Modern Implications Of Mu Shiying Urban Imagery

Shiying Mu(1912-1940), was known as “The Master of the New Feeling Style”,“Writing Wizard”, and also a contemporary writer, whose literature-New Style CityNovel-had a great influenced on the world. Under his great creativity, a lot ofliterature treasures were written during his ephemeral life, such as “The North andSouth Poles”“The Public Tomb”,“The Platinum Female Statue” and “The AffectionOf A Chaste Virgin” and so forth. Apart from “The North and South Poles”, othernovels also focus on impressing the bizarre and prosperous city life. Through cityimage, built in many different ways including representation, symbolization andmetaphor, Mu succeeded build a cultural, imaginative and contemporarycity—Shanghai, revealing the contemporary concept of the new rising city culture.Apart from the introduction and the conclusion section, the content of the essay canbe divided into for chapters:The introduction section introduced the life affairs and a series of creations of Mu,analyzed the possibility of city imagery with related theories, illuminated theimportance and meaning of Mu’s city novel, and also integrated and concluded theconcept of city image.Chapter one focused on the image of ballrooms, explicitly described the concept-“Ballroom: the Stage for Contemporary Desire”. Ballroom, as a contemporaryconsuming place, not only provided a brand new social and consuming place, but alsopresented a contemporary imagination for people living in the city-a dreaming livingway which is full of the vitality. Ballroom, as a public place filled with desire,recorded the transformation process of Chinese from abstinence to indulgence, andcreated a legitimate, reasonable atmosphere for the modern humans to pursuit thefreedom of life.Chapter two focused on the image of cars, explained the concept “Cars-TheRepresent of Modern Speed”. Cars, as a symbol of modern traffic, its fast-pace,high-speed and strong stimulation characters constructed a kind of imagination ofmodern way of living and the consciousness of high speed rhythm life hold byShanghai people; cars as a alienation material symbol, brought convenience tomodern humans and also confined the development of them, in a way thatmaterialized the relationship between people who were enslaved and objectified bythem.The third chapter analyzed the combination of the image of neon lights and citystreets, described the concept-“The Neon Light: the Representation of ModernAnesthetics”: Under the influence by lights and streets, Shanghai shined the gloriouslight like a legendary luminous pearl. With the light, the streets were so bright;however, streets turned into a hotbed of crime and conspiracy where cannot receive,and a series of tragedies about common people were playing, which represented thedarkness of the reality under the unreal brightness.Chapter four:“Pierrot: The Split Personality of Modern People”. A lonelinessfeeling showed by modern people was covered by a kind of indulging and thrilling appearance, which formed into a specific personality split in the special history period;the reason of loneliness was caused by a spirit crisis faced by them, and it present thewildness of faith, living dilemma and the lack of emotion.