Shanghai Modern

In the midst of China's wild rush to modernize, a surprising note of reality arises: Shanghai was once modern indeed, a centre of commerce and art in the heart of the 20th century. This text explores the golden age of Shanghai urban culture, a modernity which was once intrinsically Chinese and profoundly anomalous, blending new and indigenous ideas with those flooding into this "treaty port" from the Western world. Leo Ou-fan Lee discusses the architecture and urban spaces in which the new commercial culture of Shanghai has flourished, then guides the reader through the publishing and filmmaking industries that nurtured a generation of artists and established a bold 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.

ISBN 0674805518   Pages 420 ISBN13 9780674805514 (What's this?)   Volumes 1 Publisher Harvard University Press   Weight (grammes) 600 Imprint Harvard University Press   Published in Cambridge, Mass Format Paperback   Series title Interpretation of Asia S. Publication date 30 Jul 1999   Height (mm) 235 Library of Congress 98032318   Width (mm) 155 DEWEY 307.760951132   Spine width (mm) 29 DEWEY edition DC21   Academic level Undergraduate, Postgraduate, Professional / Scholarly

		Preface
I		The Background of Urban Culture
1		Remapping Shanghai		3
2		The Construction of Modernity in Print Culture		43
3		The Urban Milieu of Shanghai Cinema		82
4		Textual Transactions: Discovering Literary Modernism through Books and Journals		120
II		The Modern Literary Imagination: Writers and Texts
5		The Erotic, the Fantastic, and the Uncanny: Shi Zhecun's Experimental Stories		153
6		Face, Body, and the City: The Fiction of Liu Na'ou and Mu Shiying		190
7		Decadent and Dandy: Shao Xunmei and Ye Lingfeng		232
8		Eileen Chang: Romances in a Fallen City		267
III		Reflections
9		Shanghai Cosmopolitanism		307
10		Epilogue: A Tale of Two Cities		324
		Notes		343
		Glossary		387
		Index		399

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 "

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