An idyll of struggle: Liang Bin's novel Keep the red flag flying

As a prime example of the 1950s novels about the Chinese countryside, Liang Bin’s Keep the Red Flag Flying (1957) is frequently positioned as a Bildungsroman with the Chinese peasants of the 1920s and 1930s as a collective protagonist. As our analysis shows, Chu Laochung, the novel’s protagonist, may be viewed as a Bildungsroman hero in a conventional sense, however, his bildung per se could not be narrated with any degree of plausibility due to ideological constraints. On the other hand, Yan Jiangtao, an adolescent whose growing up and communist schooling are presented as communist bildung, his character and attitude being static and “correct” the whole time, cannot be described as a Bildungsroman character. Jiangtao’s maturation, as we see it, is more of a process of education than a personal evolution. The main objective of the novel, in accordance with the political agenda of its times, is to educate the reader, to direct his value conceptions. The novel adheres to idyllic chronotope, making it fit to be called an idyll of struggle.