Shanghai

: Alternate meanings: See Shanghai (disambiguation)

Shanghai in fiction

Literature

• Han Bangqing (韩邦庆), Shanghai Demi-monde (海上花列传; pinyin: Haishang Hua Liezhuan), also called Flowers of Shanghai, a novel following the lives of Shanghainese flower girls and the timeless decadence surrounding them. First published in 1892 during the last two decades of the Qing Dynasty, with the dialogue completely in vernacular Wu Chinese. The novel set a precedent for all Chinese literature and was highly popular until the standardization of vernacular Standard Mandarin as the national language in the early 1920s. It was later translated into Mandarin by Eileen Chang, a famous Shanghainese writer during World War II. Nearly all her works of bourgeois romanticism are set in Shanghai, and many have been made into arthouse films (see Eighteen Springs).

Besides Eileen Chang, other Shanghainese "petit bourgeois" writers in the first half of twentieth century: Shi Zhecun, Liu Na'ou and Mu Shiyang, Shao Xunmei and Ye Lingfeng.

Related Topics:
Petit bourgeois - Shi Zhecun - Liu Na'ou - Mu Shiyang - Shao Xunmei - Ye Lingfeng

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Socialist writers include: Mao Dun (famous for his Shanghai-set ZIYE), Ba Jin, and Lu Xun.

Related Topics:
Mao Dun - Ba Jin - Lu Xun

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One of the great Chinese novel of the twentieth century, Zhongshu Qian's Fortress Besieged is partially set in Shanghai.

Related Topics:
Zhongshu Qian - Fortress Besieged

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Noel Coward wrote his novel Private Lives while staying at Shanghai's Cathay Hotel.

Related Topics:
Noel Coward - Private Lives - Cathay Hotel

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• André Malraux, La Condition Humaine, 1933 (Man's Fate, 1934), a novel about the defeat of a communist regime in Shanghai and the choices the losers have to face. Malraux won the 1933 Prix Goncourt of literature for the novel.

Tom Bradby's 2002 historical detective novel The Master of Rain is set in the Shanghai of 1926.

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Films

• A Romance in Shanghai (?????) (1996), starring Fann Wong.
• Purple Butterfly (Zihudie, 2003), directed by Ye Lou
• Suzhou River (Suzhou he, 2000), directed by Ye Lou
• Flowers of Shanghai (Hai shang hua, 1998), directed by Hou Hsiao-Hsien
• Shanghai Triad (Yao a yao yao dao waipo qiao, 1995), directed by Zhang Yimou
• Eighteen Springs, (Ban sheng yuan, 1998), directed by Ann Hui On-wah.
• Empire of the Sun (1987) directed by Steven Spielberg
• Le Drame de Shanghaï (1938), directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst, actually filmed in France and in Saigon
• Shanghai Express (1932), starring Marlene Dietrich
• Code 46 (2003) directed by Michael Winterbottom
• Kung Fu Hustle (Gong Fu, 2004), directed by Stephen Chow
• Fist of Legend action movie starring Jet Li a remake of Fist of Fury.