face , body , and t h e c ity: Jiu na 'ou and mu shi yin g
rural Village or the small town . Only in a relatively small number of
. c h a p t e r six
FACE, BODY, AND THE CITY:
THE FICTION OF LlU NA'OU
AND MU SHIYING
In his classic study The COU11try
and the City, Raymond Williams traces the
transition in English literary representation from the pastoral "knowab le
communities " to the "c ities of darkness and light ." It would be hard to
trace a similar trans ition in modern Chinese literature. Rather, both city
and countryside existed side by side as contrasting images and value
systems in the modern Chinese consciousness during the first half of the
twentieth century . With the triumph of the Chinese Communist Revolu­
tion in 1949, the significance of the city was eclipsed by the ideology of
rural populism for at least the next four decades . It was not until the late
1980s , as Ch ina entered the post-Mao era , that "urban consciousness"
was recovered as the central trope in a new discourse of modernity . Thus ,
unlike the major cities of Paris , Vienna , Berlin, and New York, which
becam e th e breed ing ground and symbolic universe for Western mod­
ernism , as Williams and other scholars have argued , Shanghai played a
less predominant and more ambivalent role for the modern Chine S¢
literary imaginatio n. The fictional landscapes of May Fourth literature , as
represen ted by the works of Lu Xun and others , remain anchored in the
novels , Mao Dun 's Mid11ight
being one , do es Shangha i emerge as a "city of
darkness and light ."
In thi s regard , the two writers I discuss in this chapter , Liu Na 'ou
and Mu Shiying , are rather special , becau se for both the city was the 011/Y
world of their existence and the key source of their creative imagination .
Known as leaders of the Japanese-inspired nee-sensationalist sch ool,
they attempted to project their urban obsession with an experimental
technique that both departs radically from the May Fourth traditi on of
realism and differ s from the style of Shi Zhecun. The significance of their
contribution to Chinese litera ture-particularly to the development of
literary modernism-has been rediscovered after more than half a cen­
tury of scholarly oblivion .'
Liu Na'ou ( 1900- 1939) was born in Taiwan but grew up in japan.
After his return to Shanghai to study French at Aurora University , he
spearheaded two significant avant-garde journals in the late
1920s-Wugui /ieche (Trackless train ) and Xi11»ewyi (La NouvelleLittera­
ture)-which provided the first showcase for his friends and classmates
Shi Zhecun and Dai Wangshu. As his friends becam e established writers
and editors while his bookstore was destroyed during the japanese bom­
bardment of Shanghai in January 1932 , Liu made anoth er trip to japan
and all but disappeared from Shanghai's literary scene . His inte rest
shift ed from creative writing to film criticism , and he later edited a film
journal , Xia11daidianying (M odern cin ema) , and wrot e some penetrating
but controversial articles on film aesthe tics . In 1939 , two years after war
broke out against japan, I.iu b ecame the editor of a newspaper und er the
collaborationi st regime of Wang jingwei and was also making a film
when his life was suddenly cut short by assassination, possibly by secret
agent s of the Guomindang or by the notorious Green Gang , an under­
ground Mafia connected with it .'
Mu Shiying ( 19 12- 1940) made his first appearance as a fiction
wr iter in Liu'sjournal Xin wenyi in 1930 , at the precocious age of eighteen .
His early stori es, later collect ed in Nanbeiji(N orthern and southern poles ,
 THE M OD ERN LI TERAR Y IMAG I N AT IO N
1932 ), created quit e a stir amo ng le ftists becaus e they described the world
of the lumpen prole tariat o f river bandits and unemp loy ed workers , al­
though he had no persona l know ledge of the subject he described and
was conc erned only with the questio n of "how to wri te ." Thus he soo n
became a prot ege of Sh i Zhecun and pub lished a series of stories in Shi's
j ourn al Xiandaizazhi (LesContemporains). which exh ibited city life in all its
splendor and deca de nce . As a creative wri ter Mu was even more tale nted
and produc tive than Liu. withi n a rela tively short span of less than a
decade since his fictional debut , he wrote about fifty storie s (including
on e intended for a longer novel ), which were publish ed in several collec­
tion s. Like Liu Na 'ou, wh ose works Mu imitated and surpa ssed , Mu be­
came an inveterate and "dege nerate" urbanit e . He op enly flaunted a
per sonal sty le as an avid pa tron of da nce halls, wher e he reportedly
squandered all h is money on h is noctu rnal visits. H e pursued a da nce
..
ho stess with singu lar devotion from Shanghai to H on g Kong and eventu­
ally marri ed her, thus creating something of a legend on th e Shanghai
literary scene (see Chapt er 1). The last years of Mu's life again seemed to
imitate Liu's: having returned to Sh angh ai from Hong Kong to take over
·· i ~
th e editorshi p of a newspaper under the puppe t regim e , he too was
assassina ted in 1940, apparen tly by secret agen ts of the Guomindang .S
For his contemporar ies and lat ter-day critics , Mu Shiyi ng's brief
and meteoric career repres ent s a proce ss of mora l regr ession-a prole ­
.f',
tar ian realist turned urban decad en t. In th e early 1930s left ist critics
~
~I ' cha rged th at his fiction was utterly divorced from the real "living society"
which was "filled with the masses of workers and peasants , with exp loita­
tion for profit , and the struggle for tomorrow ." In a prefac e to one of his
story collect ions Mu stated w ith remark able candor that he chose to live
in th e society depicted in h is fiction : "Perh aps I have bee n leadi ng such a
life in my dreams , for our crit ics have said that this is all accide nta l and
separa ted from society , havi ng to do with my subco nsciou s. N o mat ter
whether it is dream , accide nt , or subconscious, I do not want my own
work to be misunder stood and distorted , to be reject ed on accou nt of
politica l expedie ncy ." The rece nt revival of scholarly inter est in his work
face , body , a nd t he c i ty: l i u n a' ou and mu sh i y i ng
may serve to clarify some misun dersta ndi ngs and redress the imbalance
caused by a narrowly politicize d ju dgment .' My ow n reading in this
chapter obviously follows t he revision ist scho larship of this recent trend .
Since the style and co ntent of Mu 's and Liu's works have so much in
com mon , I will discuss their works toge ther as formi ng a continuu m of
the urba n trope as represented by a modern femme fatale . Liu was th e
first mod ern Chines e writ er to employ such a trope , which was furth er
fleshed out by the more talen ted Mu Shiyi ng . I begi n with the fiction of
Liu Na 'ou in order to set up my interpretive framework .
Th e book cover of Liu Na 'ous only collect ion of shor t stories, Dushi
f eng}ingxian (Sce nes of th e city, 1930), features a French word , scene,
against a styliz ed background of three flashing spotligh ts. The vaguely
Art D eco design captures brilliantly the bo ok's thematic concern : in th e
eight stories contai ned therei n a series of city scenes is spot lighted , each
drawn from a familiar site of Shanghai 's urban life- a ballroom ("tango
palace "), a rapidly moving train , a movie house , a street and a flower
shop, the observa tio n deck of the racecourse , th e Wing On depar tment
store , and so on . These familiar scenes are rendered somewha t unfamiliar
by a descriptiv e tech nique derived from cinema (Liu's favorite medium):
the narra tive "camera" seeming ly moves at random through a bew ilder­
ing sequence of "shots," sometimes crea ti ng a mo ntage- like effect. At the
same time , however, most of the stori es are also told in th e manner of a
cinematic voice -over that links tog eth er the various shots and sce nes in
aloo se plot . T his first-person or third -person narrat orial voice is invari­
ably that of a man who occupi es a voyeuris tic positio n as he encount ers
his fantastic heroine , a fe mme fatale figure who first seduce s then over ­
pow ers and finally leaves him . She seems to app ear from nowhere but is
far more at hom e in the city tha n the male narrator-protagonist. Above
all, she flaunts a free and daring ly unrestra ined lifesty le that bot h fasci­
nates and int imidates him .
Such a portrait seems so outl andish as to defy all plausibility , which
leads to the inevitable question : on what (urban) cu ltural grounds are
 TH E M OD ERN LITE RAR Y IM A GI N ATI O N
th ese ficti ons produced ? In my view, Lids fiction is neither sheer fabri ca­
tion nor simple derivation from the Japanese sch ool of nee-sensational.
ism . Rather , it is a fictional projection of the same cultural e nviro nment
in wh ich it was produced and bears a direct relatio nsh ip to other genr es
of Shanghai's print culture . Som e of these sto ries were published in Lius
own journ als and in Ies Contemporains, edited by Shi Zhe cun , but Liu and
his friend s also wrot e frequ ently for more popular magazines with larger
circula tions such as Lian9You (T he yo ung compa nion) and Furenhuabao
(Wome n's pictorial ). Thus , instead of positing an elitist stance of artistic
avant-gardism or a political stance of didacticism as found in the leftist
works of the time , Lids fiction evokes a certa in visual mood of th e city
8
that could prove entertaining to th e read ers of these pictorial s It there ­
fore also bears a certain resemblance to visual materials. This is especially
, 1
.': true of Lids portraya l of heroines , which draws dire ctly from the female
: ~>
" figures in the ph otos and on magazine covers as well as on calendar
posters , to say nothing of the movies . To explore further th is intriguing
connection between fiction and popular culture, it may be worthwhile to
.' examine a few physica l details of Lids mod ern heroines.
·u
.,.
I the traditional C hinese ideal of female beaut y. The heroine 's eyes and
The Face and Body of the Mod ern Woman
The modern woman mak es her dramatic entry in the very first st ory of
i:
'" the collect ion , "Youxi" (Games). This is how she is described under the
gaze of her male companion; she has "a pair of easily startled pupils , a
~!:
rational forehead , and above it her short hair waves in the wind ; a thin
and straight Greek nose , a round-shaped mouth with a pair of thic k lips
seemingly ajar." The male narrator also comments ecstatica lly on her
"pro truding breasts , and a body soft and smooth like an eel." As she walks
down the street, her movements are athletic and agile. Th e woman in the
next story , "Fengjing" (Sce nery) , has the same small body , bobbed hair,
"ratio nal" forehead , and straigh t nose , but her eyes are "nimble and not
easily startled ." And she has small, "neurotic" lips "like an overripe pome­
granate. "!" In th e third story, "Liu" (Flow) , the heroine , a revolutionary , is
f a ce, bo d y , an d th e c i ty : li u n a 'ou a n d mu shi ying
described as "a masculinized " modern woman. Her skin is "light dark ,"
her fully developed limbs are big and strong and fullof muscular tension.
Her hair is short and neat but , the author te lls us, without any trace of
"Staco mb"- a popular hair cream for men . I I In the fourth story , "Liangge
shijian de buganzheng zhe " (Two men impervious to time) , she appears
in th e grandstand at the racecourse: "a SPORTIVE modern woman;
under her transparent French silk her elastic flesh trembles as if following
a gentle movement. " (T he word "SPORTIVE " appears in English in the
original. ) She too has a small "cherry -like mouth ."!'
What are we to make of this fleshy, "sportive" modern woman with
short hai r, "ratio nal" forehead, small mouth , a pair of startl ed or unstar­
tled eyes , a straight Greek nose "light dark" skin , protruding breasts , and
I
a small bod y "as smooth and soft as an eel "? Several featur es are immedi­
ately no ticeable in Lids portrait . Jt seems that there are more erotic
details in the face than in the body; the mouth and lips receive particular
attention as the focal points of Llu 's eroticism as well as a convenient site
for his oral metaphors : the mouth is edible like a fruit but also so avari­
cious tha t it can "swallow" a love object. While the "Greek nose " is
manifestly Western , the cherry-like small mouth is mor e charac teristic of
lips , closed or open , are perhaps of mor e mod ern orig in and derived from
Hollywood mov ie stars , particularly Lids favorites , Joan Craw ford and
Greta Garb o. Her bobbed hair may be based on contemporary fashion :
it was the popular look among urban young women of the time , espe­
cially college stud ents , who chose not to have a permanent wave . The
heroine 's "light dark " skin is another contemporary hallmark, a by- prod ­
uct of the incr easing popularit y of athl etics in women's education . 13 The
color of healthy skin is expected to be tan, in sharp co ntrast to the
classical Chinese ideal of women 's skin-white . To be sure , Liu also
occasionally eulogizes white skin , which could be seen as a racial fasci­
nation ." But skin color does not seem to be as pred ominant a factor in
Lids portrait s of his heroines as their "spo rtive" qua lity, demonstrated by
their agile movements. Obviously these portraits are a composite of
 THE MODERN LITERARY IMAGINATION fac e , body , and the c i ty: liu na 'ou and mu shi ying

diverse elements drawn from both rea lity and fantasy . If the heroine's "ca nnot find an outlet" ) that seems to contradict the "bold , direct , and
facial features bear some resemblance to those of the women in the unrestrained" nature of the heroine 's behavior. For all his daring talk , Liu
calendar posters (for instance , the cherry-like mouth of the Ruan Lingyu has failed to confront the modern woman 's body as the central site of her
lookalike in the 1930 poster described in Chapter 2), her body remi .nds sexua lity. Instead of Crawford 's face , he could have chosen Marlene
us of the numerous photos of athletic women in Liangyoumagazine-stu­ Dietrich 's legs , as displayed prominently in The Blue Angel, her most fa­
dents or film stars in swim suits or sportswear seen rowing boats , playing mous film, which also proved very popular in Shanghai . Liu's intense
ball, or riding bicycles (The same poses can also be found in the calen­ reading of Crawford's face also rem inds us of what Roland Barthes said of
dar posters. ) All in all, these physical details are intended to mark the Garbo's face: "Garbo still belongs to that moment in cinema when cap ­
appearance of a new prototype of the modern woman who also embod­ turing the human face still plunged audiences into the deepest ecstasy ,
ies a new aesthetic of beauty . In an essay titled 'T he Modern Type of when one literally lost oneself in a human image as one would in a
Expr essive Beauty" (Xiandai biaoqingmei zaoxing), published in Womens philtre, when the face represented an absolute state of the flesh , which
Pictorialin 1934, Liu made the following revealing remarks : could be neither reached nor renounced.?" Liu happened to belong to
that moment in world cinema when Garbo 's face was the dom inant icon.
,-"
....., This model of beauty can be represented by the movie stars
,. '\'
By the early l 930s the faces of Hollywood stars had become a global
s» Carbo , Crawford , and Tan Ying. Their behavior and emotional
commodity as a result of massive publicity by the Hollywood studios ,
". express ion from within are bold , direct , and unre strained. But
which supplied more than a million photos every year to newspapers and
when not bursting out they automatically suppress them. Craw­
magazines worldwide. But Liu was not merely a consumer and film
ford , with her big open eyes and closed [ips, gazes at men, and
spectator ; he was the first modern Chinese writer to have boldly taken
that expression perfectly illustrates this [new] psychology: in her
'i' possession of such an image and transposed it into his fictional landscape
heart there is passion racing like a torrent, but this torrent cannot
~ of urban Shanghai . As a result , he has given us not only the exotic "look"
'1 find an outlet but is stifled into a stagnant presence in her eyes
of his heroines but also a way of lookingat them. His stories thus offer a
and lips. Men 's psychological reaction to this kind of expression
:1
1 sustained case of male scopophilia -the erotic pleasure derived from
r is: this girl loves me as if she could swallow me in one mouthful ,
looking at women .
yet pitifully she does not dare to say it. And in this she has a
'I .
, .. The trope of woman as object of the male gaze , together with its
double psychological enjoyment . Modern men are in love with
implications for gender and sexuality, has been discussed extensively in
this kind of woman , who passionately looks for-but never
current American theories of film. As Laura Mulvey argues in her classic
seems able to find-a man to love, and who displays such a
essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema ," "pleasure in looking has
psychology on her face. Thus, in man's eyes [this kind of] woman
been split between active/male and passive / female . The determining
appears to be the most beautiful , most modern. 15
male gaze projects its phantasy on to the female figure which is styled
H is is a somewhat idiosy ncratic theory of sexual repression on accordingly." ? Peter Brooks has further argued that in Western realist
which is inscribed a distinctly male point of view. Its male -dominant fiction, scopophilia is combined with "epistemo ph ilia," the pleasure of
premise- "this girl loves me ... [but] she does not dare to say it"-is knowing : 'The body held in the field of vision is par excellence the
coupled with a quaint Victorian notion of "stifled" sexua lity (passion that object of both knowing and desire , knowing as desire , desire as know­
 THE MODERN LITERARY IMAGINATION
ing.? " Thus , "man as a knowing subject postulates woman 's body as the
object to be known / by way of an act of visual inspection which claims to
reveal the truth-or else makes the object into the ultimate erugrna .T' l]
we apply this Western gendered model to Liu's fiction , it becomes imme­
diately clear that Lids fictional male gazers are not up to their scopo­
philic and episternophilic tasks. The sexual imbalance in Lids fictional
world is caused not by male activism but by male passivity , thus deflating
in the end the erotic energy accumulated by his consistent gaze at the
female . Since , as I have noted / the woman in Lids fiction does not have a
full body as an object for visual inspection , what the passive male pursues
is rather a phantom image , the embodiment of an exotic ideal with all the
accoutrements from foreign sources . Two such sources are especially
noteworthy , for upon them Liu apparently drew for inspiration in con ­
structing his modern heroines .
Moga MorandI Exoticism
l
In addition to Hollywood stars , the genealogy of Liu's modern he roines
can be traced to the "Modern G irl" (modan qaatu, abbreviated as moga)
image that had become a fad in urban Japan in the t 920s. As described
by Miriam Silverberg and other scholars, the moga also "wore bobbed
hair , sheer stockings , high heels , and often a brightly colored one-piece
dress in the fashion of American film idols such as Clara Bow, Pola Negri,
Mary Pickford , and Gloria Swanson ." She was a "glitt ering, decadent ,
middle -class consumer who , through her clothing , smoking and drink­
ing , flaunts [sic] tradition in the urban playgrounds of the late 1920s ."20
In a story by Xu Xiacun published in Lids journal Xin wenyi in 1929 titled ,
most appropriately and in English , "M ode rn Girl ," the heroine is ih fact a
Japanese waitress. One year earlier , however , the mogahad already been
identified in the North China Herald as a "C h inese f1apper"-a young
woman "dressed in semi-foreign style with bobbed hair . .. short skirt . ..
1
and powdered face " who "has come to stay."2 Wh ether or not this
"Chinese flapper " image was incorporated directly into Lids fiction , we
can still assume that his fictional heroines are not creatures from a purely
fac e, bod y, and th e cit y: liu n ao u and mu shi ying
private fantasy; they are conceived as "public" figures in the same way
that the women portrayed in the pictorial advertisements are displayed
in print as public figures .
As well as their connections with print and film culture , Lids
heroines can claim a more literary heritage , as the mogaimage may itself
have been indebted to the works of the French writer and diploma t Paul
Morand ( t 888 -1976 ), which Liu was the first to introduce to China. Liu
may have first read about Morand in Japanese sources and th en read him
in French . Morand 's novels , such as Fancy Goods(Trndres Stocks, t 921 )/
OpenAll Night (OulJert la nuit, 1922 ) and ClosedAll Night (Ferme lanuit 1923)
are said to have exerted an impact on th e Japanese nee-sensationalists ."
Shu-mel Shih has traced Morand 's women characters to the French
exoticist tradition from Haubert to Pierre Loti ( 1895- 1925)- a tradition
which Edward Said regards as a clear example of Orientalism-a form
of Western domination which tends to relegate the Orient , and in
particular Oriental wom en , to the status of the "subhuman Other .'?'
Morand was no stranger to China and Asia; as a diplomat he had
traveled widely all over the world. In the summer of t 925 he traveled
to Asia and visited Japan, Thailand (Siam ), Vietnam (Indo-Ch ina , where
he fell ill and was visited in the hospital by Andre Malraux ), and China
(though I have yet to find any reference to Shanghai ). He wrote many
travel articles in French and English , some of which later found their
way into VanityFair.24
In the October 1928 issue of TracklessTrain, Liu and his friends
managed to translate two short stories by Morand ; "Wave of Indo lence"
(Landu ob ing, or "Vague de paresse" ) and "N ew Friends" (Xin pengy­
ournen , or "Les Amis nouveaux" ). Both we re apparently taken from his
1925 collection L'Europ
e galante(Europe at love ). Though quite short, the
stories are typical of Morand 's work . In the first story, Morand recounts a
romantic encounter in London with a Dutch woman born in Java. "I set
full value on chance encount ers and these expeditions into unknown
countries , explo rings in human skin ," comments the autobiographical
hero ." Despite taking place in England , the story is suffused with an
 THE MODERN LITER ARY IM AGINATION
indolent air of Oriental ist conde scension . The blatant rac ism of the
following paragraph is faithfully reproduced in the Chinese translation:
She was a dazzling creature , and wore her black plaits coiled
around her ears like the horns of Australian merino rams . She
made me think of those signs at country fairs:
FEMMED'ORIGINE
ORIENTAL ATTRACTION
BEAUTE- VOLUPTE-FEERIE -LUMIERE
Once again I saw myself obliged to turn to foreign industry for
my lovemaking ... And without waking up, as she felt me beside
her, she took me to her , closing upon me at once with the
instinctive action of a clam."
In the second story , "N ew Friends ," two men find themselves in a
restaurant , both having been stood up by the same woman . As the men
strike up a conversation , they realiz e that they both love her for the same
reasons . They proceed to enumerate the physical features they both
adore : "H er forehead appeared frank , approachabl e, kind . She was a new
creature. She has not got short hair. And her mouth too " as well as her
"laugh ter, her ice-cold hands , her inconstancies-she says that for pure
love of faithfulness she is faithful to everybody. ":" It is not hard to trace
the imprint of Morand's story on Liu's fiction: the heroine who plays a
trick on both men ('''Tressport,' she will say "), her facial details and her "no t
short" hair . Thus , parts of "Les Amis nouveau " are subtly transplanted
int o Liu's "Two Men Impervious to TIme" and "Carnes ." Whereas life for
Morand 's Agnes "is mad e up of twelve hours of transgressions and twelve
hours of oblivion ." Liu's unnamed heroine in "Two Men " surpasses her
record by refusing to spend more than three hours with the same man .
While in Morand's story the playful heroine's absence serves to bond the
two suitors as friends , Liu's femme fatale leaves the two men completely
speechless and dejected.
Imitat ions aside , Liu was quite aware of the colonial implications of
Morand's Or iental ism. In two stories, titled "Reqing zhi gu" (T he bone of
fa c e , b od y, a n d the c ity : li u n a 'ou and mu s h iy i n g
passion ) and "Liyi yu weisheng " (Et iquette and hygiene ), Liu satirizes
Western fantasies about Oriental woman by making his Western men
(bo th French ) pay for their fantasies . The French protagonist in the first
story falls for a Japanese woman , the mirror image of Loti's "Madame
Chrysanthemum" (even his name , Biye'er, or Pierre , refers to Loti's), only
to be disillusioned in the end when she asks h im to pay her five hundred
dollars. In the latter story, another French diplomat turned antique dealer
gives a lengthy discourse on the difference he perceives between Chi ­
nese and Western paintings and women but then admits, "This is prob­
ably due to my Oriental fascinatio n.'?" But the Chinese protagonist in
the same story sounds even more racist as he talks about Slavic women
whose flesh has "a wild flavor like lamb 's meat from the Caucasus .'?" This
deprecatory comment refe rs, of course, to Whit e Russian prostitutes
from among the throngs of impoverished Russian emigres in Shanghai
after the Bolshevik Revoluti on. Lids Chinese protagonist is a profligate
"co nno isseur" of prostitutes and a despicable character . Thus , in a sur­
prising turnabout , his wife leaves him for her French-educared lover . To
add a final ironic touch , she introduces him to her mute sister for pur ­
poses of "hygiene "-that is, to keep him from contracting a venereal
disease .
Behind Morand 's Orientalism lies the complex issue of exoticism.
In the same issue of TracklessTrain in which the two Morand stories
appear there is a much longer article on Paul Morand by the Fren ch
critic Benjamin Crernieux , as translated by Liu Na 'ou himself. The
Crernieux article , lengthy and verb ose, must have posed a challenge to
Lids knowledge of Fren ch , but it contains some unusual insights. As a
contemporary of Mor and 's, Crernieux was fully aware of the charge of
"exotic ism" (the notion of Orienta lism had not yet been concept ual­
ized ), but he argues that Morand 's brand is somehow different : "H is
exotici sm was intended in arneticulous way to guard against the pene­
tration of romanticized ideas ; an exoticism mixed with a practical
knowledge about foreign countries through direct contact , [an exoti­
cism that] shows no respect to mankind but boldly lays bare its utmost
 THE MODE RN LITERARY IMAGINATION
secrets ." 30 Morand himself was said to have "vigorously protested against
the use of such a term in criticism of this phase of his art ")! In the
opinion of another contemporary critic, Georges Lemaitre , Morand had
nothing but contempt for this kind of exo ticism , a "gaudy ornament,
added more or less artificially to a description for the sake of pic­
turesqueness " or local color. 32 Hence , in Crernieux's opinion, Morand's
women characters-such as Clarissa, Delphine , and Aurora in his early
novel Fancy Goods-serve to unveil the true spiritual state of postwar
Europe caught in a modern malaise that "made us aware right away what
this modern age of bars, dance halls, and airplanes is all about. '?' Still ,
despite these protestations , Morand's women characters exude a distinct
exotic appeal , especially for his Chinese translators . Lius fiction can be
likewise criticized as a "gaudy ornament", his heroines are even more
,
- .t
exo tic creatures than the Du tch woman in Morand's story. In fact , we
..
~\
6'!."
&I" ,
can charge Liu's entire oeuvre with representing a project of exoticism ,
an effort to make the figures in his fictional landscape as "foreign" as
possible. Whether they also unveil the spiritual state of prewar Shanghai
is, however , subject to interpretation.
In Chinese the word "exoticism" is generally translated as yiguo
qingdiao(literally , the mood and flavor of a foreign country ) and carries
the connotation of a Western country as "oth er." The term has in fact
been used as the title of two books by Zhang Ruogu and Li jinfa, both
Francophiles From Heinrich Fruehauf's insightful study we learn that
r exoticism is precisely the urban cultural code with which writers such as
Zhang and Zeng Pu refer to the heady foreign atmosphere of the "West­
ern facade" of Shanghai'S concessions , especially the French . Liu Na'ous
Scenesof the City is one of the prominent examples of this "newfangled
boom of urban exoticism .'?" Other works with a similar urban title and
landscape include Zhang Ruogu 's Duhuijiaoxiangqu(Urban symphonies ,
1929) and Xu Weinan's Dushi denannu (Ci ty men and women, 1929). In
these works "the narrator is generally assigned the role of exoticizing the
Familiar by constructing yiguo, the Shanghainese vision of a glittering,
breath-taking , and at times 'forbidden' Other .?"
face, body , and the city : liu na 'ou and mu sh iying
Thus , exoticism can serve as a double mirror. It begins as a Western
image of the Orient but ends as an Oriental (i.e. , Chinese) image of the
West. If Paul Morand 's fiction can be regarded as a product of exotic
Oriental ism from the West, his works were used by French-influenced
Japanese and Chinese writers as a reverse mirror with which to exoticize
the West . It is, in short , a process of mutual exoticization in cross -cultural
reception . Nevertheless , this Chinese phenomenon of what might be
called Occidental ism, the construction of the Western "other ," does not
necessarily imply a Chinese effort to "control " the West-a colonial or
imperialist project of "mastery" over the West in knowledge and power,
as Morand and a host of other Western writers have applied to the
Orient ." Rather , it can be argued that exoticism as a phenomenon of
urban culture is closely related to a search for a Chinese modernity and
provides a partial solution to the paradox that arises between nationalism
(a new cultural identity ) and imperialism. In the writings of the group
comprising the Francophiles Fu Yanchang , Zhu Yingpeng , and Zhang
Ruogu, as pointed out by Fruehauf , Shanghai's special status is seen as an
intellectual asset: "Shanghai , because it was so 'exotic ,' so different from
the rest of China , could become a cultural laboratory where , in vitro,the
experimental restoration of Chinese civilization would be undertaken.?"
For Fu and his friends, city is the basis of civitas,the center of modern
civilization .
Desire, Dece it, and the City
The rich and variegated resources discussed in the preceding section
may provide a larger contextual perspective in which to analyze Liu's
stories . They may also help us explore some allegorical dimensions of
Liu's fiction.
The typical plot of Liu's stories is that of a male protagonist-narra­
tor in hopeless pursuit of a striking -looking modern woman--only to
lose out in the end . If the story involves a "love triangle, " the woman
always manages to outwit and leave both men. Consequently, the
 TH E M ODERN LI TE RA RY IMAGIN ATI ON
woman serves not o nly as th e objec t of male desire and pur suit but also
as the pred omi nant "subjec t" of th e story in the sen se that it is her action
and personality t h at propel th e plo t's progr ession . A goo d example can
b e found in the story "Two Men Impervious to lime ."
The love trian gle plot b egins with on e of th e male ch arac­
ters-nam ed sim ply H -m eetin g th e modern girl at th e racecourse ! one
of Sh angha i's most popular amu sement sites for both Westerners and
Chinese and also the site o f legal gambling . H ha s jus t won by bettin g
on the righ t hor se, thus attr ac ting th e attenti on o f th e woman . He
invites her to an Amer ican tea sh op for ice cream (an omniprese nt det ail
in Lin's stori es) and afterward s takes her for a walk, since he "knows th at
takin g a walk is an ineluctable eleme nt in modern rom ance ." Their walk
takes them thr ough the French C oncession, wh ere the rays o f th e
set ting sun "[caress] th e fresh gree n leaves of th e Western ioutonqtre es."
At th e cro ssroads (presumably the corn er of Nankin g Road ), H is
temporarily side tr acked by a sed uctive automobil e, a Fon tegnac 1929,
but "h e do es not fo rget the FAIR SEX [written in Eng lish ] besid e h im"
and "w ith a most grace ful ge sture" mov es her hand from his left to his
right arm . Th en , th e three big mon strou s departm ent sto res emerge in
fro nt of the ir eyes .i" It is int erestin g to note that by thi s point th e male
pro tagoni st has bee n led to believe that h e is in char ge. Th e lon g wajk
he takes with his "fair sex" is obviously for purp oses of display
(chuf engtou). But th e more he bra gs ab out his gentl em anly behavior , the
less st ature h e has in th e eyes of th e modern girl. When another man,
T, joins th em at a dance hall ! th e tw o men 's pursuit o f the woman
become s incr easingly path et ic and the modern girl's att itude inc reas­
ingly playful and co ndescending. Amidst the rhy th ms of blues and
waltz es, thi s ty pical scene o f a mena ge a trois e nds with the heroin e
leaving both men , but not be fore she delivers th e co up de grace: "You
are just a littl e boy," she rebuk es th e hero . "W ho te lls you to be so
awkward and stupid , with all t his nonsen se of eatin g ice cream and
taking a walk > D on 't you know that lovemakin g sho uld be done in an
autom ob ile raci ng with the wind >In the suburbs there are gree n-sh ade d
fa c e , bo dy, and t h e ci ty : l i u n ao u an d m u sh i y i ng
areas. Besides, I h ave never spent mo re tha n thr ee hours with a gentle­
man before . Thi s is an exception.'?"
It is evide nt tha t the males are much weaker than th e females in
Lius fiction. Rep eatedl y the mal e suitor is describ ed as th in and slender,
in his eager beh avior "like a boy ." Occas ionally h e is said to have stro ng
arms or to have a mustache like C h arlie Chaplin' s (comical) or Ron ald
Co lman's (elegant and urban e)-anoth er confirmat ion o f Liu's suscepti ­
bili ty to the impa ct of the Holl ywood image indu stry-bu t ot he rwise no
co un te rpo int descrip tion is provid ed that would make him eith er ph ysi­
cally or men tally a true match for the woman . Whil e th e men may
occupy a pos it ion of "inte rn al focaliz ation " in the plo t , the ir own subj ec ­
tiv e posit ion is precariou s, and the ir efforts are purp osely deflated ."
Thu s, instead of bein g "knowing subjects " exerting th eir desire on the
"object" of a wom an's bod y, th ey seem to be play thin gs at the mercy o f
th e self-assured mod ern heroine .
In a perce pt ive art icle on Liu N a'ou's fiction , Shu-me i Shih ha s
argued th at Liu's male protagonist s still retain "outmo ded patriarchal
moral sensib ilities," wh ereas Lids prot otypical heroin e is from the very
outs et an urban "prod uct o f mod ernity ": "Lodged in her are th e ch arac ­
teri stics o f th e urba n culture of the sernico lonia l city and its seduct io ns o f
,
speed, commo dity culture! exotic ism, and erot icism . H ence th e emo­
tion s sh e stimul ates in the male prota gonist-helpl ess infatuation and
h opel ess betr ayal-r eplic ate th e att raction and alienation he feels to ­
ward s the city.'"" T he he ro ine in "Two Men Imp erviou s to lime " is th e
very emb odime nt of th is descripti on . N ot all of Liu's ficti on al heroine s,
how ever , are portrayed as mod ern femmes fatales with an acquisitive
taste for the urb an co mmodit ies of speed and glamour . It makes an
int eresting case if we co mpare th e hero ines of th is story and "G ames."
Both are consumm ate play ers in th e game of desi re and deceit . Both
crave and fet ish ize automobiles . In "Two Men " the "Fonteg nac 1929" in
the male protag oni st's field of vision is clearly an object o f de sire , a
mat erial substitut e for the heroin e, which is repo ssessed by th e h eroine
wh en sh e ann oun ces h er pre ferenc e for lovemakin g in a speedy car. In
 THE MODERN LITERARY IMA G INATION
"G ames, II another automobile-a six -cylinde r 1929 Vip er-is described
by the sports car-loving hero ine as "really beautiful, its body e ntirel y in
green , and harmonizes nic ely with the suburban pastures in early sum ­
mer ."?
This juxtapositi on o f cars and women in Lids fict ion has led Shu ­
mei Shih to argue that "th e speed of the c ity is paralleled b y the speed
with which th e modern girl changes boyfriends and by th e modern girl's
love of speedy sports cars : transi tory scenes and transitory romances, a
city of fast cars and brief encoun ters.?" The crucial significance of time
and spee d can no t be ov eremph asized in any di scourse of Western mod­
ernity. Cars , like train s, are clearly ma terial markers of mod ernity as they
are a comm odity of speed . Liu has under scored this significance even in
-,
~,
his sto ry's title : the two mal e suitors lose to th e modern wo man preci sely
"\ , becau se they are "imp erv ious to time ." But how much speed do Lids
;:(~
"-
female character s really crave ? The heroine's praise for t he Viper in
"G ames" is ba sed on its six-cylinder power- "it is not even short of
brea th after runn ing for half a day "-where as th e Font egnac 1929 in
,: ::: "Tw o Men Imperv iou s to Tim e" is a vehicle den ot ing both spee d and
1 ..' , novelty , no t to menti on its obviou s signification of wealth. Liu might
I . ' have found both the brand nam es and the glossy imag es of thes e cars in
t '
t he adv erti sements in Shangha i's Chine se and English new spap ers as well
..
r; as foreign mag azines such as VanityFair.Hi s adulation o f th e aut omobi le
betrays a fascination w ith its materialisti c value (mo ney) as much as its
r symbolic value (spe ed). At the same time, ho wev er, th e p rot agonist of
"G ames" also compare s the crowd of automobile s in the city street s
during "RU SH HOUR " (Liu uses th e English ter m) to littl e mons ters
(jiachon~ , or "bee tles") tha t "devou r" and "vo mit" people , It see ms that
even in the feti shiza tion o f th is mo st conspic uous item of modern con­
venience , both exhilaration and anxiety are implicated .
Another instan ce o f comb ined exhilarat ion and anxi e ty can be
found in the descript ions of lovemaking . As if to shock hi s reader s, Liu
co nspicuously display s scene s of lovemaking in th e very first tw o sto ries
in the collec tio n: "G ames" and "Scene ry." In fact , the latter sto ry provide s
f ace , bo dy, and the ci ty; l iu n a' ou and mu sh iy i ng
a pas toral set ting for th e lovem ak ing o f h ero and h e roine , wh o first me e t
on a train , then get off at a station and , at th e instiga tion o f th e heroine ,
proc eed to have sex au Mture! in th e op en field bef ore they conti nue their
separate journ ey s. The heroin e is undo ubtedly a prod uct of the city ; she
oo zes "th at special kind o f strong v isceral exc iteme n t toward the oppo­
site sex , a wo man o f th e metropolis. '?" Th eir lovemaking is dep ic ted
sparely but w ith a strik ing metaphor : "O n her flesh and skin, shining and
smoo th like a piece o f gauze , flow th e blu e wav es o f sc ore s of River
Danube s, and her red garter nibs at her snow- whi te le gs.'?" Th is sensa­
tion al image, obvi ou sly d erived from Liu's imitation o f M orand and th e
Japan ese nee -sen sationa list schoo l, conv ey s a blatant exotic appeal , but
it also defie s belief Is the heroine with a red garter fro m Shanghai or
Pari s? On an ''e arlier pag e , h er neck and small round sho uld ers mak e h er
look to th e h ero like som eone who ha s "ju st jum ped o ut o f the can va s by
Durer [?]."46 All of these ero t ic details are meant to lead to t h e male
protagonis t's final "me d itation" o n b eing shackled by urban "mech anical
civiliza ti on ." The message is as w eak and unpersua sive as th e plo t and
characte rization .
We sh ould no t demand , o f course , th at Liu foll ow stri ctly the
dicta tes of realism in providin g plausibility and veri similitude . His her o ­
ine in this sto ry is indeed a fanta sy figure . Yet in som e other ca ses she is
not so fantastic. The hero ine in th e sto ry "G ames" is depicted in the
beginning as equally exo tic, with h er small, straight Gr eek no se. Like th e
heroin e in "Two Men ," she also ha s two ma le suit ors : sh e talk s about th e
on e wi th a C h aplin esque mu stache but seduce s the oth er, who is "too
absurdly sentim ental and romanti c." Their lovemakin g is described wi th
much revealing detail :
Above her nos e is a pair of flaming ey es, and below it a dark -red
che rry. He feels as if touch ed by electricity and could not extri­
cate h imself even if he wanted to .
The snow-white bed sheets are bestirred w ith waves . Beside his
lips he discover s a set o f teeth not his own . H e senses a surge of
 THE M ODERN LI TE RA RY IM A GIN ATI ON
heat from hi s lower body and h e feels that he is having difficulty
brea th ing . A glisten ing eye gazes at him und er his eyes , maki ng
him feel pained , but it sudde nly disapp ears. At th e same time,
[her] brok en virg inity, like torn wh ite paper, falls und er the bed
piece by piece, and a pair o f small feet , dangl ing in the air, also
fall down . He feels that al\ ha s disappeared ."
This is a quaint passag e about m ale and female sexu ality. While it is
narrated- seen and felt -f rom a mal e po int of v iew, th e "act io n" co mes
mainl y from the w oman , wh o tak es th e initiative in se duc ing the man
and whos e gliste ning g aze mak es h im "fee l pained ." But th er e is a strange
inco ngru ity in the w oman 's behav io r as well : ho w can such a free and
:, '" ''' I''
) ~ .. unr estrained wo man h ave kept h er virg in ity and th en chosen to lose it
r>,
'1
1'.. ..
with a man in one nigh t's casual trys t in a h ot el roo m onl y to leave him
I~~ ~~ :' : for an oth er ? Th e two sides o f th e h er o ine 's personalit y- seductres s and
....,.
,t:;. " . virg in- sim ply do not coh er e , unl ess th e act o f sex is not a crucial factor
in her strategies of do m in ati on o ver men , o r un less the ma le nar rator­
~" , protagonist (o r eve n auth or ) st ill h arb o rs a h op elessly tradit io nal fant asy
, ..( that derives the t h rill o f sex ual po ssessi on fro m t ak ing a woman 's vir gin­
ity. What ever the reaso n, th e sex sce ne reve als co nsid e rab le discomfort
with bodies , both male and femal e .
.
1. W e should also be aw are o f th e fact that not all o f Liu's fictional
hero ine s fit comf ortabl y int o th e image o f the fre e, dar ing , and po ssibly
::t promiscu ou s mod ern g irl. Th e re are also a few who , despite th eir
.....
modern traits , are still at ta che d to men as the ir posses sions and append­
age s. This cat egor y of wo me n, ove rlooke d by scho lars, can be found in
th e last two work s in Scenes of the City: "C anliu" (Bere aveme nt) and
"Fanch e ng sh i" (Fo rmula). In "Berea ve me n t," th e wo man is a widow
wh ose husband ha s ju st died , and in a ser ies o f int eri or monologues she
voic es h er lon elin ess and he r need fo r men . As sh e tak es a wa lk alon e ,
she lets hers elf be seduce d by a fo re ign sailo r-a nd fulfills his dream to
have "A GIRL IN EVE RY PORT !" (in En gli sh in th e orig ina l). Thu s, she
willin g ly loses h er ow n indi vidu alit y and subje ct iv ity as a w id owed
fa ce , body , a n d the c i ty : l i u n a' o u a nd mu sh i y i n g
woman and bec om es a commodit y in t he serv ice trad e. In "Formu la," a
man c alled sim ply Mr . Y has ju st lost his wif e, who ha s alwa y s pr ep ared
fresh SA LADE (th is and other capitali zed te rms ap pe ar o rig inally in
En glish o r Fren ch ) for lunch , His aunt introdu ces tw o mo de rn g irls as
pro specti ve new wives: a Mi ss A wit h "sma ll delicat e hand s" who list en s
to Pekin g o pe ra, an d Mi ss W with a "PERM AN EN T WAVE" wh o meet s
him o n a dat e to w atch a "TALK IE." But t he n h e find s himself o n a sh ip
with Mi ss S , whom h e met onl y th e day bef o re, Thu s the story b e­
co mes a "merry -g o -ro un d" with four playe rs- on e man and th ree
wom en-who have no identities of the ir ow n; eve n their nam es are
oblite rate d by ca pital lett ers , like nu mbers , Wha t th e sto ry sa t irizes is
the marri age g ame its elf and the impersonal routin e o f th e life o f an
urb an o ffice w ork er : "Every bo dy kn ow s t ha t Mr . Y is a pr odu ct o f t h e
c ity, th e po sse ssor of a m ath emati cal br ain that is me ti culou s, cl ear, and
su ite d fo r h andling all trifling matt er s.'?" In such a male-d ominat ed ,
rati onali zed w orld , wo men are but puppet figur es o r pawn s in a chess
ga m e, but th e mal e protagonist fare s no bet t er .
The story 's t itl e, "Formula," prov es to be re pre sen t ativ e of mo st o f
Liu's stor ies . As we read through them , t h e initial exc ite me nt ge ne rate d
by hi s first publi sh ed sto ry, "Game s" ( 19 2~) , gr adually d issipa t es as
fo rmulai c devi ces-th e futile pur suit , th e love tri an gle-b ec om e mo re
evi de nt . And h ow ever exotic or symb olic hi s portrait o f th e "M o d ern
G irl," it be co m es clear that she , like her mal e su ito r, is but a narrat ive
figur e in a stage d urban landscape , Sh e is mad e to b e su per ficial pr e­
c isely b ecause she is m ade to serv e th e larger purpo se o f repre sen ting
t he cit y. Wha t u nit es all of Liu's stor ies is an un ab ash ed fascinati on with
th e city itself on the p art of both h is fema le and mal e ch aracte rs, Thu s,
Sh ih is sure ly right in remarking th at "Liu clearly t akes g reat pleasur e
in des cribin g cit y sce ne s, ero tici zing th em as th e o bjec ts o f hi s gaze . In
almos t every on e of Lius stor ies extend ed passages in met aph ori c lan ­
guage depict aspect s of cit y life and its m aterial culture , Even th e moral
degrad at io n of th e c ity itself become s se ductive in suc h lin gui stic
fea sts.'?"
 THE MODERN LITERARY IMAGINATI ON
As his title indicates, Liu's intention is to create a series of "scenes"
of the city. The French word used as the title of the story collection could
stand, as Yomi Braeste r suggests, for both "scenery" (equivalent to the
Chinese termfengjing) and stage. " The characters foregrounded against
such "scenery" are like prop s on a larger stage , the urban "spectacle."
Braester co nsiders the "spectacle" to have defined the thematic concerns
and literary devices in many of Liu's stories: "Narrative tension often
arises from differences in attitudes toward the spectacle . Female charac ­
ters consistently demonstrate their skill by adjusting to the illusiveness of
the spectacle and by mov ing smoothly from one spectacle to the next . As
a result, they often leave their male counterparts behind as victims of
,.,.,,'
their own ignorance of the dangers of the spectacle .'?'
When we come to the stories of Mu Shying , however , these narra­
tive negotiations between male and female characters vis-a-vis the urban
spectacle are given more technical polish , although Mu is likewise
stranded in the urban spectacle itself. For all their flaunted modenglife­
style, Mu's characters prove to be more "misfit," and hence psychologi ­
:;""
cally more revealing , than Lids.
, .'
If Liu Na'ou can be considered a pion eer-perhaps the first modern
Chinese writer to give us an exoticized vision of the city -Mu Shiying is
the young master craftsman who completed Liu's city project. Following
Liu Na'ou , he brought more flair and fantasy to the descriptions of the
modern femme fatale. He pushed the trope of the male-female encoun­
ter, awkwardly set up in Liu's work , to its comic and sometimes farcical
extremes-so much so that it becomes a devastating satire of com­
modified mod ernity. If Lids description of the female body stilI betrays a
residual traditionalism and seems more focused on the face, Mu is bla­
tantly and brilliantly body -oriented . Finally, Mu portrays scenes of the
city with a genuinely cinematic flourish : in his work the city emerges as
a veritable panorama of son et lumiere.It remains to be seen, however ,
whether such a vision is adequate for an "allegorization" of the city in the
same way that Benjamin attributes to the works of Baudelaire .
face, body , and the c i t y : liu na 'ou and mu shiying
Portrait of the Female Body
Mu 's version of Lius modern boy -meets-girl plot is both inventive and
hilarious . Like Liu, he plays up all the glitter and glamour of the urban
landscape , especially the ballroom . His plots , like Lius, also cen ter on
the encounter between the male protagonist and th e modern girl as
femme fatale. No t on ly does the encounter lead to the predictable result
of the man being outwitted , but the process takes on a more elaborate
form and details as well . The story titled "C amel, Nietzscheist . and
Woman " (Luo tuo, Nicaizhuyizhe yu nuren ) can be cited as a tour de
force of Mu's characteristic flair. At the beginning of the story , the male
protagonist , quot ing a passage from Nietzsche 's Thus SpokeZarathustra
and quickly turning its camel metaphor ("how the spirit shall become a
camel") into a consumer item , lights up a Camel cigarette as he saunters
past the city 's amusement sites: jai alai court , dance hall , gambling joint,
bars , "BEAUT E EXOTIQUE " (originally in French) , and CAFE NA­
POLI, where he meets an extremely exotic-looking modern woman.
"She has eyebrows sharpened like Garbo 's, dark tender pupils like velvet ,
and ripe-red lipS."51He flirts with her by first presenting a challenge :
"Miss, let me tell you something . Your way of drinking coffee and your
manner of smoking a cigarette are inexcus~bly wrong ." The woman
smiles, invites him to dinner , and then proceeds to instruct him about
373 cigarette brands , 23 kinds of coffee , and 5,000 formulas for mixed
drinks. As they ride on the streetcar after dinner , he is aroused with
desire, and "as he discards the brown-colored Camel cigarette and
throws himself [at her], a vague thought comes to his mind : 'Perhaps
Nietzsche is impotent! ' Down with all the philosophizing postures and
up with the pleasures of the flesh.'?'
Clearly a partial imitation of Lids "G ames" but also a spoof of that
story 's formulaic encounter , Mu's story is mo re satisfying because the
hero and heroine are in some ways a perfect match , and the ensuing
erotic denouement comes as no surprise . But Mu has gone a step further
by capitalizing on the erotic symbolism of the Cigarette , the most popu­
 THE MODERN LITERARY IMAGINATION face, body , and the ci ty : liu na'ou and mu shi ying

lar of commodities , in ways Liu would never have imagined possible. As reader's-voyeuristic gaze . The particular attention to the body's skin
the male hero plays a solitary game of "smoking" his Nietzschean quota­ color -its platinum whiteness-seems also to add a hybrid touch: a
tion by turning metonyms into metaphors and vice versa , the way is Chinese woman who has the body of a white Western woman. Is she ,
paved for him to encounter a modern femme fatale also smoking a then , a rep lica of Liu Na 'ou's modern heroine-free, daring , and promis­
cigarette-surely a sight of irresistible sexual invitation . Smoking is com ­ cuous ? The story reveals none of her character traits ; the body seems
bined with eating and drinking to provide a perfect "tease" for sex, which grafted onto the face of a rather traditional housewife. Nor is the body
promises to be consummated in a streetcar-n ot Liu's flaunted sports car, made into a material object , a metonymic substitute for automobiles , as
but equally alluring. Compared to Liu's "Games, " Mu's scenes of sexual in Lin's fiction . In the sanitized office of the doctor, it seems to exist by
tease are more exhilarating because they are unencumbered by any itself, with no linkage to the City's material culture. As such it becomes a
descriptive awkwardness. pure object for the doctor's inspection. The resulting sensations could be
Unlike Liu, Mu concentrates his major efforts on depicting the aesthetic , as in the wayan artist looks at a model, an object of lines and
female body . The "classic" text for this is also one of his best-known shapes, or purely anatomical, as in the way a doctor is supposed to feel
;roo >.,' ,
stories, "Baij in de nuti suoxiang" (T h e statue of a female body in plati­ about a patient. Yet, as the doctor orders his patient to lie on the exam­
I
't! •
't!l!'!.. , ' ,
num ). As the title suggests, the story is a "study" of a female body by a ining table , her naked body clearly arouses his desire . Even before her
medical doctor, a single man who leads a modern-style life marked by naked body is revealed , the doctor begins to wonder: he has examined
\'PI ., ~ :

punctuality. The woman patient who one day walks into his office is first
described as a body "with narrow shoulders , full bosom , fragile waist ,
;. slender arms and feet, about five feet and seven inches tall"; once she is
'o
r .. ",'
" seated in the doctor 's office , he then notices her face, which looks like "a
many women 's bodies and has always "seen through their skins and lines
of fat into their intestines and bones , so why does the seductiveness of
this woman client today manage to crawl into my mind like bone worms ?
Enigma-what prescription should be given to hed's6

;'::1
pale white lotus. " She feels weak , has no appetite, and suffers from Like the feverish diary musings of LL!Xun's madman about the
insomnia . The doctor diagnoses (in an interior monologue marked by nature of Chinese culture-also couched as a case for medical
".

'J parentheses) that she has either tuberculosis at an early stage or "over­
~
:h
c ....
bearing sexual desire. '?" After some medical questioning , he then asks
'F '
", her to take off all her clothes so that he may examine her body: "W ith a
pair of emaciated feet as base , one leg straight and the other slanting,
stands a platinum body statue-a human statue that seems to have no
shame , no morality , and no human desire , metallic , with flowing lines. as
if the gaze could easily slip past the lines of that body This unfeeling ,
insensitive body stands here, waiting for his command. l'"
It is a remarkable portrait : the body , like a sculpted torso , is both
cut off from and at odds with the face , whose sick fragility gives little
indication of the body 's "overbearing sexual desire ." Standing like an
inanimate object , it becomes the perfect site for the doctor 's-and the
study -the doctor's quandary invites analysis. Since the woman shows
no sign , much less commits any act, of seduction herself, the doctor's
desire must have been induced by his own repressed fantasy. But Mu
Shiying is not interested in plumbing the depths of male psychology.
Instead , he focuses on the doctor 's increased sexual arousal through
language . As in Shi Zhecun 's device of internal monologue , the doctor's
chaotic musings are narrated in purposefully un punctuated sentences-a
kind of stream of consciousness of Mu 's own invention at a time when no
other writer knew how to do this linguistically in Chinese . Thus, as the
doctor looks down at the patient 's reclining naked body on the table , the
following unpunctuated passage appears in the text in parentheses:
"(T he re is no third person in the room such a gorgeous statue of white
 THE MODERN LITERAR Y IMAGINATION
platinum have not paid much attention a careless person excessively
heightened sexual desire muffled words light stare of the eye s rnyst eri­
ously sensel essly proj ect sublima ted passion having lost all obstacles all
pow er of resistance lying th ere .. .)."57
Thi s experiment may be rather primitive by pres ent -day standards
(the Taiwan writer Wang Wen-hsing more succe ssfully used this devi ce
in his novel Beihai de ren- 'The Man with His Back to the Sea"-half
century later )." N evertheless , it not only serves to b reak down the
sent ence struct ure o f modern Chines e (wh ose pun ctuation rules tend to
foll ow tho se in English , wh ereas in classical C hi nese th ere is no punc­
tuation ), bu t also , with the omi ssion of personal pronoun s, allow s
enough semanti c room for repetition and free association . Thus , when
!: the do cto r finally resor ts to pray er (itself a markedly We stern ritual) ,
.:
I~ . ' •
his interior monolo gue becomes a stream of repetit ions o f a few
phra ses: "G od save me plat inum statu e ah god save me platinum statue
ah god save me platinum statue ah god save me platinum statu e ah god
...' ~.
save me platinum statu e ah god save me . . ."59 The omission o f punc­
" "...
'
tuatio n ea sily establish es a cha in of equiv alen ces and displa cem ent s so
t··· . th at "god" and "p lati num statue " become int erchangeabl e in th e simu­
, .~.
I' ,...~
I • lated stream of the protagoni st's con sciousn ess as if he were praying to
the platinum statue. The misplaced pra yer to G od thus becomes a
der anged wor ship of the platinum goddes s. (Ne edless to add, the C h i­
nese word for G od, shanf}di, is not capi talized .) For a secula r Ch inese
prota gonist who acqu ires C hristianity as par t of a modern lifestyl e,
such "ido l wor ship " does not incur sacrile ge but rath er enhances th e
aura of ero t icism .
At the lingui stic level, ho wever , confu sion is create d, sinc e the
subject "I" (wo) in Chin ese can also be easily transf er red int ersub jec tive ly
to the "I" of the platinum body -or even to the po ssessive case- so as to
b eg the question : who is to be saved from whom ? Is the doctor pra yin g
for his own salvation from the temptation of th e female pa tient 's bod y
(the surface meaning if read as if punctu ated )? Or is th e real subject of
the platinum bod y, the woman pa tient , to be saved? Or do we infer th at
fa ce , b od y, a n d t he c ity : liu n a ' ou a nd mu s hiy ing
the do cto r is alread y in po ssession o f her body and thu s prays for their
joint salvation? To me these simpl e repet itions and wordplays are pre ­
cisely the sty list ic devi ce th at cre ates the satir ical -ero tic e ffect th at per ­
meates t he te xt . Th e female bod y, th erefor e, becom es a stimulus not only
to arous e the male protagonist 's desire but also to enhance the authorial
des ire in langua ge . Yet in spi te o f such flashes o f inve nt io n, the story 's
a co nte nt is rathe r trad ition al and decid edly male chau vinis t. Th is nak ed
en coun ter results in the bachelor do ctor 's get ting marri ed in the end : hi s
sexual desire, arous ed by the body o f his female pa tien t , now finds
ano th er easy objec t-or outle t-in his new wife, a "possessio n" san c­
tified by t he institut ion of marr iage.
In "Craven A," the female bod y take s on a me taphorical , even
allegor ical, dimens ion . Th e sto ry beg ins with t he first-person male nar ­
rator -pro ta gonis t looking at a woman at a cabaret who silentl y puffs
away at a "C raven A" brand cigar ett e. As its "pure aroma slowly floats by
amidst th e jazz music," he begins to peru se her intentl y, mapp ing th e
features o f her face and body with extravag ant metaphor s so th at th e
body is Soon metamorpho sed into the map of a nation . Hi s pan oramic
gaze leads us from th e woman 's hair (likened to black pine fore sts), eyes
(lakes), mouth (volcano, wit h a ton gue of flame), brea sts (twin peaks ),
and so on to the "fert ile plain " o f th e sout h (lower bod y) until it reache s
down and his vision is bloc ked by the tab le:
Beneath the table are two strips of ocean emban kment, and
through the net stocking I see the whitened earth like the belly
of a fish. At the tip of the emb ankments lie two delicate white
seagulls with black mouth s, deep in their early summer's dreams
. .. At th e center of the two embankments, surmising from the
lay of the land, should be a delta of alluvial plain, and at the
seaside an importan t port , a big comm ercial harbo r, otherwise
there would not have been such nicely built embankm ents . And
the noc turnal scene of a metropoli s is lovely. Imagine the eve­
nin g glow at the embankment, the sound of waves at the wharf ,
 THE MODERN LITERARY IMAGINATION
the majestic posture of a big steamship entering the harbor , the
breakers at its stem, and the high-rise buildings on both sidesr"
This "geography" of the female body offers quite an unusual spec­
tacle on which considerable libidinous energy has been concentrated.
Each of its "scenic spots " is so elaborately descr ibed as to inv ite both
viewing and interpretation. Thus, as we follow the protagonist 's ram­
bling gaze , we too begin to inscribe our readings onto it. The reading
process, therefore, becomes an excursion into the pleasure of the text
until we reach the body-map's harbor and come to a sudden realization:
if the two embankments can be read as the woman 's legs and the seagulls
her shoes , then the "delta of alluvial plain " can only be her "delta of
..."
III' ""
'
Venus" (Anais Nin notwithstanding ). What , then, can the "harb o r" sig­
,r ....
nify (th e Chinese wordgal1gkoumeans , literally, "mou th of the harbor ") if
l llt - r
iir".~ ,
not the opening of the woman's vaginal Accordingly , the "m ajestic pos­
.
"
>II . ". "
ture of a big steamship entering the harbor " cannot but refer to the
M ""
... ,,1
penetration of a penis . Never had any Chinese writer dared to go that far
" ' '' n'
......\ '
..', ' . with an erotic fantasy . At the same time , however, Mu 's description of the
a ., I.
r '., harbor, with its nocturna l scene and its high-rise buildings , also seems
II
~ .
"'Y
real : the seaport metaphor is so close to home that this last stretch of the
female body's geography loses its fantastic dimension. Readers at the
time might well have associated it realistically with the city of Shanghai.
~
~ ,
At this critical juncture , before the erotic and allegorical potential
of the harbor /city is fully realized, desire is deferred as the narrator's
reverie suddenly stops and the story shifts back to the reality of the
ballroom. The possessor of the fantastic body is a dance hall hostess,
who , as the story develops , turns out to be a lonely figure simultaneously
adored and mistreated by the gigolos who surround her; only the male
protagonist shows her genuine sympathy . The conventional plot thus
deflates the libidinous energy that the body-map has generated. How,
then , do we interpret such an inversion from fantasy to reality ? How is
such an extravagant metaphor of the body justifiable in an otherwise
rather conventional story? We can imagine how contemporary Chinese
fa ce , body , and th e city: l i u na 'ou and mu shiying
readers would have received such a "map": since it shows clear traces of
the Chinese landscape, they would have considered it offensive to their
cherished nationalism.
By the time Mu published this story, a concurrent type of body
metaphor by the more pat riotic writers Xiao Hong and Xiao Jun- stories
of Manchuria being ravaged by Japanese military aggressors like a
woman 's bod y 6 1- was already being greeted with much acclaim on
Shanghai 's literary scene, led by Lu Xun himself . By comparison, Mu
Shiying 's erotic geography of the body looks like an intentional and
apolitical putdown of a nationalist cliche. Or perhaps this body-map
belongs to a totally different conception-of the motherlandas a grandi­
ose female myth that dwarfs the male "knowing subject ." If so , the story
would be quite comparable to Lu Xun 's mythological tale "Buttan"
(Me nd ing heaven ), which depicts the gigantic body of the goddess
Nuwa as she wakes from a languid dream only to give birth to the petty
creature civilization . But the erotic potential in Lu Xun's portrait of this
myth ic goddess is sidetracked by his cynical sat ire of civilized hypocrisy ;
in Mu Shiy ing's story, only the erotic power of the female body is
celebrated.
Can physical attributes alone-a face, and/or a body-be suf­
ficient to make a fictional heroine a femme fatale> Mary Ann Doane has
commented that the femme fatale is "the figure of a certain discursive
unease , a potential epistemological trauma. For her most striking char­
acteristic , perhaps , is the fact that she never really is what she seems to
be . She harbors a threat which is not entirely legible, predictable , or
manageable .'?" In other words, Doane seems to suggest that the femme
fatale is a figure with a mysterious aura , and the unpredictable threat
she ha rbors is most likely directly at men . In this regard , a sense of that
aura and that threat can indeed be detected in Mus platinum body , who
proves to be not entirely legible or manageable to the doc tor. We could
also argue that in "C raven A," the heroine is not really what she seems
to be or what her body would lead us to believe . If Mu has succeed ed
in creating extraordinary women's bodies , he seem s to have great
 THE MODERN LITERARY IM A G IN ATI O N
difficulty in depicting their psychology and behavior. In a cultural
tradition in which women 's bodi es have not been privileged , Mu's effort
can nevertheless be considered more avant-garde than in a mod ern
Western society .
As I noted earlier , Mu pushes Liu Na 'ou's formula-the pursu it of
an exotic -lookin g modern woman by one or two weak , sentimental
men -to its absurd limit. "C amel, Ni etzscheist , and Woman" is one
example. Another is a longer story , "Bel dangzuo xiaoqianpin de nan zl "
(T he man who is treated as a plaything ), in which the heroine is
cha racterized as "an amalgam of jazz , machine , speed , urban culture ,
American taste , epochal beauty . . .n (as if the list were not complete ),
and her phy sical appearanc e is described to the hilt- "a really dan ger­
ous crea tur e.'?" But this femme fatale turns out to be a college stud ent
who lives in th e dormi tory by day and frequents danc e halls by night.
Following Liu Na 'ou, Mu makes all the poss ible refe re nces to Holly ­
wood stars: she ha s Vilma Banky's eyes, Nancy Carrol 's smile , Norma
Shearer's face." Still, the ensuing story of the male prota gonist's pursuit
and eventual def eat is too drawn out and predictable . In "Wuyue" (T he
month of May ), Mu creates a beautiful Eurasian heroine with a compli ­
cated family ba ckground and a Western education , but she behav es like
a demure maid en from a traditional family. Her flirtations with a series
of men have non e of the femm e fatale 's flair. In an apparent reversal , her
body is hardly descr ibed ; we find only a portrait of innocence as evoked
by the vague contour of a face with "a pair of half-closed eyes , like
sleep ing lotus es in a clear pond at night , and a nos e-such a pur e
straight nose.'?"
Anoth er ext reme case of a discrepancy betw een body or looks and
behav ior is the story "H e Moudan " (Black peony ), in which Mu again
creates an exot ic heroine "with a high nose and long face," wearing a
carnation and lon g earr ings "like two pagodas, han ging down on her
shoulders-i n th e Spanish style ." She is a fantasy figure straight out of
Hollywood movies-a Garbo playin g Mata Har i- and she can shoot as
well as she can dance . After some dalliance with th e male narrator ,
face , b od y, an d th e c ity : l i u n a' ou and mu sh iy i ng
followed by a reckless shoot -out with poli ce , she somehow finds her self
in th e house of a reclu sive but well -to -do bachelor ; as th e narrator visits
his friend th e bachelor , the woman pretend s to be his wife and seems to
enjoy it, to the envy of the sexually unrequi ted narrator ." Why should
such a fantasy woman be made to play such a tradi tional role at the end
of an utterly unb elievable plot ? Why , in spite o f the ir strik ing bodies and
looks , do Mu 's female characters (With a few exceptions ) seem to harbor
a sentimental "soft spot"- a flaw that serves to compromise their fatal
att raction?
It would be easy to blam e such a flaw on Mu 's techni cal limitations
as a noveli st , howeve r talented he migh t have been . But the issues raised
by th e uneven and discrepant cha racter izat ion of the mod ern heroine I
hav e observed in Mu's and Lids fiction pose question s that cannot be
answered by reference to technique alone . We must place th is literary
and textual problem in a larger context of the cultural backg round in
which such texts wer e produ ced . C hinese critics would surely loca te a
few clues in Mu 's personal life, since few modern write rs have devo ted
so much creativ e energy to the depi ction of dance halls and dance
hostesses. Mu s friend s have confirmed that he indeed led a life very
much like that of hi s male prota gonis ts, with frequen t visits to th e dance
hall s in pursuit of his favorite ho stesses- one of who m he eventually
married ." In thes e familiar account s art indeed imitates life: Mus char ­
acteriza tion of the fictional he roin es was, at least in part , influenced by
his association with the real dance ho stesses he had kn own and to whom
he could not help offering sympathy . Such sympathy leads in turn to
th e heavy dose of sentimentali sm in his fiction . Thi s conventional
interpretation tak es for granted a very significant poin t that needs to be
reit erated : if the key woman in Mu's life was a dance host ess, the key
"chronotope" for his fiction is th e dance hall itself . As a central site of
Shanghai's night life (see Chapter 1), th e dance hall is crucial in any
fictional effort at repres ent ing the city. Mor e than any othe r modern
C hinese write r, Mu succe eded in conjuring up the mood and atmos ­
pher e of th e dance hall with a most fittin g technique derived from the
 T HE MODER N LITE RA RY JMAG IN AT IO N
c ine ma. Wh ere as Liu N a'ou describ ed the dance hall casually as a
"le ad-in" setti ng for h is her oines, Mu tu rne d it into th e key int erior set
fo r his film-in- ficti on.
The Dance Hall and the City
In a book o n mo de rn Chin ese cine ma , Rey C ho w has arg ued tha t most
mod ern C hinese writ er s, steepe d in their lon g writte n traditi o n, har ­
bored a "co ntem pt for visuality" and did not p ay sufficie nt atten tion to
t he signi ficance and overw he lming impact of film .68 Mu Shiying is th e
notabl e exc e ption , because h is fiction is almos t all visual and permeat ed
with film culture . N owh ere are his v isual talent and cine m atic te chn iqu e
r "','-." be tte r displa yed th an in two of hi s most famo us sto ries , "Ye zo nghu i li de
;~" ~': " wug ere n" (Five charac ters in a nigh tclub ) and "Shanghai hubuwu"
'"'
" (Shang hai fox-trot) . In both stor ies th e ce nter of acti on is th e night club
~ : '~" o r dance hall , and th e sce nes un fold in a ser ies of wh irling pan or ami c
sho ts as if from a rovi ng came ra . Bot h an express io nisti c visual effect and
,.
1:" ' a dan celike rhy th m are create d by the purpose ful repet itio n o f wo rd s and
-- 1 ~I
im ages :
j ',
!
or• Wh ite tablecloth , white tablecloth , white tab lecloth , white
tableclot h . . . white -
Placed on the white tableclot h are: black beer, black coffee, . .
. black, black . ..
t' " Beside th e whit e tablecloth are seated men in black ties and
tails: clusters of black and white : black hair, wh ite faces, black
pupils, whit e co llars, black cravats, whi te starc he d shirts, black
jack ets, wh ite vests, black trousers . .. black and white ...
Behind th e whi te tablecloth stand the waiters, wh ite cloth es,
black h ats; on th eir wh ite pants are black str ipes . . .
Joy for whites , sorrow for blacks. T he music of the ca nn ibal
rites of black Africans, the drum s like big and small thunder. A
trump et blows and howls. At the center of the floor a row of
de-crowned Slavic princesses are dancing the black's tap dance.
fa ce, body , and th e city: l i u n a' o u and mu sh i y i ng
A line of white legs step out und er bod ies wrappe d in black
satin-
Tip, tip, tip-t ip tap!69
T he rhyt hmi c rep et ition of the pro se seems to ec ho th e rhy thm ic
sou nd of th e danc e music; it also co njures up th e visual image of a
Western -styl e nightcl ub in ton es of black and wh ite , an image th at
reca lls t he d rawin gs o f th e r ich and so ph isticate d urb anit es from Vanity
Fair, which was one o f the favo rite Amer ican magaz ines in Shi Zh ecun 's
circle . A more elabora te var iation on the same sce ne can be found in
"Shanghai Fox-Tro t ." Th e paragraph that intro duces the ca baret/ da nce
hall is wr it te n in lan guage that is eve n m ore evoca tive . (In th is translat ion
I try to co me as close as po ssibl e to t he se nte nce struc tures of the
or igi nal):
A blue dusk hovers over the who le roo m. A single saxopho ne
with its neck sticki ng out and its big mout h wide ope n is be llow­
ing at th em . At th e center, on the smooth floor, fluttering skirts
and drifting gow ns, exquisite heels, heels, heels, heels , heels.
Fluffy hair and a man's face. A man's wh ite shir t co llar and a
woma n's laught er, arms exten ded, green jade earrings dragg ing
onto the sho ulders. Neat column s of rou nd tab les, but the chairs
are scatte red arou nd. At th e dark corners stand white -uniformed
waiters. T he aro ma of wine, the scent of perfume, the smell of
Engl ish ham and eggs, the taste of cigarettes . .. A solitary per ­
son sits at a remo te corne r, taking black coffee to stimu late his
nerves ."
A few parag ra phs lat er, the e nt ire sequence of the sen te nces is
reverse d, beginnin g fro m th e very end : "A so litary perso n sits at a remote
co rner , taki ng black coffe e to stimulate his nerv es . .. " Thu s, the two
parag rap hs becom e lingui st ic eq uivalent s to a ca refu lly c horeogra phed
danc e with t he se n tences twirlin g aro und th e "floor" of the text - like a
gro up o f waltzers or fox-trott ers-i n forw ard and backward formatio ns .
 THE M ODERN LI TERAR Y IMAGINATI ON
Or they can be compa red to a movie montage sequ enc e of daz zling
cam era sho ts with the camera constantly mov ing, creatin g a diz zying
spell. Either way, thes e scenes are an audaciou s demons tr ation of
fictional technique appropriated from ot he r med ia-dance and film. As
in an expressionis tic film or pain ting (a Franz Masreel , for instanc e), the
characters are drawn as cart oon figures, th eir expression and action
purposely distort ed . In "Shanghai Fox-Trot ," after the scene just quoted ,
Mus "camera" moves betw een two dan cing cou ples in the dance hall-a
rich housew ife and her ste pson and a Chin ese movie actress and a
Belgian jew eler pretendin g to be a French gentleman . The entir e sce ne is
chor eograph ed and "filmed" in such a way that it resem bles a Hollywood
screwball co medy or musical in which every thing includin g dialogu e is
sty lize d. As the two coupl es impercep tibly exchange partn ers, the char ­
;c .
'il acter s are made to repea t the same words of fake end earmen t . With such
I '~ It
1· 1 •
dizzying "camera work " Mu ha s crea ted a world o f make -believe full of
sur face glitt er but signifyin g littl e in con ten t.
" "".
In both stor ies the danc e Hoor scen es, while pro viding the cen ter of
action , are framed by scenes of th e city. Ob viously they are mean t to
'•'''''''' for m a con tinuum of urban visual landscap e. It is also in these city sce nes
",
~
I
.'
~ - ,.
~
tha t Mu displays his neo -sen sationalistic style of pros e . The fro nt gate of
a buildin g "vomit s" a throng of people ; an elevator "throws peopl e, like
..,
goo ds, up on the roof garden at a speed of fifteen seconds.'?" Thes e
,
touches of surrealism- a controversial subjec t for Chin ese reader s-i s in
~ my view but th e beginning ste p in a much more ambit ious plan to
" con struc t a semiotic world of 'floating signifiers" tha t serves to highlight
Mu's vision of Shang hai. In "Five C haracters in a Nightclub ," for instance ,
such a semiotic vision is constituted by a swirl of neon signs and adver ­
tised sights: a gigantic high-heel ed shoe in blue and a bo ttle pourin g out
red wine ; "Please Drink White Hor se Wh isky . . . Lucky Stri ke Cigar ette
Do es No t Ha rm the Smok er's Throa t"; "Alexander's Shoe Store,
Johnson's Bar, Rasario Tobacco C ompany, Dixie Music Shop , C hoco late
Candy Sto re, the Cathay Theater , th e Hamilt on Hotel . . ."72 In the story,
th e list of sho ps precedes the dan ce hall sequence , as if it were these very
face , bo d y, an d the City : liu n a ' ou a n d mu s h iy ing
signs that drew the peopl e into the fant asy world of the dance hall. After
each of th e characte rs is introduc ed in a brief vignette , they are mad e to
conv erge on Saturday eve ning in a nightclub called Qu een , dancin g the
night away and forgetting their worrie s, at least temp orarily.
Thi s urban sce ne again reminds us of th e intriguing notion of the
spectacle. Yomi Braester uses the term "spe ctacle" to denote "the visual
regime that corr esponds to capi talist commodificati on: the spect acle
promi ses tha t one may acquire wha t one is looking at and introduc es an
excha nge system to compe nsate for th e inevitable breach of th at prom­
ise. The spectacle mani pulates the spe cta tor's desire throu gh an 'econ­
omy' in the psycholo gical se nse of the word ... Desire produced by the
spe ct acle is eventu ally redirected back at the spectacl e; t he image turn s
out to be no t the medium but the end."? In this sen se bo th the billboard s
and the dance hall areurban specta cles that seduce , bewitch , and eve n­
tually frustra te the specta tor. Mu subject s a melang e of his cha rac­
ters- not on ly the modern hero ines-t o the spec tacle , th e ultima te
protagoni st of his fiction .
Mu harb ored eve n bigger plans for "Shangha i Fox-Trot ," calling it a
"fragme nt" of an intended novel to be ti tled Zhongguo yijiusanyi (C hina
1931 ), which was never written ." In other wor~s , he wished to imbue the
urb an spe ctacle with even more meanin g as par t o f a national alleg ory.
The story thu s invites immedi ate compa rison with Mao Dun 's novel
M idnight, also subtitled A Romance of China. Mu may have intende d the
novel to be a direct challenge to Mao Dun 's work, but fro m a differen t
perspective . Yet despite th e ideologic al difference s betw een the two
author s, the works shar e a rema rkable similarity o f fic tional design : to
make the city a microco sm of the country caught at a critical juncture of
time .
Being a professed Marxist, Mao Dun inscrib ed a "master narrati ve"
of histo rical development and class conflic t in his novel. Hi s ultim ate
concern was with time and tempo rality. Mu's fragment -sto ry, by con ­
trast, is structured on the tro pe o f space. It is fragmen tary preci sely
becau se it is piec ed toget her from a number of sce nes with no marked
J'

THE MODERN L ITERARY IMAGINATION fa ce, body , and the c it y : l iu n ao u and mu shiying

transitions in time . The action supposedly takes place within the span of NEON LIGHT , extending its colored fingers, writes large
one night . (T he same nocturnal mood pervades Midnight, though the characters on the blue-inkish sky. An English gentleman stands
novel's t ime span is longer, lasting several rnonths. ) Consequently , in front , wearing a red suit with tails, hold ing a stick, and walking
"Sh angh ai Fox-Trot " indeed becomes a modern experiment in "spatial with such high spirits. Below his feet are written: "JO H N N Y
torm .'?' But before a national allegory can be constructed from the WALKER STILL GOING STRONG ." On the roadside , on a
portrait of a city , the city itself must first be represented artistically as an small patch of grass unfolds a [signboard of] utopia by a real
allegorical vision. Mu gives his story a subtitle in parentheses, "a broken estate company , in which an American smoking a Lucky Strike
fragment " (yige ducmpien), also in the literal sense of an episode from a cigar ette gazes down , as if saying : "T his is a utopia for the Lilli­
longer piec e of fiction or a series of cinematic shots yet to be edited into put ians, even the big prairie is not big enough for my foot. "
the final film. Its "narrative " consists of a sequenc e of scenes-urban On top of the racecourse building, the golden horse on the
spaces envisioned as fictional cinema . Together they conjure up a vision weathervane throws its hoofs toward the red moon . Around that
of the city . The following is a fragmentary selection of some highlights large grass-covered ground is a sea of light, surging with waves
~. , ., ~ ...,
~ ,.' of thi s visionary sequence (words in cap ital letters are in English in the of crime and evil. The Moore Memorial Church is steeped in
~: . " ""M - ­
original) darkness, kneeling and praying for the men and women about to
l:':", go to hell . The spire of the Great World tower refuses its confes­
...: : ~~
;
Shanghai , a heaven built on hell: sion and proudly stares at this pedantic preacher while giving off
West of Shanghai. A large moon crawls over the sky, shining
r<
...... .
1.:' ,
_I i '
down on a large plain . . . On the plain the railway tracks draw an
circles of light. 76
1"""_

,.... \ arch extending along the sky far into the distant horizon . . . The scene then moves inside the cabaret . The characters leave
~ ,. ;~ With a roar, an arch of headlights rises from below the hori­ through the revolving glass door, to be confronted
,
by a sea of rickshaws
zon. The railway tracks rumble , and the sleepers on the tracks and automobiles: "Austins , Essexes , Fords , Buick sportscars, Buick com­
'"
.""
~ ', ~
crawl forward under the light , like a centipede. Telegraph poles pacts , with nine , eight, six cylinders "? -the list clearly intended to be an
emerge and are soon submerged in darkness. The ShanghaiExpres
s hommageto Liu Na'ou. But Mu Shiyings mise-en -scene is more ambitious
t
'\. t rushes by like a dragon with a bulging belly, da, da, da, dancing than Liu's, as the street scene leads to a series of panoramic shots of the
~

to the beat of a fox-trot and holding its luminous pearl , while
circl ing along the arch . ..
The legs of trees painted in white, the legs of telephone poles ,
the legs of all inanimate objects . .. as in a REVUE, the girls who
bare and cross their powd ered legs . . . the column of white
painted legs, along the quiet avenue, from the windows of resi­
dential houses , thro ugh their gauze curtains, lights like the eyes
and pupils of the city , stealthily sneak out-pale red, purple ,
green-lights everywhere . . .
city crowd : "drunken -eyed sailors riding on rickshaws and kicking the
asses of the rickshaw pullers and laugh in g," "Indian po licemen standing
erect" at the traffic lights , waves of cars and people "like headless flies,"
a fashion model wearing clothes from the shop and pretending
to be a high -class lady, elevators sending cargo -loads of people
up to the rooftop gardens every fifteen seconds, female secre ­
taries standing outsid e the window of a cloth shop and staring
at the all-silk French CREPE while th inking about her boss's
 THE MODERN LITERARY IMAGINATION face , body , and the c i ty: liu na 'ou and mu shiying

laughing mouth with its razor-shaved cuts , ideo logues and Shanghai has woken up:

party members carrying packages of propaganda leaflets Shanghai , this heaven built in hell."

blue-eyed girls wearing narrow skirts , dark-eyed girls wearing

long 4ipao, both displaying the same coquettish charm at their In Cao Yu'sSunrise, the singing chorus are the workers at a construc­
legs and posteriors. " tion site . The end of the play clearly implies that the new proletarian
force is rising and the nocturnal revelers of the capitalist class are
The human mosaic created in this paragraph brings forth a crescendo of
doomed. As the heroine Chen Bailu intones in her memorable last lines :
energy and excitement. Readers of the period may well have read these
"T h e sun is risen , and the darkness is left behind. But the sun is not for us,
images at the same time that they savored the photographic mosaic in
for we shall be asleep. '?' In view of Mus previous feat as the author of a
the pictorial magazine Liangyouhuabao. In both written and visual forms ,
lumpenproletarian collection of stories, Nanbeiji, we cannot rule out the
the city that emerges from these representations exudes an aura of "met­
possibility of an ending tinged intentionally with leftist ideology If he
ropolitan excitement" -duhui deciji, as the Chinese headline proclaims on
had indeed completed his projected novel of China in 1931 , would he
" ~ ~, the magazine 's printed page while the smaller English headline on the
r.. same page calls it "Int o xicat ed Shanghai ."?
have echoed Cao Yu and Mao Dun and enshrouded the city in darker
J shadows? Interestingly, in these urban stories Mu does no more with the
In this fictional "cinernascape" neither plot no r character is sig­
urban crowd in the streets than mere ly sketch its shape in a few scenes ,
• <O
J
nificant , and human beings are reduced to cardboard figures caught in a
., r'" nor does he depict the crowd in political action , as the japanese nee-sen­
whirlwind of the city 's "ligh t, heat , power ." But the story 's symmetrical
sationalist writer Yokomitsu Reiichi does in his masterly novel Shanghai
r • oj '
structure imposes a closure in the very first sentence- "Shanghai, a
1.925 , in which the protagonists-both]apanese and Chinese-lose their
heaven built in hell!"-an artistic conception that befits the Western
't mental bearings in the tidal wave of the May Thirtieth demonstrations. B2
. "I
modernist paradigm of the "city of darkness and light " as summed up by
To demand of his fiction such a revolutionary commitment would lead us
Raymond Williams . But some thing of an ideological message is insinu­
far afield into social realism .
ated in the ending: after a night of orgiastic depravity , these urban
Nevertheless, we could attempt to locate on Mus fict ional canvas
" revelers in the night club wake up to another spectacle that seems to
the figure of thejlaneurwho roams the city and gazes at the crowd while
suggest that the image is n ot the medium nor the end in itself. In a
f ruminating about his ambivalent reactions to them. Yomi Braester has
paragraph that may have paved the way for the finale of Cao Yus famous
suggested that the jlaneur in Benjamin 's conception could be someone
play Richu (Su nrise ), written in 1936 , a tenor voice is raised in Pudong,
with a "seemingly lighthearted attitude, ostensibly indulging in con­
"Ay e . .. ya . . . aye ," followed by the sound of a "heroic chorus ," and an
sumption and gambling" as an escape from "th e stress caused by the
awkward and ambiguous panegyr ic ensues:
modern urban redefinitions of space and time .? " If so, the protagonists
The buildings that lie in slumb er are standing up , raising their (male and female ) in Mu's and Liu's fiction as well as the authors them­
heads and shedd ing their gray pajamas . The river flows east selves would qualify asjlaneuersor jlaneuse
s who adhere to the economy of
again , huala, huala.The factory's sirens are roaring. the spectacle. To be sure, the male protagonists in Liu and Mu do take
Singing of a new life, the destiny of the people at the night­ walks, like jlaneurs,but often in the company of women as a prelude to
club . romance or seduction . The erotic allure of both woman and city could
 THE MODERN LITERARY IMAGINATION fa ce , b od y , and the city : liu n aou and mu sh i y i n g

tempt the jlaneur

, but in Liu's stories this urban spectacle proves too in the original Italian commedia dell'arte-s-no longer a figure of derision
overpowering for the men to endure , much less to reflect critically on but , on the contrary, one of sympathy,
from a distance. In Mus fiction the city is given a more complex and According to Robert Storey , the Pierrot figure has undergone a
multihued imagery in which a more pensive jlaneurfigure would feel at history of transformations. "Among the literati of post-revolutionary
home. We find the trace of such a conception in the minor figure who France, " Storey argues , "th e Romantics' sympathies, either real or af­
appears near the end of "Sh an gh a i Fox-Trot ," a writer who is trying to fected , were with the naively passionate People. And Iepeuple. , , was
find proper subjects for his contemplated chef d'oeuvre on the city. The Pierrot." With the appearance of Laforgues Comp/aintesin 1885 , "th e
writer thinks, 'T he first site of inspection , gambling house ; the second clown discovered his first 'modern ' voice and Laforgue an attitude that
site , streetwalkers; the third site , dance hall; the fourth site, I'll see .'?" But nearly a whole generation of writers adopted as their own. In all impor­
as he encounters a young streetwalker and her mother , the writer's tant respects , the voice and the attitude are one" because the Pierrot "is
thoughts culminate in an illusion of career vanity which soon dissipates vel)' often a carnival reflection of its crea tor . He is a figure in whom
in parenthetical self-doubt and self -mockery. "(Isn't it so it's a good impulse is frustrated and instinct aggravated by analysis , a figure who has
I I."",..~
subject technique is no problem what she says must be ideologically reasoned himself into an attitude of sometimes anguished, sometimes
~r:,:
'1'"'''' correct no fear of people saying I am a sentimental humanist ... )"B5This supercilious passivity.' ?" That Mu may have inherited the French tradi­
\ ," ~ III' ,

1'\. . , .. r
revealing passage can be read as a metacornmentary on Mu's own tion and used this Laforguean figure in his portraits of people "falle n from
I " ......
I '~ ,;.
planned project of writing a novel about China in 1931, of which the life" can be inferred from his remark that "th ese people who are op­
story is intended as a fragment . We know from the writer's self -mocking pressed by life or fall flat from life . . . do not necessarily show a rebel­
,. '~).
"", attitude , however , that Mu would never have been able to finish his lious , angry, or hateful face ; they may wear a mask of happiness on their
I ' "": "
novel. Instead of conceiving the writer in the image of a jlaneur,Mu sad faces. '?" Thus , the Pierret for Mu is less a comic than a lonely figure
"
' "t

"O f '
preferred to use a different mask , that of a Pierret.
i,
The Writer as Pierrot
.,'J In his preface to the story collection Gongmu[Public graveyard], Mu
mentions that he has written five stories -e-including "Black Peony," "Cra­
ven A," and "Five Characters in a Nightc1ub "-in order to describe "a few
people who have fallen from life , who are fallen PIERROTS."B6The word
"Pierr e t" appears in French and is not translated . Mu may have picked up
the term from Dai Wangshu, whom he calls a smiling Pierret and to
whom he dedicates the entire story collection . Dai in turn may have
discovered this dramatic figure in nineteenth -century French literature,
particularly the work of Jules Laforgue , one of his favorite French poets.
In Mu's stories , the Pierret figure has already lost its clownish quality as
who masks his sadness with a happy face . The Pierret can be either a man
or a woman , since some of Mu 's femme fatale heroines, such as in "Black
Peony " and "C rave n A," are also intended to be female Pierrots, And the
gallery of dancing figures in "Shanghai Fox -Trot " and "Five Characters in
a Nightclub " could also be seen as Pierrots if their happy-go-lucky masks
were lifted to reveal their true fragile selves .
This character design creates a carious tension with the femme
fatale prototype: if a female Pierret merely wears the mask of a femme
fatale, as is the case in "C raven A," how is it possible for her to be "fatally"
attractive to men ! And how does she fit the "M o de rn Girl " image as
perpetuated by Liu Na'ou >Mus usage of the Pierret figure reminds us that
whether as man or woman , it is above all someone with a mask , a theatri ­
cal device for the enjoy me nt of the spectators . As such it should not be
taken so seriously as an intellectual figure of social alienation , In Mus
 THE MODERN LITERARY IMAGINATION
fiction, the Pierrot's relationship with the urban environment is also one
of tenuous complexity. We could read his or her exotic mask as a form of
mimicry of the Western colonial culture in Shanghai's concessions. If so,
the seriousness of the charge is diffused by the theatrical playfulness of
the Pierrot characters , whose self-mockery becomes part of their charar ,
ter. We could also read the Pierret figure, in Shu-mei Shih 's formulation,
as an "alienated , disillusioned individual in a semicolonial city " who fails
to "come up to speed ," so to speak , with the metropolis." In Mu 's own
explanation, however, the Pierret is a marginalized member of the urban
people: his or her alienation is, therefore, more psychological than social,
yet the mental anguish of these characters is also diffused by Mu's persist­
ent humanitarian sympathy. In Mus fiction they have played out their life
.
hf' "',
j " '"'
stories in order to entertain the urban spectators. Thus , we may consider
'
Mu 's work "po pular" fiction despite his own elitist claims as a gifted but
lonely writer much misunderstood by his critics.
',;,:;
If Mu sees himself also as something of a Pierrot figure-for he too
wears a number masks in his fiction-this self-image does not contain
..
'
•• ...l!
much of a Laforguean pensive quality. When he tries to be self-analytical,
he often becomes farcical, as in a lengthy story titled (in French) "Pierret,"
..
n· ~,
which is dedicated to Oai Wangshu . The protagonist of the story, Pan
Heling , is a writer and a solitary figure , who carries a copy of Azorin and
hums "Iraumerei" or listens to Beethoven's Minuet in G as he yearns for
'";i·
his Japanese Madame Butterfly. He goes to a cafe and flirts with the
.'j!
waitress, like an "urban nightwalker ." He gives lengthy analyses of his
own temperament. He goes to a party in a room filled with sundry items:
"a statue of Tolstoy, a small radio ... Pu'er tea , banana peels, cigarette
butts and smoke , laughter, historical materialism, American culture, an
eight-inch photo of Greta Garbo, walls of books, modernism, sofa, and
the smoked-yellow fingers of Mr. Pan Heling who supports the Chinese
literary scene together with his neurotic friends. "? After a lengthy ex­
change of opinion about Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy , American literature,
women's legs , the Pre-Raphaelites, Shakespeare, Mayakovsky, Morand,
and of course Garbo's husky voice as a symptom of excessive sexual
fa ce , body , and the c i t y : liu na'au and mu shiyin g
desire , he gives another analysis of himse lf, his readers , and his critics. He
then goes to his Japanese mistress's house, only to discover that she has a
Ftltppino lover; he forgives her and then becomes ill. After his recovery ,
he suddenly becomes fascinated with the Bolshevik Revolution , gets
involved in the workers' movement , and is arrested. After half a year in
jail, he returns to life in the city, only to be ignored by everyone. This long
intellectual journey of a pathetic Pierrot in Shanghai reads like a tedious
satire . Mu may have intended it as a cynical group portrait of allShanghai
writers , or a putdown of another May Fourth posture-that of the roman­
tic writer turned revolutionary. In either case, this Pierrot figure looks
more clownish than the fallen -from-life femmes fatales . In an ironic way ,
the story becomes a carnival reflection of its creator.
That Mu has consciously chosen the Pierret as the central figure in
his urban landscape and as the self-image of a writer, instead of the more
aristocratic dandy and the more aestheticfltiHeur, may be connected with
the Pierrot figure's affinity to the Picaro, a roguish figure and tramp made
popular by Charlie Chaplin. Both character types are by definition anti­
heroes and can be regarded as lower-class counterparts to thejlilHeurand
the dandy . We are again reminded of his first story collection , Nabeiji,
which unveils a world of rural rogues and bandits. Its authentic depiction
of lumpenproletarian characters took the leftists by surprise when they
later found out that it was all a fabrication by this talented novice, If Mu
had no rural lower-class experience to speak of, he might still have
brought his rural Picaros into the city and affected some sympathy for
the urban proletariat, as another contemporary writer , Jiang Guangci,
had done." By following Liu Na'ou, however, he succeeded in creating a
different world in which the Pierrot-like figures appear more self­
parodistic than self-pitying. And like Liu Naou and Shi Zhecun , and
even Mao Dun , Mu may have been a little too enamored of the urban
pleasures of Shanghai to turn his fictional portrait of this "heaven built in
hell" into a truly hellish universe. The city remains a positive source of
creative imagination for these writers and several others who will be
discussed in the next two chapters .