Guangzhou And Shanghai: Commercial City In The Modern Novel

The city writing in the ancient novels has attracted quite a few critics'attention. This issue is especially hot in recent years, when the exploration has been further deepened, and critics start to do comparative studies from the angle of "two cities" There has already been some academic publication on the comparison of "two cities" like Chang'an and Luoyang of Han and Tang Dynasties, Kaifeng and Lin'an of Song Dynasty, Beijing and Nanjing of Ming Dynasty, and Suzhou and Yangzhou of ancient times.The dissertation claims that Guangzhou and Shanghai in the modern Chinese novels are another "two cities" which deserves our serious attention. Though Guangzhou and Shanghai are geographically far from each other and belong to different cultural districts, they share some conspicuous similarities:both of them are the earliest port cities open to the outside world in modern China and bustling commercial metropolises, and, in Qing Dynasty, they took turns to be the largest foreign trade ports in China. Such resonance between Guangzhou and Shanghai has been written into modern Chinese novels. Therefore, the dissertation, based on the text of modern Chinese novels, has two essential missions:to find out the similarity between Guangzhou and Shanghai in the context of same historical background, and to explore the difference between these two cities and the underlying cultural reasons which caused this difference.The dissertation includes the following parts:The first chapter describes pre-modern Guangzhou, Shanghai's historical evolution and its cultural roots, and recalls the ancient novel, Guangzhou, Shanghai and description. They have a long history, and they have been important port cities even since the ancient times. In terms of the cultural origin of the urban development, Guangzhou is a typical city under the influence of Lingnan culture while Shanghai has been successively influenced by Wu and Yue culture, southern culture and the Shanghai culture. There is some relationship between the cultural systems of these two cities, but the difference between them is equally obvious. Both writings of the two cities in the ancient novels have experienced the development from simple geographical symbol to detailed text description, and some cultural characters of the cities became increasingly clear in the novel. This lays the foundation for the detailed description of Guangzhou and Shanghai in modern Chinese novels.Chapter two analyzes Guangzhou and Shanghai's acceptance and resistance of Western civilization from the macro perspective. The violent invasion of Western culture had deeply affected people's life in these two cities. This is not only reflected in people's absorption of the Western material civilization, but also reflected in the new forms of daily entertainment and spiritual culture. However, in the contact of Chinese and Western cultures, there existed some inevitable conflicts. Both in Guangzhou and Shanghai, certain resistance rose against Western culture. Compared with the moderate Shanghai, and Guangzhou responded with a fierce military resistance.The next chapter focuses on the commercial activities of Guangzhou and Shanghai. Both are bustling commercial cities, which had been described in detail in modern Chinese novels. But comparatively speaking, Guangzhou, due to the decline of its economic status in the nation, is more often known as a Lingnan metropolis, which has close trade and commercial exchanges with the newly-developed Hong Kong. Shanghai, on the other hand, is becoming the most influential international commercial metropolis in the nation, having increasing commercial influence upon its neighboring cities and even other cities of the nation.The fourth chapter deals with the nascent groups of Guangzhou and Shanghai, mainly including Compradors, productive capitalists, financial capitalists, industrial workers, who grew up in a new era and played an important role in their society. In modern Chinese novels, there are a great many compradors that migrated from Guangzhou to Shanghai. This is an objective reflection of the change of the two cities'economic status.Chapter five explores the lives of the two cities through local conditions and customs. Guangzhou and Shanghai have much in common on aspects like festivals, wedding, funeral, birthday as well as belief. This reveals that many similarities have been retained in the process of the culture of Central Plains'migrating to the Wu and Yue and to Lingnan. However, because of different local cultures, the two cities have also retained some folk customs with regional features.The next two chapters reveal the dark side of the city lives of Guangzhou and Shanghai by exploring the gambling, opium, prostitutes and gangsters. These social problems were prevalent in these two cities. By comparing the same subject matters of the novels, we can that the two cities were facing many common problems. However, because of the differences of natural environment, local culture between them, the aforementioned social problems'manifestations in Guangzhou and Shanghai are not the same.Chapter eight is the general remark. It, taking Guangzhou and Shanghai as a precedent, macroscopically explores the importance of city writing in modern Chinese novels for the history of fiction.