Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Imperfect Understanding: Intimate Portraits of Chinese Celebrities

Imperfect Understanding: Intimate Portraits of Chinese Celebrities

Wen, Yuan-Ning
Rea, Christopher

Hardcover

Series: Cambria Sinophone World

Historical FiguresFiction AnthologiesChinese History

ISBN10: 1604979437
ISBN13: 9781604979435
Publisher: Cambria Pr
Published: Mar 15 2018
Pages: 330
Weight: 1.44
Height: 0.88 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English

What did it mean to be a celebrity in 1930s China? Who were Republican China's preeminent intellectuals, writers, artists, politicians, diplomats, and businesspeople, and how were they represented in the popular press? During the heady days of Anglophone publishing in 1930s China, Wen Yuan-ning edited for the Critic a series of Unedited Biographies (later Intimate Portraits) of famous contemporary Chinese personages. Wen and his collaborators--some of whom wrote anonymously--offered readers mischievous and idiosyncratic accounts of the careers and personalities of the people in the news. These idiosyncratic celebrity sketches proved both controversial and popular, with several of them immediately being translated into Chinese. A selection of seventeen of Wen's own contributions to the Critic series was published to acclaim in 1935 as the book Imperfect Understanding. Yet Wen and his contributions to Chinese literary culture disappeared from the historical record after the founding of the People's Republic, likely because Wen wrote in English and had close ties to the Chinese Nationalist Party. The fifty essays (and one reader rebuttal) that originally appeared in the Critic in 1934, recently rediscovered, appear in this book accompanied by a comprehensive introduction to Wen Yuan-ning and his participation in Republican China's thriving Anglophone literary scene.

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