Writing Personal Essays between the Hundred Flowers Campaign and the Cultural Revolution: Feng Zikai, Conformist and Authenic

This study examines Feng Zikai’s essays from 1956 to 1965 as products of his attempts to come to terms with the social, political, and cultural situation of the era through writing literary pieces and essays. This analysis of his prose writings that were created over a ten-year stretch bookmarked by the Hundred Flowers Campaign and the Cultural Revolution presents Feng Zikai’s hesitant reassessment of his own work, its intellectual and artistic foundations, and his difficult search for a conformist but at the same time authentic essayistic voice that would allow him to grasp and accept the reality of this period.