Abstract:

In the history of China in the late 20th century, there were many exiled intellectuals whose journeys illustrate the diverse ideological, philosophical, and artistic trajectories in response to stifling Maoist and post-Maoist rule. They can be distinguished in three distinct categories: the nostalgics, the resisters, and the cosmopolitans. Nostalgics are represented by the musician, Ma Sicong, who nurtured an unbreakable cultural tie to China even if he refused to join either the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) or Taiwan’s Nationalist Party (KMT). Resisters were the intellectuals who continued political struggle against the government such as Liu Binyan who fled to the United States in 1987 and pugnaciously participated in democratic advocacy. Cosmopolitans are epitomized by figures such as Liu Zaifu, who kept distance from both the Chinese government and anti-government forces overseas while pursuing the universal, transcendental qualities of cross-cultural intellectual traditions. Based on the study of these three groups of intellectuals, I aim to map the diversified pathways of exiled Chinese intellectuals, who responded to the political conundrums they faced overseas as well as the conflicts between Western and Chinese cultures distinctly. These pathways demonstrate that instead of being a unified and monolithic group, these intellectuals were a constellation of divergent socio-political and cultural potential.