A Study Of Urban Narratives In Kim Jin-hee's Novels

Kim Guemhee,a writer born in the 1970s,she has experienced China's reform and innovation,urbanization development,but also experienced the sadness and miserable life of working in South Korea.She presents her own experiences and the life styles of the people around her in the form of a novel,which resonated greatly.Kim is a leading figure in the Chinese Korean novelists born in the 1970s and 1980s.She has not only won many awards in the Chinese Korean literature forum,but also been nominated and awarded in various well-known awards in the Korean literature forum,including "Shin Dong-yep Literature Award","Bak Shin-ea Literature Award","Dong-In Literature Award" and so on.In her novels,the confusion of being a minority,the dual perspective of urban and rural development of urbanization,the intergenerational relationship between parents and children in the continuous progress of the city are vividly expressed.Most of her novels take urban space as the background,which can be said to establish her perspective of urban writing,and this writing is closely related to her personal experience.Kim Guemhee was born in 1979 in XinLi Village,Jiutai City,Jilin Province.The so-called "Xinli Village" because of this village is newly established village,which is the so-called village in the scattered area of the Korean nationality.In 1997,she gave up her job as a primary school teacher and went to South Korea to work alone.She worked as a Chinese lecturer,hotel cleaner,hotel waitress and other low-level people in South Korea.After that,she returned to China in 2004 and lived in Tianjin,Changchun and other places.Married at 22,she has a lot of life experience compared to her peers.This also explains why Tianjin,Changchun,Shanghai,Seoul and so many other cities are used as Settings in her novels.After 1978,China ushered in the era of reform and opening up and market economic system,which undoubtedly had a severe impact on the Chinese society and the Chinese Korean society at that time.Urbanization is not only due to market and government intervention,but also due to macro-economy and economic development mode.The development of cities requires a large number of labor.As an ethnic minority,the Chinese Korean ethnic group has always maintained a tradition of living and farming in the three northeastern provinces.However,after the socialist planned economy was transformed into a market economy in the 1990s and the reform and opening up policy became the mainstream,under the sweeping urbanization and industrialization of China,the agricultural social tradition of the Chinese Korean ethnic group has been greatly damaged.Especially after the establishment of diplomatic ties between China and South Korea in 1992,many Chinese Koreans have heard about the high salaries in South Korea,have gone to South Korea to work,which caused the Chinese Korean villages quickly hollowed out,aging,fertile land no one jurisdiction,gradually reduced to wasteland.But at the same time,the Chinese Korean people who go to the city have a polarized life.One is that they have no money and no power,but they work hard in the city.This kind of hard life style also enables them to quickly take root in the city.There is another kind of people who,with the sound of reform and opening up,come to the city with ambition to seek a job,but get hit in the cruel reality and even lose themselves.The characters in Kim Guemhee's novels are typical to a certain degree.Her writing not only depicts the vivid images of the characters,but also shows the social reality,so it is worth to studying.This thesis will use the theory of social and historical criticism,as well as Walter Benjamin,Georg Simmel's theory to analyze the urban space narrative in the novel.This thesis is divided into five chapters.The first chapter introduces the research purpose,research significance,advance research,research object and research methodology of this thesis.The second chapter analyzes the imagination and reality of the city.By observing the image of urban space in the eyes of rural people,it analyzes the urban space and urban material that they pursue.The phenomenon of rural youth eager to go to the city is not limited to the Chinese Korean society,but a common phenomenon in the whole Chinese society,which is also caused in large part by the widening gap between the rich and the poor in urban and rural areas caused by the deepening of urbanization.Urbanization makes the countryside and the city have no boundaries,and they can move freely.People living in the countryside can also enjoy the high-level material life of the city,which also makes them yearn for the urban space and the material life of the city.Material is not only a tool for people to obtain autonomy in the city,but also a means to make the society produce all kinds of inequality and class.On the one hand,urban space tempts people to go to the city with its rich material and growing quality of life;on the other hand,it drives away people living in the city with its indifferent human feelings and survival pressure.The third chapter analyzes the urban residential space and the urban social space.The urban residential space has multiple meanings.As a product of modern city,the urban residential space is not only the space containing the meaning of life and memory,but also the basis of our identity.But the city could represent the apartment living space is no longer living space,and is easy to value determination and the exchange of money.The "home" can be changed and bought and sold at any time according to its own needs and the coercion of society,which also makes the "home"less important and less meaningful.The sense of identity in urban space needs to be realized through the element of "hometown".The urban social space spreads out along the streets of the city.The automobile can be used as a commodity of urban social space or consumption space.At this time,the automobile in the city can establish the class order according to its brand and performance value.In addition,the city's department stores,KTV,hair salons,cafes and so on are urban consumption space.Hair salons used to be mainly men's consumption space,but have become more women's consumption space over time.Moreover,the most central and common cars on the streets can be used as a social space in a city or as a commodity for consumption,where they can create hierarchical order based on their brand and performance values.Urban social space both attracts rural people to cities and excludes those who cannot adapt in cities,driving them back to the countryside.The fourth chapter analyzes the characters in Kim Guemhee's novels.Her novels are roughly divided into two parts:"father generation" and"children generation".The "father generation" experienced The Times before and after China's reform and opening up and market economic system,and was also bound by traditional thoughts.Some "fathers" can not abandon their traditional ideas and are gradually eliminated by the society in the era of change.Some "fathers" have absorbed the advanced ideas of the city's growing development and have to pursue their own values while not causing trouble to "Sons".From birth to growth,the "children" are accompanied by social changes.They are wandering in the gradually huge city.Some people are eager to succeed,but choose to escape from the world of ideas.Some people are down-to-earth and diligent,but they can't succeed.Some people have established themselves in the city with their own efforts.Kim Guemhee writes about the spiritual changes of "father generation" and "children generation" in the city.The coexistence of the collapse of "father generation" and the rebirth of "children generation" has also become the epitome of the modern urban space.She writes about the human being,which makes today,under the influence of market economy and the growing culture of consumerism,particularly valuable.Most of Kim Guemhee's novels take the city as the background to write all aspects of the city people,but there is little research on Kim Guemhee's city writing.This is also enough to show the significance of studying the city writing in Kim Guemhee's novels.When she wrote about the city,she did not only hold a critical attitude towards the indifference and desire of the city,but also held a positive attitude towards the increasingly improved quality and thoughts of people in the increasingly developing urban society.Her work as a city writing has practical significance,also has social significance.