Professor Emeritus of the Department of East Asian Studies at Harvard University and Chair Professor at Chinese University in Hong Kong
Railway Modernity: Temporal and Spatial Experience and Cultural Imagination from the Late Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China, by Li Siyi, Times Culture, December 2020, 416 pages, NT$550.00
Railway Modernity: Temporal and Spatial Experience and Cultural Imagination from the Late Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China was originally submitted by the author Li Siyi to the Department of Culture and Religion Studies of the University of Chinese hong Kong (2012-2018), and after several revisions in the following two years, it has finally become such a rich academic work. From a theoretical point of view, it explores a major topic: the temporal and spatial experience and cultural imagination caused by railways and trains in the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, and takes this as an opportunity to rethink the many problems of modernity. In the original opening report (2013), the author had the following idea: "This paper adopts a research path of empirical tracing, placing concrete material objects above abstract theoretical discourse, establishing railways as a paradigm and method of modernity, and reconstructing the imaginary picture of modernity from the late Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China." "Concrete matter is railways and trains, and abstract theories refer to modernity.
The author once told me that whenever he mentioned the title of his paper, the reaction of the listener was mostly contemptuous and inappropriate: "Trains are commonplace, what is there to study?" And what about culture? These are words that are said casually without thinking, and it proves that trains and railways have long become the means of transportation that can be seen everywhere in everyone's daily life, and they are accustomed to it. The author must therefore face two challenges: first, he needs to convince the reader, who takes himself for granted and holds a common sense, that the story of the railway is inexhaustible, and that there is another cultural and intellectual hole behind it that deserves in-depth study; second, he must also challenge the confusion that fills the discourse of modernity in the field of cultural theory in order to obtain his own method of discourse and thus to present his own opinion. On the one hand, Si Yi collected a large number of historical, literary and visual image materials as a textual basis for research and thinking, and on the other hand, he examined various theoretical theories on modernity (especially in the introductory chapter) and reflected on the various impacts and changes brought by the railway as a "thing" to modern Chinese culture.
In this preface, I should give a preliminary introduction and interpretation of the content and theoretical framework of this book, as is customary. However, in the process of writing, it was found very difficult, and I repeatedly rewrote it, and I still felt dissatisfied. It is still recommended that interested readers and academics read this book directly, without having to read this preface, because my text is far inferior to Li Siyi's language, and the rules are not rigorous enough, and the writing and structure are also very scattered, which can only be regarded as an ordinary introduction. I ask for the forgiveness of the author and the reader.
One
In the context of Chinese, most of the scholars who study China's railways are historians, who mostly dig out its ins and outs from historical sources and describe how the railway promoted China's modernization process. In other words, this is an empirical narrative that, at best, uses Chinese historical experience to confirm or refute established Western theories. In such studies, modernity and modernization are often conflated; they describe a superficial phenomenon of railway development that ignores the cultural significance it contains. In the field of modern Chinese literature studies, the railway acts as a kind of "representation", playing a representational role in the text of modernity. The author of this book, Li Siyi, goes a step further, starting from the train/railway as a specific "thing", first establishing the railway as a method of speech and research paradigm of modernity, and then interpreting the derivation of modernity to railways according to a large number of historical hooks and textual analysis: the evolution of the concept of time and space, the ideological debate, the physical feelings of the train (riding in the moving), and the subjective experience of the characters reproduced in the literary text. In the course of this debate and narrative, trains and railways—this theoretical system of modernity of "things"—become the intellectual motive force of the whole book.
In the introduction to this book, the author discusses how to speak of modernity from a theoretical height, and combs and analyzes the doctrines of nearly twenty schools of thought, which is equivalent to giving us a theoretical lesson. The author's language, though taught with doctrinal abstraction— many new theoretical keywords need to be translated into appropriate and understandable Chinese, making it difficult to read. But how easy is it to write like this? Theoretical language originally came from the West, Chinese context (especially vernacular) did not have so many equivalent abstract languages, so many scholars in the academic circles of Chinese looked at the meaning of the text from the Chinese translations with uneven levels, made up words arbitrarily, made them mysterious or pretended to be difficult, and woven long sentences with twists and turns, and read them with teeth. More scholars reject theory at all – I think it's an anti-intellectual attitude, and it's a very irresponsible thing to criticize them without trying to understand the author's intentions and thinking paths, which I think is even more undesirable. The language of the book, though sometimes abstract, is fluent, and familiarity with the author's rhetorical style makes me feel that every word he says is deliberate (at least in my personal reaction). I even think that this book should be published in English, which may cause greater repercussions in Western academic circles.
"Dianshizhai Pictorial": Construction of railways
Dianshizhai Pictorial: The train was destroyed
The book consists of six chapters, each of which describes the six aspects of railway modernity in Chinese culture. The first chapter carefully traces the origin and connotation of the term railway and "fire (wheel) car", and explores its various references in the traditional Chinese context. The second chapter takes the famous "Dianshizhai Pictorial" as an example, analyzes and compares various images of trains and railways in depth, restores the cognitive background at that time, and instead draws extraordinary new insights. The third chapter focuses on the Wusong Railway controversy, placing the arguments of various people in the Western affairs movement on the same platform, showing that speed was not the most important consideration in China at that time. The fourth chapter discusses Sun Yat-sen's railway dream, which is the topic I recommended, and the author spent a lot of effort to do research at Harvard University, and even found the original railway map, and found the subjective will of the nation-state behind Sun Yat-sen's railway dream. The fifth chapter focuses on the literary works of the Republican period, and the selection of materials is also very extensive, but instead of randomly piecing together, writers and texts from different backgrounds are juxtaposed under a question of subjectivity about modernity; and two interrelated ideas—subject and landscape (and the landscaped other)—are used as analytical frameworks to examine the individual experience in the train carriage. In addition, the author also talks about the works of writers such as Lao She, Feng Zikai and Liu Naou on the train experience in the appropriate links. The most personally enlightening to me is the sixth chapter, "Encounter with Him/Others", which discusses the boundaries in the carriage and the problem of strangers, and the author thinks together with the avant-garde Shi Jicun and the traditional Mandarin Duck Butterfly School's Zhang Hateshui, the two literary orientations are very different, but after layers of analysis (including Freud's own railway dream), the conclusions reached are beyond my expectations and I am greatly impressed. Because these writers have all been studied by myself and have been taught in the classroom, such as Zhang Hexhui's "Pinghu Traffic", but I never thought of the possibility of such an interpretation. This also inspired me to continue to study the works of other writers and railways from this line of thinking (see below). The book spans about a hundred years of history, from 1840 to 1937. I really hope that the author will continue to write and include contemporary visual texts (such as Hou Xiaoxian's film "Winter Vacation" and Jiang Wen's film "Let the Bullets Fly"), not to mention the recent "high-speed rail" phenomenon and related topics Chinese mainland. In addition, if the author is willing to study horizontally, he can actually compare the railways in Japan and India.
Peach Blossom Wood New Year Painting "Suzhou Railway Steamcock Company Driving to Wusong"
In the process of reading this book repeatedly, as a reader, I have long forgotten that I am the author's thesis supervisor, but I have learned a lot from this book. The so-called teaching is long, green out of blue, not a lie, I have a deep understanding, this time I got another example. The author Li Siyi's undergraduate training was Western philosophy, especially German conceptual philosophy, which made him accustomed to abstract speculation; when he was a graduate student, he changed to cultural studies, so he was quite familiar with the philosophical background of Western cultural theory, and often had an extraordinary understanding. Cultural Studies is a relatively new discipline in Western (especially anglo-American) college, or "interdisciplinary" because it spans various fields such as literature, visual studies, gender studies, and cultural politics. However, in my opinion, there are two major drawbacks in cultural studies, one is the lack of historical vision (because it only cares about and chases the current hot issues and popular theories), and the other is that it does not reach the depth of philosophical speculation. Li Siyi has now finally made up for this shortcoming, and more than that — written a unique interdisciplinary book. As mentioned earlier, his entry point is very special, in bruno Latour's theory, that is, "the historical and interpretive position of things"; things are not static, stable, passive things, but a complex network of actions, a fluid trajectory. In other words, things also have their subjectivity. The train is a product of the industrialization of Western capitalist society, so it becomes a representation of modernity, but when it first entered the vision of the Chinese (via the Dianshizhai Pictorial), it was treated as a monster, and the dragon and snake giant beast were equal to each other, competing with each other for the space of nature. After the historical experience of building (and eventually dismantling) the Wusong Railway, the cultural significance of trains and railways has gradually changed, and it can be said that the railway has more or less driven the culture of Modernity in China. In the Republic of China era, after Sun Yat-sen's vigorous praise, the railway became one of the main mechanisms for building a new nation-state, and its status was obviously different from that of the late Qing Dynasty. Rail travel became a modern experience, interacting with literature and "having a profound impact on the subject construction of the Republic of China period", which referred not only to the state but also to the individual. Literary works from the May Fourth onwards also expanded the subjective horizons of rail travel. Li Siyi critically invokes the Japanese theorist Binggu Yusen's "epistemological inversion" of the landscape, and uses an anti-dialectical dialectical method to illustrate the many possibilities of railways and landscapes—the individual viewing the scenery on the train and the cognitive influence of the landscape on the individual—which I think is the most abstract and difficult part of the book, but it does not affect the author's wonderful insights from textual analysis. From the fifth chapter onwards, the book is obviously changed to another "tonality", the author no longer from the nature of the railway to discuss the subject-guest relationship between man, matter and railway, but "gradually learn to accept the entanglement of people and things" is not clear. The author seems to have gradually shifted from the constructive position of theoretical speculation to the interpretation of textual experience. There is a meaningful self-reflection at the end of the seventh chapter of the book: "Since man always expresses himself through non-human matter, we cannot deny that things can also manifest themselves through man." If the purely materialist standpoint continues, this book is bound to fall into the theoretical vortex of "post-human" and "new materialism", and Si Yi is unwilling to join the ranks of today's fashionable "theorists". Finally, he said profoundly: "If theory cannot be used to think about problems but can only produce noise, then we might as well go to specific texts and look for railways that carry historical metaphors and literary meanings." I was very touched by this passage after reading it, but I also felt a little responsible for it: Was Si Yi returning to the traditional study of literary and cultural history in order to cater to his teacher's interests?
In fact, I have never opposed theory, but only the superficial and casual application of theory, or the confusion/abuse of theoretical terms, pretending to be "abstract", but in fact it is nothing. Therefore, I particularly emphasize that we should start with solid text data and detailed interpretation, and even when studying the theory, we must use the method of text reading carefully, step by step, and deliberate on the genealogy and context behind the theory. Strictly speaking, therefore, my approach is not theoretical, but at best uses modernity as a system of care. In Siyi's words, it is the "empirical study of modernity", which is inseparable from the interpretation of modern texts, and the insights of researchers often "depend on the choice of text and their own interpretation of related texts". But for Si Yi, this is not a problem at all, the real question is what is the ultimate purpose of the theory? The conclusion of the last chapter of the book, not only summarizes the arguments of each chapter, but also clarifies the author's position on the theory, which can be said to be related to my heart: "Theory is not universal, but thinking about theory can be; theory does not solve practical problems, but creates more problems to inspire people." As long as the theory is not a decoration used to frighten people, a rigid dogma, or a pseudo-art of creating pseudo-problems such as the confrontation between China and the West, then it is nothing that can be related to thinking and research at any time and in any place. "All in all, the purpose of theory is to think about problems, and for me, it is more to help me discover new problems in research." So I want to thank this book for inspiring me.
Two
Most of the above theoretical opinions on this book are repeating Siyi's views. However, after reading this book again, I have a lot of feelings, and I can't help but write a few bits and pieces of miscellaneous feelings here, which may be used as an "appendix" to the book and this preface. I would like to ask the reader to think of it as a sporadic film captured in the passing scenery outside the window while inside a moving train.
A． Associations about stations: Zhu Ziqing's "Back Shadow"
The locomotive/carriage/rail is the body of the mechanical combination of the train, while the station can be set up as an extension. The book mentions stations in the relevant chapters (e.g., in Uddhav's The Death of Silver Gray), but does not discuss them in detail, perhaps because stations are fixed buildings that represent the beginning and end of a railway journey, rather than a dynamic experience of time and space. In the film, the train enters and exits the station has long become a common scene, although the image of the locomotive in the film is often highlighted, but the background is the station. The most famous example is the classic footage of the 1895 silent film "The Train Arrives at St. Vincent's Station" by the Lumière brothers, which is rumored to have left the cinema in a state of shock. Relevant film scholars have long pointed out that the invention of cinema and the train are almost synchronized, and the two add up to constitute a collective shocking experience of modernity. Another classic film is Walter Ruttmann's Berlin: A Symphony of a Metropolis (1927), which begins with a shot of the train leaving the station, which starts a day in the city (Berlin) and thus becomes a representation of urban culture. Si Yi mentioned Wolfgang Schivelbusch's book The Railway Journey, which contains a chapter (Chapter 11) devoted to the historical and cultural significance of railway stations, which reminded me of many works in Chinese and Western literature that set the railway station. The railway station is a modern building and a cultural indicator of the connection between trains and railways, used as chronotope in literary works, which is not surprising at all, and has far-reaching implications.
The Lumière Brothers' "The Train Arrives at Saint-Vincent Station"
The opening credits of Ruttmann's Berlin: A Symphony of a Metropolis
Wolfgang Schifferbsch, The Railroad Journey: The Industrialization of Space and Time in the Nineteenth Century
A station is a kind of building, but can it also be a "landscape" brought out by the railway? This reminds me of Zhu Ziqing's famous essay "Back Shadow". After reading the chapter in Si Yi's book discussing Zhang Hexhui's "Pinghu Traffic", I suddenly woke up, "Back Shadow" In the Pukou Railway Station is not the station where the female liar in the novel got off the train and flew away? In the same place, different human comedies and tragedies are constantly staged, and the two texts are written only a decade apart ("Back Shadow" was written in 1925, and "Pinghu Traffic" began to be serialized in travel magazine in 1935). "Back Shadow" is not concerned with the mutual gaze of the protagonist and the stranger "other" (or through the eyes of a third party) (such as Shi Jingcun's "Magic Road" and "Night Fork"), but on the father from the subjective perspective of the son, in fact, the platform of the railway station plays a key role in it. Although the station buildings of that year were not necessarily the same as in Europe, there were still platforms. Zhu Ziqing sits in the unopened carriage, watching his fat father climb over the platform to buy oranges, which is the emotional center of the entire essay, and it directly takes the reader into a scene of modernity: the father goes to the station to bid farewell to his son, and first checks a seat by the door for his son in the carriage (why close to the door?). Perhaps for the convenience of movement, the train can be dropped off a step earlier when it arrives), and in this leisurely, relatively static space, the author sees a different view outside the carriage: the father crosses the railway and climbs the platform on the other side with difficulty: "He climbs it with both hands, and then shrinks his feet upwards; his fat body leans slightly to the left, showing the appearance of effort." Then I saw his back, and my tears quickly flowed down. In this classic scene, the modernity of the train is almost "absent", and no one will ask: what if another train of Pinghu traffic enters the station at this moment? The empirical answer is that this is never the case, because with the train schedule, everyone is prepared. What effect would this literary scene have if it were made into a movie? The same scene often appears in countless Western films: the train slowly starts from the platform, two people in the carriage and on the platform — mostly a man and a woman — look at each other, the gazing camera is always matching the speed of the train after it starts, and the station itself becomes the beginning or end of a person's "sentimental journey".
B. The Discernment of Boats and Carts: Natsume Soseki and Toyoko Kai
Feng Zikai has written several essays with a modern critical temperament, at least two related to trains: one is the "Carriage Society" mentioned in this book, and the other is "Tangqi". The latter article begins by quoting Natsume's novel Grass Pillow about trains:
There is probably nothing like a train that represents the civilization of the twentieth century. Hundreds of people were pulled away in the same boxes, without mercy. Many people who are packed in boxes must all run at the same speed to the same station, and smoke the same steam. Other people say take the train, I say it's loaded into the train. Others say they took the train, and I said I was carried by the train. There is no such thing as a train that despises individuality...
In Shushi's pen, the passenger's body is dismembered by the train representing modern civilization, the speed is assimilated, and the subjectivity of man is also "materialized". Such a critical perspective seems to return to the humanistic value system that preceded the emergence of modernity. Feng Zikai, who translated Shushi, said: "When I translated this novel, I laughed at the stubbornness of Mr. Natsume while understanding his mood. In the twentieth century, there was probably no such emphasis on individuality and such a dislike for material civilization. There is also a me, and I myself feel the same way as him. ”
Are Shushi and Feng Zikai, like Gandhi, a "modern man who opposes modernity"? In this regard, is Feng Zikai more conscious than Shushi? In the article "Tangqi", he traveled from his hometown of Shimen Bay to Hangzhou, only by one hour by steamer and one hour by train. But just as he teased and teased the clock in "Idle House", in this article he made a joke about the train: he would rather take a passenger ship than give up the train - and also implied the allusion of "getting to the passenger ship at midnight" - mostly because he liked leisure and did not desire the convenience of speed. I think that in Feng Zikai's works (including his comic works such as "Sick Car" and "Half a Second", etc.), traditional aesthetic values and modern life tastes are almost perfectly and directly integrated. This is the power of the text itself, and there is no transition or reversal, nor does it need to go through the kind of "inversion" that post-structuralists such as the Stalk Valley pedestrians tacitly accept. I think the same goes for Shushi.
Feng Zikai paints "Sick Car"
C． The doppelganger of trains: trams and subways
Trams can be used as metonymic (metonymic) or connecting objects for trains. Zhang Ailing is known to love trams, and the story described in her short story "Blockade" takes place in a tram car that suddenly stops because the alarm is sounded. Si Yi and I have had many discussions, and even cited a similar story: the Argentine novelist Julio Cortázar's "Southern Highway", but always felt that it was incompatible with the temperament of the whole book, it was difficult to put in, or decided to "cut love". Another rail link is the subway, which is an extension of the railway's entry into the city's underground space. However, it appears in China outside the time frame described in this book (from the late Qing Dynasty to 1937), and there are significant differences with the railway in terms of operating mechanism and time and space narrative. The book concludes with a quote from Benjamin in drafting the outline of the Arcade Project: "The entrance to the railway enters the realm of dreams and symbols"—which always makes me wonder if Benjamin's so-called entrance refers to the railway station or the subway station. The Paris Metro is called Metro, which is an abbreviation for metropolitan. So, I can't help but dream. My personal memory of my first train ride was like a nightmare. During the Kuomintang Civil War in 1948, my mother took my sister and me alone to pretend to be the family members of the huainan coal mining company employees and fled from Wuhan to Shanghai by the company's special train. The carriage was crowded with people inside and outside, a strange man talked to us, and my mother used me and my sister as a "shield" to use. The plot is somewhat similar to Zhang Hexhui's novel "Pinghu Traffic", the difference is that at that time, we only had panic in our hearts. Mother did not dare to offend the man in front of her, because he may be a real company employee, and we are the fake "liars". As a result, this kind stranger escorted us all the way to Shanghai Station, and then took the tram to the hotel where Grandpa was staying... My Experience with Shanghai Modern began here. I was only nine years old!
This article is the author's preface to Li Siyi's book Railway Modernity: Temporal and Spatial Experience and Cultural Imagination from the Late Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China (Taipei: Times Culture Publishing, December 2020).
Editor-in-Charge: Ding Xiongfei
Proofreader: Liu Wei