编辑: 没心没肺DR | 2016-04-22 |
26 Chapter Three Diet : hidden hierarchy in diet
29 3.1 Food for Poor People
29 3.2Western Dining for Wealthy People
35 3.3 Conclusion
43 Chapter Four Housing: massive population VS. limited living space
46 4.1 Arcade Architecture
46 4.2Shacks and Shantytowns
51 4.3Houses for Rich People
54 4.4Housing Shortage
56 4.5 Conclusion
68 Chapter Five Dress: imitation from Shanghai and Western world
61 v 5.1Western Fashions
61 5.2Traditional Chinese Fashions
66 5.3Hair Styles
70 5.4Conclusion
71 Chapter Six :Conclusion
73 References
83 Appendix
90 1 Chapter One Introduction Hong Kong had its special geographic features. It located in China'
s south coast ,and situated on the east of the Pearl River estuary. Victoria harbor of Hong Kong was a deep natural harbor. These waterborne advantages made Hong Kong became an enterport. Kowloon island of Hong Kong was isolated from mainland China by narrow Shenzhen River, which made Hong Kong had a strong link to mainland China especially Guangdong province. In addition, Hong Kong was consisted of Hong Kong Island, Kowloon and Hong Kong'
s New Territories. The British Empire obtained the sovereignty of these three parts of Hong Kong in sequence since
1842 through three different treaties with the Qing government. Therefore, as a colony, Hong Kong was under special historical and social background which was quite different from other Chinese cities'
. Like Shanghai, Hong Kong city was also an old port city which contacted with foreign things and outside world. Consequently, Hong Kong society became a special region that Chinese tradition mixed with Western customs.This city enjoyed freedom while maintained heavy tradition. Hong Kong urban life had its special features from
1945 to 1949. Therefore, my thesis will discuss those features through literary materials and other materials.
2 Is literary text to some extent helpful for studying a city ? Or how does literature reflect the real history and urban life of a city? Obviously, it shows what a city is like in an author'
s mind . Authors will choose different angles to observe and describe a city. Inevitably, literature projects an author'
s subjective feeling and opinion about a city. A city in literature was not only a real entity but also the author'
s reconstruction and sense about the city. In this sense, literature offered rich information to understand a city. So, it is possible and worthy to use literature to study urban life and urban culture. Literature Review Choosing literary materials to study urban life and urban culture was not a new invention . When the urban historian Richard Daniel Lehan wrote The City in Literature: An Intellectual and Cultural History, he introduced large amounts of famous Western writers'
literature from the early novel in England to American novels of modern times to present Western ideas about cities. These literary works included different narrative modes, such as realism, romanticism, modernism and postmodernism . As Lehan argued The major writers and thinkers of the Western world have had to come to terms with the city, each era offering us an urban identity that reveals our secret cultural values, and [the]city and its literature share
3 textuality.
1 According to his arguments, reading literary texts was one good way to read the history of a city. Literature textualizes and conceptualizes a city. For the case of China, there were also many outstanding examples of exploring a city with literature. From 1980s, Chinese scholars started to study cities from urban literature.