Flaneurs, Trans-places And Speed In Contemporary Urban Culture-an Analysis Of Characters And Space In The Works Of Wei Hui, Mian Mian, Wu Qing And Other Contemporary Writers

The birth of modern cities brought a number of enormous changes to the cultural space and the human ideology. Following the change of the urban environment’s conditions, the way in which the city is seen and experienced also changed. The "industrialization" and "commercialization" of urban life, as well as the developing of urban space as something transitory and as a spectacle, produced a new kind of human character:the flaneur. The flaneur is a person who walks aimlessly around the city in order to experience it. Although he is always walking in the constraints of the city space, he clings to his position of a bystander, a spectator. Therefore the flaneur’s gaze and the way he perceives the urban reality have become an important instrument for analyzing modern urban experience.Through an analysis of Walter Benjamin, Marc Auge and Paul Virilio’s diverse theories on "modernity","flaneur","urban space","modern urban experience", and the characters and space in the fiction of Wei Hui, Mian Mian, Wu Qing and other contemporary authors, this work will try to explain contemporary urban experience, its cultural meaning, value and development tendencies.