Chapter Five. A Cross-Cultural Aesthetics Of Life: Translating “Xingling” Into “Self-Expression,” “Xianshi” Into “Leisure,” And “Humor” Into “Youmo”

Abstract

This chapter, interprets Lin Yutang's literary and cultural discourses and practices surrounding his translating into self-expression, xianshi into leisure and humor into youmo , which constitute a distinct aesthetics of life through his cross-cultural mediation and appropriation of traditional Chinese and modern Western aesthetics. Another notion Lin Yutang promoted in his popular journals in the 1930s in close association with xingling was called xianshi, or leisuret. If xingling mainly refers to the backbone spirit in literary creation, the best literary form to reveal xingling is xiaopinwen, a genre popular to Yuan Zhonglang which Lin translated as familiar essays in reference to the Western literary tradition, in a personal leisurely (xianshi) style. Youmo (Humor) is one of hundreds of neologisms that appeared in modern Chinese. It was Lin Yutang who first introduced and coined this term as early as 1924.Keywords: Lin Yutang; xianshi; xingling; youmo; Yuan Zhonglang