What is the themes and meaning of DING LING * WHEN I WAS IN XIA VILLAGE *?

Question

What is the themes and meaning of the story of DING LING * WHEN I WAS IN XIA VILLAGE *

Answer 1

I hope this gets you started on your project.

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A Fresh Start

Jesse Hoselton

When I was in Xia Village, by Ding Ling, is a story of reincarnation of sorts. It examines one girl's struggle to break away from her past because she can be seen or see herself only as the girl she once was while in the village or as the impure person she became among the Japanese. It is an account of fate, rumor, shame and rebirth during a period of hatred for the Japanese.

ZhenZhen was captured by Japanese soldiers and became a spy during the Sino-Japanese war. Upon her return to the village, shame and curiosity tinted rumors abounded among the villagers. She had been raped and had been married to a foreign devil. In an era where emphasis was still placed on the traditional female virtues and chastity, sleeping with the Japanese soldiers, regardless of her position as a spy for the Chinese, was horribly frowned upon. The women of the village were especially contemptuous and tried to represent themselves as models of purity to contrast with her.

Her past lover, Xia Dabao, was very much different than these women. ZhenZhen had been in love with him, and had been running away to become a nun so as to avoid the arranged marriage her father had set up for herself when she was captured by the Japanese. Xia therefore felt as if he had been the reason she had been captured and suffered such a fate. ZhenZhen's family approved of him marrying her after she had returned because he would probably be the only marriage offer she would receive. No man would willingly marry a woman made impure by the enemy; only Xia would marry her because they had been in love.

Yet ZhenZhen could neither marry her past love, nor remain in the village of her past. The narrator told her that "when the end of a road is reached, one must turn," however, the turn she decided to take is quite different than what everyone expected from her. She recognized that she needed to part ways because she had become an outsider in her village and wanted to start over.

The narrator noticed in ZhenZhen's eyes when she first met her, that there was a spark of life and enthusiasm for it. She had hardened herself during her suffering, forced herself on without much thought, and in the village she was still caught in this numbed state of mind. Only by leaving the village, whose people would from then on always look at her and see only her sufferings, could she release herself completely from those experiences. She needed to be among strangers, and be healed of the disease she had contracted if she wanted to start her new life as a new person.

She had told the author that among the enemy she "somehow had to find a way to survive, and if at all possible, to live a life that was meaningful." By moving to Yan'an, the cradle of Chinese communist revolution, she hoped to find new meaning in life and reinvent herself. That spark the narrator had seen in her eyes, as well as her constant curiosity and intense observation of all that surrounded her, was also part of her desire to go off and experience life elsewhere with a clean slate.

Using the character ZhenZhen, Ding Ling depicted Japanese resentment, the importance of tradition and a sense of hope. ZhenZhen was done with what she had to do among the Japanese; she had shamed her parents by refusing an arranged marriage and by refusing Xia, her last chance of being accepted by her village. Yet she still felt that if she could break away from all of her past, she could start living again.

http://www.wooster.edu/chinese/Chinese/reviews/Xia_Village.htm