Author ｜
Shuo-win Chen
Abstract ｜
In the 1930s, Zeng Pu (1871-1935) and his son, Zeng Xu-bai (1895-1994), opened a bookstore in the French Concession of Shanghai named Zhenmeishan 真美善 (Truth, Beauty, and Virtue). The pair sought to advocate aesthetic literature and trivialize the rougan 肉感 (sensuality) literature popular at the time. However, what is this so-called rougan? An examination of tabloid, journal, and magazine databases reveals that the word rougan became popular in the 1920s and 1930s and was used in relation to movies. Although its definition is complicated and diverse, the concept of rougan relates to seeing, which is almost close to the definition found in today’s dictionaries, namely, “the sensual feelings that are stirred by the (female) body.” Additionally, writers at the time also used the word in their works. For instance, Mao Dun 茅盾 (1896-1981) used it in his novel Huanmie《幻滅》(Disillusion) to describe the love between Lady Jing and her lover Qiangmeng, while Ding Ling 丁玲 (1904-1986) used it in the novel Mengke 《夢珂》to describe an actress in “a pure sensual society.” Furthermore, Guo Jianying 郭建英 (1907-1979) depicted a sexy modern woman as a rougan girl in his neo-sensualist contes and illustrations. Through keyword research and adopting the perspective of sensual cultural history, this paper focuses on examining the concept of rougan, and the literary practices mentioned above. The paper also aims to explore the appearance and representation of the word rougan, interpret literary and cultural connotations of the word, and respond to the complicated research results of Chinese modernity. Additionally, this paper aims to analyze how modern China recognized and depicted the body in certain social and cultural contexts and illustrate the changing ideas and cognitive structure of modern China during the early republican period.
keywords ｜
sensuality, Shanghai 1930, modernity, body, visuality