Urban Perception And Spatial Practice: Xia Yan And His Cultural Shanghai

Focusing on the artists I call"Chinese modern dramatists/filmmakers’and their encounters with the urban space of Shanghai, this dissertation explores the relationships between these artists and Shanghai city during the period of Republic of China, on the one hand,their lived experiences and art works is inherently connected with their perceptions of social space of city including material and mental spaces that provide the possibilities and stages for their various practices.Introduction including reviews of previous researches and attempts to blend the academic topic of Shanghai studies with the studies of Chinese modern drama and early films.Enlightened by the insights of the urban theory and theories about perception and space, this chapter also attempts to develop a new approach or theoretical perspective calls "urban perception and spatial practice" to reflect and revisit the urban experiences and cultural works in modern China.’Subject with living body’is the keystone of the arch of this approach.Chapter 1 focus on the lives, arts and revolutionary works of Xia yan and other Chinese modem dramatists/filmmakers and try to elaborate how they transform and appropriate the urban space such as house, street, hotel, cafe, theater with their urban perception of Shanghai and how these space practices is always accompany with the struggle of visibility of body.Chapter 2 traces the left-wing movements of drama and film during the 1930’s when Shanghai has shown its complicated conditions in many aspects such as the development of urban construction and the appearance of city consciousness.The performances on stage and images in screen representing Shanghai as the paradoxical city that showing its variety and openness as well as its problems.The dramatists/filmmakers entered and created the spaces of city culture with their concerns about various issues of urban modernity such as classes,female identity and dwelling in city through their perceptions and practices.In chapter 3 I will analyze the plays by dramatists such as Xia Yan and Yu ling that left and stay in Shanghai respectfully but insist on perceiving Shanghai and developing a spirit of’wild grass’(pointed by Xia Yan on the stages in theatre and in their lives when the extreme violence and horror were routinized,the’state of emergence’had became the rule of everyday life as Benjamin Walter said.Chapter 4 centers on the leftist films of "Kunlun Film Industries Corporation Ltd", a private company built in Shanghai after the war.Based on the analysis of Kunlun’s Film such as "Spring River Flows East","Myriad of Lights"and "Corws and Sparrows",this chapter will reveal the changing memories and perceptions of urban spaces during the civil war and the artistic imaginations and configurations of a new ethic of city life in their screening of Shanghai.