New Shanghai nostalgia: old buildings in Blossoms
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New Shanghai nostalgia: old buildings in Blossoms Fang Wan1
Received: 17 June 2019 / Revised: 7 February 2020 / Accepted: 5 August 2020 / Published online: 12 August 2020 © Academy for International Communication of Chinese Culture 2020
Abstract By analysing the descriptions of Shanghai’s old buildings within Blossoms, this essay discusses how Jin Yucheng constructs a new nostalgic narrative of Shanghai and extends previous Shanghai nostalgia. In previous Shanghai nostalgia, Shanghai is an imagination of global modernity which is different from the modernity in Mao’s era, leading to the neglect of the diverse properties of Shanghai nostalgia. In contrast, Blossoms focuses on the value of everyday, the ordinary people and their spaces, reviving the diversity of Shanghai nostalgia. Keywords Blossoms · Old buildings · Shanghai nostalgia · Modernity
Introduction Within Chinese literary trends, the concept of nostalgia has flourished in the last two decades, mirroring trajectories within popular culture and the media since the 1990s. It has been particularly influential in Shanghai culture where it has been named ‘Shanghai nostalgia’ (上海怀旧). In fact, this inclination has been especially prevalent within a larger consumer culture, which renders the novels within this trend significant consumable pieces of nostalgia. The focus of this essay, Blossoms (Fanhua, 繁花), by Jin Yucheng (金宇澄), typifies this genre of work.1 This story, an epic spanning nearly four decades, is split into two large parts and alternating between these time-scales, narrating the daily life of three main men: A Bao, Hu 1 The first edition was published on Longtang website (May 2011 to November 2011) and the final edition was published in the well-known Chinese literary journal, Shouhuo (2012).
* Fang Wan [email protected] 1
SOAS University of London, London, UK
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Sheng, and Xiao Mao. The first part centres on the time frame of the 1960s and the narrative carries across until the end of the cultural revolution in the 1970s. The second part takes up this point of departure, the 1980s, and continues until the start of the twenty-first century. Perhaps due to its embodiment of Shanghai customs and history, with this book almost making a literary record of the Shanghai past, Jin Yucheng has been heralded as one of the most important writers of the Shanghai narrative, on par with Han Bangqing, Zhang Ailing, and Wang Anyi (Cong 2016). At the end of 2016, famous director Wong Kar-Wai announced a plan that he would adapt Blossoms into movie. Before then, although this novel swept all important literature prizes in mainland China after it was published, it did not catch much attention abroad.2 This announcement of adaption soon brought this literary work into the sights of literary critics and publishers in other countries. Jeremy Tiang, a Singaporean writer and translator based in New York City, praised Blossoms that this novel really did seem to approach the breadth and complexity of Dream of the Red Chamber (Yao 2
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