An Analysis of the Construction of Shanghai’s Urban Consumer Public Sphere in the Works of Eileen Chang

Abstract

Throughout the history of Modern Chinese Literature, Eileen Chang is a prominent female. In the 1940s, she observed the cultural form of Shanghai as an urban woman, depicting the daily life and humanity during the city's prosperity and desolation. Shanghai's urban culture provides a constant source of nourishment for Eileen Chang's novels, and Eileen Chang also uses her unique aesthetic perspective to interpret Shanghai. This article takes a text analysis approach from the field of Shanghai's urban public space to analyze the impact of Shanghai's urbanization development on Eileen Chang's own conceptions, selecting cinemas, dance halls, and other consumer places as research objects. It investigates the urban life of Shanghai depicted by Eileen Chang, which both shapes the city's spatial culture and represents the symbols of consumption in literary creation. Chang's literary also works embody a quality different from those of enemy-occupied areas.