Southeast Asia is an important region for Chinese culture to go global and Chinese literature to spread abroad. We traditionally believe that Chinese literature in Southeast Asia is the product of China's “Wu Si” new literature after “going to the Southeast Asia”, and emphasize that Chinese culture is the root of Chinese literature in Southeast Asia, and even compare the relationship between the two as “source” and “flow”, “trunk” and “branch”. However, since the 1990s, a group of Southeast Asian Chinese writers of the new generation have reflected on this, and even put forward the idea of getting rid of the nurturing of Chinese literature and Chinese culture. Huang Jinshu, a Malaysian Chinese writer, is one of the advocates of the “weaning theory”, but his creation has not achieved the so-called “weaning” with Chinese literature and Chinese culture. Huang Jinshu, as a typical case, helps us to deeply examine the complex relationship between Southeast Asian Chinese literature and Chinese literature and Chinese culture.
Taking the relationship between Huang Jinshu's “Old Home” series novels and Lu Xun's My Old Home as a case, this paper adopts the method of text close reading and comparative research, and believes that based on the similarity of experience structures such as “loss of hometown” and “death of father”, Huang Jinshu's “Old Home” series novels use Lu Xun's My Old Home as the “situation” and “archetype”, and realize the reproduction of My Old Home. This reproduction is carried out in an “anti-hometown” way, in which there are both acceptance of Lu Xun's My Old Home and many variations. Huang Jinshu's “Old Home Series” avoided the enlightenment theme of Lu Xun's My Old Home and conveyed his deep concern about the situation of Malaysian Chinese in the transition from “mourning and anger” to “mourning”. At the same time, Huang Jinshu also rewroted the narrative and metaphor of “road” in Lu Xun's My Old Home. He viewed “road” as a “potential historical narrative” from the perspective of dispersed Chinese, in order to reflect on the ethnic dilemma of Malaysian Chinese.
Compared with the previous impact studies based on the position of Chinese literature, this paper introduces the perspective of Southeast Asia, emphasizes that Huang Jinshu's reproduction of Lu Xun's My Old Home and “Lu Xun's heritage” has gone through a process of reflection and disenchantment. He abandoned the tradition of Literary realism of the left-wing Malaysians who built Lu Xun into a “political Lu Xun” and “revolutionary Lu Xun”, and tried to return to a real “literary Lu Xun”. At the same time, this paper proposes that the reproduction of Lu Xun's My Old Home by Huang Jinshu's old family novels is not just to restore or return to “literary Lu Xun”, nor to build a monument for Lu Xun in Nanyang. In fact, Huang Jinshu uses “Lu Xun” and the Chinese modern (hometown) literary tradition symbolized by “Lu Xun” as a method to re-enter the history of Chinese in Malaysian Chinese and many structural difficulties faced by Chinese ethnic groups.
On the one hand, this paper puts forward the proposition of “Lu Xun as a method”, which clearly explains the internal spiritual connection between Huang Jinshu's related writing and Lu Xun's My Old Home; On the other hand, it is found that the new generation of Southeast Asian Chinese writers have a clear Southeast Asian position when dealing with the relationship with Chinese literature and Chinese culture. They view and deal with the problems of Southeast Asian Chinese from Chinese literature and Chinese culture, which has certain enlightenment for us to rethink the relationship between Southeast Asian Chinese and China.