ISBN:
067480550X
,
0674805518
Language:
English
Pages:
XVII, 409 S
,
Ill
,
24 cm.
DDC:
306.0951132
Keywords:
Popular culture
;
China
;
Shanghai
;
Shanghai (China)
;
Social life and customs
;
China
;
Civilization
;
1912-1949
;
Schanghai
;
Stadt
;
Kultur
;
Geschichte 1930-1945
;
Schanghai
;
Stadt
;
Kultur
;
Schanghai
;
Volkskultur
Abstract:
Verlagsinfo: 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.
Description / Table of Contents:
The background of urban culture. Remapping Shanghai ; The construction of modernity in print culture ; The urban milieu of Shanghai cinema ; Textual transactions: discovering literary modernism through books and journals -- The modern literary imagination: writers and texts. The erotic, the fantastic, and the uncanny: Shi Zhecun's experimental stories ; Face, body and the city: the fiction of Liu Na'ou and Mu Shiying ; Decadent and dandy: Shao Xunmei and Ye Lingfeng ; Eileen Chang: romances in a fallen city -- Reflections. Shanghai cosmopolitanism ; Epilogue: a tale of two cities.
Note:
Includes bibliographical references and index
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