Literature for Children and Beyond: Historicising the Fantastic Utopia in ‘The Country of the Red Heart’

Abstract

As a major voice in children's literature in China, Feng Zikai uses his own life experience and the historical context of contemporary wars to negotiate the Chinese cultural myth of ‘The Peach Blossom Spring’ [Tao Hua Yuan]. ‘The Country of the Red Heart’ [Chi Xin Guo] is a fantastic utopia that exists parallel to our world, revealing his efforts to depict a pastoral dreamland and his subsequent disillusion in the face of the horrors of war and political strife. It is a story of fantasy as well as a political move on the part of Feng Zikai to address the historical milieu of China during the time of World War II, the Civil War, and the Korean War. Feng Zikai goes beyond the combination of Chinese-style cartoon [manhua] drawings and grotesquely fanciful plot as a war story for children. It is a modern political parable that demonstrates the vulnerability of his utopia in the first part of twentieth-century China.