A newly published
novel written in the Shanghai dialect
has aroused much interest in using
the dialect in literature.
Jin
Yucheng, 61, a senior editor of
Shanghai Literature, saturated his
300,000-word novel Blossoms with Shanghai
flavor by writing it in the
local dialect.
The novel
depicts the lives of Shanghai people
in two periods: from the 1960s to
the end of the "cultural revolution"
(1966-76) and from the 1980s to the
start of the 21st century. The two
periods appear alternately throughout the
novel, presenting a panorama of old
Shanghai and its changes through 30
years.
The story is made
up of many independent stories, which
link up as the lives of the
main characters unfold.
In the
novel, Jin creates his unique
narration by using dialogue to reveal
the plot and portray characters. The
sentences are short, the language
clear and the dialogue written without
quotation marks.
"These are
actually the traditional narration
characteristics of Chinese literature," Jin
said. "They are rarely used today,
which makes them
special.
"Every writer should
have his or her own unique
language and mine is the Shanghai
dialect in Blossoms," he said, adding
that the tendency of language
homogeneity is harmful for novel
writing.
Blossoms can be read
through fluently and vividly with the
Shanghai dialect, while posing no
obstacle to readers outside of the
city.
"The language of Blossoms
is not exactly pure Shanghai dialect,"
Jin said. During writing, he left
out some slang and dialects difficult
to express in the written language
so that Mandarin speakers could
understand.
Zheng Li, an editor
with the Shanghai Literature and Art
Publishing House, said that what makes
the language of Blossoms so special
is that it's similar to
Putonghua, so that readers from the
northern part of China can taste
the intense aroma of the Shanghai
flavor. Although, there are still some
difficult to understand areas that
only local readers can
appreciate.
Blossoms won top
prize at the Chinese Literature Media
Awards this April and ranked first
in the China Novel Association's 2012
list of Novels of the
Year.
It is possible that
the novel's success will influence
more writers to write in the
Shanghai dialect, but Jin admitted
that it was no easy
task.
"You have to think
in the context of the Shanghai
dialect and recreate the language so
that readers outside of Shanghai can
understand it, which involves a lot
of research and practice," he
said.
Before Blossoms, another
novel written in the Shanghai dialect
titled Lane by author Hu Baotan, 34,
was published in 2011. Unlike Blossoms,
Lane is more difficult for readers
outside of Shanghai, who must refer
to the annotation and pronunciation at
the end of each
story.
Many renowned Chinese
writers would use some dialects in
their works to add local flavor.
For example, Jia Pingwa wrote his
Qin Opera with a lot of obscure
dialect and idioms of Shaanxi
province, and nearly all of Beijing
writer Wang Shuo's novels have
strong marks of the Beijing dialect,
which make the works vivid and
amusing.
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