Early Film Culture in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Republican China
Kaleidoscopic Histories
Description:... "Shanghai is central in the development of China's modernity before 1949, including not just cinema, but other cultural formations. To quote Wen-hsin Yeh in her pioneering article: "Shanghai in the first half of the 20th century emerged to become China's largest metropolis for trade, finance, manufacturing, publishing, higher education, journalism and many other important functions, performed by a growing population increasingly diversified into multiple classes of different incomes and interests."2 Major publications by Leo Ou-fan Lee (1999), Zhang Yingjin (ed., 1999), Andrew Jones (2001), Barbara Mittler (2004), Zhang Zhen (2005), Nicole Huang (2005), Wen-hsin Yeh (2008),3 and many others fasten on Shanghai as the wellspring of modern China in consumer and media culture.4 Through the concerted efforts of two generations of scholars, Shanghai was decisively crowned as the jewel of Chinese modernity and cosmopolitanism; film and media culture associated with the city--celebrities, advertising, magazines, popular fiction, theaters, and the urban space--also emerged to typify Chinese cinema in general. Hence the currency of "Shanghai cinema"--
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