Shanghai People
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Summary
In this autobiographical novel, Wu Zheng recounts the protagonist's struggle in Hong Kong and precisely and delicately reveals the joys and sorrows, bewilderment and reflection, confusion and choices of a Shanghai man in a foreign city. While highlighting his rich emotional world, the novel also reveals certain group characteristics of "Shanghai people."
Within its strictly realistic portrayal, the novel overflows with poetic feeling and rationality, making it distinct in both content and form from other novels on similar themes. Film and television adaptations based on the book will be released in 1995.
Editor's review
As an editor, I believe the book's core value lies in its powerful fusion of documentary immediacy and literary quality. Wu Zheng is himself an old Shanghainese, and his depictions of shikumen life, lane neighborhoods, and everyday street scenes are steeped in authentic historical detail and local atmosphere. Through the struggles, perseverance, and transformation of three generations of the Zhou family in extraordinary times, the novel records not only the joys and sorrows of individuals and a family but also reflects the pain and recovery of Shanghai and Chinese society as a whole amid the currents of the age. The apt use of Shanghai dialect and precise portrayal of urban psychology make the characters vivid and three-dimensional, highly immersive.
Unlike historical novels with grand narratives, Shanghai People derives its charm from "seeing the big in the small." It does not deliberately dramatize the sweeping tides of history but instead imprints the marks of the era deeply into the daily textures of oil, salt, firewood, and rice, of weddings and funerals. Readers can feel a resilient, shrewd, pragmatic, and life-wise "Shanghai spirit." This spirit is not a stereotype but a vitality that seeks survival in adversity and elegance within constraints. For readers who want to understand Shanghai's social landscape and urban mentality around the reform and opening-up era, as well as the development of contemporary Chinese urban literature, this book offers a rare, richly fleshed-out text. Its literary value lies in carrying heavy emotion and historical reflection through plain, restrained language, rewarding repeated reading.
Who it's for
A good fit for
- Readers interested in Shanghai's urban culture and modern history who want to understand social change through family stories
- Readers who appreciate realist literature and prefer family narratives with delicate description, sincere emotion, and deep characterization
- Readers who lived through or want to understand ordinary urban family life in China in the mid-to-late twentieth century, who will find it easy to identify with
- Literary researchers or writers who can use it as a sample of regional literature and urban writing
Not a good fit for
- Readers seeking highly plotted, fast-paced, dramatically charged entertainment fiction
- Readers completely unfamiliar with the social background of the specific historical period and unwilling to engage emotionally with it
Reading tips
- Read it as a 'citizen's epic,' attending to the era's information and human warmth embedded in details rather than merely following the plot
- Pay some attention to Shanghai dialect terms and descriptions of period objects, which are important elements in building authenticity
- Slow down the reading pace and immerse yourself in the lane atmosphere and family relationships the author creates, to feel the warmth and vicissitudes behind the words
About the publisher
People's Literature Publishing House publishes across classical literature, foreign literature, documentary writing and folk literature, with 492 titles in its catalogue. Representative books range from the Chinese classic Romance of the Three Kingdoms to Lao She's Teahouse and Longxu Ditch in the Selected Works of Lao She, as well as translated foreign literature such as Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, Dante's Divine Comedy and Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels, alongside documentary and fictional works including Primo Levi's If This Is a Man and João Guimarães Rosa's The Devil to Pay in the Backlands. Its authors include Chinese writers such as Lao She, translators such as Shen Emeri and Li Wenjun, and foreign authors such as James Wood. Overall, the house has a strong record in editing classic works and translating foreign literature, with a publishing character that bridges Chinese and foreign writing and values textual quality.
Contents
- 版权信息
- 第一章
- 第二章
- 第三章
- 第四章
- 第五章
- 第六章
- 第七章
- 第八章
- 第九章
- 第十章
- 第十一章
- 第十二章
FAQ
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About the author
Public information about Wu Zheng is limited, and basic details such as his nationality and dates of birth and death cannot be confirmed. Judging from the ten works held in the collection, his writing spans several genres: there are works with narrative tension and imaginative flavor, such as One Day Reborn and The Time Keeper, as well as pieces leaning toward personal essays and urban writing, such as Three Volumes of a Floating Life, Love Lost in Two Cities, Shanghai People, and Rear Window. The Abyss and Half a Long Night are closer in spirit to social novels and classic works, while volumes such as Three Volumes of a Floating Life also touch on modern poetry. Overall, Wu Zheng moves between urban experience and personal emotion, with a delicate style and subjects that shift between realistic portrayal and legendary narrative, which is why his work is classified under foreign literature, essays and miscellany, and social fiction. Owing to the scarcity of biographical material, his creative background and literary lineage are difficult to describe in detail; readers may chiefly come to know his writing through the works listed above.
