Abstract
The city, as much of our literature, is a landscape, a place for posing questions and describing nostalgia memories, a space either inner or outer, depend on the author’s perspective through multicultural approach. This paper explores the specifically female aspects of urban experience revealed in Wang Anyi’s writing. For Wang, the depth of the city lies in everyday trivial details, clothing, food, shelter, and transport, and in irrepressible passion for fashion, desire, and imagination. Her Shanghai tale traces the changes of the city from pre-liberation to the post-revolution by following in not only the historical and political but mainly the multicultural footsteps. A question at the heart of place-based literary memories or representations is how do real place shift and change when put on the page or screen and how does city reflect and represent memories and spaces in the way when place and identity intersect. Writing Shanghai women and writing Shanghai through women have a long tradition in modern Chinese fiction. Wang once wrote, “Women are the representatives of Shanghai. Shanghai also provides a best stage for them to performance.” No matter the performance or experience is pleasure or painful, provides a moving metaphor and a fluid potentiality for individual personality, comparing to remote solid yellow earth and traditional Chinese villages.
Presenters
Hong JiangProfessor, Chinese, German, Italian, Japanese and Russian, Colorado College, Colorado, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
WOMEN WRITING, MULTICULTURAL APPROACH, NOSTALGIA, CITY MEMORIES
