THE MODERN CHINESE NOVEL.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1569, 12 October 1912, Page 9

THE MODERN CHINESE NOVEL.

China has many troubles, social and 'political, and the Canton correspondent of the "North China Herald" says that the modern Chinese novel is one , of thorn. The old classic fiction is being supplanted, it seems, by a new, horrific kind which is selling in great quantities, to tho disadvantage of Chineso taste and morals. Wo know how serious fiction is discredited hero by writers with unclean minds who are often enough touched with soino kind of enthusiasm and even picturo themselves as pioneers or moralists. In China, too, the ugly books make pretence, at least, of convoying to the thoughtless ,awf,ul warnings. These novels are hardly known outside China, and the Canton correspondent describes onewhich has the formidable title "The Magistrate's Decision on the Dismembered Corpse of a Bake." The only passage which he gives pictures the heroine in terms of smooth fancy which wo can believe to liavo been derived from the classical works; but a description is given of the plot. This is a horrible and disgusting intrigue with a violent denouement, the suicide of the chief villain after Ms queue has been cut off by an enraged mother, tho rash mutilation of his body, tho appearance of a secondary and more mercenary villain, who packs the other and dismembered one into a trunk, and then discovery and disaster. At the end comes moralising and a formal discouragement from vice, but it is hardly pretended that the young Chinaman reads this kind of thing to improve his mind. Prosecution of authors and publishers is suggested, and no doubt the circumstances are different from our own. where tho concentration of public opinion may do so much. Yet even here public opinion, is far from a complete safeguard, partly because it is itself vitiated by lewd curiosity and partly because it is indolent and uncritical and will not discriminate between good and bad when ordinary limits are exceeded. —"Manchester Guardian."