Shen Congwen In 1928: Geographic Migration And Literature Transition

Shen Congwen is a writer with his own unique writing style in modern Chinese literatur e history. His works mainly consist of two parts: the Western series and urban life series. On one hand, the two are in the binary opposition position, referring to each other and forming a coherent and integrated whole. On the other hand, there exists a distinctive contrast between them. Generally speaking, this kind of wiring styles can be found in all of his works. However, the special writing pattern isn’t used at the very beginning of his writing career. It is in 1928 that Shen Congwen adopted this kind of writing style because of the geographical mobility.Because of the "May Fourth Movement", he moved to Beijing in 1923. He was nowhere to study and he had no choice but to create more works to survive. He buried himself in the hall and the apartment to meet some influential friends who are excellent in literature. Thus he adapted himself to the literature filed in Beijing. Before he went to Shanghai in 1927, he has been a famous writer. It was said that, Shen completed a migration of not only geographically, but also to achieve change their cultural identity moved from Hunan to Beijing.In 1927, the cultural center moved south from Beijing to Shanghai because of the changes in the domestic situation and the environment. By the end of 1927, the publishing house- "Modern Review" and "Beixinshuju" in which Shen’s works were published moved to Shanghai. And another publishing house named the "fiction" was in Shanghai. Shen moved to Shanghai because he had to survive by publishing his works. In addition to the external driving force, Shen has his internal factors to move to Shanghai. He had to take the livelihood into consideration. In 1927, Shen’s mother and sister came from Beijing to Shanghai to live with him. Shen had to support three of them. But he didn’t get any job at that time. And the only income was his royalties. In order to maintain the whole family, Shen must make his works published as more as possible. For this consideration, Shen had to move to Shanghai where the royalties system is relatively mature.After the migration from Beijing to Shanghai, he was unable to integrate into Shanghai and he even rejected the city life in Shanghai, which could be found in the letters sent to his older brother and Xu Zhimo. For one thing, Shen Congwen did not manage to intergrated into Shanghai. For another, he needed the business atmosphere and reader market. He depended on the life in Shanghai which can be seen from the "southbound Notes", "die Di and the "maritime communications". Shen Congwen is extremely contradictory about life in Shanghai. On one hand, he criticized Shanghai. One the other hand, he said that his work could only be written in Shanghai. Because he can not integrate and adapt to the Shanghai city life, he began to criticize the city, taking the initiative to choose a writing style- urban opposition. He criticized the concept of urban people unhealthy lust in the "lure- refuse," "or person’s wife," "learned man" and other short stories. In the long fairy tale novel "Alice China Travels",Shen criticized the prevalence of tipping system for the city, Worship phenomenon and foreigners lease privileged phenomenon massively.Shen’s resistance to city life can be seen from an other manifestation: he began to deliberately build a "Western literature" to compete with the front of the city, to seek psychological balance. Shen Congwen aired original Xiang people’s healthy lust in "Picking fern" and "rain". In "Bai Zi", Shen portrayed the deep affection between sailors and prostitutes, which is in stark contrast with the city’s alienation and apathy. When he was in Beijing, he wrote some works whose themes were about Xiangxi people. But those works were mainly based on the description of the place and the local people, which belonged to the "geographical Xiangxi" or "real Xiangxi". In 1928, he deliberately ignored backwardness and ignorance of Xiangxi in his works and only extracted the wonderful aspect of Xiangxi, which made Xiangxi was full of poetry. It could be called as the "poetic Xiangxi" or "ideal Xiangxi " and " civilized Xiangxi". All these works were full of his personalized views. Starting from the late Shanghai, his Xiangxi became a Utopia Xiangxi where the characters, story, time and space were unrealistic.