| dc.description.abstract | “Sing-song Girls of Shanghai” is a literature masterpiece that implies practical significance in daily life circumstances and sentiment. The book centers brothels and intersperses one hundred characters, among which are officials and gentlemen, rich and powerful people, street walkers and cart drivers. It portrays a picture of floating world of Shanghai brothels. Lu Hsun and Hu Hsih praised its style as insipid but close to nature. This article pays most attention to its “hiding wonder in the ordinariness” and rereads the adoption with translation notes written by Eileen Chang in mandarin Chinese with a hope to provide the readers with more specific examples and testify the insipid aesthetics of naturalism style.
Different from the common romantic imagination on brothels, the Shanghai brothels in the end of the nineteenth century developed an extremely different 「family imitation」 ethic, which means that the interpersonal interactions in the brothels look like daily social activities between mother and daughter, sisters or couples. Besides, because of their inanity and anxiety inward, people lay much emphasis on and energetically practice the religious ceremonies that can remove ill fortune and bless them. In Shanghai Concession of modern times, Chinese and foreigners intermingle with each other; a large quantity of material civilization, especially manifested in “eating western food”and “riding carriage”, were introduced to China, which embodies the exaggerating richness and prosperity of the miles with foreign.
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