Boundaries of the Real in Xu Xu’s Fiction

This chapter focuses on Xu Xu’s fiction from the 1930s and 40s, providing analyses of his main short stories and novels from this period, demonstrating how Xu’s work transitioned from modernist experimentation to popular romances after his return from studies in France. Xu’s bestselling short stories and novels were often set abroad and featured exotic, otherworldly characters, such as ghosts, spies, pirates and gypsies. In many of these works, the cosmopolitan, rational and educated male protagonist encounters a mysterious, elusive, otherworldly woman. Eventually, the truth is revealed and the mysteries are uncovered, vindicating the modern outlook of the male narrator. With their references to traditional literature, abnormal psychology and sexual desire, such works frequently echo Shi Zhecun and Mu Shiying’s writings from a decade earlier, yet Xu’s writings are mainly escapist entertainment rather than an attack on rational modernity or the status of art in society.

Tradition and Hybridity in Shi Zhecun and Mu Shiying

This chapter focuses on the 1930s New Sensationist (xinganjuepai) writers Shi Zhecun and Mu Shiying, whose works are shown in later chapters to have influenced the subsequent literary scene. They are seen here as an avant-garde group that wrote works in opposition to the overall direction of the contemporary literary field. Through close analysis of a number of short stories, the chapter demonstrates how these authors constructed hybrid works that incorporated tropes and stereotypes from popular literature, legend, tradition, literature and myth. By combining the real with the otherworldly and the imagined, these authors rejected realism and the politicisation of literature promoted at the time by the League of Left-wing Writers. The chapter also establishes aspects of these writers’ works that are used for later comparison.