ABSTRACT
This chapter emphasizes that code words for media in Long River are textual elements, and furthermore elements that engage in construction. The author's real interest really proceeds from the logic of the text itself, to probe questions of culture and ideology in the text. Shen’s tactic was to avoid personal direct criticism of the “New Life” movement; letting knowledge and imagination of “New Life” emerge by itself in the space for West Hunanese public opinion. Shen’s political concerns are fully expressed through his scorn for the New Life movement. The modern media represented by the Shen Bao have already formed a “public space” in West Hunanese society as described in Long River that is worth serious consideration. The entry of nationalistic discourse into Long River meanwhile complicates the political orientation of this text. Shen often called himself a country person, and his fiction often constructs a binary opposition between the “country person” and the “city person”.
