“Fish Swimming in Glass Jar” and “Poplar Catkins Falling Down”

This article proposes a theoretical operational concept: vulnerable-precarious aesthetics. It means some existence of vulnerability, uncertainty, instability has the power to dissolve and disintegrate the order. This article intends to understand what kind of colonial literature based on the concept of vulnerable - precarious aesthetics. It can be found that colony is not only the site of trauma, the weakness and impotence, but with a kind of fragile power, a riddled courage, and the possibility of some new forms. This article attempts to study on the Puppet State Manchukuo female writer Yang Xu based on the concept. There are two characteristics of Yang Xu’ works: hybrid and ambiguous. They mix private life and literary world, reality and fiction, memory and truth, personal image and public image. So, even though Yang Xu and her works are vulnerable and instable, they shake a series of discourse boundaries and show pseudo-state and chaos of the Manchukuo. This article offers a new thought of interpreting the complexity of the colonial writer Yang Xu and re-thinks colonial literature.