Shanghai Modern

by Lee, Ou-Fan Leo

• ISBN13: 9780674805514
• ISBN10: 0674805518
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-09-01
• Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr

Summary

In the midst of China's wild rush to modernize, a surprising note of reality arises: Shanghai, it seems, was once modern indeed, a pulsing center of commerce and art in the heart of the twentieth century. This book immerses us in the golden age of Shanghai urban culture, a modernity at once intrinsically Chinese and profoundly anomalous, blending new and indigenous ideas with those flooding into this "treaty port" from the Western world. A preeminent specialist in Chinese studies, Leo Ou-fan Lee gives us a rare wide-angle view of Shanghai culture in the making. He shows us the architecture and urban spaces in which the new commercial culture flourished, then guides us through the publishing and filmmaking industries that nurtured a whole generation of artists and established a bold new style in urban life known as modeng. In the work of six writers of the time, particularly Shi Zhecun, Mu Shiying, and Eileen Chang, Lee discloses the reflection of Shanghai's urban landscape--foreign and familiar, oppressive and seductive, traditional and innovative. This work acquires a broader historical and cosmopolitan context with a look at the cultural links between Shanghai and Hong Kong, a virtual genealogy of Chinese modernity from the 1930s to the present day.

Table of Contents

Preface	xi
I THE BACKGROUND OF URBAN CULTURE
Remapping Shanghai	3	(40)
The Construction of Modernity in Print Culture	43	(39)
The Urban Milieu of Shanghai Cinema	82	(38)
Textual Transactions: Discovering Literary Modernism through Books and Journals	120	(33)
II THE MODERN LITERARY IMAGINATION: WRITERS AND TEXTS
The Erotic, the Fantastic, and the Uncanny: Shi Zhecun's Experimental Stories	153	(37)
Face, Body, and the City: The Fiction of Liu Na'ou and Mu Shiying	190	(42)
Decadent and Dandy: Shao Xunmei and Ye Lingfeng	232	(35)
Eileen Chang: Romances in a Fallen City	267	(40)
III REFLECTIONS
Shanghai Cosmopolitanism	307	(17)
Epilogue: A Tale of Two Cities	324	(19)
Notes	343	(44)
Glossary	387	(12)
Index	399