Title: Introduction to Chinese Cultural History / The Columbia Companion to Modern Chinese Literature / 21 Chinese Modernism: The New Sensationists

Front: When were The New Sensationists active?
Back: "took shape in the late 1920s and flourished in the early to mid-1930s."

Front: What was the cultural background against which the New Sensationists established themselves?
Back: - Nationalist goverment on the right (conservative)
- League of Left-Wing Writers on the left (radical Marxist)
- New Senationists try out new ideas to describe milieu of Shanghai

Front: What are some aspects of the material culture of 1920s Shanghai?
Back: - "dance halls,
- cinemas,
- nightclubs,
- department stores,
- skyscrapers, and
- racetracks."
- "cars,
- cigarettes,
- alcoholic beverages, and
- stylish clothes",
- "neon lights"
- "jazz"

Front: What's an important difference between Chinese modernism and modernism in other parts of the world?
Back: - Chinese modernists "did not outright reject the city and the modernization and development", instead the urban culture "attracted them".
- They viewed the city with "a combination of excitement and fear".

Front: What are the New Sensationalists?
Back: - A group of Japanese writers known as Shinkankakuha or New Sensationalists, a decade before the Chinese modernists.
- The Chinese modernists, by contrast, are called New Sensationists.
- The Chinese group named itself after the Japanese one and both tried to "create a language that could account for the new sensations of modernity".

Front: What are some psychological themes of the New Sensationists?
Back: - "repression
- obsession
- eroticism"
- "loneliness
- anxiety
- alienation of the city"

Front: How did New Sensationism begin?
Back: With Liu Na'ou (1900–1939), studied literature in Japan and French in Shanghai.

Front: What are some journals asociated with the New Sensationists?
Back: - Published by Liu Na'ou and later closed by nationalists: Trackless Train.
- La Nouvelle Littérature
- Les Contemporains

Front: What was the political position of the journal Les Contemporains?
Back: Apolitical.

Front: What's One Evening in the Rainy Season (1929)?
Back: It's a Shi Zhecun story about the internal struggle of the narrator between repressed desire and guilt it elicits.

Front: What are some of the setbacks experienced by the characters in "Five in a Nightclub" (1933)?
Back: - "a tycoon loses his fortune;
- a student is jilted by his girlfriend;
- a socialite discovers she has lost her youth;
- a scholar questions the significance of his work;
- a senior city clerk is unexpectedly fired from his job."
- "The drummer for the club’s band cannot get time off to be with his wife, who is about to give birth." (dies in childbirth)

Front: Did the New Sensationists only do fiction?
Back: Poetry too, e.g. Dai Wangshu wrote modernist poetry, but it was rarely set in the city and also drew on classical works.

Front: What's interesting about Dai Wangshu's use of lilacs in poetry?
Back: - Showed knowledge of French symbolism,
- but also of traditional Chinese poetry.

Front: What are some reasons for the end of the New Sensationists?
Back: - "slowed significantly in the mid-1930s
- and the group ultimately disbanded as a result of political critiques and the threat of war with Japan
- Shi Zhecun abandoned his experimental writing because of criticism from the League of Left-Wing Writers"
- "leftist polemics,
- Nationalist censorship, and
- financial pressures from [...] publishers"

Front: When did modernist experimentation briefly resume after the end of the New Sensationists?
Back: - Eileen Chang in Japanese-occuppied Shanghai of the early 1940s did a lot of stuff with sensory images, but concentrated more on domestic spaces.
- 1950s Taiwan poetry, e.g. Ji Xian

Front: Did chinese modernism contribute to later cultural developments?
Back: Yes, Modernism contributed to the development of Misty poetry and Avant-garde fiction.