Memory And Imagination: The Urban Narrative Of Mass Media In Modern China

Although the modern press was born relatively late in Tianjin, it had a rapid development and obtained an enormous influence very fast in China. The supplements developed unprecedentedly after the establishment of the Republic of China. Founded on January26,1895by a German named Hanneken, the Zhili Report was the earliest newspapers attached leisure words published in Tianjin. Since then, through a period of development, the supplements in Tianjin’s press had been more and more maturing.The golden age of the press in modern Tianjin is in the1920-1930s. With increasing prosperity and stability of the city life, both serious and humorous comprehensive supplements, with the purpose of enlightenment and entertainment, began to rise, and became very popular. At the same time, many professional supplements whose contents are very serious and professional but yet interesting also had emerged, and gradually grew up. These all-encompassing "soft" supplements complemented each other, to fit the needs of readers and guide social change. To the four great newspapers in Tianjin in1920-1930s, the supplements of Ta Kung Pao was more than30, Yi Shih Pao more than20. The other two newspapers’supplements were less than Ta Kung Pao’s and Yi Shih Pao’s, but they got warm welcome of a lot of people.In1920-1930s the newspapers’supplements in Tianjin recorded an urban form filled with fragments, from the rich to the poor. As a perfect media platform, including everything of all and closing to ordinary citizens, the supplement became the best carrier to show the urban landscape. Through reproduction of them, the isolated life, leisure and emotion between different classes were spliced together. Even more important, in the reader’s gaze and discussion, the public agenda or private topic within some scope was to be resocialized and rebalanced in the dynamic adjustment. Therefore, supplements realized their economic value in these events, but also created a public group which based on the modern public platform and displayed its thought even power. Another concern is that for the fragmentation and diversification of city life, some descriptions and judgments in supplements based on their own social class or interest showed a wide variety of forms and value orientation. Or, in the supplements’observation to urban life, there was some so-called artificial code. To the view of mass communication, the "city" in supplements had experienced a process of continous translation, from authors to editors, again to readers. Through this process, the physical and real city was gradually symbolized and subjectified, and eventually became a spiritual, cultural and virtual city. In the mixture of reality with imagination, and order with chaos, supplements reproduced an implicated and significant city both in history and reality, both to be visible and imagined.Within the newspapers’supplements, some focused on urban construction, and some focused on social progress. Of course, there are quite a large part of them centered on the daily life of ordinary citizens. All these supplements that shined on each other formed a very special picture in modern Tianjin’s journalism history. Also because Chinese press was born and developed with the process that Chinese cities changed from the traditional to the modern, supplements born in cities not only recorded a lot of great transitions and turbulences in history, also largely mapped modern life in Chinese cities and sorrows and joys of ordinary people because of its unique city attribute so as to be a perfect mirror to examine the history of the city. With the same meaning, in specific urban society, the various supplements participated in the shaping of urban culture, at the same time they also constructed the history of cities. Therefore, this paper intends to analyse these supplements, involved in the construction of new cities, and people’s daily life, urban leisure and entertainment, as well as gender relations between young men and young women, to explore the function and amazing strength of the media on the expression of urban culture and its construction, look for the interaction between media text and urban culture, and try to establish a closer relationship between the social and historical change and the mass media.