The Research Of Urban Writing In Chi Zijian’s Novels

With the change of working and living places in the 1990 s,Chi Zijian’s writing also began to shift from the countryside to the city,and the number of novels set in the city continued to grow.Her writing about the city is different from her early rural-based fiction and also distinctly different from other writers who write about the city.This paper uses documentary analysis,close reading of texts and comparative studies,and takes time,space and humanity as the entry point,to explore the uniqueness of Chi’s urban writing from three aspects: the literary expression of urban time,the spatial construction and ecological nature of the city,and the human relationship and human-city relationship of the city.From the perspective of diachronic,Chi’s novels adopt a narrative strategy that breaks the single linear narrative and intercepts time points and segments.Unlike the previous linear and epic narration,she abandons some of the continuous images to complete the new collage,and adopts an on-demand approach to integrate history and the past into the current narrative,making the historical narrative more daily and life-like.The history of the city is presented in a diverse way through characters experiencing history,architecture presenting history and folk art expressing history.From the synchronic level,Chi’s novels express the city’s time in a way that combines natural time and social time,both of which are skillfully combined to drive the development of the plot and give the works a deeper ideological connotation.Public buildings and ordinary dwellings are the main body of the material space of the city.Through the construction of the characters’ work,living and entertainment places,Chi injects blood and soul into the material space,and renews the way of shaping the characters.The private residence is the real field to understand each individual’s state of existence,and the complex relationship between people and space can be seen through them.The urban road traffic and zoning are the most prominent and intuitive elements of the city map,and their detailed descriptions are the writer’s study of the overall layout,development,and interrelationship of the city from a more macro perspective.Another unique feature of the construction of urban space in Chi’s novels is that the writer skillfully integrates the artificial and the natural,trying to construct a harmonious coexistence of human and nature in the city.The emotional relationships of various characters in Chi’s urban novels can be divided into three categories: blood,kinship and romantic relationship.These relationships coexist,and sometimes the other two can surpass blood relationship,becoming the strongest bond among people.It is not only Chi’s portrayal of human relationships in the city,but also her thinking and exploration of interpersonal relationships in the city.From the perspective of a single individual,the relationship between people and the city is a kind of relationship from exclusion to gradual integration.From the overall perspective,people and the city are an isomorphic relationship,and the fate of people is also the fate of the city.The history of human growth is also the history of the construction and development of the city.Individuals and the city mutually embrace,nourish,and create each other.