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From the perspective of New Literature after the May Fourth New Culture Movement, Liang Qichao's "new fiction", Lu Xun's "satirical fiction" and old scholars' fiction from "the School of Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies", are all classified as old lit¬erature. Yet from the perspective of both fiction studies and feminism, Zeng Pu's A Flower in a Sinful Sea is a new, instead of an old, novel. Its literary practice of "transforming anecdotes into fiction", by integrating the style of the chaptered novel, note-form fiction, as well as western fiction, connects the old and new literature during the late Qing dynasty and the Republic of China. Other than historical interpretation, A Flower in a Sinful Sea's briiliant depiction of Late Qing history and its officials and gentry contains rich life details and customs. As China's pioneer of "academic fiction", it links The Unofficial History of the Scholars and The Besieged City, thus making an indelible contribution to Chinese fiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to revise aspects of the existing interpretations of Nie Hai Hua (A Flower in a Sinful Sea) by applying perspectives from post-colonial studies to the study of this late Qing Chinese novel. Here the novel is read as a national narrative that portrays the emergence of China as a modern nation state from a decaying empire, with its intelligentsia caught between their desire to embrace modernity and nostalgia for cultural traditions. From the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century, traditional Chinese scholars were faced with a predicament: they were lured by the modernity represented by Western learning, on the one hand, but were tied by an emotional link to Chinese tradition, on the other. In a disintegrating society, they struggled both to preserve their own cultural identity and construct a new identity. The opposing groups of Chinese literati portrayed in the novel in fact reflect the schizophrenic state of the Chinese consciousness on the threshold of modernity.To write the story of the nation demands that we articulate that archaic ambivalence that informs modernity.1 [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]