Narrative Subjectivity and the Production of Social Space in Chinese Reportage

In a little-discussed 1932 work titled "Eventful Autumn" ("Duo shi zhi qiu"), Ding Ling illustrates the reaction of the people of Shanghai to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in September of 1931.1 The text opens, as many Chinese short stories and novels of the time do, with a bustling city scene described with a rich palette of sounds, colors, and movements and observed from the midst of the action. The scene envisioned is a large intersection on Shanghai's main commercial artery, Nanjing Road, from the point of view of the narrator on an approaching trolley.