Metropolitan Life Under The Contemplation Of Citizen Culture

As a Chinese metropolitan full of legends, Shanghai has drawn the attention of many litterateurs. Therefore, there have been numerous works on this city. In Wang Anyi's writing of Shanghai, she uses her exquisite composing skills, reflecting the ordinary resident's daily life under the contemplation of Shanghai's citizen culture, which unveils the essence of a city from the trivial details of daily life and is latent the distinctive characteristics of a region and the spiritual particularity of a city. This article adopts the method of works-analyzing, in attempts to study how the Shanghai citizens' culture has affected and restricted Wang's imagination about the city, as well as how the latter reveals Wang's emotional concentration for the Shanghai culture.The text divides into three parts:Chapter One serves as the theoretical basis. Beginning with the relationship between the urban culture and literature, it discusses about the specific development history of Shanghai and deals with the formation and the characteristics of the Shanghai culture. Through the retrospection of Wang's growing experiences, it also describes the relations between Wang and Shanghai. Then it analyzes how she has been assimilated by the citizens' culture and how she has expressed the subject of cultural identification from the previous spontaneity to the later self-knowledge.As the key part, Chapter Two analyzes mainly the urban figures in Wang's works about Shanghai, the living situation of different types of urban dwellers, the citizen mentality and their varied mental pursuits. It also explores the underlying cultural causes of their mind and conducts, that is, the relationship between the Shanghai citizen culture and the citizens' life.Last but not least, Chapter Three analyzes the earthliness of Wang's writing about Shanghai. It deals with Wang's manifestation of the earthliness through her choice of theme, her way of building a nostalgic atmosphere and her favor to female characters. Then in the respect of Wang's own peculiar historic outlook, it discusses the reasons for her to write about the earthliness and points out the significance of writings about earthliness in the history and the reality.