abstract: During 1947-1948, three commercial films: Everlasting Love( 1947) Long Live the Wife (1947) and Happiness and Sorrow of Middle Ages (1948) from the director Sang Hu were released. Although the results from box-office were stunning, they suffered fierce criticism from progressive critics largely because the films lacked descriptions of China as a nation-state with critical explorations on nationalism, anti-imperialism, and feudalism. This ideological bias resulted in a long time neglect of the artistic and social value of these three films. This paper attempts to analyze the directors original intention through the love story vehicle, illustrate his concern toward individuals, society, urban culture and moral standards and further discuss this new film genre through a comparison of today's film market. In my opinions, his films contain considerable artistic and social values which deserve scholarly attentions. They show great compassion toward the dilemma of ordinary human beings and privilege the perspectives of common citizens; The director depicts various kinds of interpersonal relationships in a semi-colonial city and thus demonstrates considerable concern with the social realities. In their particular political environment, these films negotiate the economic market and yet successfully contribute their own intervention in the wider cultural discussion of post-war social reconstruction and the development of ethical values. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. East Asian Languages and Civilizations 2012

It seems unwise to compare Eileen Chang and Alice Munro, because at first glance the urban traits of Chang's Shanghai and Hong Kong romances are dissimilar to the rural idiosyncrasies of Munro's southwestern Ontario stories. However, both the female writers describe in their fiction the women characters' romantic fantasies and their interrelationships with reality. In Chang's Romances, in the westernized and commercialized cosmopolitan set, a new age is coming, and the traditional patriarchal familial and moral systems are disintegrating. The women try to escape from frustrating circumstances through the rescue of romantic love and marriage. In Munro's fiction, the women attempt to get ride of their banal small-town cultures in order to search for freedom of imagination and expression through the medium of art, although at ; the center of their quest for selfhood is always their love and hate relationship with men. The women are in the dilemma of "female financial reality" and romantic love; they express their desires and fears through immoral and abnormal love relationships and vicarious escapades in their imagination; their interpretation of life and love is in reference to art in general, but such interpretation is full of disguise. Only in their unbound daydreams and imagination can they express their desires freely. Alice Munro and Eileen Chang's fictional worlds bespeak a sense of femininity. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

This thesis examines the theme of gender and power relationships in the works of Ding Ling (1904-1986) and Zhang Ailing (1920-1995), focusing particularly on two novels: Ding Ling’s The Sun Shines over the Sanggan River (1948) and Zhang Ailing’s The Rice-Sprout Song (1954). Through this examination, this thesis demonstrates the critiques by these authors of the CCP and its policies which, while ostensibly guaranteeing equality to women, in actuality do nothing more than reinscribe traditional Confucian gender values. This thesis situates these novels historically, and places them into the context of the author’s other writings. The analysis focuses on three main aspects of these two novels: violence, repression of women’s desire, and female sexuality. Through a close reading informed by a feminist approach to gender relationships, this thesis demonstrates the startling similarities in the critiques of Ding Ling and Zhang Ailing, despite the writers’ different political ideologies and situations in regard to the CCP.

Fiction has emerged as a major medium for modern Chinese to express their imagination and 'narrate' the country since Liang Qichao advocated the importance of 'New Fiction'. Over the past century, fiction (including both its form and content) has undergone various changes in response to the transformation of the modern Chinese society. In 1993, David Der-wei Wang initiated a discussion on 'Imagination of China', examining how Chinese people imagined the past, present and future of the country through fiction as a means of fabricated narration. While diegesis is a literary concept central to Realism and lyric constitutes a typical form of Romanticism, visual expression is the technique representative of Modernism. This method was first introduced to Shanghai by Liu Na'ou from colonial Taiwan and it exerted tremendous impacts on the works of Mu Shiying and Eileen Chang subsequently. The present dissertation sought to address two main questions pertaining to 'visuality'. First, how did the fictions of Liu Na'ou, Mu Shiying and Eileen Chang use visual expression for imagination of China? A related concern was how this approach reflected and molded the modern experience of China. Second, how was this particular mode of imagination related to other forms of imagination of the time? Also, what was its association with the politics and ideology in the arena of power? This dissertation did not only analyze the visual properties of this particular mode of imagination, but also examined the power issues underlying the technique, including colonialism and post-colonialism, literature and image, as well as man and woman. / There are five chapters in the dissertation. The first chapter introduces the framework, method, and background of the research. Chapter two examines how Liu Na'ou, Mu Shiying and Eileen Chang imported, migrated and mimicked the visual perceptions of colonists when expressing their imagination of China. On the one hand, this kind of imagination closely resembled the mentality of colonists such as France and Japan. On the other hand, the three authors strived to make modifications, formed critical judgments and reflected on the roles of the colonizer and the colonized during the process of imagination. All these were manifested in the changes in the form of presentation characterizing their fictions. As such, examination of these changes relative to the literature from the 1930s to 1940s is another focus of this chapter. Chapter three explores how Liu Na'ou, Mu Shiying and Eileen Chang incorporated the visual features of movies into fictions when expressing their imagination of modern China. The interaction between literature and image (especially the influence of movie on the presentation of fiction) inspired the three authors to come up with an alternative perceptive regarding imagination of China. The intersection of fiction and movie also allowed more room for fictitious creation, giving rise to a different mode of imagination beyond those featuring Realism and Romanticism. Some other issues covered in this chapter include why and how this approach guided the imagination of readers in designated time and space, as well as its relationship with the national discourse. Chapter four discussed the problems concerning imagination of China with reference to visuality and alternation in sexual subjectivity. Male vision could be identified in the fictions of Liu Na'ou and Mu Shiying. However, under the symbolic system of patriarchal culture, such male vision, when compared with the vision of the colonizer, is apparently less prominent in terms of male subjectivity. In their fictions, female characters are usually 'seen' through the lens of others and such female images are largely consistent with the male authors' perceptions of national subjectivity. This chapter also investigated how Eileen Chang used vision as a way to reflect on the male perceptions of female images, as well as how she was imagined and defined as a female author in the field of literature. Chapter five is the conclusion, which highlights the significance of visual expression in Liu Na'ou's, Mu Shiying's and Eileen Chang's fictions. / 梁慕靈. / Adviser: Hang Fung Carole Hoyan. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 73-03, Section: A, page: . / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 269-306). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [201-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in Chinese and English. / Liang Muling.

Appelés à s’appliquer concurremment pour traiter les difficultés d’une société, il est classiquement considéré que les relations entre le droit des sociétés et le droit des entreprises en difficulté se résument à des conflits pouvant être résolus en faisant prévaloir le « droit spécial » des procédures collectives sur le « droit commun » des sociétés. Cette analyse a perdu de sa pertinence en raison de la mutation du droit des faillites en droit des entreprises en difficulté dont la finalité, le contenu, et le domaine d’application ont profondément changé, ainsi qu’en raison de la contractualisation des deux matières. Ces évolutions ont induit une appréhension nouvelle de celles-ci. Sont en effet recherchées, tant par les sociétés en difficulté que par leurs créanciers, les potentialités de l’association du droit des sociétés et du droit des entreprises en difficulté pour organiser le rebond d’une société défaillante. Leurs relations en droit positif s’avèrent ainsi plus subtiles et plus complexes. Une synergie existe entre elles lors du règlement à l’amiable des difficultés, tandis qu’une véritable soumission du droit des sociétés au droit des entreprises en difficulté peut être constatée lors du règlement judiciaire des difficultés. Malgré des origines distinctes, des finalités propres, et des fonctions radicalement opposées, une logique anime les relations des deux matières révélant un corpus légal et jurisprudentiel utilisé pour le règlement des difficultés qui témoigne de l’existence d’un droit des sociétés en difficulté. / It is commonly understood that, when considering ailing companies, the conflicts that arise between concurrently applicable corporate law and insolvency law can be solved with “special law” that prevails over “ordinary law”. This understanding has lost some relevance through the transformation of “bankruptcy law” into “distressed business law”. The trend towards the use of explicit contracts in these fields is bringing about a change in their finality, content and scope. This evolution of corporate law and insolvency law is creating new apprehension on the part of both the distressed company and the creditors, with the result that both parties are looking for means to combine these subjects when organising the recovery of an ailing firm. Their coexistence in substantive law turns out to be even more subtle and complex. In the case of an amicable settlement of a dispute, a synergy exists between corporate law and insolvency law whereas when a settlement is imposed under court supervision, the prevalence of insolvency law over corporate law is notable. Despite distinct origins, differing finality and radically opposing functions, a common logic motivates the relation between corporate law and insolvency law revealing a legal corpus and case law as a testament to the existence of an “ailing company law”.