Abstract
Through the concepts of flâneur and abject, this paper examines Li Yongping''s Zhu Ling''s Adventures in Wonderland, highlighting the heroine Zhu Ling as a female flâneur, the configuration of the sex industry, urban economy and the government, as well as the stereotypes of prostitutes and punters. Better than her male counterpart, Zhu Ling directly engages and negotiates with urban space, discovering its dangers and excitements at the same time. Through streetwalking, Zhu Ling, like a sociologist, reveals Janus''s two faces of the sex industry-as a disdained abject and as a fascinating spectacle-and configures an erotic map loaded with contradictions. In the view of the government, prostitutes are immoral subjects whereas prostitution contributes to the development of urban economy. The sex industry thus becomes an abject from which the self-claimed moral government wishes to, but always fails to distinguish itself-the abject always comes back to haunt the subject. Similarly, although the prostitutes and their patrons appear as others vis-à-vis flâneur the subject, the fear of the temptresses may in fact reflect the weakness of the male subject and the abjective patrons may be seen as a screen on which the subject projects his ugly desire and thereby disavows his inner demon haunting his mind and body. Therefore, prostitutes and punters can only appear in Li Yongping''s work as stereotypes, as phantoms that are simultaneously visible and invisible.