Colleage Chinese - Conversation | Generated by AI
A: Hey, I’ve been looking through these 50 multiple-choice questions for the 04729 University Chinese self-study exam. They cover a huge range—from classical poetry and prose to modern literature and basic literary knowledge. Let’s dive in and discuss some key ones, focusing on how these works function in practice, their rhetorical mechanisms, and cultural significance rather than just memorizing facts.
B: Absolutely, that’s the right approach. These questions test not only recall but understanding of literary techniques and historical context. Take the first one: Which work is NOT by Su Shi? Options include Chibi Fu, Niannujiao · Chibi Huaigu, Deng Taishan Ji, and Shui Diao Ge Tou · Mingyue Ji Shi You. Practically, Su Shi’s style shines in his fu and ci—evocative, philosophical, blending personal reflection with nature and history. Chibi Fu uses vivid imagery of the Yangtze and historical reflection to explore life’s transience. But Deng Taishan Ji? That’s not his; it’s more associated with other travel records. Su Shi’s works often carry a sense of detachment and humor in facing adversity.
A: Right, and that detachment mechanism is key in his ci too, like in Shui Diao Ge Tou, where the moon serves as a bridge across distance and time, turning personal longing into universal sentiment. Now, look at the phrase ‘先天下之忧而忧，后天下之乐而乐’—from Yueyang Lou Ji by Fan Zhongyan. In practice, this isn’t just moral posturing; it’s a rhetorical device that elevates the scholar-official’s role, using parallelism to contrast worry and joy, urging selfless service amid political exile. How does that compare to Ouyang Xiu’s more relaxed tone in Zuiweng Ting Ji?
B: Great contrast. Fan’s line employs grand, symmetrical antithesis to inspire ethical responsibility, almost like a manifesto for the engaged intellectual. Ouyang Xiu, though, uses a lighter, self-deprecating voice—drunken joy in nature—to subtly critique rigid Confucian seriousness while still affirming harmony. Both are Song prose masters, but Fan pushes moral urgency, Ouyang balances it with aesthetic pleasure. Another good one: ‘海内存知己，天涯若比邻’ by Wang Bo. This line mechanizes friendship through spatial metaphor—the vast world shrinks when true understanding exists. It’s a practical emotional tool for maintaining bonds in an era of officials posted far away.
A: Exactly, and that spatial compression is a common rhetorical move in Tang poetry to humanize distance. Switching to the ‘Three Perfections’—poetry, calligraphy, painting. Su Shi is often cited, but Wang Wei historically pioneered it as the poetic-painter archetype. In practice, these arts interlock: a poem’s imagery inspires brushwork, calligraphy adds rhythm. Zheng Banqiao later embodied it with his eccentric orchid-bamboo style. Now, the chuanqi genre peaked in Tang—short, romantic tales with supernatural twists, functioning as entertainment and moral commentary through vivid narrative mechanisms like dream sequences or karmic retribution.
B: Tang chuanqi laid groundwork for later vernacular fiction. But the Gong’an school in late Ming—袁宏道, 袁中道—pushed for natural, individualistic expression against rigid formalism. Their prose feels conversational, prioritizing genuine emotion over ornate patterns. Compare that to the骈文 style: heavy parallelism, four-six rhythms, ornate diction—beautiful but often artificial, used in official documents or display pieces. Han Yu attacked that in the guwen movement, advocating plain, ancient-style prose for clear argumentation and moral force. ‘文起八代之衰’ praises him for reviving robust, practical prose.
A: Han Yu’s mechanism was to return to pre-Six Dynasties directness—using classical allusions sparingly but powerfully. His essays often build arguments through vivid examples and rhetorical questions. Like Du Mu’s ‘大漠孤烟直，长河落日圆’—that visual starkness captures frontier desolation with geometric precision, straight smoke, round sun, creating a balanced yet lonely composition. It’s almost painterly. And Zhuge Liang’s Chu Shi Biao: the opening ‘先帝创业未半而中道崩殂’ uses tragic timing to evoke loyalty and urgency, practically a persuasive appeal to the young emperor through emotional sincerity and historical duty.
B: That table uses anaphora and measured rhythm to build pathos. Modern side: Lu Xun’s ‘药’ and ‘狂人日记’ employ irony and symbolic realism—blood mantou as false cure, paranoia revealing societal cannibalism. The mechanism critiques feudal mentality through fragmented, unreliable narration. Mao Dun’s ‘子夜’ uses panoramic realism to show capitalist contradictions in Shanghai—multiple perspectives reveal economic mechanisms at work. Qian Zhongshu’s ‘围城’ satirizes intellectual entrapment via witty metaphors and circular logic.
A: And Zhang Ailing’s ‘金锁记’—the golden lock symbolizes repressed desire and generational trauma, with cold, precise psychological detail. Xu Zhimo’s ‘再别康桥’ uses gentle repetition and imagery to evoke tender farewell, almost musical in rhythm. Wen Yiduo’s ‘死水’ employs grotesque imagery to critique stagnant society—dead water as metaphor for corruption. Practically, these modern works shift from classical harmony to exposing social mechanisms.
B: Yes, and in rhetoric: particles like ‘之’ as possessive/modifier glue sentences together flexibly, ‘乃’ signals sequence or consequence. The questions overall test how these devices—parallelism, metaphor, irony—function to convey meaning, emotion, and critique across eras. Great discussion—really highlights why University Chinese emphasizes both heritage and practical literary insight.
A: We left off talking about how modern works shift toward social critique. Let’s pick up with another classic modern piece: Zhu Ziqing’s ‘背影’. That essay isn’t just sentimental—practically, it uses the father’s clumsy, physical act of climbing over the platform as a concrete symbol of parental sacrifice. The mechanism is understatement: no grand declarations, just detailed observation of movement, clothing, and effort. It creates deep emotional impact through restraint rather than exaggeration. How does that compare to the more direct emotional outpouring in Xu Zhimo’s ‘再别康桥’?
B: Xu Zhimo’s farewell poem operates almost like soft music—repetition of ‘gently’ (轻轻的), the waving willows and rippling waves, the slow departure by boat. The mechanism is synesthetic: visual beauty merges with gentle sound and motion to evoke bittersweet tenderness without overt grief. It’s romantic individualism, very different from Zhu Ziqing’s grounded, everyday realism. Both show how modern Chinese prose and poetry moved away from classical allusion toward personal, immediate experience. Another interesting one: the ‘荷花淀派’ and ‘山药蛋派’. These are regional realist schools post-1949. Sun Li’s Baiyangdian stories use lyrical descriptions of nature—lotus ponds, moonlight on water—to frame human resilience and collective spirit, almost poeticizing rural life.
A: Exactly. Zhao Shuli’s ‘山药蛋派’ is earthier—plain-spoken, humorous tales of peasants solving practical problems through mutual aid and Party guidance. The mechanism is folk storytelling: simple plots, vivid dialect flavor, moral clarity without heavy didacticism. Both schools served to make literature accessible and ideologically aligned, but Sun Li added aesthetic beauty while Zhao emphasized pragmatism. Shifting to classical: ‘兰亭集序’ by Wang Xizhi. Beyond its calligraphy fame, the prose itself uses a philosophical mechanism—starting with joyful gathering in nature, then pivoting to melancholy about life’s brevity and inevitable death. The famous line ‘后之视今，亦犹今之视昔’ creates temporal symmetry, making readers feel the same transience. It’s a memento mori wrapped in elegant parallelism.
B: That pivot from pleasure to sorrow is a classic Six Dynasties rhetorical move, balancing enjoyment with Daoist reflection. Compare it to Du Fu, the ‘诗圣’—his work often fuses personal suffering with national crisis. Take ‘春夜喜雨’: the joy in timely rain isn’t just pastoral; it’s relief amid war and famine, using gentle personification (‘随风潜入夜，润物细无声’) to show benevolent, unobtrusive goodness. Du Fu’s mechanism is often to embed grand historical pain in precise, sensory detail. Another strong example: Bai Juyi’s ‘长恨歌’. The closing wish ‘在天愿作比翼鸟，在地愿为连理枝’ uses natural metaphors—birds and trees joined—to express eternal romantic union, but the whole poem balances imperial extravagance, tragedy, and quiet pathos. It’s narrative poetry that functions almost like a historical ballad.
A: Bai Juyi excels at making complex emotions accessible through clear storytelling and musical rhythm. In contrast, Li Bai’s soaring imagination—’俱怀逸兴壮思飞，欲上青天揽明月’—uses hyperbolic flight to express boundless creative energy and defiance of limits. The mechanism is romantic transcendence: he doesn’t describe reality so much as escape it. Now, a rhetoric question: the particle ‘之’ in classical Chinese. Practically, it’s the glue of modification—noun + 之 + noun = possession or description. Without it, sentences lose flexibility and elegance. ‘乃’ often marks consequence or transition, giving prose a logical flow. These small words enable the concise yet layered style that defines classical writing.
B: True, and that’s why guwen reformers like Han Yu wanted to preserve that clarity while stripping away excessive parallelism of pianwen. One more: ‘儒林外史’ by Wu Jingzi. Its satire of the examination system works through episodic structure—each chapter exposes a new absurd scholar or corrupt official. The mechanism is cumulative ridicule: no single villain, but a whole rotten system revealed through ridiculous yet believable characters. It influenced later May Fourth critiques. And Lu Xun, of course, sharpened that into biting irony in ‘狂人日记’—the diary form makes paranoia feel real while symbolizing society’s ‘cannibalism’. These works show literature as diagnostic tool for social illness.
A: Precisely. The 50 questions together map a journey: from Tang-Song elegance and moral depth, through Yuan-Ming drama and vernacular vitality, to Qing satire and modern awakening. Discussing them this way—mechanisms, tone, cultural work—really brings the exam’s purpose to life: not just knowing who wrote what, but understanding how literature persuades, moves, critiques, and preserves human experience across centuries. This has been an excellent deep dive.
B: Agreed. Anyone preparing for 04729 would benefit hugely from thinking about these texts in terms of rhetorical strategy and historical function rather than isolated facts. Great conversation!
A: One area we haven’t touched on much yet is the Yuan dynasty’s sanqu and zaju drama. The flourishing of sanqu—short, lyrical songs in vernacular—gave poets a freer, more personal voice than the regulated ci form. Practically, sanqu allowed direct expression of frustration, romance, or satire outside the rigid courtly tradition. Ma Zhiyuan’s ‘Tian Jing Sha · Qiu Si’ uses extremely concise imagery—withered vines, old tree, crow, thin horse—to paint loneliness on a journey. The mechanism is extreme economy: every word carries visual and emotional weight, almost like cinematic montage.
B: Exactly. That stripped-down style makes sanqu feel modern even today. In zaju drama, the same vernacular energy appears in dialogue and arias. Guan Hanqing’s works, for example, often center strong female characters who speak boldly and act decisively—practical subversion of gender norms through theatrical voice. The four-act-plus-wedge structure keeps momentum tight while allowing poetic arias to deepen emotion. Compare that freedom to the Ming chuanqi, like Tang Xianzu’s ‘Mudan Ting’. The ‘Peony Pavilion’ uses dream sequences as a psychological mechanism: Du Liniang’s dream love awakens her desire, then literally revives her through passion. It’s romance functioning as resistance to Confucian repression of emotion.
A: The dream device isn’t mere fantasy—it’s a culturally sanctioned way to explore forbidden feelings while preserving moral surface. Kong Shangren’s ‘Taohua Shan’ later uses the fan as a recurring prop that accumulates blood, tears, and history, turning a personal love story into allegory for the fall of the Ming. The prop becomes a narrative mechanism that links private romance to national trauma. Now, another rhetorical favorite: the line ‘沉舟侧畔千帆过，病树前头万木春’ by Liu Yuxi. It employs parallel contrast—sunken boat vs passing sails, diseased tree vs thriving forest—to express renewal after failure. The mechanism is optimistic realism: hardship doesn’t end progress; nature (and society) keeps moving forward.
B: That couplet became almost proverbial because it so neatly captures resilience without denying pain. Similar spirit appears in Xin Qiji’s ci—he often mixes heroic aspiration with bitter frustration at being sidelined. His style is dense with allusions yet driven by strong emotion and irregular rhythm, practically breaking the smooth elegance of earlier ci to reflect inner turmoil. Contrast with Li Qingzhao’s delicate, feminine precision—her ci use everyday objects (wind, rain, wine) to externalize grief in a restrained, almost fragile way. Both Southern Song masters, but different emotional mechanisms.
A: Yes, and that range shows why the Southern Song is seen as ci’s golden age. One last group: the May Fourth–related questions. ‘新青年’ magazine launched both the New Culture and May Fourth Movements—promoting vernacular baihua, science, democracy, and anti-traditionalism. Practically, shifting to baihua broke the monopoly of classical Chinese, democratizing literature and making it a tool for mass awakening. Lu Xun, Zhou Zuoren, and others used the new medium for sharp social diagnosis. Even earlier figures like Liang Qichao had pushed vernacular essays, but ‘新青年’ made it revolutionary.
B: Right—baihua wasn’t just simpler; it carried ideological weight, signaling modernity and equality. The questions also highlight continuity: from Han Yu’s guwen revival against ornate style, to Yuan vernacular theater, to Ming–Qing novels satirizing examinations, to modern realism exposing social ills. Each era adapts literary form to new social needs. Talking through these 50 questions this way really reveals University Chinese as a living tradition—rhetoric, narrative technique, and cultural critique evolving together. Excellent way to prepare or review.
A: Totally agree. The exam rewards seeing these texts as active tools—persuading emperors, consoling exiles, mocking corruption, awakening citizens—rather than museum pieces. Thanks for the thorough discussion!
B: Before we wrap up, let’s circle back to a few more standout items from the list that show interesting transitions or contrasts across periods. Take the ‘桐城派’ in the Qing dynasty—led by Fang Bao, Liu Dakui, Yao Nai. Their prose emphasized ‘义法’ (righteousness and method), drawing heavily from the Tang-Song guwen tradition. Practically, they tried to make writing serve moral instruction and clear structure: beginning with a clear thesis, developing through examples, concluding with reflection. But their insistence on imitating ancient models sometimes made their style feel stiff compared to the freer, more expressive Gong’an or Yuan Mei’s individualistic approach in the same era.
A: Yes, the Tongcheng school’s mechanism was almost pedagogical—they treated prose like a moral classroom, prioritizing ‘古文辞类纂’ as models. That rigidity later drew criticism from the late-Qing reformers and May Fourth writers who wanted literature to reflect living speech and contemporary reality. Another Qing satire masterpiece is ‘儒林外史’—its episodic, almost picaresque structure lets Wu Jingzi expose one grotesque examination candidate after another. The lack of a strong central plot is itself a mechanism: it mirrors the aimless, repetitive grind of the keju system, making the critique feel relentless and systemic rather than personal.
B: Precisely. The novel functions like a series of case studies in human folly under a broken institution. Compare that diagnostic approach to Shen Congwen’s ‘Border Town’—there the mechanism is lyric pastoralism: slow, delicate descriptions of Miao customs, river life, lantern festivals, and innocent love create an almost timeless, utopian refuge from urban modernity and political chaos. It’s literature as cultural preservation and gentle resistance to Han-centric nationalism. Both works use form to comment on society, but one attacks through ridicule, the other heals through beauty.
A: And then there’s Mao Zedong’s ‘沁园春·雪’—the line ‘俱往矣，数风流人物，还看今朝’ turns historical sweep into revolutionary confidence. The ci form, with its grand vista of landscape and heroes, gets repurposed as political rhetoric: past greatness is acknowledged, but the present generation claims superiority. The mechanism is dialectical—synthesis of admiration and transcendence. It shows how traditional poetic forms could be adapted for 20th-century ideological purposes.
B: Very true. Even the classical allusions in that poem (Qin, Han, Tang, Song emperors) serve to elevate the speaker’s era above them. One final rhetorical gem: in ‘阿房宫赋’, Du Mu builds layer upon layer of extravagant description—palace scale, music, beauties, treasures—only to collapse it all with the sharp question ‘奈何取之尽锱铢，用之如泥沙？’ The mechanism is accumulation followed by reversal: sensory overload makes the waste and cruelty hit harder. It’s a masterclass in using rhetoric to turn admiration into condemnation.
A: That structural crescendo-and-crash is incredibly effective for political critique disguised as historical reflection. Looking at all 50 questions together, they trace a clear arc: Tang-Song emphasis on moral-aesthetic balance, Yuan-Ming vernacular vitality and dramatic emotion, Qing satire and stylistic debates, modern realism and ideological awakening. The exam really wants candidates to grasp how literary forms evolve as responses to social conditions—whether through parallelism for harmony, vernacular for accessibility, irony for critique, or lyricism for consolation.
B: Well said. This kind of discussion turns rote preparation into genuine appreciation of Chinese literary heritage as a dynamic, living tradition. Thanks for the engaging back-and-forth—it’s been a pleasure exploring these classics and modern works with you.
A: Likewise. Anyone studying for 04729 would do well to approach the material this way: always asking how the text works, what it does culturally and emotionally, rather than just who wrote it when. Until next time!