Rethinking Chinese Popular Culture: Cannibalizations of the Canon

301 Pages·2009·2.252 MB·English

by  Carlos Rojas, Eileen Cheng-yin Chow

Rethinking Chinese Popular Culture
Through analyses of a wide range of Chinese literary and visual texts
from the beginning of the twentieth century through to the contemporary
period, the thirteen essays in this volume challenge the view that canonical
and popular culture are self-evident and diametrically opposed categories,
and instead argue that the two cultural sensibilities are inextricably bound
up with one another.
An international line-up of contributors present detailed analyses of liter-
ary works and other cultural products that have previously been neglected
by scholars, while also examining more familiar authors and works from
provocative new angles. The essays include investigations into the cultural
industries and contexts that produce the canonical and popular, the position
of contemporary popular works at the interstices of nostalgia and amnesia,
and also the ways in which cultural texts are inflected with gendered and
erotic sensibilities while at the same time also functioning as objects of desire
in their own right.
As the only volume of its kind to cover the entire span of the twentieth
century, and also to consider the interplay of popular and canonical literature
in modern China with comparable rigor, Rethinking Chinese Popular Culture
is an important resource for students and scholars of Chinese literature and
culture.
Carlos Rojas is Assistant Professor of Chinese Cultural Studies at Duke
University.
Eileen Cheng-yin Chow is Associate Professor of Chinese Literary and
Cultural Studies at Harvard University.
Routledge Contemporary China Series
1 Nationalism, Democracy and 11 Politics in China since 1949
National Integration in China Legitimizing Authoritarian Rule
Leong Liew and Wang Shaoguang Robert Weatherley
2 Hong Kong’s Tortuous 12 International Human Resource
Democratization Management in Chinese
A Comparative Analysis Multinationals
Ming Sing Jie Shen and Vincent Edwards
3 China’s Business Reforms 13 Unemployment in China
Institutional Challenges in a Economy, Human Resources
Globalised Economy and Labour Markets
Edited by Russell Smyth Edited by Grace Lee and
and Cherrie Zhu Malcolm Warner
4 Challenges for China’s 14 China and Africa
Development Engagement and Compromise
An Enterprise Perspective Ian Taylor
Edited by David H. Brown
and Alasdair MacBean 15 Gender and Education in China
Gender Discourses and Women’s
5 New Crime in China Schooling in the Early Twentieth
Public Order and Century
Human Rights Paul J. Bailey
Ron Keith and Zhiqiu Lin
16 SARS
6 Non-Governmental Organizations Reception and Interpretation in
in Contemporary China Three Chinese Cities
Paving the Way to Civil Society? Edited by Deborah Davis
Qiusha Ma and Helen Siu
7 Globalization and the Chinese 17 Human Security and the
City Chinese State
Fulong Wu Historical Transformations
and the Modern Quest for
8 The Politics of China’s Accession Sovereignty
to the World Trade Organization Robert E. Bedeski
The Dragon Goes Global
Hui Feng 18 Gender and Work in Urban China
Women Workers of the Unlucky
9 Narrating China Generation
Jia Pingwa and His Liu Jieyu
Fictional World
Yiyan Wang 19 China’s State Enterprise Reform
From Marx to the Market
10 Sex, Science and Morality John Hassard, Jackie Sheehan,
in China Meixiang Zhou, Jane Terpstra-
Joanne McMillan Tong and Jonathan Morris
20 Cultural Heritage Management 28 The Chinese Party-State in the
in China 21st Century
Preserving the Cities of the Adaptation and the Reinvention
Pearl River Delta of Legitimacy
Edited by Hilary du Cros and Edited by André Laliberté
Yok-shiu F. Lee and Marc Lanteigne
21 Paying for Progress 29 Political Change in Macao
Public Finance, Human Welfare Sonny Shiu-Hing Lo
and Inequality in China
Edited by Vivienne Shue 30 China’s Energy Geopolitics
and Christine Wong The Shanghai Cooperation
Organization and Central Asia
22 China’s Foreign Trade Policy Thrassy N. Marketos
The New Constituencies
Edited by Ka Zeng 31 Regime Legitimacy in
Contemporary China
23 Hong Kong, China Institutional Change and Stability
Learning to Belong to a Nation Edited by Thomas Heberer
Gordon Mathews, Tai-lok Lui, and Gunter Schubert
and Eric Kit-wai Ma
32 U.S.–China Relations
24 China Turns to Multilateralism China Policy on Capitol Hill
Foreign Policy and Regional Tao Xie
Security
Edited by Guoguang Wu 33 Chinese Kinship
and Helen Lansdowne Contemporary Anthropological
Perspectives
25 Tourism and Tibetan Culture Edited by Susanne Brandtstädter
in Transition and Gonçalo D. Santos
A Place Called Shangrila
Åshild Kolås 34 Politics and Government in
Hong Kong
26 China’s Emerging Cities Crisis under Chinese Sovereignty
The Making of New Urbanism Edited by Ming Sing
Edited by Fulong Wu
35 Rethinking Chinese Popular
27 China–US Relations Transformed Culture
Perceptions and Strategic Cannibalizations of the Canon
Interactions Edited by Carlos Rojas and
Edited by Suisheng Zhao Eileen Cheng-yin Chow

Rethinking Chinese
Popular Culture
Cannibalizations of the Canon
Edited by Carlos Rojas and
Eileen Cheng-yin Chow
First published 2009
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
© 2009 Editorial selection and matter, Carlos Rojas and
Eileen Cheng-yin Chow. Individual chapters, the contributors.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Rethinking Chinese popular culture : cannibalizations of the canon /
edited by Carlos Rojas and Eileen Cheng-yin Chow.
p. cm. – (Routledge contemporary China series)
1. Chinese literature—20th century—History and criticism.
2. Popular culture—China. I. Rojas, Carlos. II. Chow, Eileen.
PL2303.R45 2008
895.1′09005—dc22
2008023499
ISBN 0-203-88664-X Master e-book ISBN
ISBN10: 0–415–46880–9 (hbk)
ISBN10: 0–203–88664–X (ebk)
ISBN13: 978–0–415–46880–0 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978–0–203–88664–9 (ebk)
Contents
Notes on contributors ix
Introduction: the disease of canonicity 1
 
PART I
Producing popularity 13
1 Perverse poems and suspicious salons: the Friday School in
modern Chinese literature 15
 
2 Professional anxiety, brand names, and wild chickens:
from 1909 40
  
3 Serial sightings: news, novelties, and an Unofficial History of
the Old Capital 54
 - 
4 Canonizing the popular: the case of Jin Yong 75
  
PART II
Canonical reflections 89
5 An archaeology of repressed popularity: Zhou Shoujuan,
Mao Dun, and their 1920s literary polemics 91
 
viii Contents
6 A tale of two cities: romance, revenge, and nostalgia in two
fin-de-siècle novels by Ye Zhaoyan and Zhang Beihai 115
 
7 From romancing the state to romancing the store:
further elaborations of Butterfly motifs in contemporary
Taiwan literature 132
- 
PART III
Nostalgia and amnesia 149
8 Rewriting the Red Classics 151
 
9 The reproduction of a popular hero 179
 
10 Memory, photographic seduction, and allegorical
correspondence: Eileen Chang’s Mutual Reflections 190
 
PART IV
Gender and desire 207
11 Popular literature and national representation: the gender
and genre politics of Begonia 209
 - 
12 “What sort of thing is sentiment?” Gifts, love tokens, and
material evidence in Jin Yong’s novels 235
- 
13 Authorial afterlives and apocrypha in 1990s Chinese fiction 262
 
Index 283
Notes on contributors
Michael Berryis Associate Professor of Contemporary Chinese Cultural Studies
at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He is the author of Jia
Zhangke’s Hometown Trilogy (2009), A History of Pain: Trauma in
Modern Chinese Literature and Film (2008) and Speaking in Images:
Interviews with Contemporary Chinese Filmmakers (2005). He is also the
translator of book-length novels by Wang Anyi, Ye Zhaoyan, Chang
Ta-chun, and Yu Hua.
Hsiao-hung Chang is NTU Distinguished Professor in the Department of
Foreign Languages and Literatures at the National Taiwan University.
Her books in Chinese include Fake Globalization (2008), Running into a
Wolf in the Department Store(2001),Queer Family Romance(2000),Sexual
Imperialism(1998),Queer Desire: Gender and Sexuality(1996),Narcissistic
Women (1996), Gender Crossing: Feminist Literary Theory and Criticism
(1995), and Post/modern Woman: Power, Desire and Gender Performance
(1993).
Jianhua Chen is Assistant Professor of the Humanities at the Hong Kong
University of Science and Technology. His books in Chinese include Re-
volution and Form: Literary Modernity in Mao Dun’s Early Fiction(2007),
Poetry Selections of Chen Jianhua(2006), In the Ages of Late Empires and
Globalization: Essays on Chinese Literary Culture (2006), and Revolution,
Discourse and Modernity in China (2000).
Eileen Cheng-yin Chow is Associate Professor of Chinese Literary and
Cultural Studies at Harvard University. She is completing a volume on
Global Chinatownsand is the co-translator, with Carlos Rojas, of Yu Hua’s
novel, Brothers.
DAI Jinhua is Professor of Chinese Literature and Culture at Peking Uni-
versity. Her books in Chinese include Scars(2002),Misty Scenes: Chinese
Cinematic Culture, In the Mirror: 1978–1998(2000), Discussions with Dai
Jinhua (1999), Cartographies of the City of Mirrors (1999), Hidden Writ-
ings: Studies in 1990s Culture (1999), Crossed Gazes: Multiple Identities
in Post-1989 Mainland Chinese Art Films(1998),City of Mirrors: Woman,