


































Economics, Law and Policy 
ISSN 2576-2060 (Print) ISSN 2576-2052 (Online) 

Vol. 6, No. 3, 2023 

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1 
 

Original Paper 

The New History of Urbanization Representation: Another Face 

of New Century Novels 

Ming Shen
1
, ZhiJie Jia

2*
, Xincun Chen

1
 & ZeYu Kou

3
 

1
 School of Guangxi Vocational University of Agriculture, Nanning 530007, China 

2
 School of National University of Malaysia, Selangor 410500, Malaysia

 

3
 School of Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Malaysia, Selangor 410500, Malaysia 

*
 ZhiJie Jia, School of National University of Malaysia, Selangor 410500, Malaysia 

 

Received: July 4, 2023         Accepted: July 13, 2023       Online Published: October 11, 2023 

doi:10.22158/elp.v6n3p1                    URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.22158/elp.v6n3p1 

 

Abstract 

From de-urbanization to urbanization, China has created a new history, it has mainly undergone a 

gradual transition from integration to diversification. Based on the actual cities in China in the new 

century after reform and opening up, one period of time which born at the end of 1978, we tend to 

interrogate the urban novel for corresponding to rural novel, is a reflection on cultural integration and 

de-urbanization. From three aspects including the transcendence of modernity, the urban and rural 

spatial narrative of new century novels and the presentation of urban landscapes, considering the 

recursive reality from rural China to urban China, we attempt to explore how the novel text represents 

China's urbanization, dig out the manifestations of human’s survival in the process of urbanization in 

China in the new century after seeking roots in rural areas, thus mirroring the mixed urban habitats of 

multiple ethnic groups in Guangxi. 

Keywords  

urbanization, new century novels, existence, urban and rural space, theme supergram 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



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1. Introduction 

In the field of economy and culture, mainland China has undergone dramatic changes from the 

countryside to the cities, and there is a cohesive field affecting each other. The process of urbanization 

affects the literary motif, and the embodiment of literary react on the development of the city by 

reflecting or pursuing. Urbanization and literariness generate intertextuality. To a certain extent, the 

interaction mirrors the relationship between cities, beings and society to achieve the effect of symbiosis. 

“The city is the continuous double construction of urban life added to literary forms and literary forms 

added to urban life” (Chen, 2016, p. 56). From this point of view, there is a certain degree of 

co-construction relationship between literature and social processes. Therefore, urban China has 

created a “new consciousness China” in the literary field that is different from the previous rural China. 

The symbiosis of urbanized China and literary urbanization present a regular sequence. Urbanization 

affects social values of human beings which are reflected in literary works in the form of reflecting the 

process of urbanization, while urbanization reveals the spiritual ecology of urban people which reacts 

to economic and social development.  

According to Marx, “The modern city is the urbanization of the country, not the ruralization of the 

ancient city” (Richard, 2009, p. 3). Chinese urban novels from the late 1990s to the new century use 

high-rise buildings as textual images symbolizing desire and beings. Le Corbusier’s urbanization 

theory of high-rise buildings also proves the inevitability of architecture in the process of urbanization. 

In mainland China, the urbanization process follows the tall buildings with a secular face, thus it refers 

to single value of the urban literature.  

Mainland China’s new century novels mirror the daily life in the whole process of urbanization 

including mass media, queer culture. It forms rather mixed metropolis and urban matrix cultural carrier. 

The diverse cultural field weaves the so-called recursive framework of inter-generational conflict and 

integration. “Culture is always a mixture formed by interaction and migration” (Karl & Friedrich, 2001, 

p. 480). Therefore, most of the new century novels in mainland China have a tangled relationship with 

the urbanization process of contemporary China. There are reciprocal action between the shaping of 

urbanization to new century novels and the demonstration of urbanization in new century novels. The 

new century urban novels in Guangxi is different from urban writing in other regions of China. Due to 

the guide of “economically backward, culture first”, coupled with transitivity and modernity in the 

emphasis on life consciousness, Guangxi’s new century urban novels reveal the wild nature of Guangxi 

as a region. 

We mainly interrogate urban novels corresponding to rural novels in the literary sense. Therefore, 

contemporary urbanization really began in the 1980s. 

Based on the recursive case from rural China to urban China, we argue that how novel texts represent 

urbanized China, how human experience their beings in new century after root-seeking from three 

aspects, namely, urban and rural space narrative, urban landscape presentation and original living 

conditions. 



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2. From Rural China to Urban China: Modernity Theme Transcendence in the Perspective of 

Society and Literature 

From rural China to urban China, the sequence of development is presented by the transcendence of 

social structure and literary motif. The transcendence here refers to the transcendence and alternation of 

the previous beings. 

From the May 4th Movement to 1940s, rural China and Chinese cities are definitely not rural and urban 

in the modern sense. In the context of globalization, the current urban China has realized a kind of 

digital change in the modern sense of cultural flatness. At present, most of the Chinese in the world live 

in cities or feel the modern field of network globalization and cultural flatness. Since Bai Juyi’s 

“moderate seclusion” in ancient times, most of Chinese have not been aware of the collective 

unconsciousness about living in the city. The texts created by literati originates form the living 

experience of the city, not the countryside. The city has always been the center of Chinese culture. As 

the Chinese field of urbanization, it is shown by the modern novel in the new century. In essence, it is a 

kind of dynamic generation of non-modern rural novels and vivid expression of urban habitat under the 

circumstance of worldwide network and culture. 

The multi-faceted and heterogeneous nature of globalization has led mainland China to embark on a 

homogeneous process with latecomer advantages, which has taken extreme urbanization as a sign of 

economic development. Under the guidance of reform, opening up and market economic policies, 

contemporary China, gathering advantages such as globalized economy and culture, has gradually 

announced a large-scale migration of rural areas into cities. The shackles of the household registration 

system are gradually fading under the control of the government. Thus, large numbers of rural people 

have slipped into the cities. Transposition layer by layer, led by the collusion of urban capital and the 

government, generates the mixed connection of urban, suburban and rural spaces. Further more, urban 

space gathers rural imagination and controls rural vitality. This outstanding feature of urbanization 

gives novels in the new century another dimension. 

In recent decades, economic development has been the center of mainland China, which has promoted 

the urbanization trend at an astonishing speed. After China’s reform and opening up, politics, economy, 

culture, society and other fields are basically under the aesthetic witnessing of urbanization process. 

New urban characters such as new citizens, slaves of desire, alien bottom class, alienation of survival, 

etc., and new urban images such as information network, towering buildings, and luxury items shown 

in urban novels all intertextualize with the reality of urbanization after the reform and opening up. 

Therefore, this change is evident in the field of literature, especially in the text form of novels. 

Since 2000, Chinese novels have shown a time wonder in the sense of the times. It clearly refers to 

China’s rapid urbanization process in the past 20 years. In novels of the new century, skyscrapers, 

highways, five-star hotels and other typical symbols of modern cities can be seen everywhere, and 

mental states such as material desire, power struggle, and love sinking can be found everywhere. From 

the reform and opening up to the early 1990s, Chinese writers’ style of writing conformed to the times, 



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and most of them focused on reflective literature, root-seeking literature, educated youth literature, and 

pioneer literature. “In the past, Chinese writers were all peasants, and they were only good at writing 

about rural areas, not urban areas” (Michael, 2003, p. 149). Jia Pingwa, who is proficient in 

root-seeking literature, wrote the rural China under the consciousness of writers and the changes of the 

times based on the rural Shanxi before the 1990s. Jia Pingwa wrote the city as a village in his book 

Abandoned City, which marked the fall of rural writing and the opening of urban writing. The peak of 

Chinese urban writing is mainly concentrated in the new century. 

The fluidity and openness of the city are in contrast to the solidity and conservatism of the countryside. 

The globalization of urban space determines that it is full of vitality and innovation, but at the same 

time it can hide dirt. In the late 1990s, a writing group known as the late generation emerged in the 

Chinese literary circle. The cities described by them feature the unique era symbols of China in the 

1990s, such as business, official corruption, and love games. The dark sides such as prostitution and 

whoring are also dealt with calmly and objectively in the novels of the late generation. Compared with 

the literary works of the previous 40 years, from the late 1990s to the new century, the entire literary 

field has a completely new pattern, and at the same time shows a distinct imprint of the times. 

In terms of themes, it seems that it permeates the urban space on the surface and was popular in the 

1990s. In essence, it is rooted in and the result of the release of human desires. It is mostly reflected in 

the desire for money and power violence. The characters written by writers of the late generation are 

often troubled by money and  desire, full of yearning for power, and buried in common violence. 

“When the writers of the late generation put their narrative goals on a large scale to the reality of 

common people’s existence, a desire-based narrative law was gradually established, including that He 

Dun and others’ obsession with money ”
 
(Huang, 2010, p. 119). This kind of fickleness on the theme is 

an overcoming of the folk character. 

The local writing novels still occupied the main position of Chinese culture in the 1970s and 1980s. 

The narration of the land can best demonstrate the folk characteristics of the works, while the carnival 

presentation of the city refers to the existence of a non-beautiful state. “The rural population is attached 

to the land. Generations of people have never left the land. It is normal for farmers to live on this land, 

and it is abnormal to leave their hometown” (Hong, 1996, p. 60). A large number of rural groups who 

have merged into the urban space will inevitably change their original state of existence in the process 

of urban space organization and construction. In the text of the novel, this urbanization of space and 

people embodies the complex expression of the conspiracy of power and capital in the process of 

urbanization in the text of the novel. Relationships, as well as the significance of human nature and 

ethnic groups, outsiders and local households in the city take the initiative to get close and 

communicate with the cultural traditions, so as to achieve a state of coupled symbiosis. The existence 

of non-beauty or original-beauty by farmers entering the city brings about structural transformation of 

urban ecology. 

 



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Generally speaking, in terms of themes, most novels in the new century involve the process of rapid 

urban evolution. Narrative forms such as the trivial daily narrative in A Troubled Life, the grass-rooted 

narrative in Above the Wheat Field, and the narrative of migrant workers entering the city in The Fate 

of Tampering are all different from the popular culture, traditional concepts, Confucianism and 

Buddhism in rural China before, which take the current social reality in the process of urbanization as 

the object of expression. Looking at the new century literature from the perspective of urbanization, we 

can find that the urbanization in the novels has a strong impact on daily life and people’s living 

conditions. 

To some extent, “Most new century literature writes about cities to varying degrees, reflecting the 

changes of contemporary urban culture in the process of urbanization” (Fei, 2012, p. 4). And we are 

concerned that in urban writing, Guangxi writers not only show the original beauty of urban space, but 

also focus on building a beautiful and harmonious state, an ideal urban living space. And pursuing the 

cultural significance and aesthetic value of this urban space is not unrelated to the unique living 

environment and lagging economic development of Guangxi province. Of course, writers’ strong desire 

to write under the premise of survival collides with the multi-ethnic culture in the land, that brings the 

bright future of urban text from the New Group of Gui, synonym of Guangxi. 

 

3. The Narrative Subject, Imagination and Construction of Urban and Rural Space  

The complexity and entanglement of the relationship between urban and rural areas exists in the 

conflict of ideas and value systems. The praise of the countryside and the criticism of the city in novels 

in the new century are based on the monotonous value judgment of the city and the blindness of 

self-living space. Since the May 4th Movement, most literary works have pointed to the disorder and 

evil of the city for the uplifting of the countryside. However, the development of Chinese cities was in 

a state of unbalanced growth in both the Republic of China and the contemporary era. Looking back at 

the development trajectory of post-modern European and American cities, China’s urbanization process 

is still in the growth mode of the post-industrial era. No doubt, in recent years Mainland China 

proposed the construction of ecological civilization in 2009, just because it realized the unbalanced 

development of urban and rural areas and the fragmented damage to the natural environment. 

3.1 Underlying Narratives in Conflict 

“Literature is a symbolic act of society” (Wang, 2011, p. 29). Therefore, the evolution of the 

urban-rural relationship and its consequences are symbolically presented through literary texts. The 

anxiety of social reality in modern and contemporary China refers to the conflict and confrontation 

between the moral rights mechanism between urban and rural areas. The entanglement between 

agriculture and urban civilization has become an important evidence of Chinese development. The 

reconstruction of urban functions and values is based on the change of traditional peasant identities. 

The land complex runs through the rural and urban, traditional and contemporary contradictions. 

 



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“Only those who make a living by farming understand the value of the soil. The city people despise the 

country people with rusticity, but for the latter, soil is their lifeblood. The land, as God, which is close 

to human nature, occupies the highest position of the gods” (Henri, 2007, p. 61). The essential 

difference between urban and rural spaces in novels in the new century lies in the landlessness and 

homesickness of the city, and the imagination and return of the countryside. 

To a certain extent, the collision between the countryside and the city is rooted in Taoism, ecological 

aesthetics, and Heidegger’s ontology, expressing Laozi’s theory of heaven, earth, man and god, the 

ancient thought of “harmony between man and nature”, Heidegger’s Quartet Game Theory and the 

pursuit of harmony and neutrality, which is evident in Guangxi literature. 

Urban writing and city novels in contemporary literature are two prefaces. Urban writing is the 

necessity of urban novels, but it is not the specific dimension of urban novels. Based on our research, 

city novels are a form of fiction that covers a wider range than urban literature. It should cover the 

novels of the large and medium-sized cities in mainland China. As far as the performance of the object 

is concerned, city novels involve more aspects than urban fictions. Citizens, including urban migrants, 

migrant workers, beggars and other low-level people, are the concrete representation of urbanization 

described in city novels. From the point of view of connotation, city novels should have obvious city 

consciousness. City novels are “texts that describe individuals in urban space and their urban life, have 

a relatively clear expression of city consciousness in the text, and are created by writers with a long 

period of experience in urban life” (Fei, 2012, p. 8). The writing of urban and rural spaces in city 

novels has obvious differences from the comparison between urban and rural areas in rural novels. 

The urban and rural space of rural novels is based on the soothing reproduction of rural scenery and the 

painful squeeze of urban space. For example, in The Stone City of Lan Baiyang written by Yang 

Yingchuan, a novelist in the new century, the countryside in the text is homeland, harmonious, and 

natural, while the city is a highly control mechanism, a machine of desire, and the source of evil. But 

not all rural novels or urban novels describe the existence of urban-rural opposition in such a dualistic 

and opposing dimension. 

The complexity and tonality of the relationship between urban and rural areas needs to be considered in 

the local politics of morality and structure between urban and rural areas. The meaning of the existence 

of the city must also be confirmed by its entanglement with the rural countryside as the other. In the 

novels of the new century, the urban field is constructed by the reconstruction of rural space and the 

transformation of people who enter the city. Transformation and resistance, conflict and opposition are 

placed in the context of globalization, referring to the local resistance to globalization. Thus, the moral 

difference in urban and rural spatial narratives has led to a disordered state of social space. 

The underlying narrative is the means of demonstrating the urban-rural relations. After migrant workers 

entered the city, as the main body of the countryside, the strong moral law of the rural they accepted 

was replaced by the indifferent social logic in the city, and the process of urban norms gradually 

oppressing the lower class did not change the status of migrant workers and prostitutes. In the text, a 



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large number of migrants from the rural still demand the direction of the urban culture based on the 

moral judgment standard of the rural culture, and resist the process of the urban culture. Actually, the 

bottom-level characters are not bound by the moral values of both, so that there is an alienated image of 

indulgence. The cause of the disorder is that people who have broken away from the norms of local 

culture and resist modern cultural norms perceive themselves as being in the cracks, leading to an 

independent individual for survival, neither country nor city. “Sharing the same cultural pattern, finding 

a place in a national system of interdependent activities, participating as a citizen in the activities of 

various organizations that constitute public life” (Gong, 2021, p. 17), has become an impossible 

behavior for the image of the bottom. Unable to integrate into the city, most of them are alienated, 

rebellious, and depraved. It is inevitable to become victims of urban-rural spatial entanglement. 

However, the abuse of the binary opposition mode in the text weakens the power of the text, such as 

digging out the evil side of urban human nature from the urban-rural opposition thinking mode in a 

biased way. 

Citizens are the concrete figures, while the images of the bottom refer to the pain of living after 

entering the city. The images of men and women portrayed in novels in the 1990s tend to be typified, 

and the essential difference between male and female urban novelists lies in the macro and micro 

aesthetic observation of the city. The women described by female urban novelists in the 1990s are 

roughly divided into traditional women, white-collar beauties, urban newcomers, low-level women and 

urban migrant girls. White-collar beauties and urban newcomers are typical stereotyped female 

characters. New images of women, created by Wei Hui and Mian Mian, rebelling against tradition and 

playing with men in the games of love, convey a disdain for discipline and a rebellion against reality. 

Human beings focusing on the desire are inevitable outside the mainstream culture, and their typified 

characteristics are manifested in the carnival of desire, the betrayal of the mainstream and the 

barrenness of spirit. In a certain period of time, they appear in the texts of many female writers, 

forming a tendency to typify. 

It is worth noting that some scholars believe that “female writers are best at expressing such delicate 

and sensitive folk writings, digging out enthusiastic or entangled citizens’ personalities” (Fayve, 2005, 

p. 75). According to their point of view, female urban novelists can best express this kind of 

regionalized cultural genes. However, whether female writers can express the connotation of the city 

better than male writers, we believe that there is a certain entanglement between materialization and 

dematerialization. The independent personality of female writers in the 1990s was not complete. Wei 

Hui and Mian Mian’s self-materialized and Lin Bai’s forced compromise, all show a passive 

acceptance of desire. And not all male writers view and ponder them from the perspective of God. The 

urban novels of Qiu Huadong, Li Feng, etc., affirm women as a new independent image of the city 

from male power, referring directly to the conflict and entanglement between traditional and modern 

culture. After stripping off the traditional shell, women will naturally perceive the emerging world by 

themselves. Of course, the traditional position of women is as the margin out of region mainstream. 



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Both are indeed possible to reach a consensus to some extent. 

3.2 The Imagination of Urban Space 

In the process of China’s urbanization, the reallocation of resources, population, land and other 

resources determines the social structure, life style, urban culture, style of doing things and other 

factors that the city tends to rationalize. China is a traditional agricultural country, and male and female 

migrant workers have become forced relocation due to the power of the city, which actually shows that 

the social development of the urban market has shifted from an economic and social form dominated 

by agriculture to one led to by service industries and industry and commerce. However, urbanization in 

mainland China is fundamentally different from urbanization in other parts of the world. 

In China, the agricultural population is huge, urbanization is late, the environment of industrialization 

has been severely damaged, and industrialization and urbanization have not been synchronized. 

Therefore, the mixed urban landscape has been deduced into complicated social problems due to the 

contradictions of funds, land, people, and living space. The urban space does not give the bottom 

people the right to live. Peasants who have lost their land also act as builders of urban imagination. 

Homecoming and homeland complex have long been the motifs of Chinese literature, but the new 

urban imagination in some works provides urban planners with the possibility of harmonious 

construction of urban space. The traditional Chinese agricultural imagination makes the land constitute 

the collective unconsciousness of the Chinese people. Therefore, resisting the development of 

urbanization from a rural standpoint is rather absurd but innovative. In The Age of No Land, the author 

transforms the urban space by planting crops in the city, which shows that “human life has developed 

to the age of soilless. This civilization makes people leave the land and get further and further away 

from original nature and people’s concept of land is becoming more and more indifferent. In fact, the 

most missing thing in the city is the closeness of people to the land” (Li, 2011, p. 60). 

In the soilless era, the city does not reject plants, and crops can grow on the road. This kind of romantic 

urban space imagination breaks the city’s discipline and suspends the city’s aesthetic principles. “To 

grow according to the aesthetic principles of cities, their combination, shape and distribution need to be 

carefully planned” (Wang, 2011, p. 147). The aesthetic idea of rebuilding urban space by planting 

crops on urban land is an metaphor for land. 

3.3 Significance of Rural Space 

The countryside, as the spiritual hometown of most people in the agricultural society, the other in the 

urbanization process and the carrier of economic recession and environmental damage, bears the 

pressure of urbanization. Some capital colluding between the city and the government flows into the 

rural field. The replacement of land use and the reconstruction of the value concept of the rural space 

make the original countryside tend to a kind of urbanization. Among them, the novels of the new 

century features migrant workers and the shaping of the countryside by the city. 

Since the beginning of the new century, a number of new rural writings such as Ni Qiu have emerged, 

whose fundamental quality is based on the narratives of migrant workers entering the city. In contrast, 



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city novels focus on the passive form of rural space impacted by urban commerce. Some works have 

reflected on the duality between urban and rural areas. 

In these novels, some texts did not escape from the entangled reality of urbanization, nor naively 

shifted the spatial latitude of the city to the perspective of moral criticism of rural ethics, simply placing 

urban and rural areas in the binary opposition, it expounds urban capital devours rural space, which 

brings and the disastrous consequences, and that a kind of sympathy for vulnerable groups from rural 

areas such as migrant workers. Thus, the sadness and helplessness of rural power space are all 

reasonably displayed in the context of urbanization. Villages that have historically regressed or been 

swallowed up by cities have become vulnerable spaces that sheltered for a long time. Especially when 

modern civilization in the process of urbanization forcibly interferes with the original rural social 

structure, it will inevitably cause certain conflicts and variations in the original ecological 

consciousness of villagers. For example, in Hunting Season, the original Guangxi is shaped by the city 

under the trend of desire. In the countryside, regardless of the ecological harmony, the practice of 

skinning and cramping is used for urban people to hunt, and leisure and entertainment have replaced 

the established situation of harmonious coexistence between man and nature. 

Rural space narratives in urbanization are generally in the form of rural land and migrant worker 

narratives. Some writers reflect the rebirth of rural power under the influence of cities. An old concept 

of power has resurfaced due to the control and suppression of urban desires, leading to the solution that 

farmers had to flee from the countryside to the cities. 

 

4. Presentation of Urban Landscape 

The urban landscape, as the externalization of the image of the steel and concrete, presents the aesthetic 

reproduction of commerce and consumerism, norms and power mechanisms. However, “the landscape 

itself also exhibits something indisputable and inaccessible” (Wang, 2011, p. 148), which also 

foreshadows the evil side of city. Those material, advanced, and magical urban landscape, as 

externalized carriers that affect human emotions, show the lack of natural landscapes and the 

reconstruction of urban space. 

Geo-spatial experience is closely related to human self-identity. For example, in High Heels, the city of 

Shanghai in this novel squeezes ancient alleys in the shadow of high-rise buildings. Modern streets 

such as Nanjing Road, Xiafei Road, and the Bund, displaying petty bourgeois goods such as 

high-heeled shoes, perfume, and brand-name clothing, while the original folk culture of Shibao Street 

has been gradually replaced by commercial atmosphere. The changes of the protagonists in the lives 

actually form an ambiguous relationship with the commercial landscape, which improves the urban 

consciousness of citizens, and at the same time abandons the traditional imagery before urbanization. 

The urban landscapes such as ktv, bars, and foot-washing city on both sides of the street show the 

living environment of the bottom-level people and the shared face of the consumer group, while the 

new landscape on both sides of the street is an intersection where dogs lie, villagers gather and talk on 



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the country dirt road and the non-staple food store stands alone, which forms a sense of release and 

obedience. For the release of desires on the city streets, including purchase and physical desires, the 

rural guards and the only remaining local language have become symbols of loneliness and 

backwardness.  

Apart from the streets, urban buildings in new century novels are no longer the folk house, ancestral 

temples, and cultural buildings in agricultural era. The buildings that best reflect urbanization are shops 

along the streets and high-rise buildings. Under the presentation of these landscapes, different 

characters with different identities are pulled out. The specific urban space of high-rise buildings 

represent the living space of a new social class, and are representatives of postmodernism and 

consumerism. 

We have noticed the fact that in urban novels in the new century, the description of natural scenery is 

missing. The material symbols such as high-rise buildings, subways, luxury shops, and villas in the city 

have caused the distance between man and nature to a certain extent. These main landscapes and places, 

in a certain sense, show the characteristics of the city as the main body of urbanization, but at the same 

time, they separate the transitivity of the text, ignore the pursuit of harmony and abandon human nature. 

There is no need to sever the connection with the natural landscape, after all, what connects the 

countryside is the natural image landscape rather than the even urban architecture. 

 

5. Conclusion 

The mutual shaping of literature and cities embodies the intertextuality of culture and society, and 

demonstrates the multidimensional facets of social, cultural, economic, and capital in the development 

of cities in the new century. Urban structure, social development, landscape presentation, and human 

nature display all predict the reality of urban culture and the possibility of becoming better. In addition, 

the construction of new century literature by urbanization and marketization is also reflected in the 

internal influence on literary activities. At the beginning of the reform and opening up in the last 

century, the central position of writers was gradually replaced by the multiple roles of writers or the 

polycentric status of the commodity society driven by factors such as literature, art and publishing. For 

example, the Internet writing that appeared after 1998 has changed the pattern of pure literature in the 

past. The author and readers have formed an intimate relationship of interaction and cooperation, and 

the latter has become an important meaning of the literature. To a certain extent, Internet literature is 

the product of the era of commercialization, and the prediction that literature come true. The end of one 

era brings the brightness of another era. And such multi-dimensional facets cannot fail to refer to the 

diversification and homogeneity of the city, the homogeneous desire, and the writing of the original 

beauty, presenting the overall evolution of urbanized China. 

 

 

 



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The imprint of commercialization is like a branding iron engraved on the body of novels in the new 

century. There is no doubt that literature is marginalized, but in terms of the output of literary works, it 

shows a contrasting prosperity. Ironically, the lack of quality has not affected the circulation of the text, 

the number is getting bigger and bigger, the audience is getting wider and wider, and more and more 

awards refer to the paradoxical reality. On the contrary, Guangxi has culture first and economy lags 

behind. Compared with contemporary writers who fluctuate to a certain extent between tradition and 

modernity, globalization and localization, based on ecological aesthetics, Guangxi writers show a 

harmonious return and transitive interpretation. 

Since the beginning of the new century, the pace of urbanization has accelerated, urban-rural mobility, 

and the change of land nature have become more frequent. The beauty and non-beauty of the living 

conditions of contemporary people are placed in front of literary creation. Writers of texts must shift 

their point of view to the urban habitat. Lei Da believes that the biggest change in literature since the 

new century lies in “the shift in the focus of literature: the city is replacing the countryside as the center 

of literary imagination” (Mike, 2003, p. 49). Chen Xiaoming pointed out, “To be precise, only those 

works that directly present the existence of the city itself, establish the object image of the city, express 

the author’s clear reflection on the city, and express the spiritual conflict between the characters and the 

city can be called typical urban literature” (Lei, 2010, p. 35). Urban literature itself has the 

characteristics of reflecting the dominant of the city. Urban literature and the process of urbanization 

can achieve an inter-textual effect with symbiosis to a certain extent. 

The textual representation of the city by literature makes people reflect on the painful price paid by the 

disadvantaged groups for economic development in the process of urbanization, and urban literature 

should express the original beauty of desire-oriented human and the unlimited desire of human beings 

in the living environment to reflect on the negative consequences of urbanization. 

In addition to urban and rural space narratives and urban landscape presentations, the alienation of 

human beings in urban habitats also shows the spiritual changes of people in contemporary China 

under the influence of globalization. In the face of urban China, the genes of the countryside have been 

eroded away, but the writers’ desire to build a new harmonious urban structure has not diminished. The 

ontology of ecological aesthetics believes that there is a need to maintain a harmonious relationship 

between people, people and society, and people and nature for dynamic balance. Guangxi’s diverse 

national culture and natural resources shape the generation of writers’ ecological awareness, and the 

life totem fits with the traditional Chinese aesthetics of life, especially the meta-theory of ecological 

aesthetics, namely whole life, proposed by local theorists. It is more suitable for Guangxi literature to 

explain the non-beautiful state of people in the city with an aesthetic attitude of reflection, witness, 

return, homeland, life, harmony and neutralization, and to find a way that is suitable for the harmonious 

development of the city and people with a seeking attitude. 

 

 



www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/elp                   Economics, Law and Policy                        Vol. 6, No. 3, 2023 

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Published by SCHOLINK INC. 

Acknowledgements 

The article was supported by the Philosophy and Social Science Fund of Guang Xi (No. 22FZW012): 

On the Urban Novels of “Guangxi Army of Literature” from the Perspective of Ecological Aesthetics; 

Education and Teaching Research Project of Guangxi Agricultural Vocational and Technical College 

(No. YJJ2122): Exploration and Practice of Ideological and Political Education in the Course of 

“Literary Appreciation” in Agricultural Universities from the Perspective of Party History Learning 

and Education. 

 

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