Chinese Journal of Literary Criticism

No.2, 2024

Spatial Narrative Method and the Spirit of the 1990s: On Wei Wei’s Yanxia Li

(Abstract)

Cong Zhichen

Ten years in the making, Wei Wei has announced her literary ambition to write a broad history with her novel Yanxia Li (In the Clouds). The narrative structure of the chronicle is in fact a spatial structure, in which Wei Wei’s intentional portrayal of the narrator freely travels through different time and space, summoning mixed information to overlap at the same moment, creating an aesthetic effect of polyphony. Through this creative spatial narrative method, Wei Wei writes about the unique spiritual temperament of the “post-’70s” generation, who grew up in the transitional stage of time and the urban-rural interface.