Xu Jilin | Shanghai's urban culture is elegant and secular

The Jiangnan cultural tradition of elegant customs has been inherited into modern times, making Shanghai's urban culture not as pure and elegant as the scholar-doctor culture in Beijing, nor as thorough as the northern folk culture.

Shanghai is the representative of modern urban culture, is metropolitan culture elite culture, or mass culture? The binary cultural analysis model between the elite and the masses is usually ineffective for Shanghai. Of course, Shanghai is the birthplace of various popular novels, popular music and popular dramas in modern mass culture, the romance novels of the early Minchu are called the Mandarin Duck Butterfly School, and the Peking Opera of the Hai School has more commercial and market elements than the Beijing School, however, Shanghai is also the cradle of elite Enlightenment culture. The earliest political newspaper", Shiji Bao, was founded in Shanghai in 1896, liang Qichao, as the chief writer of the newspaper, with the magic of "pen edge often with emotion", poured the north and south of the river, "Shi Ji Bao" symbolized the birth of the critical public sphere in modern China, and also symbolized the emergence of the first generation of critical public intellectuals. The enlightenment of the late Qing Dynasty originated in Shanghai, and similarly, the prelude to the new cultural movement in the early years of the Republic of China was also opened in Shanghai, and in September 1915, Chen Duxiu founded the magazine "Youth" in Shanghai, which was later renamed "New Youth", relaying the flame of enlightenment to Beijing, and enlightenment became a great tide.

The enlightenment of Shanghai is different from That of Beijing, which is the academic center of China and the famous national universities such as Peking University and Tsinghua University, which rely on elite culture. Shanghai is the cultural center and public opinion center of the country, and the most influential newspapers, the largest circulation bookstores, and the most diverse magazines are all gathered in Shanghai. Newspapers, magazines and the publishing industry constitute the media of communication in modern times. The media is different from universities, which attract intellectual elites, while the media are aimed at all kinds of people. The enlightenment in Beijing is the enlightenment of the elite to the elite, and cannot go out of the circle of the elite; the enlightenment of Shanghai is the enlightenment of the elite to the masses, through the channels of the media, appealing to public opinion, textbooks and popular books, directly facing the public.

Enlightenment became a business because of the emergence of the modern printing industry. The modernization of printing technology has made cheap publications possible, so that the general public can afford to buy, and the promotion of vernacular novels and vernacular languages has made the reading public expand rapidly. Shanghai's elite culture, unlike beijing's, is the media media against the backdrop of print capitalism. Newspapers, magazines and books are governed by the laws of the market, and they all take into account the appreciation tastes and aesthetic orientations of the reading public, the theater public and the film public. Therefore, Shanghai's elite culture and enlightenment cause are not a one-way process of elite preaching to the public, but a two-way process of mutual influence and mutual restraint between the elite and the public.

Therefore, in Shanghai culture, there is no absolute boundary between the elite and the masses, the enlightenment and the business. Taking the largest and most influential commercial press in China as an example, in the enlightenment in the early years of the Republic of China, its influence was definitely not below Peking University. The Commercial Press does not take the upper but lower line, it publishes a large number of dictionaries, textbooks and popular academic reading materials, the new science, new disciplines and new knowledge spread in society, the magazine series it founded: "Oriental Magazine", "Education Magazine", "Women's Magazine", "Youth Magazine", "Novel Monthly", "Nature", etc., in addition to the "Oriental Magazine" facing the intellectual circles, the rest are oriented to a specific social public, taking the market route, but never kitsch; educating the public, but not condescending. In the 1930s, the Commercial Press published a total of 2,000 volumes of the Universal Library, which collected a variety of Chinese and foreign classic books, and distributed them to general readers in a simple and inexpensive manner.

The May Fourth Enlightenment camp in Beijing, after 1925, underwent a profound differentiation, liberalism, statism and socialism, all products of the Enlightenment, as different legacies of the Enlightenment, but they confronted each other, ideological conflicts and tensions, in Beijing very fierce. But in Shanghai, mainstream publishing media such as the Commercial Press, Zhonghua Bookstore, and Enlightened Books, although they have their own value tendencies, are not placed in the foreground, and they appear in a broad liberal posture. For example, Zhang Yuanji, the boss of the business, takes an inclusive attitude, and all kinds of "isms" of writing, as long as they are reasonable and persistent, are included in the list. Therefore, it is difficult to divide the cultural people in the Shanghai publishing industry into Western and traditional schools, and for Chinese and Western cultures, they are rather harmonious and communicative, which is the spirit of Shanghai culture.

Shanghai has an enlightenment tradition, but also a consumer culture, between enlightenment and entertainment, not two heavens and people, the elegance of the elite and the secularity of the masses, is also the same. One of the local origins of Shanghai's urban culture is the Jiangnan culture since the Ming and Qing dynasties. The tradition of Jiangnan culture is the intermingling of scholar culture and citizen culture, and there is elegance in custom, and there is custom in elegance. This Jiangnan cultural tradition of common customs has been inherited into modern times, making Shanghai's urban culture not as pure and elegant as the scholar culture in Beijing, nor as thorough as the northern folk culture. Modern Beijing is a dualistic world, and it is impossible for foreign professors in universities and camels in hutongs to appreciate the same culture. But Shanghai is different, Shanghai's cultural people and the civic class are in the same world culturally, not only living a secular life, but also trying to be subordinate to elegance, elegance and worldliness, elite and the masses, although there is a boundary, there is no gap that cannot be crossed.

The elegance and customs of Haipai culture are mixed, and there are two examples of textualism. One is Zhang Ailing's novel, the protagonists of her novels are mostly young men and women in the city, exuding a strong sense of citizenship. Zhang Ailing plays with the worldliness of urban life and writes the poetry of daily life; she has insight into the sophistication of urban people, and sees a faint desolation from the sorrows and joys of ordinary people. With the resurgence of Shanghai, it is no accident that Zhang Ailing's novels have once again become popular among urban readers.

Fuzhou Road Old Shadow (Picture from the Internet)

Another model of elegance and custom is the Sima Road culture in the late Qing Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty. Si Ma Lu (today's Fuzhou Road) was once a gathering place for Shanghai's various elite cultures and entertainment cultures, known as the "combination of prostitutes and soldiers", which is not only the center of modern media, but also the place of wind and moon, and the gathering place of various new theaters. At that time, a short Wangping Street next to Fuzhou Road concentrated the most influential newspapers such as "Declaration", "News Daily", "Shang Bao" and so on, and the most influential bookstores such as the Commercial Press, Zhonghua Bookstore, and Enlightened Bookstore also gathered here. At the same time, the Fourth Avenue also concentrates all the elements of modern urban entertainment and consumption, and the intellectuals on Fuzhou Road inherit the spiritual tradition of the Ming and Qing Dynasties Jiangnan Scholars, talking loudly and advocating change in the newspaper hall during the day, watching plays in the theater at night, enjoying Haipai Peking Opera, or going to the Qinglou to eat flower wine. They brought the wind and snow into the cause of enlightenment, and made the place of desire full of literati Yaxing and interest. The "condemnation novels" and "romance novels" of the late Qing Dynasty and the early Ming Dynasty both originated from the Four Horse Roads, and used the culture of the Four Horse Roads as scenes: although the former was a social satire and political criticism, it took the form of a popular novel, and the latter, although it was a leisure and entertainment Mandarin duck butterfly school, tried to pursue the elegance of the literati in art.

Elite and popular, elegant and secular, these ambiguous cultural elements have obtained a wonderful combination here in the Shanghai culture, inlaid with each other, infiltrated with each other, forming a unique Shanghai cultural character.

[This article is excerpted from "The Ambiguous Character of Shanghai Urban Culture: Professor Xu Jilin's Speech at the Simian Institute for Advanced Study of Humanities at East China Normal University", originally published in Wen Wei Po Weekly Lecture, September 5, 2009)

Author: Xu Jilin

Editor: Chen Yu

Editor-in-Charge: Yang Yiqi

*Wenhui exclusive manuscript, please indicate the source when reprinting.