Why is The Besieged City hailed as the new Julin's History?

Siege of the City has been hailed as a modern-day "Ru Lin Wai Shi" because Qian Zhongshu satirized the intellectuals to the fullest extent in this novel.

The author portrayed a large number of intellectuals in the 1930s and 1940s in the novel. They wandered away from the anti-Japanese beacon of the time, and although they all returned from their studies and were imbued with Western culture, they had no lofty ideals and lacked the courage to fight against traditional forces and ideas, and as a result, they couldn't even grasp their own lives.

The protagonist Fang Hongjian, Su Wendan who is "as cold as ice and as beautiful as peach and plum", Li Meiting who is a vulgar and money-grubbing academic liar, and Sun Roujia who hides her heart under her suppleness, etc.......The author analyzes the personalities and moral weaknesses of this group of people with his witty humour and warm satire and reveals that they are not as good as they used to be, and that they have a lot to say. The author uses witty humor and warm satire to analyze the personalities and moral weaknesses of this group of people and reveal their spiritual dilemmas, which is why some people have commented that Siege of the City is a "modern-day Julin's History".

Expanded Information

The cultural satire in Siege of the City is based on the historical platform of the conflict between Chinese and Western cultures, which is one of the key points of Qian Zhongshu's work.

One, modern culture to look at some of the shortcomings of traditional Chinese culture, such as the pedantry of Mr. Fang Hongjian's father, Mr. Fang, who recommended a threadbare book, "Chinese people are square in character, so they say the ground is square, and the foreigners are round and smooth, so they advocate that the ground is round," and so on.

Second, mocking the Western culture, "like that first set of Chinese tailor copy of the suit, the look of foreigners on the old clothes on the two sides of the patch, according to the style of the sleeves and pants," such as Cao Yuanlang copied "Avery Wicked" (Eliot), "The Waste Land". The poem "Spelling Plate Concubine Companion" is a copy of Eliot's "The Wasteland" by Cao Yuanlang, as well as Mr. Zhang's style of Yanjingjing, who is a buyer.

Three, explore the absurdity in the absorption of Western civilization and Western culture, as Fang Hongzhuan said in a speech at his hometown high school, "Hai Tong for hundreds of years, there are only two Western things in the whole of Chinese society to survive. One is opium and the other is syphilis, both of which are Western civilizations absorbed by the Ming Dynasty." Another example is the "mentorship system" at Sanlu University.

But the satire in "Siege" is based more on the dissection of human nature. For example, Fang Hongjian's famous fake doctorate from Clarendon University focuses on the human nature of fraud, vanity, weakness, helplessness to the environment, etc. Another example is Li Meiting's stealing roasted groundnuts, Lu Zixia's bluffing with envelopes from the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Miss Fan's using unintelligible English to impersonate authors to present books to herself, etc., to name a few.

Baidu Encyclopedia - Besieged City