The Island of Individualism
By Tang Ying
Published by Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House
After reading Tang Ying's latest novel "The Island of Individualism", I have a very fresh feeling, as if her writing has entered a new stage or interface, and has gone deeper into history. Most of her long, medium and short stories that I have read before seem to focus on the social changes, lifestyles and civic consciousness (especially female consciousness) changes in the cities (especially Shanghai) after the "reform and opening up" and "globalization", in which she and your contemporaries can be seen everywhere. "Lonely Island" is her first book involving the early 20th century to the 30th century, in the construction of the early years of the Republic of China social and political urban geography and culture has made a lot of efforts, research (research) color, writing and overall form is more solemn, although the characters are fictional, but feel a flesh-and-blood documentary and the atmosphere of the times.
As a writer of film culture and history, I have written a book about early Shanghai cinema and its "vernacular modernity", "The History of Screen Yan", using a new historical narrative method to write academic works into a kind of alternative "historical novel" in a sense. In the afterword to the Chinese edition of the book, I also mentioned the influence of Tang Ying's Novels on Shanghai. I was excited and felt like our writing had come from different fields to a crossroads, a long goodbye reunion.
The novel was written in the fall of 2019 and was finalized last year during the pandemic, but I know she has been inspired and prepared for a long time. In conjunction with the publication of the Chinese edition of The History of the Silver Screen, Sha Dan (one of the translators) and I organized an early film retrospective together with Sha Dan (one of the translators) at the Beijing Archive. Tang Ying happened to be in Beijing and also came to see the first screening. Continuing to focus on women and urban themes, she was thrilled to see it, saying that "The History of Screen Beauty" (the next episode; the previous episode is not left) made her think about it, saying that she did not expect that in the early 1930s there was such an open and radical female theme film, or silent film. I told her that when I first encountered this film on the small screen many years ago when I was looking for materials for my thesis, I was also "amazed" by the vivid breath of life it conveyed and the femininity that came from the daily soil. The protagonists in "The Isolated Island of Individualism" Mingyu and Xuan Jinglin are contemporaries born in the same class, both tough and optimistic, and can be compared with each other.
Writer Tang Ying
Their lives have undergone a series of "metamorphosis", reminiscent of the image of spring cicadas shedding their cocoons. English may say reinventingoneself. Not just once, but as the times change and mature themselves, they constantly refresh themselves. Xuan Jinglin successfully transformed into the era of sound film by returning to the set to find and sublimate herself, and her artistic career lasted for a long time and lived a long life (born in 1907, until her death in 1992). Mingyu, on the other hand, became a single professional mother after her husband, a revolutionary who ransomed her much older than her, opened the "Little Fuchun" hotel, located in the area of Fuxing Park in the French Concession. The professional identity of the hotel owner lady has a special intention, the hotel is a consumption space, but also a public space, a social space, she looks at all directions and deals with various people in such a crossroads-like social environment. Readers will notice that Tang Ying's novels have always been very attentive to food and food, but the image of the restaurant lady goes beyond the previous depiction of the daily diet. The hotel's geographical location in the Chinese and Foreign Miscellaneous Concessions provides a specific cultural and geographical coordinate and narrative foothold for the novel's particularly complex socio-political aspects. A private space in contrast to this also has a special significance. Mingyu also has a house in the apartment building where Little Green lives, and is ready to move in alone after the child debuts in the future, live a life that really belongs to herself, and clean herself in the chaotic world. The imagery of the building seems to have inspired the title of the novel. It's like Wolff's "a room of your own," which may be an island, but it's also a beacon of your own.
The protagonist Mingyu's portrayal is brilliant, but she has an unspeakable past and demons. Does she have the original form in life? Or a synthesis of multiple prototypes? The Enlightenment and social change of the early 20th century created a generation of "new women." She seems to be the embodiment of a new generation of women, but she is inextricably linked to the "old times." As a figure and witness of different eras and visions, she is a persuasive and substituent image of modern Chinese women. The urban women who grew up in the "new society" and postmodern cities in Mingyu and Tang Ying's previous novels are different but are still physically connected in flesh and blood.
This article is written by Zhang Zhen
The important interface of the definition of vernacular modernity that I proposed in my book "A History of the Silver Screen" is a cosmopolitanism based on local cosmopolitanism, which can be called "pidgin modernity" in Shanghai (and coastal treaty ports such as Guangzhou). In addition to many Chinese characters, there are Japanese, British and mixed-race children (little Green), as well as Mingyu's "Borscht" neighbors and friends, presenting the cross-cultural style of Shanghai in the late Qing Dynasty. Tang Ying did not just write them as abstract backgrounds, but portrayed several important characters in three parts. Her depictions of the "Borschtes" and other expatriate Shanghainese provide a particularly important interface to the complexity of Mingyu's "new woman," a relatively independent space outside of the characters of several major Chinese, especially men, who are associated with her. As a single parent, she and her children are in the same boat with these exiled foreigners, and are also infiltrated by their culture and lifestyle, such as food music and dance parties.
Finally, let's return to the female characters in the novel. In addition to Mingyu, Tang Ying also portrayed Jin Yu and Mei Yu, "three women in one play". The relationship between Mingyu and Jinyu reminds me of Xie Jin's film "Stage Sisters", and the different personalities and fates of the three also remind me of the Republic of China films "Three Modern Women" (1933, directed by Bu Wancang, without a trace), "New Woman" (1935, directed by Cai Chusheng) and "Li Renxing" (1949, directed by Chen Liting). I think that the echoes and changes of Tang Ying's novel and the "composite" image of modern female individuals and groups, which are common in Chinese film literature, are worth continuing to explore and explore.
(The author is an associate professor in the Department of Film Studies at the New York University School of the Arts and the founder of the Asian Film Media Program)
Author: Zhang Zhen
Editor: Zhou Yiqian