Honghuzi in the literary reception

Outlaw is one of the archetypes in world literature. Honghuzi is the eastern version of the image of the outlaw. As his counterpart in European literature, he expressed the ambiguity, the ambivalence of human nature. Unlike the characters of F. Schiller, A.S. Pushkin and others, the image of Honghuzi is the least marked by romantic features. In the prose of the Russian emigrant writers of the Harbin diaspora, Honghuzi expresses the Chinese mentality; the specifics of orientalism are projected onto him, and at the same time its image is extremely objective, which primarily characterizes the prose of P.V. Shkurkin - the author of the ethnographic prose about the outlaws of the border zone of the Russian Far East, Manchuria, Korea and Mongolia. The context consists of the works by Shi Naian, Pushkin, Schiller, English folklore, etc. Comparative analysis allows us to identify the individual features of the artistic perception of the Honghuzi's activities by Shkurkin. It is proved that the interpretation of Honghuzi by Shkurkin is close to the image of the robber in Chinese, English, German literature, along with Russian literature of the XIX-XX centuries.