In this suspenseful tale of seduction and deception, a wealthy banker is smitten by an alluring young woman while traveling aboard the express train from Beijing to Shanghai. A consummate storyteller and one of the most popular novelists of his day, Zhang Henshui sweeps us on board with them and takes us through train stations and back and forth between first, second, and third class cars, evoking the smells of this microcosm of the urban world. We see what various travelers wear; we hear their conversations; we feel the chill or the warmth of each car; we detect a trace of perfume in one, pickled vegetables and greasy meats in another. Here is popular Chinese fiction at its best. Shanghai Express was considered "entertainment" fiction and was enormously popular in the 1930s. William Lyell's sparkling translation at last allows an English-reading audience to share in the fun.
| |||||||||||||||
Book Description
Frequently Bought Together
Editorial Reviews
Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Chinese
Original Language: Chinese
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A fine novel,
By Chris (Washington state, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Shanghai Express: A Thirties Novel (Fiction from Modern China) (Paperback)
I would disagree strongly with the notion that this is a "trashy" novel. As William Lyell says in his afterward, just because this was a "popular" novel i.e. one intended for a mass audience, does not automatically mean it is trash.
The story is told in simple and vivid prose, aided by the masterful translation of Dr. Lyell. The author obviously was a gifted story teller. He shows in this novel an ability for evoking the reality of his characters as he simply describes their actions. The story does not exactly evoke the profoundest human emotions but it does do so with considerable skill nonetheless, particularly at the end. In addition, the author's eye for details is quite profound; life on the trains are described with great precision, particularly life in and the denizens of, the train's third class car. About eighty five or ninety percent of the story takes place on the "Shanghai Express", a train going from Beijing to Shanghai. The novel takes place in the mid 30's, when it was first published. The story takes place over the several days of the trip and involves the eventually successful intrigue by passenger Hu Ziyun to get into bed, a young female fellow passanger, Liu Xichun. Ziyun is a very successful banker and Xichun claims to have married into the family of one of his friends. The novel is quite drawn out and, perhaps consciously intended for its popular audience, well into the book springs upon the reader, a major twist, relating to the character of Liu Xichun. After this twist is fully exposed, we jump forward about ten years and look at the very profound tragedy of what has become of Hu Ziyun. That evocation of that tragedy by the author is probably the most impressive part of the book. I was most bothered in the novel by some of the lengthy dialogues about their relationship between Xichun and Ziyun which sometimes seem a little unnatural and slightly abstrusely over-intellectualized. Overall, however, the novel is pretty impressive.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Good Book but Not To Everyone's Tastes,
By Litr8r "Reader, writer, book lover" (Globetrotter--currently in the Windy City) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Shanghai Express (Fiction from Modern China) (Hardcover)
During the 1930s, Zhang Henshui (pen name of Zhang Xinyuan --ÕÅÐÄÔ¶) enjoyed the status of China¡¯s most popular author. Born in 1895, Henshui departed for Beijing in 1919 to work as a newspaper editor. His first major long work, Chunming Waishi (An Unofficial Tale of Peking), was serialized between 1924 and 1929. The smashing success of this series established him as the preeminent popular novelist of his generation. His masterpieces include Jinfen Shijia (A Family of Distinction--1927-32) and Tixiao Yinyuan (The Fates of a Marriage of Tears and Laughter--1930). In 1935, Shanghai Express was China¡¯s most read novel by her most popular author. Although Zhang Henshui is associated with the Mandarin Duck and Butterfly School, his later writing took a more serious and political tone. During the anti- Japanese war, he took a patriotic stand and published satirical novels such as Eighty-One Dreams. Always prolific, Henshui had penned over one hundred novels by the time he died in 1967.
In Shanghai Express, a socially prominent and well-to-do banker¡ªHu Ziyun--falls for an alluring young woman¡ªLiu XiChun--while traveling from Beijing to Shanghai. Henshui keeps the reader constantly moving among the sights, sounds, and smells in all three classes of passenger cars, while allowing the tale to unfold. As the two protagonists move among the three classes of train cars, the author offers insights into the characters who populate the various cars. Through the story of Ziyun and XiChun, Henshui explores the boundaries between past and present, public and private, and self and community. Although Ziyun believes that he got lucky when he met XiChun, by the story¡¯s end he realizes the luck was all hers. Hu Ziyun has paid a heavy price for indulging his vanity, proving how fine the lines between the classes can be and how easily people can move or be moved among them. Shanghai Express provides an example of the ¡°Mandarin Duck and Butterly¡± style of sentimental social romance novel that was enormously popular during the 1920s¡ª1940s in China and for which Zhang Henshui is notable. Though this style of writing was widely enjoyed, some tried to discredit it as mere entertainment for relaxation on a Saturday afternoon¡ªthe equivalent of today¡¯s movies. The Mandarin Duck & Butterfly School of literature was frequently derided by ¡°May Fourth¡± intellectuals as excessively sentimental and trivial. They were the ones who coined the term and used it in a derogatory way. They found this literary style too commercial and ideologically backward during an age when literature in China was dominated by the leftist politics and Europeanising aesthetics of the May Fourth Movement. Arguably, however, Zhang Henshui tried to dignify the genre by retaining the form and language of the old-style Chinese novel, but assimilating techniques and content from May Fourth writing in an effort to modernize traditional fiction and make it more attractive to the masses. The arguments over maintaining scholarly tradition or making literature more approachable to the masses is ages old, and the same disagreements were happening during the Modern era among scholars and writers in the West. Though this novel may have been written for the general reading public with a slant toward the literary tradition, it may not suit the tastes of contemporary Western readers. The minutiae and drawn out suspense, which create the book¡¯s merit for many, are the very same factors that will make it move much too slowly for other readers. History buffs, Chinese literature fans, and Chinese culture seekers will find the story compelling and will appreciate its exhaustive, Jane Austen-style level of detail. If you¡¯re building a library of Chinese classics, you¡¯re keen to learn something about one of China¡¯s most popular authors, or a fan of 1930s Chinese culture, grab a copy of this translation off amazon.com.
5 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A trashy novel from another era,
By
This review is from: Shanghai Express: A Thirties Novel (Fiction from Modern China) (Paperback)
Don't buy this book expecting a fine and fancy piece of literature: that it ain't. Zhang Henshui was the Danielle Steel of early 20th century China, and this, one of his best known novels, has it all. Sex, suspense, intreague, betrayal...a page turner indeed.Shanghai Express is an enjoyable if not very edifying read. Like all trashy novels, its hard not to feel guilty for the expenditure of time and money, but its foreign-ness and time frame should assauge some misgivings. As 1930s pop literature, though, it does paint an interesting portrait of the manners and mores of its time. Ways of dressing, talking, eating, etc, present an unintentioned history. Be advised, though, the book has absolutely nothing to do with Shanghai. It is also unrelated to the American movie of the same title.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
