ABSTRACT
In the late 1990s, a tide of “Red” nostalgia emerged on the Chinese cultural market and artistic stage, as if the socio-cultural horizon of fin-de-siècle China had suddenly been stained a dark reddish hue. This wave of nostalgia could be seen as the product of various transnational factors, which were then overlaid onto an indigenous cultural iconography derived largely from 1930s Shanghai. In this way, the familiar old movie-star photographs, old advertisements, “beautiful woman” calendar posters, 1930s Shanghai legends, coffeehouses with nostalgic décor, and the “Shanghai nostalgia” restaurants that have sprung up throughout China with names like Nocturnal Shanghai and Shanghai Harbor can therefore all be seen as a displaced realization of the call for “rewriting history” that emerged in 1980s elite culture. Through the excision of the socialist historical memory of the 1950-1970 period, combined with the purging of the bloody revolutionary dimensions from the 1930s Red historical narrative, the reality of 1990s China is therefore able safely to link up with the imaginary “history” represented by 1930s Shanghai.
