A Re-Deliberation of Minzu Literature and World Literature: The Literary World in Alai’s Writing Haomin Gong Lingnan University, Hong Kong, Department of Chinese haomingong@ln.edu.hk Abstract: This essay examines the tension between minzu (roughly an equivalent of “ethnic” and “national”) and world literature by investigating Tibetan-Chinese writer Alai’s Gesar and his other writings. For Alai, the tension between minzu and world literature is a moot question. He challenges many assumptions of both minzu and world literature through his metafictional rewriting of Gesar and alerts us to the power of differentiation. Alai’s unique views urge us to reflect on the politics of a non-Western ethnic writer writing in, to, and for the world. Keywords: Alai, ethnicity, national literature, world literature, The Song of King Gesar The myth of “The more national/ethnic (minzu) a thing is, the more it belongs to the world” (yue shi minzu de, jiu yue shi shijie de 越是民族的，就越是世界的) remains as a popular topic of discussion in modern Chinese literature and arts. Attributed to Lu Xun, the father of modern Chinese literature, this claim has been regarded as a “Golden Rule” for the internationalization or globalization of Chinese literature since the second half of the twentieth century. Although scholars constantly challenge the origin and veracity of the claim, it continues to hold firm from official statements to people’s everyday conversations. For many, the fact that a literary work with unique national/ethnic characteristics becomes a world asset demonstrates a dialectic that renders the tension between the two opposites into unity. Yet, for others, the so-called “dialectic” that undergirds the claim has never been clearly defined, and the relationship between the national/ethnic and the world remains ambivalent. In Chinese, the term minzu central to the claim refers to both nationality and ethnicity and is 1