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Home , Mu Shiying, Shanghai Race Club, Shi Zhecun

Appendix Notes on Source Material

Prior to the economic reforms in China in the late 1970s and concomitant changes in cultural realms, the New-sensationist literary group, their history and writings, had all but sunk into obscurity since their heyday in the 1930s. Some of the earliest attempts to re-examine the work of these writers were the essays of Huang Jundong 黃俊東 (dates unknown) and Liu Yichang 劉以鬯 (b. 1918) that appeared in the Hong Kong literary journal Siji (Four Seasons) in 1972.1 Although this was famously the year Richard Nixon visited China, heralding a greater openness with the West, such openness did not extend to a recognition of the ‘decadent’ culture of China’s own recent past. A focus on the modernist literature of this period, as discussed in the essays of these Hong Kong scholars, would not have been possible in mainland China at a time when the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) was still in progress. A later resurgence of interest, which took place on the mainland during the 1980s at a time when China was more systemati- cally opening up to the world, was largely due to the efforts of one scholar, Yan Jiayan 严家炎 (b. 1933). The publication of his influential compilation of short stories, Xin ganjuepai xiaoshuo xuan (A Selection of Short Stories of the New-sensationist Group) (1985) must be seen as central to the re-evaluation that followed. More than twenty years later his Mu Shiying quanji (Complete Works of Mu Shiying) (2008), co-edited with Li Jin, consolidated once and for all material for research on this most important of New-sensationist writers.2 The renewed availability of the work of the New-sensationists in modern Chinese editions in the 1980s gave rise to a reinvigo- rated interest in both China and the West. Two pioneers in the West were Heinrich Fruehauf, with his inspired ‘Urban Exoticism in Modern and Contemporary Chinese Literature’ (1993), and Yomi Braester with his ‘Shanghai’s Economy of Spectacle: The Shanghai Race Club in Liu Na’ou’s and Mu Shiying’s Stories’ (1995).3 PhD studies from this early period of research, which took the New-sensationists as their central theme include: Randolph Trumbull’s The Shanghai Modernists (1989), and Anthony Wan-hoi Pak’s The School of New Sensibilities (Xin’ganjuepai) in the 1930s: a Study of Liu Na’ou and Mu Shiying’s Fiction (1995).4 A major scholarly study by Yingjin Zhang, published in 1996, The City in Modern Chinese Literature & Film has been of central importance to a continued interest in this field of study.5 Leo Ou-fan Lee’s seminal work Shanghai Modern was published in 1999 and was followed by important studies by Shu-mei Shih and Peng Hsiao-yen. One of the most significant Chinese-language studies from the later period

1 Liu Yichang 劉以鬯, ‘Shuangchong renge: maodun de laiyuan’ 雙重人格：矛盾的來源 (Twin-personality: Origins of the Conflict) in Siji 四季 (Four Seasons) (November 1972); and Huang Jundong 黃俊東, ‘Mu Shiying he tade zuopin’ 穆時英和他的作品 (Mu Shiying and his Writings) in Siji (Four Seasons) (November 1972). 2 Yan Jiayan and Li Jin (eds.), Mu Shiying quanji 穆時英全集 (Complete Works of Mu Shiying) 3 vols. (Beijing: Beijing chubanshe, 2008). 3 Yomi Braester, ‘Shanghai’s Economy of Spectacle: The Shanghai Race Club in Liu Na’ou’s and Mu Shiying’s Stories’ in Modern Chinese Literature vol. 9 no. 1 (1995), pp. 39–58. 4 A later example is Christopher Rosenmeier, Shanghai Avant-Garde: The Fiction of Shi Zhecun, Mu Shiying, Xu Xu, and Wumingshi, PhD, SOAS, University of London, 2006–2007. See also Christopher Rosenmeier, On the Margins of Modernism: Xu Xu, Wumingshi and Popular Chinese Literature in the 1940s (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017). 5 Yingjin Zhang, The City in Modern Chinese Literature: Configurations of Space and Time (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996).

Haipai xiaoshuo lun (On Shanghai-style Novels) (2004) is by the leading literary scholar, Li Jin, co-author of the Complete Works of Mu Shiying.6 In the field of popular music and dance hall culture two English-language books in particular have been influential. Andrew F. Jones’ Yellow Music, and Andrew David Field’s Shanghai’s Dancing World have both proved themselves to be important in the field.7 The latest addition: James Farrer and Andrew David Field’s Shanghai Landscapes: A Nocturnal Biography of a Global City, takes a rather different approach to the subject, comparing the Republican period with Shanghai’s more recent history but will no doubt prove to be just as influential as its predecessors.8 One important example of an academic book directly related to the study of pictorial magazines is the 2013 volume: Liangyou: Kaleidoscopic Modernity and the Shanghai Global Metropolis, 1926–1945.9 This is a significant addition to the field and can be seen to touch on areas covered in the present study. Indeed, in some chapters, arguments put forward in Kaleidoscopic Modernity form the basis for dispute, discussion and debate in Intoxicating Shanghai. The phenomenon of widespread nostalgia for the Chinese Republican Era that was expe- rienced at the turn of the millennium manifested itself in both scholarly writings and popular fiction. Perhaps the best example of the latter is by Zhou Weihui. Her controversial and somewhat derivative novel Shanghai baobei (Shanghai Baby), although set in more recent times, owes much to a reconstructed and reimagined vision of 1930s Shanghai, and to the writings of Western authors such as Henry Miller.10 A number of translations into English of the short stories of the New-sensationist group, particularly those of Mu Shiying, appeared throughout this period of nostalgic rediscovery, including: ‘Black Whirlwind’ by Wiu-kit Wong (1992); ‘Five in a Nightclub’ by Randolph Trumbull (1992); and ‘The Shanghai Foxtrot (a Fragment)’ by Sean Macdonald (2004). A more recent short story collection Mu Shiying: China’s Lost Modernist by Andrew David Field (2014), which contains six of Mu’s best known stories, has been instrumental in introducing the writings of Mu Shiying to a wider audience in the English-speaking world.11

6 Yan Jiayan, Xinganjuepai xiaoshuo xuan 新感觉派小说选 (Selected Fiction of the New-sensationist Group) (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1985); Heinrich Fruehauf, ‘Urban Exotism in Modern and Contemporary Chinese Literature’, in Ellen Widmer and David Der-wei Wang (eds.), From May Fourth to June Fourth – Fiction and Film in Twentieth-century China (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: Harvard University Press, 1993), pp. 133–164; Leo Ou-fan Lee, Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China 1930–1945 (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: Harvard University Press, 1999; and Li Jin, Haipai xiaoshuo lun (On Shanghai Style Novels) (Taiwan: Xiuweizixun keji, 2004). 7 Andrew F. Jones, Yellow Music: Media Culture and Colonial Modernity in the Chinese Jazz Age (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2001); and Andrew David Field, Shanghai’s Dancing World: Cabaret Culture and Urban Politics, 1919–1954 (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2010). 8 James Farrer and Andrew David Field, Shanghai Landscapes: A Nocturnal Biography of a Global City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015). 9 Paul Pickowicz, Kuiyi Shen and Yingjin Zhang (eds.), Liangyou, Kaleidoscopic Modernity and the Shanghai Global Metropolis, 1926–1945 (Leiden: Brill, 2013). 10 Zhou Weihui 周卫慧, Shanghai baobei 上海寶貝 (Shanghai Baby) (Shenyang: Chunfeng wenyi chubanshe, 1999). 11 Andrew David Field, Mu Shiying: China’s Lost Modernist (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2014). Sean MacDonald’s translation of ‘Camel, Nietzscheanist and Woman’ as ‘Camel, Nietzschean and Woman’ is the latest to appear.

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A similar revitalised interest in the visual artists involved in modernist Shanghai circles during the Republican Era took place in the 1980s and 1990s. This was partly due to the newfound interest amongst the general public in China with the popular cultural imagery of Shanghai’s jazz age. Such images became central to the nostalgic look back at the Republican Era that culminated in the first years of the new millennium, for example with images of the Modern Girl that had originally appeared on advertising posters and in magazines, now found as deco- ration on any number of everyday items, from playing cards to tee shirts, from mobile phone covers to keyrings. For academics and staunch enthusiasts of the period, the results of this widespread interest could be seen in reprints of magazines, which became more widely available for research. Two examples of these are the full-colour reproductions of Liangyou republished by the Liangyou tushu youxian gongsi in 2007, and the earlier rather more niche reprint of Shanghai manhua in 1996. Alongside such relatively high quality and costly examples came a host of poor quality reedited and expunged versions, which, due to their indeterminate nature, are more of a hindrance than a help to scholarship in the field.12 More recently there have appeared a number of databases of Republican Era newspapers and periodicals and these have opened the field right up, allowing easy access to once hard-to-find publications. With advantages come disadvantages and the ready availability of a small number of selected magazines in reprints or electronic reproductions has actually created a distorted picture of the Shanghai publishing industry. With some magazines readily available and others harder to access, it is of course the former that receive the bulk of attention from both students and scholars. In fact, in many cases those magazines that are the most difficult to access are as important as those that are available on tap. In this way a distortion of the 1930s publishing industry is currently being perpetuated. As far as publications about the second strand found in this book are concerned, countless volumes of all sorts have been published during and since the 1980s on the subjects of Lu Xun, the New Woodcut Movement, and the use of art and literature to promote left-wing politics in the 1920s and 1930s. That said, the mythology that has grown up surrounding this – amounting to nothing less than a hagiography of Lu Xun – has grossly distorted the history of both literature and art in China. The subject of the woodcut as an important building block in the formation of a Chinese modern art has resulted in the publication of many books of varying degrees of use- fulness, mainly in Chinese, but also in other languages, including English. Many of these repeat the same material ad infinitum, and separating the wheat from the chaff is a task of mammoth proportions. As far as reprints of primary sources are concerned, perhaps the most important collection for the purposes of this second strand is the five-volume set of the woodcuts that were once in the collection of Lu Xun himself. These are of real importance for building a picture of Lu Xun’s eclectic taste and his understanding of this artistic genre and provide much information about his hands-on engagement with the woodcut.13 Somewhat different to this but also useful are the reprints of the volumes Lu Xun had a hand in re-publishing himself. These volumes of prints by Aubrey Beardsley, Fukiya Kōji, Carl Meffert and Käthe Kollwitz, have been readily available in Chinese editions for some years. Another important collection that has been of great help to the second strand of enquiry in this book is the selection of woodcuts and drawings formerly in the possession of journalist and

12 Liangyou hedingben 良友合订本 (1926–1945) (‘A Compilation of the Companion Pictorial (1926–1945)’) (Shanghai: Liangyou tushu youxian gongsi, 2007). 13 Shanghai Lu Xun ji’nianguan (eds.), Banhua jicheng: Lu Xun cang Zhongguo xiandai muke quanji 版畫紀程:魯迅藏中國現代木刻全集 (Progress in Prints: Complete Modern Chinese Woodcuts Collected by Lu Xun) 5 volumes (Nanjing: Jiangsu guji chubanshe, 1991). Along the same lines is the earlier Hong Kong published volume, Lu Xun shou- cang Zhongguo xiandai muke xuanji 1931–1936 魯迅收藏中國現代木刻選集 1931–1936 (Selection of Modern Chinese Woodcuts Collected by Lu Xun 1931–1936) (Beijing: Renmin meishu chubanshe, 1963).

Paul Bevan - 9789004428737 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 11:59:31AM via free access 364 Appendix cartoon artist Jack Chen, which is now housed in the British Museum. This is a unique resource and contains examples of prints, original sketches and works of art originally produced for publication in magazines and newspapers by some of the most important figures in the Shanghai art world of the late 1930s. This material has been utilised extensively in the research for this book. Essays and memoirs by artists and writers formerly involved in the New Woodcut Movement are numerous. Just a few of the countless examples available include those by Chen Yanqiao 陳烟橋 (1961), Zhang Wang 張望 (1956) and Liu Xian 劉峴 (1956), in Lu Xun huiyi lu (Memories of Lu Xun), as well as a number of other examples in later publications such as Hanning da di 1930–1949: Guotong qu muke banhua ji (The Frozen Earth 1930–1949: A Collection of Woodcut Prints from the Nationalist Party Areas) and Nuhou de huanghe (The Roar of the Yellow River).14 Such memoirs are certainly useful for constructing an overall picture, as they were written by individuals who were actually there as the woodcut movement was taking place. They were, though, written well after the events they describe took place, at a time when the way opinions were expressed and discussed had drastically changed. Thus, they throw up as many questions as they answer, written as they were by people who devoted much of their energy simply to the apotheosis of Lu Xun. Belonging to the same school of thought, but of real use nonetheless, is the book Lu Xun and the New Woodcut Movement by Ma Tiji and Li Yunjing. This is useful as a one-stop source for general information about artists and exhibitions, although the information presented should sometimes be taken with a pinch of salt.15 Contemporary scholarship (from the 1990s onward) is equally patchy although two English- language books in particular continue to prove of real importance to the field: Xiaobing Tang’s Origins of the Chinese Avant-garde from 2008, and Chang-tai Hung’s War and Popular Culture. The latter, with its chapters on woodcuts, newspapers and cartoons, was ground-breaking in its research on wartime China when it was first published, and is still an important book at all levels of research.16 It is not possible in a short introduction such as this to list all the available source material on the subjects covered in the book – that is the purpose of the bibliography and footnotes. Here I have briefly mentioned just a small selection of the books used in the research. In the minds of some scholars today, the field of Shanghai studies has long since had its heyday, particularly, so these people say, urban studies of the Republican Era. For these critics ‘Shanghai’ has been overdone and it is now time to move on to something ‘more interesting’ instead – a popular suggestion being Sinophone studies. Even though some think in this way, with the vast amount of rich source material available that remains largely untapped, it is clear that there is much still to do. Thankfully, there are a significant number of specialists in countries around the world currently working on diverse aspects of the history of Shanghai, researching and publishing in areas as varied as: urban studies and art history, literary history and economic history, and politics and film studies. With the positivity and optimism currently shown by these scholars far outweighing just a few instances of negativity, it is predicted that exciting research on the city of Shanghai will continue for years to come, in the hands of both capable contemporary scholars and their successors.

14 Lu Xun huiyi lu 鲁迅回忆录 (Memories of Lu Xun) (Shanghai: Shanghai wenyi chubanshe, 1978); and Li Shusheng 李树声 and Li Xiaoshan 李小山 (eds.), Hanning da di 1930–1949 Guotong qu muke banhua ji 寒凝大地 1930–1949 国统区木刻版画集 (The Frozen Earth 1930–1949: A Collection of Woodcut Prints from the Nationalist Occupied Areas) (Changsha: Hunan meishu chubanshe, 2000). Li Shusheng (ed.), Nuhou de huanghe 怒吼的黄河 (The Roar of the Yellow River) (Jiangxi: Jiangxi meishu chubanshe, 2005). 15 Ma Tiji and Li Yunjing (eds.), Lu Xun yu xinxing muke yundong (Lu Xun and the New Woodcut Movement) (Beijing: Renmin meishu chubanshe, 1985). 16 Chang-tai Hung, War and Popular Culture: Resistance in Modern China, 1937–1945 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1994).

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