Annotation

The idea of fengliu, which literally means free-flowing wind and implies an unrestrained style, runs throughout this 20-cent magazine. A declaration on its front page notes: ‘In One Thousand and One Nights, each night was spent in a style in accordance with fengliu, so go stuff yourself and save two dimes if you don’t know to appreciate the essence of fengliu.’ Two novel serialised in its pages are respectively titled ‘President Fengliu’ and ‘Consequences of Fengliu’. Its columns included ‘The Account book of Fengliu’ and ‘The Family of Fengliu’. It even had an author named Miss Fengliu.

Among the contributors of this typical example of a ‘Cantonese style’ magazine were Louie Yu Tin, author of the comic strip ‘King of Slipshod’ (Wulongwang), who drew a four-cell comic strip series of the novel Expedition to the South Pole, and Wang Xinfan, a master of Cantonese song, whose piece ‘A Play with Catfish in a Restaurant’ (Jiu Louxitangshi) appeared in one issue. Also featured was rarely seen Cantonese martial arts and skills fiction by the established writers Nianfoshanren (Xu Kairu) and Kong Tong.

Fengliu’s publisher, Luo Tongbang, was also the publisher of Quwei, a supplement to Nüyou (‘Girlfriend’) magazine. As the last page of one issue of Fengliu carries the note ‘No.6 Supplement of Nüyou’, it appears that Fengliu may have been an offshoot Nüyou.