A Hypoplastic Philosophic Fiction: A Reperusal of Li Ping'sWhen the Sunset Disappears

This paper is a reperusal and a reinterpretation of When the Sunset Disappears, a novel sensational in the 1980s. This novel contains a series of theoretic questions which are still significant nowadays, such as the relationships between reason and emotion, civilization and barbarism, religious forgiveness and secular punishment, etc. As a representative work of a representative intellectual group of that period, this novel is still worthy of attention, for it reflects a pattern the "Zhiqing" (Educated Youth) writers cannot break away from when thinking and writing about the Cultural Revolution: abstracting, philosophizing and moralizing specific social and historical problems. This pattern, existing in novels about the Cultural Revolution, as well as typical of "Zhiqing" literature at that time, still prevails even in current thoughts and culture.