"In this fascinating collection of short fiction, Liu Na’ou experiments with language and narrative to explore new modes of expression to capture China’s dizzying shift from tradition to modernity in the 1920s. Whereas other Chinese writers of the day embraced social realism, Liu sought a different literary path that favored depictions of the layered complexity of human thought and desire. Set (mostly) against the backdrop of Shanghai’s culture of modernity—its nightclubs, cinemas, foreigners, racetracks, streetcars, art studios, cafes, and trains—the stories center on new kinds of male-female relationships. Although mostly narrated from a male perspective, the many strong female characters, who boldly assert their independence and sexuality, reflect changing conceptions of womanhood in a deeply patriarchal society. Sexual desire pervades the stories, particularly desire outside of the confines of marriage, a theme that goes hand in hand with their attention to the exotica of modern urban life. The stories are poised, somewhat precariously, between fascination with and critique of the trappings of modernity." —Kirk A. Denton, The Ohio State University

"This timely translation of a signature work of Chinese modernist fiction provides English-language readers with a fresh new window into the lives, loves, and liberties of city people in China’s most modern metropolis, Shanghai, in what is now regarded as its golden and gilded age." —Andrew Field, Duke Kunshan University

Liu Na'ou (1905—1940) was an editor, writer, film critic, scenarist, and director who introduced Japanese Shinkankakuha (New Sensationism) to China and made it an important school of modern Chinese urban fiction. His writings—Urban Scenes, his slim volume of modernist fiction, in particular—have had an outsized influence on Shanghai’s image as a phantasmagoric metropolis in the 1920s and 1930s, and his name has become part of the city’s twentieth-century history. Liu's life was cut short when he was murdered by unknown assailants, purportedly for political reasons.

About the Translators

Yaohua Shi is Associate Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Wake Forest University. He holds a PhD from Indiana University, and his previous publications include the Chinese-language textbook series Integrated Chinese.

Judith Amory graduated from Radcliffe College and pursued doctoral studies in Russian literature at Columbia University. Since retiring from Harvard University Library, she has catalogued Chinese language materials for the New York Public Library and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Together Shi and Amory have translated Yang Jiang’s novel Baptism, its sequel After the Baptism and Lin Huiyin’s modernist masterpiece, “In Ninety-nine Degrees of Heat.”

Translators' Introduction

Games

Scenery

Currents

A Man of Passion

Two Men Insensible to Time

Etiquette and Hygiene

Remnants

Equation

Below the Equator

Cotton Quilt

Attempted Murder