| Zhang Ailing is an extraordinary yet important literary figure in 1940s China. In her writing, the specificity of hybridity breaks through restriction of domestic, social, political and cultural issues and makes her writing surpass the boundaries of races, cultures and space and time. It integrates Zhang's profound concern for human life and humanity with her exquisite literary sensibility. In my thesis, I deploy my study on this hybrid specificity, and also on the cultural phenomena relevant to Zhang Ailing in 1990s China, namely the "Zhang Ailing fever" and the nostalgia theme in Hong Kong film. By exploring the underlying relationship between the two issues on the basis of respective analyses of them, I try to enrich our understanding of this legendary writer and stimulate further thought on the broad and complex process of the "rehabilitation" of Zhang's literary reputation in both Western sinology and Chinese academia. |
