What is root-seeking literature?

Root-seeking literature refers to a literary form with the theme of "cultural root-seeking". In the mid-1980s, there was an upsurge of "cultural root-seeking" in China literary world. Writers began to explore traditional consciousness and national cultural psychology, and their creation was called "root-seeking literature".

1985, Han Shaogong declared for the first time in a programmatic paper "The Roots of Literature": "Literature has roots, and the roots of literature should be deeply rooted in the cultural soil of national traditions." He proposed that we should "base ourselves on reality and transcend the real world at the same time, and reveal some mysteries that determine the development of the country and the survival of mankind."

Under this theory, writers began to create, which is called "root-seeking school" in theoretical circles.

In the whole ideological trend of root-seeking literature, educated youth writers played a major role.

When they are mature, they need to find a cultural symbol of their own. This generation of writers must find their own world to prove the significance of their existence in the literary world.

They use their experience of going to the countryside and being close to farmers' daily life, and through this life experience, they further seek the lost traditional cultural value of the people.

It should be noted that they are not aborigines living in traditional folk customs. On the contrary, most of them are people who actively accept western modernist literature. However, when the modernist methods are directly criticized by political parties, they have to use national packaging to implicitly express the emerging modern consciousness.

Therefore, the essence of culture is not to return to tradition, but to find a more favorable reception field for modern western culture. After a deeper understanding of the history of modern western literature and the writer's situation, writers who are eager to "go out" in literature are required to realize that following some western writers and schools, even if they imitate it well, cannot be original artistic creation. In their view, it should be a more feasible way for China literature to look for something vital from China culture through the mirror of "world literature".