Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China, 1930-1945 / Edition 1

by Leo Ou-fan Lee

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674805514
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	09/01/1999
Series:	Interpretations of Asia , #106
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	464
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Leo Ou-fan Lee is Professor Emeritus of Chinese Literature at Harvard University and Professor of Humanities at The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Table of Contents

Preface

PART I: The Background of Urban Culture

1. Remapping Shanghai

2. The Construction of Modernity in Print Culture

3. The Urban Milieu of Shanghai Cinema

4. Textual Transactions: Discovering Literary Modernism through Books and Journals

PART II: The Modern Literary Imagination: Writers and Texts

5. The Erotic, the Fantastic, and the Uncanny: Shi Zhecun's Experimental Stories

6. Face, Body, and the City: The Fiction of Liu Na'ou and Mu Shiying

7. Decadent and Dandy: Shao Xunmei and Ye Lingfeng

8. Eileen Chang: Romances in a Fallen City

III. Reflections

9. Shanghai Cosmopolitanism

10. Epilogue: A Tale of Two Cities

Notes

Glossary

Index

What People are Saying About This

The special flavor of prewar Shanghai emerges from these pages. Shanghai Modern is immensely rich in theoretical insights, and they emerge out of the dense, living portrait of old Shanghai, with its literary circles, dance-halls, movie theatres, façades, and streets. Lee makes you see how modern consciousness only exists in the circulation of forms, images, and ideas. The process is laid out before us in this rich and subtle description of the key epoch in the life of this tragic metropolis.

Wen-hsin Yeh

This is cultural history from inside out and from ground up. Lee reads the semiotics of Shanghai modernism with a stunning sensibility that evokes a cosmopolitan past when city streets were scenes of poetry rather than protests and when urban experience redefined the meaning of femininity. A major statement towards a new cultural history of modern China.
— Wen-hsin Yeh, University of California, Berkeley

Charles Taylor

The special flavor of prewar Shanghai emerges from these pages. Shanghai Modern is immensely rich in theoretical insights, and they emerge out of the dense, living portrait of old Shanghai, with its literary circles, dance-halls, movie theatres, façades, and streets. Lee makes you see how modern consciousness only exists in the circulation of forms, images, and ideas. The process is laid out before us in this rich and subtle description of the key epoch in the life of this tragic metropolis.
— Charles Taylor, McGill University

David Wang

This is the definitive study of the making of modern Shanghai. Leo Lee has remapped Shanghai's cultural geography, marking out the intricate relations between city and coloniality in the 1930s. Admirably combining historical rigor with literary sensibility, it adumbrates an alternative style of cultural criticism for the new century.
— David Wang, Columbia University

Editorial Reviews

The special flavor of prewar Shanghai emerges from these pages. Shanghai Modern is immensely rich in theoretical insights, and they emerge out of the dense, living portrait of old Shanghai, with its literary circles, dance-halls, movie theatres, façades, and streets. Lee makes you see how modern consciousness only exists in the circulation of forms, images, and ideas. The process is laid out before us in this rich and subtle description of the key epoch in the life of this tragic metropolis.

Charles Taylor

This is cultural history from inside out and from ground up. Lee reads the semiotics of Shanghai modernism with a stunning sensibility that evokes a cosmopolitan past when city streets were scenes of poetry rather than protests and when urban experience redefined the meaning of femininity. A major statement towards a new cultural history of modern China.

Wen-hsin Yeh

This is the definitive study of the making of modern Shanghai. Leo Lee has remapped Shanghai’s cultural geography, marking out the intricate relations between city and coloniality in the 1930s. Admirably combining historical rigor with literary sensibility, it adumbrates an alternative style of cultural criticism for the new century.

David Wang

Lee is at his strongest in discussing the inter-textuality of the various works he discusses in this section of the book, showing their relationship to both the European and Chinese literary traditions… Lee’s focus on republican-era Shanghai is a reminder of the renewed capacities of China’s largest city as a producer of the discourse of modernity in the post-Mao era.

Left History - Antonia Finnane

Lee is at his strongest in discussing the inter-textuality of the various works he discusses in this section of the book, showing their relationship to both the European and Chinese literary traditions…Lee's focus on republican-era Shanghai is a reminder of the renewed capacities of China's largest city as a producer of the discourse of modernity in the post-Mao era.
— Antonia Finnane

Left History

This is cultural history from inside out and from ground up. Lee reads the semiotics of Shanghai modernism with a stunning sensibility that evokes a cosmopolitan past when city streets were scenes of poetry rather than protests and when urban experience redefined the meaning of femininity. A major statement towards a new cultural history of modern China.

Wen-Hsin Yeh

Lee is a distinguished professor of Chinese literature at Harvard University who has had a long association with the founders of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Being thus well versed in both Chinese and Western literature allows him to define Chinese modernity in Shanghai during the foreign occupation, when "culture" was at its height. Lee points out that China's adoption of Quaker Oats and cigarettes as nationalistic commodities was less important than the unprecedented use of the female body to advertise these products. Lee describes the surging modern atmosphere by examining the proliferation of cinemas, coffeehouses, theaters, dance halls, parks, and race courses. He also details the literary contributions of six writers to describe the popular demand for modern literature. Like Geremie R. Barm 's In the Red (LJ 4/1/99), this book examines many different types of media in China, although Barm 's focus is contemporary. Recommended particularly for libraries with collections in modern literature and Chinese studies.--Peggy Spitzer Christoff, Oak Park, IL Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

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