Unraveling the Urban Myth: History, City, and Literature in Xi Xi's Fiction. (2nd January 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Menkus, Wei Yang
• Is Part Of: Chinese literature today. Volume 8:Number 1(2019)
• Page Start: 58
• Page End: 67
• Publication Date: 2019-01-02
• Subjects: Chinese literature -- Periodicals; 895.1
• DOI: 10.1080/21514399.2019.1605255
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2151-4399

Abstract

Abstract : The lack of a viable urbanism in most Chinese literature from the first two-thirds of the twentieth century has confined the urban imagination to two essentialist templates: one that exploits the spectacles of urban woes for nationalist discourse, and one that reduces the wealth of urban experience into worn and simplified platitudes. Against this background, this essay considers Xi Xi (b. 1937) to be a rising literary self-consciousness that is remarkably urban and independent from traditional aesthetic and intellectual parameters. Examining a broad range of literary devices in Xi Xi's fiction, including magic realism, multipoint narratives, defamiliarization, and atonality, I argue that Xi Xi's writing has modified the Chinese modernist tradition of urbanism by turning the once mystified urban world into an open, habitual space. Xi Xi's alternative urban visions respond to the ultimate criticism in classical urban studies through suggesting the potential for a city to free people from an alienating existence, returning to the legacies of human communities. Meanwhile, by embedding her narratives within a thinly veiled twentieth-century Hong Kong history, Xi Xi underscores the strength of the Hong Kong public in critical moments, elevating the qualities of conventional neighborhood life to a point of local allegiance.