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  • Shanghai Express: A Thirties Novel [inline-graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="01i" /] (Ping Hu tongche)
  • Helena Heroldová (bio)
Zhang Henshui . Shanghai Express: A Thirties Novel (Ping Hu tongche). Translated from the Chinese by William A. Lyell. Fiction from Modern China. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1997. 259 pp. Paperback $12.95, ISBN 0-8248-1830-x.

Shanghai Express, published in 1935 in the journal Lüxing zazhi (Traveler)—a journal that offered travel information, travel diaries, short stories, and novels—is about a man who fell in love with an improper woman and instantly lost his wealth and social position. Zhang Henshui , a popular author of love stories of the period, made use of vivid descriptions, brilliant dialogues, the psychological credibility of his characterizations, and a touch of mystery to create an easy-reading and witty story about the power of money, cheating, and deceit.

Zhang Henshui, originally Zhang Xinyuan (1895-1967), was born in Nanchang in the southern province of Jiangxi. His family came from Anhui Province. He obtained his education in the beautiful ancient city of Suzhou. When his school was closed and he was not allowed to complete his studies, he traveled across China, finding temporary work wherever he went. He spent several years with a theater troupe, and later he worked as a journalist. In 1919 he settled in Beijing and started his career as an editor, journalist, and writer. His first novel, Chun ming waishi (Romance in the Imperial City), achieved great success when it ran in a newspaper for fifty-seven months, and a year later, in 1925, it was published in a book edition by Shanghai Shijie Shuju. In 1929, he wrote another successful novel, Tixiao yinyuan (Fate in tears and laughter), which was serialized in the supplement of the Shanghai paper Xinwenbao and, in 1930, published in a first book edition.

By the time he stopped writing in the 1950s, Zhang had produced more than one hundred novels. He is generally placed among the writers of the school called by the derogatory name of Yuanyang hudie pai (Mandarin ducks and butterflies). Since mandarin ducks were the traditional symbol of marital love, the name of the school suggests that the authors, professional writers who were successful and prolific, wrote mainly sentimental love stories. Although widely read, their works were often attacked and ridiculed as being in bad taste. The majority of these writers gradually came to be neglected and have been mostly forgotten until now, as new research on Chinese literature from the first half of the twentieth century has brought them to light. In spite of the fact that Zhang Henshui belonged to the Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies school, this particular novel is far from being merely a sentimental love story.

In Shanghai Express Zhang Henshui used a recurring theme in traditional Chinese literature: love between an honest, credulous man and a sly woman. [End Page 278] Since the beginning of Chinese fiction, there have been stories about the young literati allured by women who were beautiful and clever who turned out to be immoral and dangerous and whose behavior violated in some way the heavenly order of things. Relations with them brought about misfortune. Thus, the man who did not escape upon realizing the true nature of his beloved paid dearly. Zhang Henshui reshaped this traditional theme according to new rules. He replaced the moral message of the traditional story—namely that young men should not fall in love with amoral women—with another message more suitable for modern times: do not fall in love with someone who might bring about financial and social ruin. The power of money—as a substitute for social position, security, and even self-confidence—underlines the entire story. Every character is defined in some way by his or her response to the basic question: whether or not to obtain money, and how to get it.

At the beginning of the story, a wealthy banker, Hu Ziyun , on the train to Shanghai from Beiping (as Beijing was called when the government moved to the South), meets a young lady who introduces herself as Miss Liu , a remote...

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