” is a story not about collective triumph but of individual victory. The heart of the tale lies in the paradox between inside and outside spaces—between the space of past and the space of the present, the space of women and the space of men. Critics have oft called Ding Ling’s final story a parable, a coming of age of the new socialist woman. Ding Ling’s use of the new socialist propaganda form, however, is ultimately done in irony; her final most autobiographical story is one last, haunting glance back at a lifetime of contradictions more aptly described as a confession. The life and loves of Du Wanxiang is a history of China’s own transformation from a feudal to a Communist society. Yet, it is ultimately this transition that Ding Ling finds most abhorrent precisely because she is unable to see a significant change. The category of the new socialist woman is ultimately, for Ding Ling, a superficial one, a mold re-cast from its feudal roots. Ding’s Ling’s personal transformation, illustrated by the archetypical life of Du Wanxiang, is likewise a farce, a renaming rather than an internalization of Communist logic.

The parallel between Du Wanxiang and Ding Ling must first begin with a historical analysis of the writer’s troubled life. In 1904, Ding Ling was born Jiang Bingzhi into a prominent gentry family in Hunan Province (Barlow 17). Her unconventional early life greatly contributed to the ideology she would eventually term “anarcho-feminist.” Ding Ling’s relationship to her mother figured especially prominently in the development of her political philosophy. Ding Ling’s father died when his daughter was just five years old, a situation that, under traditional circ...

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Early Republican Period. Honolulu: University of Hawaii, 1995. 14-61. Print.

Ding, Ling. "Du Wanxiang." I Myself Am A Woman: Selected Writings of Ding Ling. Ed. Tani E.

Barlow with Gary J. Bjorge. Boston: Beacon, 1989. 329-54. Print.

Ding Ling. “Thoughts on March 8.” I Myself Am A Woman: Selected Writings of Ding Ling. Ed.

Tani E. Barlow with Gary J. Bjorge. Boston: Beacon, 1989. 316-321.

Farquhar, Judith. "Du Wanxiang: The Rosy Glow of the Good Communist." Appetites: Food and

Sex in Postsocialist China. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2002. 167-74. Print.

Zedong, Mao. Speech. “Talks at the Yan'an Forum on Literature and Art.” 2 May 1942. Modern

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