On Shen Congwen And Shanghai

When Shen Congwen re-emerged in the historiography of Chinese modern literature in 1980s after years of ignorance, he was categorized as a nostalgic countryman who barely related to the modern city of Shanghai. This idea, nevertheless, can be traced back to the well-known debate between Jing Pai (Beijing School) and Hai Pai (Shanghai School) in 1930s, in which Shen was viewed as one of the representatives of Jing Pai. A back glimpse of that debate, however, would suggest that Shen's emphasis was always on the solemnness of creation and he, as the editor of TaKungPao's Literature and Art Supplement, had to take a strategic stance, which resulted in misunderstanding. In fact, Shanghai had an indissoluble bond with him even five years before.In 1928, the commercial cultural system of Shanghai had gradually matured, which not only gave birth to a new kind of literary market and consumer groups, but also nourished the vocational writers. As the new literary businesses leaned towards south, Shen Congwen, one of many, went to the south of China. Five years of literary life in Beijing before this trasition had already made Shen accepted and well-known among the mainstream literary circle, yet although he was depended on writing for the living, he was only a semi-vocational writer who did not enter the cultural market entirely.Shen, arriving in Shanghai, was stimulated by the commercial culture there and began to write madly. As his works could enter the cultural market as the free-trade commodities, it was Shanghai, in this respective, made Shen a genuine vocational writer. The diligent writing and large amount of works made him matured artisically and earned him the names of, such as, prodigious writer and prolific writer. It is exactly under the same circumstances that Shen participated in the creations of two magazines in vain and earned an occupation in Chinese Public University with the fame he accumulated. Such an experience of both successes and losses, however, nourished Shen's love-and-hate attitude towards Shanghai, as he, on the one hand, criticized Shanghai, on the other hand, searched for the way to intergrate with Shanghai in the meantime to break away from it. Therefore, Shanghai not only made Shen well-paid and famous, but also formulated his spiritual structure.This internalized "Shanghai-ness" not only influenced Shen's representation of Shanghai, but also became his basis of his portray of Xiang Xi ( west of Hunan province) in this period, so it was through his signification of Xiang Xi, rather than the representation of it, Shanghai was brought out unconsciously. In the meantime, the works of this period reflected his desire stimulated by the metropolis and his anxiety towards sex and female's bodies, which differed greatly from his reminiscent prosaic portray of Xiang Xi during the Beijing period: they were legends rather than the madrigal in the Beijing period.It was after Shen left Shanghai that he became to realize his intimate relationship with Shanghai. Because of this "Shanghai-ness" of his spiritual structure, his master works such as Bian Cheng ( The Border Town), Xiang Xing Sanji (Travel Sketches in Hunan) and Chang He ( The Long River) embraced a lot of Shanghai ingredients. Xiang Xi was much more realistic than it was before and Shen was no longer a poet chanting pastroral songs or storyteller of Xiang Xi legends, but a realistic writer occupied with modernity from the height of nation-state. Such kind of viewpoint undoubtedly originated from his experience of Shanghai, so no matter how far Shen was from Shanghai, he was always in the vision Shanghai rendered to him.