Xi Lou And The Intellectuals In Xi Lou

From 1894 to 1911, hundreds of thousands of institutional media such as newspapers, associations and schools emerged in Shanghai. Due to the city's favorable atmosphere in social politics and culture context, the activity spaces and modes for the intellectuals from all corners of China gathered in Shanghai are engaged in cultural and political activities experienced a great change. Through the influences of personal friendships among the intellectuals and the new-emerging institutional media, a new social communication circle began to take shape. On this basis, the intellectuals built a series of activity spaces. Xi Lou, which located in Shibao office, is a typical space. By it, the intellectuals run some activities. Under the background of Shanghai's political and cultural atmosphere in the late Qing Dynasty, the intellectuals built up a cultural network via institutional media, conduct cultural, educational activities or run some political activities. In this process, Xi Lou, which literally means "a rest chamber", was given several particular spacial messages. This article regards Xi Lou and the intellectuals in Xi Lou as research objects. Through tracing the changes of Xi Lou's spacial messages, I try to describe the basic situation that how the intellectuals conducted social interactions, exchanged views and organized political activities, and to restore its functional mechanism. On the basis, I will discuss the interaction between the intellectual groups and their activity spaces.In this paper, in addition to the Introduction, Conclusion, the full text is divided into three parts.Introduction, reviewing the status of this topic shows that the institute has been achieved and the remaining space to expand. Basing on this study, mentioning a clear meaning and research ideas of this article, and defining some related definitions.Chapter one is about Shibao and the founding of Xi Lou. Shibao is an innovative newspaper with some distinctive features. Di Chuqing, the owner of Shibao, vacated a special reception room for guests to have a rest, chat and entertainment activities, namely Xi Lou. In the course of relaxation and communication in Xi Lou, the frequent visitors gradually formed a Xi Lou-centred social communication network and public activity space, thus a loose social group called "Xi Lou Zhong Ren", the intellectuals in Xi Lou took shape. The intellectuals in Xi Lou shared common education background and interests; sometimes they even have a relationship of consanguinity. So they often visit Shibao office and gather for some activities. Most of them are young or middle-aged intellectuals coming from Jiangsu Province.Chapter two will put emphasis on the cultural activities, the cultural network of the intellectuals in Xi Lou. In the last years of Qing Dynasty, they made great contributions in promoting the social and cultural education reformation by establishing schools, setting up associations, running newspapers and magazines and sponsoring bookstores. Relying on these institutional media, the intellectuals in Xi Lou built up a specific cultural network and broaden this group's cultural power. In this process, Xi Lou completed its transformation from pure recreation areas to a gathering place where intellectuals often haunt to exchange their political viewpoints and conduct cultural activities.In Chapter three, I will cover the political activities of the intellectuals in Xi Lou. In the last years of Qing Dynasty, various social contradictions transformed into political campaigns one after another. As a specific social group sharing the common political viewpoints, the intellectuals in Xi Lou passionately engaged themselves in Constitutionalism Movement by publicizing the constitutional ideas to the broad masses of people. When the influence of Constitutionalism Movement faded away and the tendency of revolution became increasingly urgent, they transferred to support revolutionist and advocate the republicans. In this process, Xi Lou was transformed from a leisure place to a political site where people express their political viewpoints. Especially during the year of Xinhai, Xi Lou was turned into one of the occasion for constitutionalists and revolutionists to reach a recommendation.In the conclusion, I will analyze the alternations of Xi Lou's spacial allegory and the improving role of the intellectuals in Xi Lou played in theses changes, explaining the influences of changes on the intellectuals in Xi Lou. Based on the above, I will discuss the relationship between the activity place of intellectuals in Shanghai in the Qing Dynasty and these intellectual groups. According to my research, on one hand, via various public mass media, the intellectuals built an activity space by their own in many different ways and given them different messages in different cultural or political context; on the other hand, the formation of the intellectuals' activity spaces exerted forgoing influences on their social or political activities and self-identification. The two factors are interactive, each promoting the other.