From the late 1970s to the early 1980s, it was a dominant literary phenomenon in Chinese mainland. It is named after Lu Xinhua's short story Scar, which focuses on the life of educated youth during the Cultural Revolution. The appearance of scar literature marks the beginning of literature in the new period. It is a strong accusation of the awakened generation against the nightmare abnormal suffering years that have just passed. After the downfall of the Gang of Four, with the rising voice of ideological emancipation, the position of material in literary creation gradually recovered. Under this historical background, the author of scar literature pays attention to and thinks about the truth of life with a sober and sincere attitude, and faces the painful history directly, presenting a picture of life during the ten-year catastrophe in his works. Completely denying that the Cultural Revolution is the spiritual essence of scar literature. The biggest feature of scar literature is truth. Its value and attraction also depend on its authenticity. With the rise of scar literature, the false literature that avoids the truth, whitewashes the truth and distorts the truth has gradually lost its market, which is of milestone significance to the development of contemporary literature in China. The establishment of literary authenticity marks the restoration of the realistic tradition, the beginning of the release of the writers' bondage by the ultra-left trend of thought, and the disintegration of the "false, big and empty" creative mode that ruled China's literary world for ten years.

Representative works: Lu Xinhua's Scar, Zhang Xian's Corner Forgotten by Love, Zhang Xianliang's Soul and Body, and Wang Anyi's The Terminal of this Train.

References:

Chapter 9 Forum Literature World