| The Sing-song Girls of Shanghai | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Traditional Chinese | 海上花列傳 | ||||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 海上花列传 | ||||||||||||
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The Sing-song Girls of Shanghai, also translated as Shanghai Flowers[1] or Biographies of Flowers by the Seashore,[2] is an 1892 novel by Han Bangqing.[2]
The novel, the first such novel to be serially published,[2] chronicles lives of prostitutes in Shanghai in the late 19th century.[1] Unlike most prostitution-oriented novels in Wu Chinese, specifically the Suzhou dialect, all dialog in this novel is in Wu.[3][4]
The acclaimed writer Eileen Chang translated the book into Mandarin, published in two parts under the titles "海上花開" and "海上花落" (lit. The Flowers of the Sea Bloom / Fade" or "The Flowers of Shanghai Bloom / Fade"). She also translated the book into English,[5] which was not discovered until after her death.[6] Eva Hung revised and edited the English translation before its publication.
Wilt L. Idema, who wrote a book review of The Chinese Novel at the Turn of the Century in T'oung Pao, wrote that the novel Shanghai Flowers included the use of Wu in dialogs, a "doomed to failure" protagonist, and a consciously crafted plot, therefore the book "already showed many of the characteristics of a typical Late Ch'ing novel".[2]
A film adaptation called Flowers of Shanghai was made in 1998.[6]