UCLA

This study is to look at what could be the impact of the hybrid cultures' inflow on the literary venations of Shanghai writers, as shown by the non-indigenous traits of "modernity'' in the writings of Zhang Ailing. The author examines some of the earlier works of Zhang Ailing, including “Aloeswood Incense: The First Blazier,” “Jasmine Tea” and “Love.” Borrowing an angle from scholarship on the Sci-Fi, hybrid features in Lu Xun’s "Iron House" and "A Mad Man’s Diary," the study furthers the investigation on these works, which the author believes have manifested the repetition feature of rewriting and reinterpretation. It argues that the thread has been given via the writer’s repetitious emphasis on a claustrophobically confining ambience of quiet horror and terror, parallel to the drastic social changes occurring in Shanghai. The writer’s ability to “spellbind” the readers to a logically-structured enclosure, akin to a form of “grotesqueness” seen in both the influx of western Gothic literatures and the bedrock Chinese modern literature, has been bestowed by this parallel as the essential fabric of the text.