Hong Kong Takes Flight: Commercial Aviation and the Making of a Global Hub, 1930s–1998

Chinese intellectuals for the general reader, often end with catastrophic consequences such as death, quite contrary to the mainstream Chinese love stories with a happily-ever-after conclusion. Here McLaren provides a very convincing analysis, showing us how these songs celebrate the delights of love while lamenting the dead. The story of “Shen Seventh Brother” and “Hua Mountain Lifter” discussed in chapters three and six both carry political implications, but in different ways. “Shen Seventh Brother” describes Shen as the local hero who brought the knowledge of rice cultivation to the Lake Tai region in ancient times, challenging the official discourse that it was Prince Tai Bo (heir to Emperor Tai of the Zhou Dynasty) from the north who brought sedentary civilization to the “primitive” south in the 11th century BC. As to “Hua Mountain Lifter,” a story of a bandit-rebel who leads an uprising during the anti-rent campaigns of the later imperial era, it encodes community memories of rent resistance movements going back to the Ming period. While examining the meanings of specific folk epics, this book also discusses how the longer form of narrative songs developed under the local influence of song competitions and amateur song troupes and within the broader context of the commercialization of the economy, the growth of market towns, and burgeoning popular market for printed texts (chapter two). With its lucid writing style and the diverse topics treated, this book can be used for college courses on Chinese and comparative literature, Chinese social history, Chinese cultural studies, Chinese gender studies and folklore studies. It should also appeal to general readers interested in world literature and folk culture.