Shanghai used book market|gossip stall literature

Recently, I saw a news that Tian Yanning, a Sichuan writer who was one of the authors of the "Shermily" series of novels on the streets and alleys that year, recently passed away, and remembered going to the Strand second-hand bookstore in Manhattan that year and found a bookshelf dedicated to Pulp Fiction. Pulp Fiction is the title of Quentin's famous film noir, which means "pulp novel", referring to the American 1920s stall literature Pulp Magazine (Pulp Magazine) "Black Mask", which publishes the crime stories of hardcore detectives and femme fatales, because pulp is cheap so popular among the general public. In China, the stall literature that once swept China was an important symbol of reform and opening up in the 8090s of the last century.

America's "pulp novel"

In fact, the history of street stalls in our country can be traced back to the Song Dynasty when commerce was developed, and the best evidence is drawn in the "Qingming Upper River Map", when the stall literature was a script for singing opera and composing music, and later developed and derived chapter back novels, until the birth of the four famous works. After the reform and opening up in the early eighties and the rise of the commodity economy, the people were hungry and had no taboos, and the most conspicuous and best-selling street stall culture was the sexy girl wall calendar, presumably every family would be proud of having a brilliant fashion star or even swimsuit wall calendar. Beyond these eye-catching street stalls, the mobile book stalls scattered throughout China's cities and towns are the most like treasures waiting to be discovered. Because at that time the popular spiritual entertainment life was scarce, the publishing industry was not fully regulated, and there was a period of popular manuscripts before opening, stall literature became a window for curious people to spy on the strange world, and those informal printed, typos and missing stall books could also be eaten. The golden age of the barbaric growth of stall literature is a stall magazine represented by cottage Jin Yong, qigong science fiction, martial arts fighting, legal documentary, sexual enlightenment reading, and inspirational success studies, from wild history, secret news, curiosity, insider, business war to gossip, there are twists and turns, some are bizarre, some are appalling, and some are adventurous and fantastic, satisfying the tastes of the broad masses of the people and opening the door to popular literature. Among them, "Zhiyin", "Reader", "Youth Digest", "Yilin" and "Story Club" are the most indispensable.

《Story Club》

Popular literature represented by stall literature challenged the orthodox status of serious literature at that time, blazed a unique trail in the wave of marketization, and became the pioneer of later online literature. The reading boom of foreign literature in those years also spread through the mixed stalls, because just opened the country, everything outside was novel, and the cover design of foreign novels on these stalls was particularly eye-catching. For example, the first edition of "Lolita" introduced by Lijiang Publishing House was quickly circulated because of the cover, but it was reported by the public, and they had no choice but to change the binding design to republish. The earliest Chinese translation of the pioneering work "On the Road" by the hippie godfather Kerouac was based on the cover of "a group of American strange men and women drifting documentary" young people as the cover to attract readers, and even some domestic literature such as "Waste Capital" and "White Deer Plain" have changed the cover and sold it as salty books. But it is precisely because of the merit of the stalls that literature has entered thousands of households and has become the best channel for enlightenment and popularization.

When it comes to science fiction literature on the ground stalls, there are enlightenment science fiction novels represented by Ye Yonglie's "PHS Roaming the Future", Tong Enzheng's "Death on Coral Island" and Zheng Wenguang's "Flying to Sagittarius", as well as pseudo-popular science magazines "UFO Exploration" and "Mysteries" that were once quite popular. There are also comic strips known as "villain books", which have always been hard currency on the ground stall, but in the nineties of last century, a number of Japanese comics such as "Dragon Ball", "Saint Seiya", "Cat's Eye Three Sisters", "Random Horse" and "City Hunter" were first introduced by Hainan Photography Art Publishing House occupied the original adolescent student market.

Ye Yonglie, "PHS Roaming the Future"

In addition, in addition to the flood of mistaken martial arts novels, there are several author names that were expensive in Luoyang paper in the stall back then, but are rarely mentioned today, that is, Nishimura Shouyuki, Chunhiko Daisei, Karen Cen and Shermili. Nishimura Toshiyuki's most well-known masterpieces are "The Hunt" and "Dog Flute", the adapted movie is popular on the mainland, and Takakura's tough guy image has influenced a generation of Chinese. Nishimura was introduced along with Japanese mystery writers such as Matsumoto Kiyobari and Morimura Seiichi, but he was classified as a stall hunter, because his animal novels, tough guy mystery novels, social mystery novels, adventure novels, disaster thriller novels, fantasy legends and other fields showed a lot of the ugly and dark side of capitalist society, so that the 1989 stall became the "Nishimura Shouyuki fever", the predecessor of commercial bestsellers, but the distorted values in his books were not good for teenagers at the time, so he was ordered to stop publishing. Haruhiko grew up in northeast China, returned to Japan and graduated from Waseda University in Tokyo, and his "Awakened Golden Wolf" and "City of the Beast" have also been put on the screen, and these action movies starring Yusaku Matsuda are popular all over Southeast Asia, and are outstanding representatives of Japanese revenge adventure novels, which are very marketable in stall literature. To discuss the king of love, it is not Qiong Yao, Yishu, and Sanmao, but Cen Karun. Karen Shum probably wrote more than a hundred love letters, the text is very materialistic, describing Hong Kong's lights and wine, sports cars, fashion, mansions, villas, talking about the love of rich men and women, impacting the three views of young people at that time. And the recently deceased former director of the Sichuan Provincial Writers Association Tian Yanning, he and Tan Li created "Xue Miley", the "Hong Kong writer" gimmick, translated from "Sydney" to "Sydney" to "Shirley" plus the famous actor "Michelle" synthesized the name of the writer, from the publication of "Female Belt Home" became a hit to "Female Boss", "Female Secretary" and so on, Tian Yanning, who has not been to Hong Kong, has fabricated the image of modern women in Hong Kong out of thin air just by relying on the maps, newspapers and periodicals sent by friends there.

Works by Toshiyuki Nishimura and Haruhiko Ōsusa, among others

Shermily's work

Stalls literature is like a B-grade film in the movie genre, compared with mainstream commercial films, shoddy but cult full of game, with incomparably vigorous vitality. But because of the emergence of the Internet, major literary websites have sprung up, and the stalls have almost disappeared overnight, not to mention that now physical books have become luxury goods, and I don't know how long the 100,000+ clicks in the subscribed public account can be as popular as the eye-catching cool articles on the stalls back then.

There are very few stalls selling books in Shanghai, except for the occasional flash in Juqicheng in Yunzhou Commercial Building and Lingshi Road Bird and Flower Market. I remember the last time I met Zhang Wei, a researcher at the Shanghai Library who had just passed away, he said that if someone systematically studied the stalls, it might be an interesting cultural project. "The stall economy is a firework in the world", maybe in the need to release this fireworks today, the stall literature will reappear in the world with a new look.