Shanghai Citizens' Spiritual "Great World"

The tabloid is cultural fast food favored by citizens of modern cities. Together with periodical and newspaper supplement, it is taken as one of top three carriers of modern popular novels. It is extremely significant for both popular culture and popular novel. Taking The Crystal, the authority of tabloid which is typical representative of modern Shanghai tabloid, as an example, this article studies modern tabloid's survival situation and its content features distinguished from newspaper, in a bid to acquire more knowledge about the relationship between the tabloid and modern popular literature and mass media.The Introduction part gives a summary of the previous study achievements on tabloids and The Crystal, and puts forward this article's study thought train and methodology.In Chapter I, the author gives a brief review of the development history of The Crystal, based on which he gives analysis on The Crystal's position and value in the history of modern popular literature. This article divides the tabloid's over 20 years of development history into three phases and summarizes different features of the tabloid in these three phases. Comparing The Crystal with other tabloids and newspaper in the same phase, the article concludes that The Crystal is a comprehensive tabloid integrating both literature and art works and social news. The author also gives detailed analysis for both internal and external reasons leading to the publication halt of The Crystal. He concludes that The Crystal was stopped publication due to both internal and external factors, which corrects the previous rumor on the reasons of the publication stop.Based on lots of essays, notes and arguments, the Chapter II offers detailed analysis on the diction strategy of The Crystal. The author points out that in terms of content, the Crystal attracts readers mainly in three aspects, i.e., winning readers with interest different from that of newspaper (the interest found in game articles, social news and novels), attracting readers with fierce literature and art argument (also one of methods to improve its taste), and always attracting readers with independent standpoint through sharp social criticism.In Chapter III, the author first analyzes the cultural conservatism tendency of The Crystal's literati group, and pointed out that they are traditional literati who insist on traditional ethical and moral conception and literature concept. They are also in active pursuit of"celebrity conduct"and"talent romance"in both daily life and writing. Regarding the individuation theory, the article analyzes the tabloid critics'nucleus Zhang Liaozi and typical celebrity Yuan Hanyun, pointing out that they show typical culture and literature tendency of The Crystal's literati group. In the discourse of the novels of The Crystal, the article gives no detailed thought and art analysis, but focuses on the summary of its general features as popular novels. The author also sums up the defects and their reasons of serial novels published on The Crystal, trying to unveil the common defects and their reasons of serial popular novels published on modern newspaper.In Chapter IV, the article tries to discuss about the operation strategy of They Crystal in some aspects such as reader orientation. The accurate reader orientation is indispensable for They Crystal's great success in Shanghai's media circle despite the fierce competition. The article studies the tabloid's column setup and style change in its previous development phase, believing that the expected readers are those common citizens but not the literati. Focusing on this orientation, The Crystal ceaselessly adjusts its content and styles according to citizen readers'reading tastes to pursuit change in stability and finally became the tabloid authority in Shanghai.