Chinese Journal of Literary Criticism

No.3, 2025

The Reality and Illusion of History and Individuals—Notes on Ye Zhaoyan’s The Garden of the Qu Family

(Abstract)

Ji Jin

The Garden of the Qu Family revolves around the ups and downs of the fate of three generations of the Qu and Hou families in the area of the Qu Family Garden for more than half a century. While recording the history of the city, it also sings and cries for the historical changes and the fate of the characters. The author’s great handling of the relationship between characters, time and space shows the narrative art of simplifying the complex and making light of the heavy. In the spatialized or structured time frame, the fate of the characters is seamlessly embedded in the historical trajectory, and a group of characters interwoven by “real people,” “fools” and “mediocre people” and a variety of local life scenes are depicted in a fragmented narrative method and rich object images.