Fortress Besieged by Qian Zhonshu
Introduction
Qian Zhongshu’s Fortress Besieged is a Chinese literature that depicts middle-class Chinese society. The novel was set before the Sino-Japan War when the hapless protagonist Fang Hung-Chien returns to Shanghai with a fake university degree from an unknown American university. It also illustrates aspects of social satire and Chinese distrust about relationships, relatives and human conducts. The author writes that Fang met Miss Su and Miss Pao on the French lining home where they became accustomed with each other. Qian states that
“With Miss Pao it was not a matter of heart or soul. She had not any change of heart since she did not have a heart,”(Qian 123).
This depicts the character of Miss Pao about relationship and Chinese culture regarding the relationship among the youngsters. Although the novel shows different stylistics usages of comedy and satire of the Chinese society, the impressions of the characters illustrate contrasting views and interpretation.
Synopsis
While at the university, Fang had a pre-marriage agreement struck, by his parent, to marry an unidentified girl. Unfortunately, the girl died before Fang had returned home after his studies. Therefore, Fang managed to meet Miss Su on their way back to Chinese after completion of their studies from abroad countries. Miss Su’s characters and behaviours are clearly portrayed by her first attitudes towards Fang. This attitude towards men implies that she is still unattached and feels frustrated about that situation. Similarly, Miss Pao was also on the same boat that the other two characters were on board to home. Fang was attracted to Pao and pursued her with the purpose of falling in affection with her (Qian 110). However, Pao alighted with her spouse who was a doctor when they reached Hong Kong. This made Fang disappointed, and he decides to be intimate with Miss Su was also in the voyage. They reached their destination in Shanghai, and everyone started searching for job opportunities since they were fresh graduates from University. A few days later, Fang decides to contact Miss Su, and they meet at her place. This is where the author introduces Miss Tang as a cousin to Su. However, during the difficult times of his life, Fang met with his future love mate Chao Hsin-mei, who has also returned from the University. The two later became secured teaching jobs at the newly introduced San Lu University in Hunan Province. Fang ended up dropping his job and the companionships of both Su and Tang at the same time (Xie, 30).
Theme of Love
At the start of the novel, Chao Hsin-mei mistook Fang Hung-chien as his love rival because Fang was interested in Su whom he had been admiring since their childhood days. This made Chao confront Fang for breaking his desires of wooing Miss Su (Sollars and Jennings 453). However, Fang was only interested in Miss Tang, and Chao decided to develop friendship with him. Fang character is both cultured and naive because he was sometimes considerate and thoughtful in his actions. Love is a significant theme in this piece that revolves around all the characters as illustrated by the author (Wong, 56). It starts at the beginning of the storyline between Fang, Miss Su and Miss Pao, but ends tragically at the end between Fang and Chao. This shows that love is a process that grows and disintegrates in the course of interaction between individuals. Parents should guide their children in such matters to ensure that they do not make mistakes when marriage time reaches (Ch’ien Chung-Shu 312).
Therefore, Fang is shown to make frequent visits to Miss Su’s place, which made her think that Fang was truly into her and would marry her in the future. In contrast, Fang was just a friend and had no intention of showing love to Su. For example, “Fang held Miss Su’s hand (Qian 123).” This example demonstrates how Fang presented Miss Su wrong indication when he held her hand.
This also shows that the affections were misinterpreted by miscommunication between the characters. For instance, when Miss Pao showed intimate relationship with Fang, he misinterpreted this to be a true love. Pao disembarked from the voyage and was received by his lover. The author states
“Marriage is like a Fortress besieged; those who are outside want to get in, and those who are inside want to get out (Qian 143).”
This reference to marriage reveals the novel’s theme of love and tragic results of misinterpretations. The author also reveals how continuous demands by societal customs create a vague position for everybody especially Fang and Miss Su. Through the marriage and love pressures of Fang and Su, Qian creates a tragedy in which genuine and symbolic marriage assume.
However, as a discouraged man far away from his home town, especially when the university employment environment meant nothing, but dissatisfactions, Fang unsurprisingly felt isolated and doubtful (Chang and Owen 167). This is the time when Miss Su came, in handy, to arrange for his journey home. It is at this moment that chances she felt it was love that drove Fang to grab her hand. The caring and sympathy from both of them appeared as such a substantial relief that Fang was finally surprised, thinking it his fate. The subject of besiegement features prominently all over this highly organized and cultured article. It is evident towards the final stages of the book, which deals with marriage and its break-up. This happens because of traditional anticipations that clash with the morals and stresses of modern life (Ch’ien Chung-Shu 324).
Conclusion
Qian uses complex aspects of Chinese cultures to display challenges of love in modern society where young people face difficulties in tackling relationship issues. For example, Fang faces difficulties in determining a suitable lover to marry after his marriage deals failed. She meets two girls and is confused who is suitable to give his love. He discovers that Miss Pao took him granted for being intimate with him yet she had a lover. On the other hand, Miss Su also misinterprets Fang’s closeness with her for love, which is otherwise to Fang. The character of the protagonist is displayed in several occasions using relationship triangles. For instance, Fang does not recognize his situation in front of his friends until at the end of the novel. He does not understand whether those interactions are romantic with Pao and Tang or political with Kao and Han. Qian dramatizes the terrible outcomes of confusion at the time when Hung-Chien baffling Tang with Su on the phone. The novel was a true depiction of culture, relationship and modernity in determining a person’s future live in marriage.
Works cited
Chang, Kang-i S, and Stephen Owen. The Cambridge History of Chinese Literature.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Print.
Ch’ien Chung-Shu. (n.d.). Fortress besieged. [S.l.], Indiana Univ Print.
Press.
Qian, Zhongshu. Fortress Besieged. London: Penguin, 2006.
Print.
Sollars, Michael, and Arbolina L. Jennings. The Facts on File Companion to the World
Novel: 1900 to the Present. New York: Facts on File, 2008. Internet resource.
Wong, Yoon-wah. Essays on Chinese Literature: A Comparative Approach. Singapore:
Singapore University Press, National University of Singapore, 1988. Print.
Xie, Yaling. Inside the Fortress Besieged: Will Chinese Life Sciences Post doctorates in the
United States Return to China. , 2007. Print.
