A New Interpretation of Blossoms from the Perspective of Thirdspace Theory: On the Reception and Dissemination of Jin Yucheng’s Blossoms

Abstract

With the television series Blossoms directed by Wong Kar-wai sparking a widespread cultural phenomenon, the spatial narrative strategies of Jin Yucheng’s original novel and its effects in cultural dissemination have garnered significant attention in academic circles. Grounded in the “Thirdspace” theoretical framework from cultural geography, this study integrates textual analysis with empirical research to examine the strategies of spatial construction in the novel Blossoms and its pathways of dissemination. At the textual level, the author employs non-traditional narrative techniques through illustrations to construct a spatial landscape characterized by synchronicity and diachronicity, thereby establishing an intertextual relationship between literary fiction and urban geography. At the level of dissemination, the spatial landscape of Blossoms functions as a cultural medium: audiences, through accessible landscape symbols in real physical spaces, activate nostalgic imaginations of Shanghai, thereby constituting the city as a vast site of nostalgia. By analyzing the internal mechanisms through which literary space is transformed into a space of cultural memory, this article seeks to provide a reasoned explanation for this cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural dissemination phenomenon.