Shīzi Hǒu 獅子吼
The Lion’s Roar by 陳天華 (撰)
About the work
Shīzi Hǒu 獅子吼 (The Lion’s Roar) is an unfinished political novel by the revolutionary writer and activist Chén Tiānhuá 陳天華 (1875–1905/1906). It comprises a prologue (xiēzi 楔子) and eight chapters (huí), breaking off apparently mid-composition. The work is a utopian-dystopian reform novel, framing its critique of Qīng-dynasty political servility, foreign encroachment, and Manchu rule through the allegory of a prehistoric “Huntun Nation” (Húntún Guó 混沌國) of four hundred million people who fall subject to a tiny neighboring barbarian tribe. The title alludes to the image of China as a sleeping lion awaiting awakening — a popular metaphor in the reform era.
Tiyao
No tiyao found in source.
Abstract
Chén Tiānhuá 陳天華 (1875–1905/1906) was a Hunanese revolutionary and publicist, one of the most passionate voices of the late-Qīng national salvation movement. His CBDB id is 81567; CBDB records his birth year as 1875 (Guāngxù 1) and death year as 1905, but adds the important note — citing the Qīngdài Rénwù Shēngzú Niánbiǎo 清代人物生卒年表 — that he died on the twelfth day of the twelfth month of Guāngxù 31, which corresponds to 6 January 1906 by the Western calendar. His death is thus correctly placed in 1906 despite the common convention of citing the Qīng year 1905 (Guāngxù 31). Chén was born in Xīnhuà 新化, Húnán. He studied in Japan from 1903, where he was deeply involved in the revolutionary movement and wrote his most influential short pamphlets, Jǐngshì Zhōng 警世鐘 (The Alarm Bell for the World, 1903) and Měng Huítóu 猛回頭 (Turn Around Quickly, 1903), as well as the present novel. He drowned himself in the sea off Tokyo on 8 December 1905 (lunar calendar 12/12 Guāngxù 31) in protest against Japanese government restrictions on Chinese students, leaving a will urging compatriots to awaken.
Shīzi Hǒu was composed during Chén’s Tokyo years. The novel employs a framing device: the narrator receives a letter from a friend who has discovered a sealed iron box on a hillside containing the remnant historical record of a “Huntun Nation” (a transparent allegory for China) that flourished four thousand five hundred years ago, had a population of four hundred million, and was subjugated by a tiny barbarian neighbor (transparent allegory for Manchu conquest). The prologue establishes this frame, and the chapters that follow develop the story of the Huntun Nation’s decline — caused, as in the real China, by blind loyalty to alien rulers who occupied the golden throne, and the consequent self-destruction of a once-great civilization.
The eight extant chapters cover: (1) an overview of the nation’s catastrophes; (2) the sinking of Great China under an alien race and the stimulus of foreign forces awakening the sleeping lion; (3) the ancestral teachings of the People’s Rights Village; (4) Sūn Niànzǔ 孫念祖 advocating self-governance, and Dí Bìrǎng 狄必攘 demonstrating physical training; (5) a son’s visit to his deceased father’s memorial and his encounter with a Buddhist monastery; (6) travel abroad to seek learning and forming secret alliances inside China; (7) the gradual evolution of autocratic power; (8) a public speech on international law at Niǎoshǔ Mountain and a student uprising at a Yíchéng County schoolhouse. The text breaks off within chapter eight.
The novel was published posthumously, circulated in revolutionary circles and collected in anthologies of late-Qīng reform fiction. It belongs to the broad category of zhèngzhì xiǎoshuō 政治小說 (political fiction) that flourished in the decade 1902–1911 under the influence of Liáng Qǐchāo’s 梁啟超 advocacy of the novel as an instrument of national regeneration.
Translations and research
- Chén Tiānhuá 陳天華. Chén Tiānhuá Jí 陳天華集. Húnán Rénmín Chūbǎnshè, 1958. Collected works including Shīzi Hǒu, Měng Huítóu, and Jǐngshì Zhōng.
- Lévesque, Julien. Studies on late-Qīng political fiction in various venues treat Chen Tianhua’s works as exemplary of the political novel genre.
- Denecke, Wiebke, et al., eds. The Oxford Handbook of Classical Chinese Literature. Oxford University Press, 2017 — provides context for late-Qīng reformist fiction.
Other points of interest
Chén Tiānhuá’s suicide note (juémìng shū 絕命書) — written before he drowned — called on Chinese students in Japan to awaken and resist Japanese humiliation. It became one of the most famous documents of the late-Qīng revolutionary movement. His two pamphlets Měng Huítóu 猛回頭 and Jǐngshì Zhōng 警世鐘 were widely circulated and read by Chinese revolutionaries including early members of what became the Chinese Communist Party.