9 March 2014: China’s Lost Modernist: Andrew Field on Mushiying

With Neil Schmid

When: 9 March 12:00 p.m.

Where: The Beijing Bookworm

Tickets: RMB 65

About:

When the avant-garde writer Mu Shiying was assassinated in 1940, China lost one of its greatest modernist writers and Shanghai lost the most detailed chronicler of its demi-monde night life. In his recent publication of translation and commentary, Andrew Field argues that Mu Shiying advanced modern Chinese writing beyond the vernacular expression of the May 4th giants Lu Xun and Lao She to even more starkly reveal the alienation at the heart of cosmopolitan Shanghai. Each of the five stories translated in Field’s book focus on the anxiety-ridden relationships of the modern city and its culture of consumption. Neil Schmid, a China scholar and honorary editor of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, will talk to Andrew Field about the life of this fascinating and forgotten citizen of Shanghai.